Freaky Friday

Last night was "Freaky Friday" on one of the TV channels. I watched with amusement and some fascination the "accounts" of hauntings, possessions and other supernatural phenomenon. One of the stories was about a family that discovered that the house they had just rented had once been a mortuary. The embalming room and walk-in freezer in the basement had been left virtually untouched despite the recent renovations and updates done to the rest of the house. Upon discovery, the parents were highly distressed and wondered how they could possibly raise their children in a home that had such a history. As you have already deduced the house was indeed haunted. But haunted not by a simple lost soul somehow stuck between this world and the next, as it seems happens quite a lot according to pop lore, but by a fully-personified demon. Naturally the Catholic Church officials were called in and after quite a bit of testing and collecting of evidence an exorcism was authorized and performed and the house and family freed of their possessor. I do not tell this story to pass judgment about the presence of evil and its many manifestations but rather to illustrate our feelings and assumptions about the creepiness of death and how quick we are to associate it with the profundity of evil spirits. In short, death spooks us.

This being the season of Lent, and the issue of death, or at least one particular death, is increasingly haunting the collective Christian conscious. This Sunday marks the third of the four Sundays in Lent. The dark days of Holy Week will be quick to follow: Passion Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday. But even now, we assure ourselves that death is not the end; all be will be well because this hard and sorry story has a joyful ending. We know how this story ends. The eyes of our heart avert the sight of death by starring ahead to Easter morn. Spare us, o spare us, O Lord, from Freaky Friday.

This year I am recommending the Psalms as a Lenten resource. As one prays the psalter day in and day out, the heart's eye scans the full range of human experience and emotion: praise and awe of God, joy of living, confrontation of evil, protection from enemies, reverence for creation and all that is in it, violent anger, and fear of death. Among many others, Martin Luther (1528) referred to the psalter as "the little bible," and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, entitled one of his books, "Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible." Despite its long and valued history, the Psalters under-appreciation currently in the Christian church is staggering. Of course the psalms are hard to read; so much unpleasantness, so much talk of fear and anger, dying and death. This is the language of lament and yes, its a little freaky. One distressed by the psalms might wonder: Can't we just read the New Testament, Jesus and all, and forget about all this doom and gloom? Followed by: I want to read something that makes me feel good about life, not depressed. I dare say many Christians make a habit of skipping to the good parts; pancakes on Shrove Tuesday straight to Easter morning church. But in truth the function of faith is not to make one feel good. One might say, that the function of faith is to not to make us feel anything, but rather to assure us that no matter what we feel, God will walk with us through it; even how we feel about death and dying and those who have died and those we still mourn all these years later, and the certainty that one day we too will die.

Thomas Mann, wrote in The Magic Mountain, A Novel, "The only healthy and noble and indeed . . . the only religious way in which to regard death is to perceive and feel it as a constituent part of life, as life's holy prerequisite, and not to separate it intellectually, to set it up in opposition to life, or worse, to play it off against life in some disgusting fashion - for that is indeed the antithesis of a healthy, noble, reasonable, and religious view . . . Death is to be honored as the cradle of life, the womb of renewal. Once separated from life, it becomes grotesque, a wraith - or even worse." (New York: Knopt, 1995, p. 197)

The psalms breech the divide we force between life and death. They place God rightfully as mediator between the two. Only an intentional, consistent reading of the psalms will reveal this, of course. Steadily favoring one at the expense of the others or leaving off offending verses is to avert the eyes of one's heart from that which God does not avoid. In the words of the psalms that pain and haunt us because they so surely reflect the life we know, therein God finds us trembling and troubled in the face of Freaky Friday. Found and saved from fear and death.

A Calll for Christian Credibility

As the world has been watching the events unfold in Japan, the emerging story about the possible meltdowns of nuclear reactors is competing heavily with the loss of life and property due to the tsunami; not least of all the conflicting reports coming from Japanese officials. Reporters and pundits have rightly cited this as an issue of credibility. It has been pointed out the whole world is watching Japan right now and that they were creating a model that will either demonstrate how well a crisis could be handled or how much worse a disaster got because of a lack of credibility.

