When Enough is Enough: Moses Gets Cranky After a Rough Day at Work

Some thoughts on today's Lectionary readings:

• Often, the Old Testament reading and the Gospel reading aren't particularly related. This isn't one of those days.

• In the reading from Numbers, there is tension between three parties: the people of Israel, Moses, and God. Israel is still in the midst of their wandering in the desert. They are a people in transition...both homeless and yet promised a home.

• The people revolt: Though Israel has been delivered from 400 years of slavery, have witnessed God's great work, and have been fed by God, they still pine for Egypt, the place of their slavery. Their complaints are patently absurd given their freedom. The complaints echo their complaints from Exodus chapter 16, which prompted God to send them the manna to feed them. This happened before the people reached Mount Sinai in the 3rd month after the Exodus. It is now after the beginning of the first month of the year after the Exodus, 9 or 10 months later. In Exodus chapter 16, God promised to feed them daily. By Numbers chapter 14, that promise is no longer enough.
  
  How many revolutions begin with people not having enough to eat or enough basic provisions to live on? The people were already amidst a rebellion. Numbers chapter 11 begins with God squashing a revolt and Moses petitioning God to relent. The narrative has already established that the people are never lacking in their needs. They have enough to go on everyday but they are unable to store and save, and are therefore unable to plan. This was to be the last stretch of their wandering but their actions following this will lead to another 40 years of wandering.
  
  The story of the Exodus is fundamentally a story about memory and trust. The examples are extreme and the consequences are great, but the people's troubles come from either their forgetfulness of the things God had already done (or said he would do) or from their lack of trusting what they've known God to do and say, preferring their own plans to God's.
  
  It's a fundamental issue for Western Civilization since the Enlightenment. If we do not already deny God's existence outright, we tend to question a dynamic, acting God who speaks personally to his people. Most modern people would consider that kind of understanding of God as foreign to their way of thinking. Yet it's at the crux of biblical religion, standing before almost any other issue. Can people know God? Can God communicate in a meaningful way to people? Does God speak in a way discernible to a whole nation of people? How should we respond to the exclusive claim of God's revelation to Israel? Applying the word "trust" to God means that he is perceived as having done things that are trustworthy. This is an understanding of God that is well beyond the merely conceptual. This radically challenges many commonplace images of God.

• Reluctant and heroic leadership: The beauty of this reading from Numbers lies in Moses' stark honesty. He is beyond frustrated and he is clearly stuck in his position between God and the people. Moses does not have a lot of leverage in the relationship. He shares both a great intimacy with God (Numbers 12:6-8) and yet he begins his mission as both a murderer and a coward.
  
  His words to God really cash in whatever good will he may think that he has before God:
  
  Why do you treat your servant so badly?” Moses asked the LORD.
  “Why are you so displeased with me
  that you burden me with all this people?
  Was it I who conceived all this people? ...
  I cannot carry all this people by myself,
  for they are too heavy for me.
  If this is the way you will deal with me,
  then please do me the favor of killing me at once,
  so that I need no longer face this distress.”
  
  Moses is one of the great characters of the Bible and, if you were making a case for that claim, this passage could be Exhibit A. Moses possesses no sense of false piety. Imagine being given a mission that would last for 40 years, culminating in your death, and full only of hardship, of being misunderstood, and of conflict. It's almost unbearable and the last moments of Moses' life in Deuteronomy are tragic considering the fact that he is not allowed to enter the land that he guided the people to. We do not encounter any real moment of joy in his life and even his relationship with God involves anger and frustration. I'd like to imagine that there is joy in Deuteronomy when the children of the rebellious first generation after the Exodus pledge themselves to follow the Torah and bind themselves to living justly in God's eyes. At the last moments of his life he finally sees the fruit of his work.
  
  His complaints are a great challenge for us to be honest before God. God, it seems, has no use for false piety. Piety should bubble joyfully out of the heart. It can't be forced or contrived. It's as natural as blurting out an "I love you" to your beloved in a moment of deep recognition of what you two share. You can't fake it so don't try. Moses surely didn't.

• And yet...we are given another image of leadership in Jesus. The reading from the 14th chapter of Matthew's Gospel is well known and is recounted a couple of different ways throughout the Gospels. Jesus feeds 5,000 men and their families with five loaves and two fish. There's a lot happening in the story but it's the first few lines that give us a window into Jesus' personality. He's clearly a leader and it's interesting to compare what he does here with what Moses said and did in the last passage.
  
  We're presented an image of a grieving Jesus who just wants to be alone. The Gospels are written very economically, as though every inch of parchment and every drop of ink mattered. Because of this, you sometimes have to read between the lines to understand those things that aren't simply spelled out for you. John the Baptism figured heavily into the life of Jesus. So much of who Jesus the man was came from John. John saw his role as preparing for the coming Messiah (Matthew 3:11-12) but he wasn't an incidental figure in the Gospels. He provides Jesus with his first followers (John 1:35-37), he baptized Jesus, and he is remembered as a cousin of Jesus (Luke 1:36-45). John was a callback to the Old Testament prophets in his words and actions and it reminded those who witnessed him that the events from their distant past actually happened. His presence would have reawakened a sense of expectation and re-education, almost like an abbreviated prologue at the beginning of a film that catches the view up on things they may have forgotten. There's a reason that so many people thought Jesus was John come back to life (Matthew 14:2 and 16:14). John and Jesus said similar things (Luke 3:3 and Mark 1:15, Matthew 3:8) and even similar insults for detractors (Matthew 3:7, 12:34, and 23:33). While there were clearly differences between the men and their styles (Luke 7:33-34), John and Jesus shared something close. John is remembered as a cousin but it would probably not be too far to say that Jesus lost not only a cousin but a kind of brother and mentor.
  
