When you think of your bowels, do you think, primarily, about feelings of mercy and compassion?
I don't. But then, I'm not a 1st Century Palestinian. For them, the "bowels" (in Greek splangnon) were the seat of your tenderest affections, where things like pity, and empathy, and compassion came from. Usually we associate these things-- tender affection and warm feelings- with the heart, like when we say: "my heart really goes out to you." But in Jesus's day it wasn't your "heart," it was your "bowels." (Look, for instance, at 2 Cor 7:15, Phil 2:1, Col 3:12, Phm 1:7, 12, 20, or 1 John 3:17 in an old KJV, but don't try writing "My bowels go out to you" on your next Get Well Soon card (especially if it's for someone who's just had a coloscopy).)
But I'm not trying to be gross. I'm saying this to illustrate how easily we can miss the point if we don't remind ourselves that moderns and ancients often used different "psychosomatic categories" for talking about the body.
Sometimes, for instance, we hear people quote Jesus when he said: "These people honour me with their lips but their hearts are far from me." And because we use the "heart" to describe our emotions, we conclude that Jesus is saying he wants people to worship "with emotion." Now, it may be (and I believe it is) that Jesus wants people's emotions engaged when they worship. But in the Bible, the “heart” actually refers to the whole "inner self," and not exclusively, or even primarily, the "feelings." The "heart" is the seat of knowledge and reason (Mk 11:23, Ac 7:23; cf. Ex 35:10, Deut 8:5, 1 Kin 10:2, 1 Chron 29:9), will and resolve (1 Cor 7:37, Eph 6:22; cf. Ex 23:2, 1 Sam 9:20, 1 Chron 24:4), affections (Ac 2:26, Jn 16:22; cf. Deut 11:16, 1 Sam 1:8), and is better understood as a parallel to the “soul” than to “emotions.” Jesus’ criticism is not that the Pharisees lack emotion, but that their adherence to empty tradition at the expense of real holiness betrays hypocrisy, and is a sign that their “inner selves” are not aligned with God.
How Do You See?
St Brendan's Prayer
And while I'm sharing musical adaptations of the prayers of Irish saints, I'll post this one, too.
St. Brendan the Voyager (484-577 AD) is one of the more fascinating of the early Irish saints. He's most famous for his voyage westward into the Atlantic Ocean, in search of the Island of the Blessed (which, if it happened at all, probably dates some time around 520 AD). The Voyage of St. Brendan the Navigator, the ancient Irish immram (a traditional navigational story) that recounts this voyage for us, describes such legendary adventures as his saying the mass to swarms of fish on Easter morning, landing on an island that turns out to be a giant whale (or in some versions of the story a sea monster named Jascon), and discovering mysterious lands in the western Atlantic, covered with vegetation. Some historians who have taken the time to sift through this fabulous hodge-podge of legend, hagiography, myth and history have suggested that the "western lands" in the St. Brendan legend represent, at the very least, pre-Colombian knowledge of the Americas among the early Irish seafarers.
There's a prayer traditionally ascribed to St. Brendan , and imaginatively set on western shores of Ireland, just before Brendan embarks on his dusk-treading sea voyage. Not that many of us will ever brave the wild white waves in any literal sense, but the imagery of the sea-voyage has always been archetypal for the spiritual journey (just ask Homer, or Melville, or C. S. Lewis, or John Patrick Shanley), and in that sense the prayer expresses something about the adventure and abandon of following Christ that still resonates; in that spirit I offer it here:
Shall I abandon, O King of mysteries, the soft comforts of home? Shall I turn my back on my native land, and turn my face towards the sea?
Shall I put myself wholly at your mercy, without silver, without a horse, without fame, without honour? Shall I throw myself wholly upon You, without sword and shield, without food and drink, without a bed to lie on? Shall I say farewell to my beautiful land, placing myself under Your yoke?
Shall I pour out my heart to You, confessing my manifold sins and begging forgiveness, tears streaming down my cheeks? Shall I leave the prints of my knees on the sandy beach, a record of my final prayer in my native land?