Credibility is always important but when the stakes are high, it becomes the most valuable asset because its what people rely on. Credibility in a non-negotiable virtue in trusting relationships. A credible witness, informant or model allows us to assess our own situations by being able to accurately gage what's going on around us or within a situation that has the potential for affecting our lives. As for nuclear reactor meltdowns, the way in which truth is conveyed is an important as the truth. This is a theological reality as well.

We might not as first think of the story of Jesus' temptations in the wilderness as a model of credibility, but that is precisely how it functions in Matthew's Gospel. It is the final event in a chain of events that build up credibility for Jesus' identity as the Christ: the detailed genealogy establishing Davidic lineage, the virgin birth, the foiling of Herod's plans to kill the divine child, the correlation between the infant Jesus and the infant Moses, the reference to God's saving action in Exodus through Herod's mass killing of the infant boys, John's prophetic announcement, God's affirmation voiced at Jesus' baptism - all followed by the events in the wilderness. The wilderness, itself, is also reminiscent of the Israelites struggle toward the promised land and God's guiding hand throughout. Much could be made of each of these events, but taken collectively, they provide an unshakable foundation of the credibility of God's merciful intervention in the world.

This lesson from Matthew's Gospel begins our Lenten journey. A time when we could easily focus on our own temptations; our individual journey toward the grace of Easter. But Matthew's set up to this point doesn't make this entirely plausible. Matthew is building a case for credibility for the whole Christian community. This is especially true when we consider that the pronoun, "you" in much of the New Testament should often be read as "ya'll." You is meant in the plural. But we are so individualistically-centered we tend toward reading "you" as "me." But Matthew likely intended it to be read in the collective, with communal implications. This being the case, it changes things for how Christian communities deal with the issue of temptation, moving from the 'I' model to a more communal accountability before God. Lenten reflections must then include, at least in part, a communal self-examination; spiritual renewal for the whole body the hoped-for endpoint. As the faith community assesses its spiritual life through prayer, fasting, study, sacrifice and worship, we begin to form questions about our (pl.) credibility; the integrity of our witness to the wider community.

Through this practice we don't just dare to wonder, but are challenged to directly question the Christianity we practice. As an example: A temptation for Christians is to seek a credible examples of Godly action in the world. In cases such as the current crisis in Japan, we focus our energy of praying for God's saving work dispensed through miracles and grace. It's not that this is an inappropriate thing to pray for but its not what Christians are primarily called to do. We are a people of action - we are the healing hands of Christ. We are called to come to the aid of our neighbors who are suffering, even to the point of personal sacrifice for the greater good.

No model for this is more clear then that of the Japanese people's response to the overwhelming crisis they now face so boldly demonstrated by the lack of looting, violence or displays of angry unrest as they wait for supplies to reach them. This is surprising when we look at the incidents of looting and violent outbursts in other places under similar (or even lesser) stresses. One news reporter spoke to this saying that the Japanese people are taught from a very young age that it is more helpful to assist one another then to commit acts that would do far more damage then good for anyone - emphasis on the communal good vs. the individual good. When I think of Christianized nations, I must say, Japan does not jump to the fore. And yet these are people who resist the temptation to act out in desperation in order to do the most good for the most people. They are building on a platform of credibility that is long-established in their culture. And it is an excellent foil against which the Christian community can honestly examine itself.

The Christian church has done a really good job at personal accountability. But if we look at Matthew's model of communal credibility - then we must acknowledge we've hardly begin.

A broken and contrite heart

A colleague posted on Facebook the following:"Lenten levity from the Shrove Tuesday program at St. Philip's":

An Irishman moves into a tiny hamlet in County Kerry, walks into the pub and promptly orders three beers. The bartender raises his eyebrows, but serves the man three beers, which he drinks quietly at a table, alone. An hour later, the man has finished the three beers and orders three more. This happens yet again.

The next evening the man again orders and drinks three beers at a time, several times. Soon the entire town is whispering about the Man Who Orders Three Beers.