  In short, the day John died was not a good day for Jesus and he wanted to deal with his grief by being alone.
  
  Yet people start flocking to him without any concern for his feelings. Jesus is like Moses in that the rest of his life would be consumed with a difficult (and some could say thankless) mission. One one hand, we can't be surprised that people treated Jesus like the goose that lay the golden eggs. He was always surrounded by people who were hungry or afflicted because of his reputation as a wonder worker. Even today, if a doctor has a reputation for dealing with certain illnesses or successfully performing certain kinds of surgeries, he will find himself sought after and very busy. Jesus' reputation was as someone who could do anything and there was no shortage of people who were suffering without any other hope.
  
  On the other hand, I can't help but see Jesus as being kind of used here. How do we feel about people who only come after us when they want something? After a while our response to them is cynical or dismissive. If this passage from Matthew's Gospel included the line "and Jesus told them 'can you maybe give me a couple hours to chill out?'", we would certainly understand it. In most circumstances that would probably be the most charitable thing we could muster.
  
  This is what makes his response to them so moving for me: "his heart was moved with pity for them, and he cured their sick". His response involves no words, only compassion. The Gospel lets us know that it was a "vast crowd" and we learn how vast when he ends his time of healing their sick by feeding them all. The curious saw wonders, the hungry ate, and the afflicted were healed.
  
  What a powerful image of God: so great yet embracing us so deeply as to become one of us. Grieving but not at the expense of consoling others. Tired but working until all are healed and fed. Motivated not by a reputation and seeking nothing but moved by unfathomable compassion.
  
  Moses began to crack under the pressure, and yet remains the prophet most venerated in the memory of Israel (Deuteronomy 34:10-12). He loses nothing of his greatness in his weaknesses and failures. Yet it speaks volumes when God's only Son goes through the same thing and still shows so much compassion and mercy.

The Memory of Marie Antoinette and the Memory of Bread from Heaven

The 2006 film version of the life of Marie Antoinette was not considered a great success. It's director, Sofia Coppola, had eschewed both the standard historical tragedy and the then-popular "biopic" and presented an image of Antoinette that had more in common with the New Wave groups of the early 80's than David O. Selznick's production of A Tale of Two Cities. There influence of Siouxie Sioux and Adam Ant were apparent in both style and soundtrack. Although Marie Antoinette was torn apart in the domestic box office ($15 million dollars made on a $40 million dollar budged...it would make its money back overseas) as well as by critics, it also painted a gorgeously horrific picture of invincible ignorance and decadence. 

The film is far kinder to Marie Antoinette than the mob who gathers at Versailles at the end of the film, but there is a tragedy in her (at least in her film incarnation) not coming to terms with life outside of the palace sooner than she did. She is never shown as ever have knowing any better than what the royalty and the aristocracy had allowed her to see. Her aloofness is endearing in the world she lives in. She's set apart for her simplicity and innocence. But that means nothing to a starving, filthy, and oppressed mob and her values mean little in the sight of that. She has seen so little and the truth is in the big picture.

Today's readings in the Lectionary deal with a similar conflict between reality and appearances. The centerpiece of this second set of Sunday readings (in a 5 week cycle) are what's known as Jesus' "Bread of Life" discourse from the 6th chapter of John's Gospel. The Church reads this section of John as his Eucharistic theology par excellence. John's Gospel is quite a bit different than the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all of whom share a certain literary similarity. One major difference involves Jesus' words in instituting the Eucharist. While Matthew, Mark, Luke, and St. Paul all recount what Jesus said during the actual meal ("this is my body...this is my blood"), John does not. John's theology of the Eucharist, however, is woven deep within the narrative fabric, from John the Baptist's first recognition of Jesus as the "Lamb of God" to the parallels between the crucifixion and the Passover sacrifice. The Gospel itself is very Eucharistic and the early Christian communities would only have to listen to the words of the weekly celebration of the Lord's Supper to see the allusions.

Today's selection from John's Gospel involves Jesus trying to communicate His role in God's work through a cultural memory familiar to his audience. We're given a window into that memory through the first reading from the book of Exodus. After their deliverance from 400 years of slavery, God's people are wandering in the wilderness. They begin to starve and yearn to return to Egypt, their place of slavery, for want of food. They "grumble" or "murmur" (תּלֻנָּה/t®l¥nnâ) about their plight. When God tells Moses "I have heard the grumblings of the Israelites", he is aware that their ire is directed towards him and not Moses or Aaron.

The "te-lunna" of the people will only lead to trouble for the ancient Israelites because they cannot trust the God who delivered them from slavery and find themselves hostile to his continued guidance. Much later in John's Gospel the people will find themselves feeling similarly towards Jesus. John spells out the parallels between Jesus and Moses, but John is also even more clear about Jesus as God's dwelling among His own people. John chapter 6 is a turning point in the Gospel. The section begins with Jesus' "public approval" rating at an all time high. He worked a miracle where 5,000 people were fed by what began as five loaves of bread and two fish. The crowds are so taken with this experience that, when he leaves them by boat, they are already on the other side of the Sea of Galilee to meet him when he arrives. 

