Time and Chance

"Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all. For no one can anticipate the time of disaster. Like fish taken in a cruel net, and like birds caught in a snare, so mortals are snared at a time of calamity, when it suddenly falls upon them." - Ecclesiastes 9:11-12

I often try to rationalize the world in black and white terms. Good and bad; yes or no; love or hate; us and them. I do it and I'm not proud of it. I know the world is far more complex.

Perhaps it is the human condition to oversimplify. After all, it's so much easier to blindly hate someone than it is to understand them; it's so much tidier to be ignorant than to risk shaking my assumptions.

And so, perhaps it's no surprise that we start to believe that the universe turns around us. God loves me, so I'm entitled to certain benefits, right? It makes sense, but reality isn't so transactional.

Sometimes, things don't work out. I struggle financially despite my hard work and cleverness. The cancer patient succumbs despite prayers for healing. We tend to think that God is to blame. The Divine is micromanaging existence down to the slightest detail. So, when things go badly, we wonder if our faith wasn't strong enough. We suspect we're being punished.

But I suspect that sometimes, bad things happen to good people, not because God is playing puppeteer, but because the world is an imperfect place. That's just how things go.

Yes, God loves you and yes, terrible things still happen. I don't know why. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to us all. And that uncertainty is okay.

Our Refuge

Today, I took a walk through the Superdome and I felt the pain. You see, I'm in New Orleans, Louisiana as part of the team that will put on the ELCA National Youth Gathering — an event for more than 33,000 Lutheran high school students and their chaperones that occurs once every four years. And this year, as in 2009, it is being held in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

So, today, during the course of my duties (I was writing something to accompany a performance piece), I left our busy, noisy little office to breathe and collect my thoughts. I headed up to the second bowl, which was largely deserted. Just me and the empty seats. Rows and rows.

The phrase "what if these walls could talk" popped into my head. If I was very still, I could almost hear the walls weep. Their story was one of desperation; of dehydration; of starvation. It was a place where thousands of people waited for rescue or death.

During Hurricane Katrina, over 20,000 people took refuge inside the stadium. They waited out the storm here, on these cement floors and in these folding chairs. For six days, they waited, while babies ran fevers, trash and toilets backed up, lights went dark and the only running water poured through holes in the ceiling and trickled up through elevator shafts. It was hell at its most tangible.

When the last bus of refugees rolled out, the concourse where I stood was overflowing with more than a foot of garbage and human waste. Imagine the horror of it all. These walls are still crying, still bleeding for the poor of New Orleans.

In several Psalms, God is likened to a shelter. "The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble," the psalmist says in one. In another, the people of Israel call out to God, "Turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me." In the storm, God is the shelter. Isaiah proclaims that the Lord has "been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress, a shelter from the storm, and a shade from the heat." God does not abandon those in need. He was there, in the Superdome, wiping sweat off his brow with the people of New Orleans; he suffered through their nightmare.


It is easy to forget the story behind the flashy exterior, but if you stop to feel the divine presence in the Dome, it is undeniable. If those walls could talk... We are called to hear the story — to feel the pain and love the scars.


I hope my brothers and sisters who come to this event understand that the Spirit is at work in this place. Jesus was crucified in the Superdome just as surely as he was at Calvary. And God provided a refuge from the storm.


If this is not a sacred place, then I don't know what is.

- Jonny Eberle, Dome Creative Team Member. I live in Flagstaff, AZ and blog here and at www.jweberle.com/blog.

Holy Saturday: Life from Death

There was nothing especially uncommon about that week in Jerusalem. Jesus was not the first messiah to appear and gather followers. Jesus was not the first man to threaten the establishment of the Temple. Jesus was not the first rabble-rouser to be arrested by the Roman occupying force. Jesus was not the first man to be crucified, nor was he the last. Jesus was not the first person to die.

But sometime Saturday night, something extraordinary occurs.

Behind the heavy stone sealing the tomb, the Spirit is at work. When morning comes, the body of Jesus will be gone and his burial shroud neatly folded. What exactly occurs in the dark of the borrowed tomb we may never know or comprehend, but the result changes everything.

Death — once the end of everything — is no longer a barrier.
Death is vanquished.
Death is meaningless.

During the night, a spiritual calculus is performed. A single sacrifice pays for the accumulated sin of all humanity for all time and the slate is wiped clean. As Paul would later write to the Romans, "...We have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life."

Jesus overcomes the grave and death itself to free us from sin. I don't know how that math works. I don't know how the sacrifice of one man can liberate an entire species, but I am humbled to think that my soul is worth dying for. The mystery of that depth of love will forever captivate me with its beauty.

Good Friday: Forsaken

"Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" - Mark 15:34

Humans are strange creatures. We are petty, we are cowardly and we are untrustworthy. We lie, cheat, steal and kill our brothers and sisters. But the thing that truly defines us is our mortality. No matter who you are or how much money or power you might have, you cannot escape the inevitable. Our whole lives are spent outrunning death...until we grow weary or are caught off guard.

I don't know about you, but I'm terrified of death. I don't understand it. I don't understand why we lose the people we care about, one by one. I don't know if anything lies beyond the final breath or the last flicker of electricity in the brain. I don't even like to think about it.

Tonight, I have to think about it. Tonight, Jesus died. He was tortured and nailed to a cross where he hung for hours, bleeding his life out from the wounds in his hands and his side. He was sent here for this; to die. I know this story, but it is still painful to be reminded of it.

Over the past week, death has hung over every aspect of my life. One of my professors, a man I considered a friend and mentor, died suddenly in his sleep eight days ago. The anniversary of another friend's death is next week and I know other friends have suffered similar losses. It feels like the whole world is dying.

