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.

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?"

The 21st Century Church, Part Four: Re-Formation

Exactly 494 years ago today, an insolent monk in what we now call Germany nailed a notice to the door of a church. There were 95 things he was ticked off about and he listed off every one. One scathing indictment of the Roman Catholic Church after another. Martin Luther had guts (and he was probably a little stupid). At the time, the Church was the most powerful institution on Earth. Making it angry was likely to get you excommunicated or even executed. But Luther stood firm in his beliefs.

At the heart of his 95 theses about what was wrong about the Church were five key conclusions that Luther had gleaned from careful study of the Bible. The basis on which he challenged the Pope's monopoly on salvation now forms the foundation of modern Protestantism, something he never imagined or wanted.

Martin Luther believed that the road to being saved was very different from the path prescribed by the Church, encapsulated by his five core principles:

• The first was sola scriptura — by Scripture alone. The authority of God does not lie in any person, office, building, or institution, but only in the words of the Bible.

• The second was sola fide — by faith alone. You can't buy your way into Heaven (despite what Pope Leo X would've told you). God has no use for money and does not require good works. You get in on your faith, in a transaction that skips the middleman (Rome) entirely.

• The third was sola gratia — by grace alone. This one is my favorite. No one forgives sins but God himself (of course God is beyond gender, but that's another blog) and nothing we do can make us worthy of this forgiveness. The good news is we don't have to do anything. God is merciful and gives us his forgiveness as a free gift.

• The fourth was solus Christus — by Christ alone. This is gift of grace is given through God's son, who died so that we might live. That's how great his love is for us.

• The fifth was soli Deo gloria — glory to God alone. I imagine this one really angered Luther. In his day, the Church held all the power and influence in Europe and was in the process of violently converting the native peoples of Central and South America. The Pope lived opulently. The glory was to the Church...and if there was any left over, God could have that.

It has been 500 years since Martin Luther took his historic stand against the Church. A Protestant branch of Christianity swept the globe, inspired by his theology. A whole new church was named after him. The Catholic Church survived and thrived. It, too, was reformed by the Reformation. Martin Luther became a mythic figure, a champion of intellectual and philosophical rebellion and one of the first men in history to assert his individuality against the hegemonic ideology of his time.

In 1517, Luther saw that the Church was broken and he sought to give it form again. In 2011, our church is also broken. People are leaving in droves. Our stance on social justice issues is largely limited to words and resolutions, but lacks any real action. The stances themselves are deliberately vague to keep from alienating a diverse base of financial support that covers the entire political spectrum. We have trouble practicing what we preach and we get so caught up in the trappings of modern Christianity that we ignore or forget about the meat of our beliefs. We don't question. We don't debate. We don't grow in our faith through serious reflection and discussion. We are stagnant, without form.

We need to re-form our church. We need to give it life again, the same way Martin Luther did. We need the courage to say that the institution is wrong. We need to take a good, hard look at the scriptures and remind ourselves of what we believe. The time has come — time for a new Reformation.

The Economy of Grace

"Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food." 

- Isaiah 55:1-2

Today, in the midst of a meeting of the Dome Creative Team for the ELCA's Youth Gathering, we happened across these verses from the prophet Isaiah and it got me to thinking. In our everyday lives, we are so caught up in the material — the market economy, the exchange of goods and services, the global systems of cash and credit — that we forget that God doesn't play by our rules.

In a nation hit hard by a recession and very possibly heading into another one, we are acutely aware of the difficulties of surviving in the secular modern world. According to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national unemployment rate was 9.1% in September. Concerns about how to repay student loans, pay rent, and put food on the table dominate our thinking and guide our choices. In captalist society, someone usually has to lose for others to gain.

God's economy doesn't work like human economies. Through Isaiah, we are invited to enter the marketplace. Everyone is invited to buy, but God doesn't take cash, credit, or debit. You buy without money. There's never a bill or an invoice. To the western mind, this sounds like gibberish, but for God, it makes perfect sense, because God is far beyond the acquisition of wealth. Grace is a priceless gift — literally priceless.

We have difficulty fathoming this economy, but that is only because our worldview is so narrow. We can barely see beyond our own wallet. We are consumed with paychecks and car payments and in doing so, we have missed the point of our existence. Why do we spend our money on that which is not bread and our labor on that which does not satisfy? Is this not the perfect critique of modernity? We do we do all these things that ultimately do not fill the emptiness?

In the 16th century, Martin Luther rebelled against the Church's practice of selling indulgences, proclaiming that we are saved by grace, not any earthly institution. He saw that God expresses no interest in our money. God is selling something infinitely more real: this mysterious, intangible thing called grace. We have been invited to eat was is good and delight ourselves in rich food. Even if we are unworthy, God forgives us free of charge. If we are unable to pay, God picks up the check. That's good news.

The 21st Century Church, Part One: Egalitarianism

It has been over 2,000 years since Jesus — the Word made flesh — came to live and die among us. 2,000 years since the teachings of a radical young Jewish rabbi inspired the founding of a major world religion. There have been many changes in Christendom since those early days and sometimes it can be hard to tell what parts of our church experience have been there from the beginning and which have accumulated over time.

The question I have is: Do we need all this extra stuff? How important is the ceremony and frills to our relationship with God? I know I'm not the only one asking these questions. I think most people are asking them deep down. What we need is not just an answer, but a new direction. The church is going to change in the 21st century. And I'm going to humbly attempt to articulate how in my next few blog posts.

The first big shift I see is away from the hierarchical church system we see today. I was privileged to have a foretaste of that church last night, when I sat down with my good friend Ron and dissected this week's scripture readings. What emerged from the evening was a deeper understanding of the text than could ever be gained from a sermon (no offense to any members of the clergy who might read this).

I suspect that this is much like the early Christian church in the first decades after Jesus' death and resurrection — a group of equals sitting down at a table, breaking bread together and discussing the tricky questions of theology and practice.

This our heritage, and I suspect it is also our future. There was no distinction between those behind the altar and those in the pews. There was discussion in an egalitarian community. Church, therefore, is not an individual experience, but a communal one.

A non-hierarchical church centered around the Word and the Eucharist, where we are all equal members of the priesthood and engaged in deep, ongoing conversation and discovery. That's the church I want to be a part of.