Shall I then suffer every kind of wound that the sea can inflict? Shall I take my tiny boat across the wide sparkling ocean? O King of the Glorious Heaven, shall I go of my own choice upon the sea?
O Christ, will You help me on the wild waves?
Happy St. Aidan's Day
Those who share my general interest in the lives of the saints, and/or my somewhat more specific interest in the Irish Saints, may know that today is the feast day of St. Aidan. Some time around 650 AD, St. Aidan founded a monastery on the Island of Lindisfarne, in England. He's sometimes known as the Apostle of Northumbria, inasmuch as he is credited with restoring the Faith to Northumbria.
Leave me alone with God as much as may be.
As the tide draws the waters close in upon the shore,
Make me an island, set apart,
alone with you, God, holy to you.
Then with the turning of the tide
prepare me to carry your presence to the busy world beyond,
the world that rushes in on me
till the waters come again and fold me back to you.
Casting Stones
I'm wondering about 1 Peter 2:4-10 today, having preached it this morning (you can listen to the sermon below). I'm thinking especially about all the rock imagery in there. Jesus is the Living Stone (v. 4), we're also living stones (v. 5), the scriptures promised a foundation stone (v. 6a) and cornerstone for Zion (v. 6b), which is Jesus, who is a precious stone (v. 7a), a rejected stone (v. 7b), and the capstone (v. 7c; interesting, he's the foundation and the capstone, the first and last); he's also a stumbling stone (v. 8a) and a rock of offense (v. 8b).
That's 9 rock references in all of 5 verses-- a veritable land-slide.
1 Peter 2:4-10: The House that God Built
The Cobblestones of Heaven
In Revelation 21:21, when John the Seer is casting about for words to describe the vision of the New Creation he's just glimpsed, he tells us, among other things, that the street of the heavenly city was pure gold, like transparent glass.
Not that I've spent a lot of time ruminating on the infastructure of Heaven, but whenever I did, I always assumed this was intended to signify either the beauty of the city or the extravagance of its wealth. It reminds me a bit of 1 Kings 10:21, where it says that Israel was so wealthy under the reign of Solomon that nothing was ever made out of silver, because silver was considered of little value in Solomon's days.
It may still be, in the end, that when he describes "streets paved with gold" John wants to fill our heads with hopeful visions of the luxury that awaits us in that celestial city. Our pie in the sky when we die. I'm not sure. But the other day I was reading Talking the Walk, Marva Dawn's fascinating book about Christian doctrine, and she suggested something in passing I've never considered before.
She says that the "street paved with gold" is a vision, actually, of the great reversal that God will accomplish at the end of the age, when Christ's Coming turns everything on its head. "Here," she writes, "we think gold is of utmost importance, but there we will just walk on the stuff."
If she's right, she'd certainly be singing a tune in beautiful harmony with one of the major-- and most ignored-- themes in the New Testament, a theme that I sometimes call the "Upside down Kingdom" (with apologies to Don Kraybill). In God's Kingdom, things are continually turned upside down: the last come first; the greatest are the least; the Poor are called to rejoice and the Rich sent away in tears. Those who mourn are happy; the fools shame the wise; the Christ conquers through his public humiliation and brutal execution.
And the most precious ingots of all (perhaps?) become the cobblestones.
Of course, to vary that old saying about the banana a bit: sometimes lump of gold is just a lump of gold. And certainly when you look at how John uses gold imagery in the rest of his apocalypse, it still seems to signify the radiant beauty and transcendent value of heavenly things. But, right or not, I like Marva Dawn's reading here for its implications. Because if the gold we're toiling for today will become mere paving tiles in the Heavenly City, then it certainly begs the question: in that same God-illumined Jerusalem then, what will become of those things-- the humble, ignored, physically down-trodden and spiritually-degraded things-- that we tend to trample over now in our worldly ignorance?