Finally, a week later, the bartender broaches the subject on behalf of the town. "I don't mean to pry, but folks around here are wondering why you always order three beers?" 'Tis odd, isn't it?" the man replies, "You see, I have two brothers, and one went to America, and the other to Australia. We promised each other that we would always order an extra two beers whenever we drank as a way of keeping up the family bond."

The bartender and the whole town were pleased with this answer, and soon the Man Who Orders Three Beers became a local celebrity and source of pride to the hamlet, even to the extent that out-of-towners would come to watch him drink.

Then, one day, the man comes in and orders only two beers. The bartender pours them with a heavy heart. This continues for the rest of the evening - he orders only two beers. The word flies around town. Prayers are offered for the soul of one of the brothers.

The next day, the bartender says to the man, "Folks around here, me first of all, want to offer condolences to you for the death of your brother. You know-the two beers and all..." The man ponders this for a moment, then replies, "You'll be happy to hear that my two brothers are alive and well... It's just that I, myself, have decided to give up drinking for Lent."

In many ways I think this gets to the heart of many Lenten devotional practices; they are often misunderstood and misconstrued by those who observe but do not themselves part-take of this practice. And they inherently mean little to nothing to anyone else. I had a friend who used to give up peanut butter every year. He claimed a deep and abiding love for the stuff and to be without it for 40 long days was a true act of sacrifice to his mind. But, I wonder, does God care if we give up such things, chocolate, sweets, meat, peanut butter or even beer? I am not so sure God cares about such things, unless such acts of piety truly do what that for which they were intended, that is, to reconnect us to God. In Psalm 51, recited each year in the Ash Wednesday service, we recite: "Had you desired it, I would have offered sacrifice; but you take no delight in burnt-offerings. The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." And then we give up... some little thing that is not even as much trouble as rustling up a burnt-offering - which is, by the way, not the equivalent of burning incense. A burnt offering means going out to the pasture and capturing our most prized goat or sheep, following the prescribed way of sacrificing it, burning its flesh and sharing the cooked meat with those present (being sure to save some for the priests, whose piety it was to depend on the generosity of others in order to eat). If going to that much trouble and enduring a substantial loss of our own food supply isn't preferred by God, then I'm thinking doing without chocolate for four weeks doesn't even show up on the radar. Just sayin' .....

I saw the movie, Pieces of April, earlier this week. (Highly recommendable, by the way.) April is a young women in her early 20's, estranged from her family, and just beginning to find herself. Her family is coming to her NY apt. for Thanksgiving. All is going well until her oven breaks. She goes door to door in her building searching for anyone who will help her with very little sympathy from her neighbors. At one door a middle-aged black women yells inside to her husband, "That little white girl from 2A is telling me she's got a problem. I can't wait to hear this. What kind of problem could your white, affluent self possibly have? This otta be good." And that's the problem with giving up some trivial thing like cake and candy, we mean well but in the scheme of things its like telling a beaten and tortured Libyan we're giving up our right to vote for Lent.

The purpose of Lent is not to throw stones of privilege and affluence into the face of God whose heart is burdened with the blood and tears of those who work for justice, weep for the dead and fear for their lives. Lent is a God-given time-out for acknowledging in some concrete way the One to whom we belong and to make some authentic effort toward repairing the very broken relationship between us and God. The forty days of Lent isn't intended to be a time made up of pious prayers and kind acts geared toward attaining salvation, rather it is a precious time to be spent living into the salvation already given. The dynamic abundance of divine love cannot be withheld; when fully known it tends to spill out with abandon onto every person we encounter. It takes on a life of its own, radiating from our being lighting a path for those whose way is darkness.

When dispensing the ashes to someone privately early this day the recipient said to me, "I love Easter. I know we hear every Sunday that God loves us, but Easter is the big 'I Love You.'" That being the case, then Lent is that time when we have an opportunity to say through acts of contrition, kindness, and self-sacrifice for the benefit of all who are our neighbor, I love you, O Lord, as you have loved me.