AUNT ADA’S ADAPTATION

The first time I heard my friend mention his Aunt Ada, it was in the telling of the story of what she said to his wife at their wedding, ‘It’s a shame you are marrying my nephew.  I always liked you and now I know you’ll never be saved.’ He shared this with good natured humor, but the lingering hurt of it was there too. 

Well today he is back from Aunt Ada’s funeral and as is often the case, on the day his family gathered to mourn a death and celebrate a life, the time proved to be marked by grace and growth.  He’d described Aunt Ada as a person who was rigid and judgmentally religious.  At the funeral, he heard more about her life and gained insight.  Perhaps living in a story where all things are either good or bad provides some sense of security or control, but it also comes at a cost.  He talked about Ada’s son who married a Jewish woman and had real wine at the wedding!  He talked about a grandchild who went to jail.  He reflected on the reality that Ada’s own story placed her at odds with the people she loved and the reality that to some degree she was able to revise her story later in life so that she didn’t become isolated from her family. 

It strikes me that Ada’s experience is not all that different from anyone’s.  We attempt to organize our world in a way that is manageable and predictable… to ensure that “all things be done decently and in order.”  In the Reformed Church in America, this inclination is almost genetic.  We can’t help but operate with control, structure & certainty, particularly in regard to our doctrine & theological expression.  This posture comes with benefits; feelings of security, of confidence, of peace.  Of course, it also comes with costs, which we usually incur in relationship and our openness to others. 

As we as a denomination digest the reality of our diversity that was so obvious during the Conversations event and is often painfully clear in forums like this one, how does the notion of revising your own story for the sake of maintaining relationship strike you?  Wishy-washy?  Gracious?  Flawed?  Hopeful? 

What about God’s story?  As you read the redemptive narrative of the Bible, do you have the sense that God revises the story to prevent isolating the children of God?  Obviously this is a perspective I am sympathetic to, but I’m curious how it plays with other RCA folk. 

From a Distance

I have a question I’d like to have responses to.  It is not a question that I want rote or trite responses to, though.  If you haven’t wrestled with this question, please do so before you respond.  To hopefully prevent thoughtless response, I’ll tell you how my day has begun.  I just got back from a funeral for an 18 month old boy who was perfectly healthy and vivacious 10 days ago.  I met him and his wonderful family last Monday when he came in with E coli... from eating blueberries, maybe.  I visited Tuesday & things were worse.  Monday and Tuesday the family begged for prayer and we had earnest conversations about their deep faith.  I visited Wednesday and he was better, eating and drinking and laughing.  I didn’t see them Thursday and when I came in Friday morning I learned he was dead.  I have felt stunned since then.

So here’s the question: How do you reconcile for yourself the reality that God doesn’t seem active in the world today like God was in the Bible?  I’m not saying that God never intervenes, but throughout the Bible there are occasions when God actively intervenes in big public ways, often for the benefit of people whose faith is no stronger than that of modern people (feeding the Israelites in the wilderness, consuming the sacrifice on Mt. Caramel, Jesus feeding the multitudes, people being healed by the Apostle Peter when his shadow fell on them).  In these cases and many others God’s intervention is miraculous and obvious.  Has that stopped?  Did God change?  Did the divine relationship to humanity change?  How do you explain this to yourself?

In the more ultra-evangelical days of my youth, I used to hate the Bette Midler song, From A Distance because it made it sound like God wasn’t active in the world.  I still hate that song for a multitude of reasons, but I often don’t know what to say about God’s activity. 

Do we help hate?

The news in Iowa today relates to the death of 19-year-old Marcellus Richard Andrews.  Andrews, who was openly gay, was sitting on a porch Friday night when a truck pulled up and the passengers began yelling anti-gay slurs.  This drew the attention of Andrews’ friends who came to his defense and in the brawl that ensued Andrews was severely beaten, receiving multiple blows to the head that put him in a coma.  Life support was removed Saturday.  Today’s news reports that no arrests have been made and that investigators do not intend to pursue this as a hate crime because the history between Andrews and the other people involved in this incident goes back over a year and is conflicted. 

Now, not many details have been released, so my understanding of this incident is limited.  That said, if a beating that resulted in death began with overt bigotry, even if it is the culmination of a year of conflict, it seems to be hate-based to me.  So, what is the church to do?