Yet by the end of John chapter 6 Jesus' words have created a crisis among his listeners and many become hostile. What we remember as an almost mystical, contemplative teaching on the Eucharist has led to disputes and complaints. As if to drive the point home, John's Gospel will use the Greek word γογγύζω/gonguzo, a word that is often used in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible to refer to the Israelite's murmuring in the wilderness at the time of Moses. In the past the Israelites murmured against God in the wilderness despite the good things he had done and it would appear that history has repeated itself.

It is precisely this "murmuring" that provoked God's response in feeding his hungry people with "manna", bread that God rained down from the sky to feed his people. The manna signifies a time of intimacy with God as it marked Israel's complete reliance on God as they left Egypt. They could not provide the food for themselves so, therefore, God had to do it. The image of God feeding his people was of "bread from heaven" and it's on this point that Jesus will connect this manna with himself. Jesus is now the bread that came down from heaven and though he will continue to elucidate this point over the course of this passage, it is clear that Jesus wants his listeners to focus on God and the one whom he had sent...Jesus himself. The source of God's goodness will not be apparent in the one standing before them. 

There is a tension between what we see, what we have seen, and what we hope to see happen. In the Exodus, Israel had witnessed God's work in rescuing them from Egypt and sustaining them in their times of trouble. That experience lived only as a collective cultural memory by the time of Jesus, but in John's Gospel the people still speak with the weight of their collective experience (cf. John 8:33). They speak of God but they haven't seen him. They speak as their ancestors but they didn't see what they saw. The trust their tradition but it is not their experience. The experience of Jesus is a crisis for his listeners because they have now been inserted into the drama of their ancestors. God is now present and they can see him. In fact they can see him far better than Moses who, though God spoke to him "face to face, as one speaks to a friend" (Exodus 33:11) still only managed to see God from the back, obscured because his glory was so great (Exodus 33:21-23). Now they can all see God and what they see is...a man. This very man who they have known from childhood. They are aware of his parents and they know his trade. He appears ordinary and his words make no sense based on appearances.

Yet they have seen loaves and fishes multiplied and the sick healed. They have heard unearthly wisdom and they have heard the testimony of the wise and the holy. They see so little and the truth is in the big picture.

I often find myself returning to this section of the Gospels when I speak to families in my work. It's necessary to return to the reappraisal of the world as we see it and the world as it is. Often, the two concepts are conflated, that the world we can see is the only one there is. We live at a time when we can perceive things at the subatomic level while having the technology to perceive deep space. What can possibly be left? But just as the Israelites could not see beyond their hunger in the wilderness and many of Jesus' listeners could not see beyond the human being standing in front of them, we find ourselves in a tension between sight and hope, between proof and promise, between fact and truth. All of them are valid but we shouldn't mistake dismissal of the problems they pose to actually resolving them.

I also love the image of Jesus coming from Heaven so that we might better experience God. The images he gives are sensual and almost too crude for what we often mistake for spirituality. God came to what I am and what I have so I can better become who He is.

“Amen, amen, I say to you,
it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven;
my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 
For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world.”

So they said to him,
“Sir, give us this bread always.” 
Jesus said to them,
“I am the bread of life;
whoever comes to me will never hunger,
and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” 
-John 6:32-35

Debts, Laws, and Release

A couple of thoughts on today's Scripture readings from the Lectionary:

•  Today we read from the books of Leviticus, the Psalms, and Matthew's Gospel. Leviticus is much maligned as of late - a reminder that it's best not only to read a line in the context of the book it originates from - or even a book with its series of books - but also to read a text within its fuller context. In this case I'm referring to its historical context and its communal context (whether that is Israelite religion/nascent Judaism or the Church).

• In the Church we've spent the last week reading from the book of Exodus. The locus point has been the giving of God's Law, which clarified Israel's identity in terms of morality, penal laws, and rituals. For Israel, the giving of the Law begins their self-identity as freed persons. After leaving Egypt they had only what they carried and their identity was a mishmash of vague cultural memories that were then hundreds of years old and, most recently, the experience of Egypt. They were slaves subject to Egypt's laws and worship. The giving of the Law is the beginning of their self-governance, allowing them to embrace their own destiny.
  
• The Law is a gift from God that prevents them from social collapse. In the Bible's narrative, forgetting the Law is more serious than just breaking one of those laws. To forget the Law is to forget the Giver of the Law. The Giver of that Law isn't just the lofty conception of God but Yahweh, their own God who delivered them from the bondage of slavery, who protected them from their enemies, who gave them their sustenance in their decades wandering the wilderness, and who gave them a Promised Land to live in. There was a direct correlation between societal harmony and keeping the Law. The Law is considered a law of life. It's still this way for believing Jewish communities which says something of the resiliency of the Jewish culture that has endured far longer than any other.
   
• A good window into the goodness of that Law is today's reading from Leviticus. It deals with the Jubilee Year. In a Jubilee Year, all debts were forgiven among the people, slaves were freed, the land was given rest as to not overwork it, and ancestral lands were returned to families. It was a way of restoring order, to allow those families who had lost much to recover what they had and to prevent the exploitation of those in need.
  