And I'm supposed to believe in a resurrection?

I don't know if I can.

Like the disciples at dusk on Friday evening, I'm lost. I'm forsaken. I'm not sure how to function anymore. The idea that all this death could have some purpose seems trite. This night, I must wrestle with the grave; struggle with its meaning. Tonight, my savior lies in a tomb, betrayed by his friends and savagely cut down by the same people who praised his entrance Sunday morning.

"Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?"

Lent: Church and State

Every Lent, I wrestle. I wrestle with myself and my own shortcomings and I wrestle with the world. By the time my 40 days in the wilderness are over, I usually have more bruises than answers, but I struggle anyway. This year, with the political world in chaos (as always), I've been asking myself some tough questions about the relationship between faith and governance.

As a Christian-in-progress and a political animal, I have a lot of trouble with the concept of the separation of church and state. Contrary to popular belief, the United States was not founded as a Christian state. Most of the Founding Fathers were deists and the only mention of religion in our highest documents is one clause of the First Amendment, which reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It seems simple enough on its face, but everyone draws a different interpretation from those 16 words.

On the one hand, my beliefs guide my decisions, so I don't have a problem with applying that to my actions in the public sphere. On the other hand, religion can be a tool of oppression and my understanding of Constitutional law tells me it needs to remain far removed from government. How do I reconcile that?

Some of the current presidential contenders have made remarks about tearing down the wall between the Church and the Capitol. They believe strong Christian values can turn this nation around, but I'm not so sure that's how it works.

For one, I worry about religious oppression. In the last decade, we have proven ourselves to be extraordinarily intolerant of other faiths. Christians think they're superior to everyone else and it's easy to see why other traditions are marginalized — Christians dominate the political stage, especially on a national level. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that of the 535 members of Congress, 304 are Protestant. An additional 156 are Catholic. There are just 3 Buddhists and 2 Muslims in the 112th Congress (and none of them are senators). What results is nothing less than mob rule, where the 86% who self-identify as Christian believe they have a monopoly on morality.

I just don't know what to think. Christians don't have a terribly good track record when it comes to governance (ie. the Crusades, the Inquisition, and Nazi Germany), but I can't shake the feeling that I could be on the wrong side of the argument. And so, I am left right back where I started, pondering the question: What role should faith play in the affairs of state?

Risky Business

"Cheap grace is the grace we bestow upon ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate...When Christ calls someone, he bids them come and die." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We like things to be easy. We don't want to have to think or commit too much to anything. We want to get the most reward for the least amount of effort. We expect it from our technology, our education, and from our God.

"I went to church and I even put money in the offering, so we're cool, right, God?"We did the minimum and we think that should be good enough. Yes, you're still saved through grace; grace that is a free gift. But that grace is hollow, because you didn't put yourself on the line for it.

For years, our experience of church has been safe. Sit, stand, sing, bread, wine, Jesus loves you. Being a follower of Jesus is mainstream and acceptable. In most cases, we don't risk anything by being a Christian. We proclaim a cotton candy gospel (that is, mostly sugar and air) and nobody gets stoned to death, crucified, or drawn and quartered. Do you see what I'm getting at? I'm not saying you have to defy the Roman Empire to validate your faith, but if you're not willing to stand up for it, what is it really worth? What are we worth if we let intolerance and injustice rule over us without a fight?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor living in Germany in the 1930s and '40s. When many clergy stood by while Hitler spouted hate and killed millions in concentration camps, Bonhoeffer realized that he could not stand by and let this happen. He started an underground seminary, smuggled people out of areas under Nazi control, and eventually became involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. When the attempt failed, Bonhoeffer was arrested and executed, joining a long line of martyrs.

Grace is not cheap. It is costly. Jesus paid for it with his life and many of those who followed him have paid the same price. I don't know how we face that risk today, but I know that we shouldn't take this precious gift for granted. You don't have to earn it, but I think that we have a responsibility to use it. What is point of forgiveness if we keep it all to ourselves? We have to care for the less fortunate, stand with the broken and oppressed, and fight tooth and nail for a better world. Only when we risk our reputation, our relationship, and maybe our lives can we truly call ourselves disciples of Christ. At least, that's how I see it.

Feel the Spirit

 

In the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan. As he is coming up out of the water, "he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him" (Mark 1:10). That's pretty powerful, but it gets better. A voice calls down from heaven, saying, "'You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased'" (Mark 1:11). Immediately after this awe-inspiring moment, the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness.

I can't even imagine what Jesus must've felt. I have never been filled up with the Spirit, or seen it descend on me like a dove. I have never seen the heavens open up or heard a voice call to me. But this is what we want, isn't it? We want real results when participate in church. We fully expect that at some point, we're going to hear the voice of the Lord as clearly as if whispered in our ear. We want to be claimed as part of the family. We want to have our existence affirmed and  have God's seal of approval stamped on our forehead. Perhaps most importantly, we want to be physically, mentally, emotionally, and of course, spiritually moved by the Spirit from apathy into action. We want purpose and direction.

However, most weeks, I walk out of the Sunday evening service at LCM feeling no different than when I walked in. I don't feel transformed. Sometimes, I feel like I'm trying too hard. I know I can't force myself to have an experience. All I can do is be open to the possibility that I will internalize a little of the Spirit.

Still, while I don't expect the sky to open for me anytime soon, I cannot shake the sensation that sometimes, I'm alone in the room; the Spirit didn't show up at all. I don't know how to feel about that or if it's even true. Like most mysteries in this world, I may never get an answer.