I first learned of this incident from another chaplain at the hospital where I work who is gay.  She was in tears at our staff meeting because she works with young people in Iowa’s Gay/Straight Alliances and knows this could happen to the kids she works with.  My initial response was stunned silence.  I just don’t have a place in my experience or imagination for it.  How can a someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity generate such hatred in a person or a group of people?  What kind of culture would need to exist to nurture that kind of anger?  And the more I’ve thought about it today the more I worry that the church is complicit.  I don’t know anything about Marcellus’s attackers or if they are Christians or not, but as I listen to political discourse & national debate, the voices that speak with the most passion and anger in opposition to homosexuality are often the people who most vocally claim their Christianity.  I’m not suggesting those voices would be any less sickened by this death than me and I’m not interested in debating whether homosexuality is sinful right now, I just want to suggest that the climate of our debate contributes to the kind of culture that would generate enough anger that a 19-year-old boy could be killed because he’s gay. 

Now I admit that I live on the liberal end of the RCA spectrum and am on the board of Room for All, so my reaction is kind of predictable, but is it unreasonable to think that all Christians would be appalled by this story?  Shouldn’t this behavior be denounced in pulpits across the spectrum this Sunday?  Am I totally naïve or do we all agree that the church needs to stand up and say that even for Christians who think homosexuality is sinful, we are defined by our love of our neighbors and there is no place for hate in the heart of Christians?

Spirituality?

Everyday at the hospital we begin our day with chapel at 7:30 and each day a different staff chaplain or resident chaplain leads it.  Today a resident was talking about her experience spending two months at a Benedictine monastery between two seminary years & she celebrated the Benedictine approach to life that seeks to recognize the spiritual in all of life and to baptize even the mundane realities of our days.  Then she invited us to reflect together on the devotional practices that are meaningful to each of us. 

Now, I've been a self-described contemplative for a long time and when describing the years of spiritual maturing I experienced in college at Northwestern and in seminary at Western, I talk about the role of the spiritual formation movement, Renovari, contemplative prayer, spiritual retreats, centering prayer, spiritual direction, etc.  I enjoy the emotional payoff and the feeling of closeness to God I get when I take a 2-3 retreat and I preached regularly about the importance of a healthy & active spiritual life when I was in the pulpit every week.

That said, there is also an ambivalence I experience about devotional practice.  I don't see it evidenced in the Bible very much.  True, there are numerous passages about prayer & even daily prayer.  There are passages like the shema or Psalm 1 that suggest perpetual attentiveness to God, but I wonder if they are more about identity than activity.  I don't see figures like David or Moses or even Jesus (except when he could get away to a mountain) acting all that devotional.  I guess what I'm wondering is how much of our devotional practice is of our own creation, designed more to serve our own needs than to satisfy God's expectations for a faithful life?  What do you think?

Christian or Lamechian?

This past Sunday I heard a wonderful sermon from my pastor that I want to share some thoughts from.  Rev. D Mark Davis is the pastor at Heartland Presbyterian Church in Clive, IA, where my family and I attend.  He’s been preaching for the last three weeks from Genesis 4 and this week focused on Lamech, the great-great-great-grandson of Cain.  After Cain killed his brother he encountered God and was cursed for his murder and banished to a wandering life,

“Cain said to the Lord, ‘My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.’ Then the Lord said to him, ‘Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.’ And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him.”

Several generations later Cain’s descendents had been successful and had grown strong.  They became the fathers of cities and Lamech became the father of the Bedouins and the artists and the metalworkers.  Pastor Mark highlighted these verses (4:23-24):

“Lamech said to his wives:
‘Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
   you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
   a young man for striking me.
If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
   truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.’”

Mark made a clear distinction between the mark God gave Cain and the mark Lamech claimed for himself.  God’s protection of Cain was an act of divine mercy.  God was responding to Cain’s desolation and fear.  Lamech co-opted God’s words for his own purposes.  The promise was not given by God but was taken by Lamech in the service of his own hubris. 

In that regard, I think Lamech is a helpful type through which we may view our own hermeneutics.  Lamech’s is a cautionary tale that reminds us that we do not have the right to unilaterally requisition God’s words for our own purposes, particularly when the driving energy behind our interpretation is that kind of self-serving arrogance or the defense of our own violence (physical, spiritual, relational or otherwise).  He will be a helpful character against which I will judge my own reading of the Bible and also a useful category by which I can understand the proof texting of others.  Good stuff.