  It was also a tangible reminder of what it means to be set free. We live in a society that takes large debts for granted. On one hand there is the need for personal responsibility and we have a duty to pay our debts. On the other hand, what happens when that debt becomes too much to bear? Does the justice of debt repayment supersede human dignity? The Jubilee Year places a responsibility on both the debt-laden as well as the debtor. It makes forgiveness a principal of society. In this case, forgiveness is not an emotional release but one that is expressed tangibly in society. Those who hold on will let go and all who have lost will regain. It's a reminder that life's situations can change, that those laden with debt may one day have someone indebted to them. Likewise, those who are owed may one day owe. In this case, justice is not about power but peace and the restoration of balance in society. Balance and a clean slate achieves a more lasting justice than a perpetual cycle of debt collection.
  
  It says something that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all have a similar principal within their traditions with regards to establishing a fair way to reckon with debts or interest and that all have been tempted throughout history to find a way of working around the difficulty of the forgiveness of debts. Temporal debts are often tangled into emotional debts and social debts. When we feel someone owes us something, we become frustrated and angry when we are not repaid. Those kind of existential quandaries eventually work themselves out in ways that are usually terrible and, eventually, regrettable.
  
  "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those indebted to us" (Luke 11:4).
  
• Lastly, this is a great set up for the Gospel reading which is the death of John the Baptist. In short, John the Baptist is in prison after Herod Antipas arrests John for having preached against him for marrying his brother's wife. The Gospels portray Herod as having liked to listen to John but not taking his words to heart. By today's reading, Herod wants John dead but fears the response it will elicit. At a party, his wife's daughter dances and her dance seduces him to promising her anything she asks for. At her mother's prompting she asks for the head of John the Baptist. Ironically, while his fear of the people prevented him from having John executed in the past, now it is the fear of his reputation among his dinner guests that move him to follow through with her wishes. Herod relents and John is beheaded.
  
  It is a strange image of justice. Herod wants to be a man of integrity in keeping his word and yet proves himself as having no integrity in killing a righteous prophet. He breaks off his duty to his brother Phillip by marrying his wife yet keeps that duty in granting his step-daughter's murderous desire. Instead of making things right, the order of things is radically disrupted.
  
  The book of Leviticus says this about oaths:
  
   "...when any of you utter aloud a rash oath for a bad or a good purpose, whatever people utter in an oath, and are unaware of it, when you come to know it, you shall in any of these be guilty" (Leviticus 5:4).
  
  Both the Book of Judges and the Book of First Samuel illustrates the tragedy of rash oaths when Jephthah's oath leads to the death of his daughter and Samuel's oath curses his son Jonathan.
  
  Jesus also warned against taking oaths, likely for this very purpose (Matthew 5:33-37). He sees the absurdity of binding your honor to things you cannot possibly control. In all of the above cases, the need to maintain an image of righteousness supersedes actual justice. It upsets the social order and are tragic guideposts that remind us of the vanity involved in maintaining a reputation that ultimately proves one undeserving of a good reputation.
  
  All in all, today's readings are a great excuse to reflect on the nature of right and wrong and how severing the connection between our personal sense of right and wrong to deeper universal principals is ultimately an exercise in futility. We are not moral vagabonds who are left to contextualize right and wrong based on a radically personal definition of values. We are not tribes of people who organize on either ends of false dichotomies like class, political party, or ideology. We are human and we've always been our best when we reach beyond ourselves. That desire is not a collective mental projection or an imaginary brass ring. It's real and it matters. As the stars and their constellations allowed humanity the ability to navigate and, therefore, to explore and discover beyond the narrowness of our personal life situation so it is with right and wrong. 

My Brother's Keeper

וּלְשָׁמְרָֽהּ 

(Gen 2:15)

לשְׁמֹ֕ר

(Gen 3:24)

הֲשֹׁמֵ֥ר

(Gen 4:9)

וְאַתָּ֖ה אֶת־בְּרִיתִ֣י תִשְׁמֹ֑ר 

(Gen 17:9)

I can't count the amount of times I've heard the argument that religion is the cause of the worst kind of hatred and conflict.

The truth is we don't know how to talk about this stuff. We use the word "religion" as a bracket. We juxtapose it with words like "spirituality" or "realism" or "science" or "freedom", not understanding that we limited the meaning of all of them and made them all enemies.

But the Christian message is a message of hope and truth, that there is a God and he cares about his creation. The first "job" that man has in the book of Genesis is to take care of the earth and to take care of each other, to be its "keeper" or "guard" or "watchman". God entrusts us to one another and we really have to look out for one another or this is not going to work. Our "common ground" is not merely that we exist but that our identity is of brothers and sisters with a common "father" who have an absolute responsibility over one another and the earth as a whole. We choose violence but it's against our first call to "keep", "guard", and "watch". God sends His Son when we refuse to be reconciled with God and our greater calling.

The thing is, even if you hate religion and faith and all that, it's your calling to care for one another and this world we live in. I sincerely and respectfully believe that you are mistaken if you slash God out of that view of things, but you know the call and you've felt it whenever you've stood up for someone or tried to build up your community or tried to save the earth. I'd love to talk about God and faith, but if you really won't we can still talk about taking care of one another and this world we live in. We can work towards that.

Blame religion all you want, but every extremist will eventually have to answer for how they betrayed what they said they stood for. Their contradictions will be laid bear and their calloused consciences will eventually be cut.

So right now, when you read about Christians being killed for being Christians, maybe don't section that reality off because they don't share your view of the world. They are human and they are not simply being discriminated against or bullied or economically or socially disadvantaged, as terrible as those things are. They are being murdered and their blood is as valuable as any other person who dies because someone stopped "keeping" or "guarding" or "watching" over one another and started treating them as less than whatever is alive on this earth.