Fields of Gold
About a year ago, when I was bidding Sasktchewan a fond farewell and all, I mentioned a few of my favorite Saskatchewan artists. In that post I might have added my wife to the list, but at the time she hadn't yet begun to paint the prairies. Last weekend however, mostly out of ache for big sky and yellow fields, she painted this landscape that now hangs in our living room. The photo doesn't really do it justice: it's 4' x 5' and the detail on the barn is perfect. I was going to add my 2 cents about the value of having things around us that we've made with our own two hands, things we've made that remind us of stuff we really love and so a bit about who we really are... but I think I'll let the painting speak for itself.
Occupied
The other day we were filling out some forms for some changes we're making to an insurance policy, when the helpful representative from the brokerage asked me this innocuous question: "Occupation?"
He'd already run through the questionaire with my wife, so I knew what was coming next. Because after I answered: "Pastor," he asked: "And the description of your work?"
He just wanted hard data. He just wanted to be able to assure the insurance company that I'm not at any special risk of death or dismemberment because of the nature of my occupation. But I have to admit, my mind sprinted a couple of laps before I answered.
Mostly because I've been asked this question before, usually out of genuine curiosity, always out real interest and only once out of vague suspicion towards the role in general: "So, what does a pastor do?" And I always hesitate.
When I was in seminary, one of the courses I took had us write a "vision statement" that would help us define our future roles in ministry. My own "vision statement for ministry" is: "To use my gifts as a teacher, preacher and leader to point others to the revelation of God's grace and faithfulness in Jesus Christ, and to fully participate by the power of the Holy Spirit in the redemptive work that Christ is accomplishing in my community and in the lives of those around me. " But I knew that if I told the polite, helpful insurance broker sitting across the table from me that in my line of work I use my gifts as a teacher, preacher and leader to point others to the revelation of God's grace and faithfulness in Jesus Christ and to fully participate by the power of the Holy Spirit in the redemptive work of Christ... it wouldn't have got me very far.
He just wanted hard data, after all.
Of course, thanks to the unlimited storage-and-retrieval powers of modern technology, hard data isn't that hard to come by. A few clicks on the computer this evening and I found out that in my first full year as a pastor I:
preached... 138,318 words
received ... 1,774 emails
sent ... 1,228 emails
read ... 781 pages for denominational ordination
played ... 348 songs
posted ... 108 blog posts
wrote ... 43 pages of papers for denominational ordination
baked... 22 loaves of communion bread
tabled ... 10 pastor reports to the board
taught .... 7 introductory sessions on the Christian Faith
submitted... 1 annual report
And participated in... innumerable meetings. (I once heard a pastor say that he "didn't do meetings" and I thought: How? That's like a high steel worker saying he didn't do rivets.)
But it turns out that all this hard data is actually rather soft. Because none of these numbers really express what it is I "do" as a pastor; and there is no number you could write down to quantify what it means to be invited to walk alongside God's people as Christ does his new-creation work in our life together. No number could express the honour it is to invite others to discover the grace of God in Jesus Christ, or the privilege it is to help others see the love and goodness of Jesus in the Book he inspired, or the joy it is to encourage God's people to use the gifts God's given them to be part of God's redemptive mission in the world.
None of this, I suppose, entails special risk of dismemberment, but there is a special risk of death in there; a death to self and a daily resurrection into a life of measuring all things-- work, meaning, worth, success, life itself-- by the measuring stick of the cross, and by the scandalous death of the crucified King.
And how do you quantify that beautiful risk?
What the?
Once when I was teaching I happened to overhear a girl at the back of the room talking about her ex-boyfriend. This jilted lover was expressing her bitterness over the cause of the jilting, and then drew a somewhat crass parallel between her anger and sexual intercourse, using an expletive that started with the 6th letter of the alphabet.
In short: she dropped the "f-bomb." And then she likened her ex to an unmentionable part of the human body.