All you have to do is care about this unless you can do more than that, in which case you should.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. 

(Gen 2:15 NRS)

He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life. 

(Gen 3:24 NRS)

Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" He said, "I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?" 

(Gen 4:9 NRS)

God said to Abraham, "As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. 

(Gen 17:9 NRS)

Giving Up

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

 

-1 Corinthians 13:11-13

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food; for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness.

But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.

 -Hebrews 5:12-14

In the last 5 years, I have managed to accomplish most of the cliches typical of someone in their 30's. I finished school, began a long term career, got married, had children, started going to bed earlier, and, of strange importance, started to give up on popular culture. Popular culture is a plastic womb lined in fake fur, an artificial environment that feels more at home to me than the outdoors ever could, all of it mediated through plastics and lighting and wiring and synthesizers and amplification. Nearly all of it are faint echoes spanning decades, though not going back longer than the advent of the recordable or transmittable mediums. Even those works of art that go back even a little further stand at the end of a living chain of development or improvisation or adaptation, squashed dead and crystallized. They are, with little exception, the results of mass media. Nothing was transmitted hand to hand.

Popular culture also has an endless obsession with youth and, as a product of that culture, I am too. It's greatest artists flourish in their middle-to-late twenties. No 16 year old will put a picture up on his wall of Robert Plant in 2014. It has to be 1973, during their legendary Houses of the Holy tour, when Plant was a "golden god", free from any of the depressing worries that plague adults. His young son Karac would not be dead for another 4 years. His current irritation at staving of Led Zeppelin reunions is met with much ire because everyone else wants it to be 1973. He maintains that it is impossible: he wants to live in the present. He's also a 65 year old man.

I noticed the anxiety of aging when my hair began to grey and I began to lose much of it. I felt paranoid at others noticing it. I wanted to hide the bald spot or dye my hair. I didn't see my body teaching me lessons and I felt ashamed. I saw pictures of myself at 18 years old, the only time in my life that I wasn't terribly overweight and my hair was long and black, and I wanted it all back. As my twenties faded I felt uncomfortable when someone 10 years younger than me would discuss music. Art has always meant so much to me but I could no longer stay up to date on everything happening that week. When I worked at a music store I could discuss new music with authority but now I couldn't invest the amount of time and energy needed to keep up.

That image of the 18 year old fades as time brings me farther and farther away. I'm only 33. 

In my 30's I also had older friends. Becoming a co-worker, a husband, and a father put me in their league. I now had more in common with them than I did a 15 year old. These new roles also created a divide among my most immediate peer group. Many remained unmarried and unattached. They looked at "parent-culture" or "divorcee culture" or "homeowners" with contempt. We sold out, paragons of mediocrity, embracing conventions and cliches. Maybe we dreamed of greater things but they were only fantasies. 

I felt that contempt, that divide in myself. Did I have a right to make art and worry about insurance? Could I make music and put my kids to bed? Did I have any right to anger? I've been conflicted. That conflict speaks: "you are too old for this, this is just sad". I tend to agree. I can't stand when older people try to be young, to sing young songs with an old man's voice or hide age. Age can only be hidden poorly. Concealing the marks of time does not make you look young or old, both of which grant a certain grandeur and dignity. They put you in a third category of appearance, where the attention gained is not what was intended.

On my 30th birthday I worried like other 30-year olds do. At 15, a 30 year old is very old. These gaps of time are relative, but I didn't always understand that. When I was 5 years old, I looked at the 13 and 14 year olds on my school as fully formed and intimidating adults. There was a great chasm in my mind, where children stood at one end and everyone over 13 stood at the other. At that time, there wasn't a whole lot of difference in appearance between them and my parents or my aunts and uncles.  

On my 30th birthday my mind turned almost immediately to David Bowie. David Bowie is one of a few artists in popular culture who found relevance in every era he occupied. Let's Dance was a period-appropriate album, danceable New Wave and utterly contemporary. Tonight was pure adult contemporary. He even managed to transform the title track, a cover of one the best songs that came from his collaboration with Iggy Pop on one of Iggy Pop's most important albums, into the kind of palatable banality that was of that time. It's really wonderful. David Bowie also wrote Rebel Rebel. His first breakout single, Space Oddity, capitalized on the "space race" and the obsession with ethereal cosmic frontiers invoked in popular culture, in Looney Tunes and in 2001: A Space Odyssey. He was of every era, transmuting disparate elements of the fringe cultures into something common and approachable. Like Quentin Tarantino in Kill Bill, dozens of influences played together as though made for one another, even if they weren't. His mind and his craft revolved around two principals: collaboration and synthesis. He collaborated with contemporary artists and thinkers, either by proxy or within his bands, visual artists, and producers. Most importantly, he synthesized all these elements into his voice and movements. Each album, each video, each song were densely packed time capsules. They invited you to read a new book or see a new film or to artistic experimentation.

Wes Anderson is usually derided as being a product of the pretentiousness of twee, hipster culture. He isn't. He's another great collaborator and his work celebrates astute aesthetic synthesis. Each film is an open invitation to more art. He doesn't claim these influences as his own: Stefan Zweig, Satyajit Ray, Louis Malle, the Stooges, the Velvet Underground, Boys Life Magazine, Saturday Night Live...his is an invitation to the blurred boundary between high art and common culture and the way they occasionally flirt with one another, where they attend one another's parties. He doesn't celebrate an artist for their obscurity but for their forgotten accessibility. 

On my 30th birthday my mind turned to David Bowie because at 30 years old he began his "Berlin trilogy", a trio of albums that came from his collaborations with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti, as well as Iggy Pop, Robert Fripp, Carlos Alomar, and others. They represent Bowie's greatest artistic achievement. Bowie and Iggy Pop moved to Berlin in an attempt to get off of narcotics. Watching Bowie's degradation between the eras of Ziggy Stardust and Station to Station is depressing. His face thins and his eyes grow more distant. Don Cornelius had to chastise him during a taping of Soul Train where Bowie was under a narcotic haze, reminding him that it wasn't every day that a white artist was invited to the show.The art he was making was great, but it threatened to destroy him.

The three albums - Low, Heroes, and Lodger - are sober and efficient while utterly free, experimental, and, for at least half of each album, pure pop music. He accomplished something impossible: he gave the world Can and Kraftwerk in a way they could understand. He also had very little in common with an artist even 10 years younger than him. He already had a marriage fail. He had already reinvented himself many times. His songs were often abstract and even a little silly early on, but he had also sung about the death of his brother, of existential brokenness, and about those corners of existence closed off to younger people. They wouldn't understand. They couldn't understand. But maybe they'd dance.

Ideally, experience is a reward for aging. Experience is also a frequently forged document. Lesser skills are passed off as something greater and deeper. But there are some experiences you can't fake. You can't fake having been hungry. You can't fake the sudden or tragic death of someone who made you who you are. You can't fake real sacrifice or long hours of work. You can't fake a marriage. Or fatherhood. Or adulthood. Or, most of all, maturity. I admire the Bowie who made Heathen and Reality and who married Iman. I admire the Bowie who repudiated the man who made some of his greatest art without denying the art itself. He didn't just have to grow to become that man. He had to age.

I obsess over age, about how I have spent time and how much I have left. It's not death that scares me. It's wasting time, of wasting art and learning and giving what you've been given and what you've developed towards the common Good.

Book Reflections: Vatican II, the New Theology, and the Search for Meaning in Post-Conciliar Faith Formation

I wrote this back in January on our diocesan "professional page"/social network. Since I'm about to move back to Albany in about a week, I wanted to make sure that this existed someplace else. The audience was other faith formation leaders who work in the diocese. I wanted to give people who do what I do for a living access to some background on the Nouvelle Théologie and it's contributions to the Second Vatican Council and how much it relates to our work.

I think the title is a little pretentious and the tone is too, if not a little distant as well. But I think the info is helpful if you like this kind of thing.

I also really recommend both of these books.

Book Reflections, 1/24/2013: Vatican  II, the New Theology, and the Search for Meaning in Post-Conciliar Faith Formation

Yves Congar, My Journal of the Council, Liturgical Press, 2012 (translated edition)

Jürgen Mettepenningen, . London and New York: T & T Clark (A Continuum Imprint), 2010.

Without question, the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) was the most significant event within the last century of the Catholic Church's history. It marked a shift in everything from how we worshiped, how we engaged the non-Catholic world, and how we understood ourselves as God's people. Today, faith formation leaders embody the Council's call for greater lay participation in the life and leadership of the Church, as found in the Constitution Lumen Gentium and the Decree Apostolicam Actuositatem.

A number of recent books have evaluated the post-Conciliar landscape as a quest for identity, for example John O' Malley's "What Happened at Vatican II?" and Massimo Faggioli's "Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning". Modern debates on the Council distinguish between what the Council meant and what it actually said. These questions still play out in parishes when the Council is invoked as the reason to do this or that. Some of the great fault lines in the life of the Church today mark the different assessments that people make of the Council and its legacy.

Usually, these debates take into account two different aspects, either the so-called "spirit of the Council" or the documents themselves. But two recently published books give another perspective to the Council, particularly the period that led into the Council. This time period is not incidental. In fact, if there is a hermeneutic to the Council then it must include historical situation surrounding it. That meaning of the Council cannot be reduced to simply "aggiornamento" or simply an opening up the world (as important as that is). Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has noted that any authentic interpretation of Vatican II needs to take into account the two councils that set the stage for it, namely Trent and the first Vatican Council. Clearly there is a bigger story to tell.

Moreover, the Council itself was also the culmination of a century of theological debates. At the time of the convening of the Council, the prominant theological school was Neo-Scholasticism, which built upon the thought and methodology of St. Thomas Aquinas and his later commentators. The scholastic approach of Aquinas was recognized by Pope Leo XIII as normative for the whole Church in his encyclical Aeterni Patris, especially as an antidote to radically secular approaches to philosophy. By the end of the 19th century, however, a revolution had begun in philosophy and the sciences, particularly in the historical sciences. In turn, theologians began to evaluate the Tradition in the context of its sources.

This return to the sources, or ressourcement, slowly began to revolutionize the theological landscape. The Church Fathers of both East and West were re-appropriated into the Tradition. The early liturgies were studied and helped spur a wider Liturgical Movement. Doctrine was studied in terms of their formation over the course of time. The Catholic convert John Henry Newman had already published his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine in 1845 and had recast Tradition as a process that finds its root in the apostolic era but not fully-formed, illuminating Jesus' words to his Apostles in John's Gospel, that the Holy Spirit would teach and remind them after the Resurrection (John 14:26). In particular, Biblical studies went through a long and storied struggle as they too appropriated new methodologies to better understand the text.