Of course, a teacher's ears are finely tuned to this kind of "inappropriate verbiage," and I called her on it. But rather than eating her words, as most students would have done, she stood by her work: "What's the big deal, anyways?" she demanded. "It's just a word."
I didn't really have an answer for her, except to appeal to rules made by higher authorities that I knew she wouldn't have acknowledged anyways (the school board, society, a dusty old book with gilt lettering on its cover). So instead I tried to explain that using taboo words like these were actually an indication of ignorance-- a sign that the speaker is either too lazy or too stupid to find more accurate, more witty, more creative ways to express himself. And then I added (for good measure) that because I knew she was neither lazy nor stupid, it was unbecoming of her to leave others with the impression that she was.
That answer got me through to the bell. But I've thought about that question off and on ever since: What is the big deal about these shocking words?
Even appeals to the highest authority will only get you so far. To be sure, in Ephesians 5:4 the Good Book warns us not to let "obscenity" sully our lips. But then, back in Ezekiel 23, God's own prophet likens Israel's political aliance with Egypt to "adultery"-- and then describes her Egyptian "lovers" in terms that I might blush to repeat in a locker-room, let alone behind the pulpit.
So the question lingers: what is the big deal?
If my student were to ask me that same question today-- why does it matter if I swear?-- I think I'd take a different tack. "It's because you're created in the Image of God," I'd say.
And when she looked at me sideways, I'd explain: there's this ancient story from the cradle of humanity that says when the Creator made the world, he made it by speaking. He spoke things into existence. And then when he made humans, he said: "I'm going to make you in my 'Image,'" which basically means we're given a special role by the Creator to carry on (in small ways) the work that he began.
And then I'd point out that, if God creates the World by speaking, and we are made in his image; then it sort of follows that, to a lesser degree, humans "create worlds" by speaking, too. And it's true: human speech is always "world-creating" because our words create the realities we inhabit.
So when we take a word, for instance, that literally describes sexual intercourse, and use it in ways that are shocking, violent, degrading or empty; then, like it or not, in that spoken word we're actually creating a world where sex itself is shocking, violent, degrading, and empty for us. At the same time, we're destroying that world the Creator is after, where sexuality is affirming and tender and life-giving.
So the question is not: "did you utter any of the phonemes found on this arbitrary list of taboo words?" The question really is: are you using speech to create, or to destroy? Are you Imaging God in your talk?
That's a better answer, I think. And when we ask the question like that, interestingly, we find that there may actually be times when using words that are shocking, even taboo, can actually be a creative act, a step towards answering our calling as creatures made in the image of the creator.
Ezekiel, I think, got this.
So did the author of the Hebrews. In one place he's talking to people who are experiencing God's "discipline" and asking why, and he says (according to the NIV): "If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons." But the word translated "illegitimate children" there is actually a rather shocking term in the Greek, a word not necessarily suited to polite society (it's not for nothing the KJV renders it: "If ye be without chastisement ... then ye are bastards and not sons"). Because perhaps it's only in the shock of this scandalous speech that we actually feel the scandal of wanting to enjoy the Christian life without without the sometimes difficult but always loving discipline of God.
Even the author of Ephesians 5:4, I think, understood this power of speech. In Philippians 3:8, after listing all the religious accolades and spiritual accomplishments he's accrued in life, he says: but I consider all that "rubbish" compared to the goal of winning Christ. That's how the NIV renders the verse, but "rubbish," it turns out, is not near earthy enough. The word in Greek--skubala-- though not quite an "s-word" itself--certainly would have raised more eyebrows in the Philippian church than mere "rubbish" does today. The KJV renders it "dung," but for dynamic equivalence, I've heard that "crap" (or its scatological synonyms) might not be too far off.
And if we could hear that shocking skubala with the ears of the Philippian Christians Paul's writing to here, we might actually discover ourselves standing in a fresh-made world where there really is no crown in heaven or on earth that looks gold, compared to the all-surpassing riches of Christ.
And that's a big deal. It's never "just a word."