All of this was not without controversy. Divisions arose within the Protestant traditions when these methodologies were applied to the Bible, with liberal Protestantism siding with the new methods in biblical studies and the biblical fundamentalist movement arising in reaction to the perceived new threat to the inerrant word of God. The Catholic tradition, however, had always embodied the relationship between faith and reason. These controversies occasioned a further self-reflection in the Church with debates that were hardly resolved by the time of the Council. Pius IX issued a Syllabus of Errors to combat many modern philosophical and theological approaches that were incompatible with Church teaching. Pius X later issued a Syllabus of his own, as well as the encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, which condemned many modern approaches under the umbrella of a movement known as Modernism. Modernism, he wrote, was "the synthesis of all heresies".

This encyclical, along with the Syllabus set a program that ran counter to the ressourcement movement. It is only in the years after the Council that the overarching meaning of those condemnations have become clear. Joseph Ratzinger noted that the proper interpretation of these pronouncements sees that any approach to philosophy and theology that denies any place to God or is hostile to his immediate involvement is untenable to Catholics. In the introduction to his commentary on the Vatican II Constitution Dei Verbum he also notes that many within the Council's administrative leadership were surprised to find that what they had been condemning as "Modernism" was in fact an entirely different theological school than neo-scholasticism and saw itself as being in the service of the Church and not at all opposed to it. As a matter of approach, Councils do not decide in favor of one theological school over an other with regards to approach. Ratzinger's assessment has also been echoed by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Fides et Ratio, as was as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's document Interpretation of the Bible in the Church as well as the future Pope's own Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini.

Several theologians contributed to this "new theology" or Nouvelle Théologie. Henri De Lubac and his collaborators spearheaded new studies into the Church Fathers, creating a series that reprinted and re-translated their work for modern audiences. Marie-Dominique Chenu wrote of the practical and pastoral dimension to theology. Jean Danielou wrote about the necessity to return to the sources and was critical of Thomism as a solitary approach to theology. Yves Congar, widely considered among the biggest (if not the biggest) influence on the Council Fathers, wrote about the possibility of reform in the Church that did not necessitate schism. He also worked tirelessly in the ecumenical movement at a time when the Church was still struggling with its role in dialogue with other Christians.

Congar was also a theological advisor, or peritus, of the Council, as were several representatives of the Nouvelle Théologie. He also kept a diary from the time of the announcement of the Council that extends past the end of the last session in 1965. His diary gives a unique perspective of the Council on an almost day-to-day level from one its most influential behind the scenes workers. Congar helps construct interventions, study groups, lectures, and even sections of the texts. There is a story that prior to his elevation as pope, John XXIII had read Congar's "True and False Reform in the Church" and mused at the idea that reform was really possible within the Church. Apparently he thought so. Many of the Council Fathers let Congar know that they had been strongly affected by his work, even though Congar is frequently unsure of the value of his presence at the Council.

His diaries also show the radical differences in theological approaches present among the Council Fathers. Within days of Pope John XXIII's legendary opening address at the Council, however, the tide begins to turn towards greater openness and dialogue with the world. Congar recounts the interventions of the Council Fathers during the sessions. Many are tedious (at times worthy of an eye roll or two) but some of them really move the hearts and minds of the other Council Fathers. Many of the influential peritii are stereotyped as modernists by a few influential members, but it's clear that equating their positions to Modernism holds little weight to most of the Council Fathers. The diary is also a veritable "who's who" of the Catholic world of the time. At one point, Congar meets Raymond Brown at a time when his star was still rising within the field of biblical studies. He also records his impressions of Fulton Sheen, which is it once resonant and hilarious, even for his admirers.

Congar recognizes a "spirit of the Council" from the very beginning. It is this "spirit" that will be a point of contention after the Council. The peritii themselves will populate the post-conciliar theological landscape. Names like Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, Joseph Ratzinger, Edward Schillebeeckx, Henry De Lubac, and Hans Küng are familiar to lay Catholics. Many of them would continue their work in support of a Vatican III, seeking a more radical vision of the Church. Küng in particular saw the documents of the Council as compromises that did not do justice to what he has seen as the real vision of the Council. But Ratzinger, De Lubac, and other like-minded theologians began to feel uncomfortable with certain currents that were making their way through the post-conciliar Church. This vision of the Council was not only superseding the intentions of the Council Fathers, but at times breaking with them entirely. Ratzinger will later note that calls for a Vatican III do not recognize how monumental and even traumatic a Council is in the life of the Church. Councils take several decades before they begin to be understood. In Congar's diaries, Ratzinger is almost always mentioned along with his once close collaborator Karl Rahner. Afterwards, Ratzinger will speak of the parting of ways that he experienced with Rahner and others who he joined in founding the academic journal Concilium (including Küng, Congar, and Schillebeeckx). Ratzinger (who along with De Lubac, Walter Kasper, and Hans Urs Von Balthasar founded an alternate post-conciliar academic journal Communio) felt that their call for a new Council, as well as the themes of their writings, had sailed beyond their original vision of faithful renewal into entirely different waters. This tension is still present in the current theological landscape (for a great review by Fr Robert Barron of Congar's diaries and the Concilium/Communio divine, see here: Yves Congar and the Meaning of Vatican II

Faith formation leaders often feel very far from the world of academic theology but any benefit of the legacy of the Council has to take into account the foundations of the Council. That foundation is simply this: how we think and believe is as important as what we think and what we believe. It is also a reminder that the pastoral dimension of the Church does not exist apart from the theological dimension of the Church. Karl Rahner once wrote that "all theology is pastoral theology". This is very clear when faith formation leaders work with parents. The question is not "What is the Trinity" but rather "How does God's self-revelation as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit apply to my daily life and struggles? How do the teachings of the Church help me make sense of who I am and my place in this world? What real hope do I have beyond this life? Is there any life besides this one? How real is it? And what of my loved ones?" The knowledge of the faith makes little sense to most people without the personal dimension. Gaudium et Spes tells us that "the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear." In Christ, we find out who we really are. Dei Verbum speaks of God's revelation to us squarely in terms of "salvation", that is, that God reveals Himself to us in our current troubles and worries precisely to offer a solution to them. Ultimately, that solution is found in God Himself, the Father who lovingly supplies for the needs of His children, the Son who shows us the meaning of life and rescues us from sin and death, the Holy Spirit who teaches and reminds us everything we are so apt to forget while giving us an immanent experience of God's life in the here and now as to prepare for the life to come.

In Christ we are given a real hope and the promise of salvation. His Kingdom is both "at hand" (Mark 1:15) and "does not belong to this world" (John 18:36). It is not enough to tell people about God as though He is merely an object of study. Rather, for the faith to take hold there has to be a concrete encounter with the God who not only cares for us greatly but who is alive and active, who is concerned with all of our problems and wants to share in all of our joys, who rescues us and will never let us go.

Cheating on God: A Brief Note On Violence In The Bible

I'm teaching the 4th class in my Old Testament class tonight. My goal is to cover all of Joshua and Judges and as much of 1 Samuel as I can.

Joshua and Judges are arguably the two most violent books of the whole Bible and usually come up when arguing the place that the Bible has as a central text in informing moral values within western civilization. I remember reading a very graphic comic that Nail Gaiman produced on the most despicable episode from Judges, implying that anyone who uses the Bible to teach morality is out of their minds.

The point of both Joshua and Judges is to show how bad things can get when God is forgotten. The people make up "gods" for themselves. In this context, "gods" refers not only to little sculptures made of clay or metals. The word "gods" means something that you have created for yourself to fulfill your own desires. These "gods" would say what the people wanted to hear because their voices were actually the expressions of the people who made them. These "gods" would encourage people to do what they want already wanted to do because they were thinly veiled projections of the desires of the people.

The result of this way of living was a slow but inevitable collapse of their society. People became more selfish and therefore more violent. Eventually, the people would sense the problem but not its cause. In Judges 10, the people express their frustrations to the God that they abandoned: "We have sinned against you, because we have abandoned our God and have worshiped the Baals [i.e. gods of their own making]" (Judges 10:10). This was a matter of fact, a confession of guilt. But in His response, God does not help them. God's response is classic "Go and cry to the gods whom you have chosen; let them deliver you in the time of distress" (Judges 10:14). If this was put in terms of a relationship, they were admitting to "cheating on" God, but not willing to give up the adulterous relationship. Finally, the people wise up and "put away the foreign gods from among them and worshiped the LORD; and he could no longer bear to see Israel suffer" (Judges 10:16).

Of course, Judges has another 11 chapters that follow and the situation will grow more dire following this brief moment of respite. By the beginning of 1 Samuel, the righteous are a precious few. Judges wants to answer a few key questions: Why do we need a king? How and why did things get so bad for us? What is the purpose of the Law? And perhaps most importantly: Did God do this to us...or did we do this to ourselves? The answer to that last question is complicated. There are three possibilities within the Old Testament: 1) God outright calls for violence 2) God permits violent actions and 3) God outright prohibits violence.

The reality is that all three positions are found within the Old Testament. There are times when God calls for violence. Pacifism was not a national policy for ancient Israel. More importantly, it was definitely not the policy of the nations that surrounded them. The Psalms will sometimes talk about being delivered from "the violent". Violence was only condoned for two reasons: as a penalty for breaking the law (ex: "eye for an eye", Ex 21:24) or for warfare (Deut 20). In the New Testament, Jesus will "finish" these teachings. Matthew 5, Jesus will say: "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile (Mat 5:38-41). Jesus shows us that the principal of the law wasn't penalty or violence, but justice. Jesus extols mercy as the highest expression of love for your neighbor. If that is true, than mercy doesn't abolish justice but fulfills it. In the old covenant, God makes provisions for people to use violence to survive among violent nations. Jesus, on the other hand, makes it possible for His followers to survive in a violent world without turning to violence.

This helps answer why God will permit violent actions that He Himself did not initiate with no obvious penalty. For example, in chapter 2 of First Kings King David commands his son and successor Solomon to pay back all of the men who betrayed him and tried to cause him harm. Kind David is a king of a nation amongst other kings of other nations. He is not outright condemned for acting as other kings act. But it can be argued that David's actions come in the wake of a tailspin to his rule that began when he seduced the wife of his loyal soldier Uriah (2 Samuel 11). Moreover, this episode in First Kings begins a cycle of violence and disobedience that will culminate in two successive exiles of the people of Israel and the collapse of their monarchies. When violence goes unchecked and isn't condemned, then the lives of the violent will inevitably end in violence. The people of Israel remember this principal in their Proverbs when it says: "Do not envy the violent and do not choose any of their ways; for the perverse are an abomination to the LORD, but the upright are in his confidence" (Pro 3:31-32).

Lastly, there are certainly ways that God clearly condemns violence in the Old Testament. Innocent life is protected by the Torah: "You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. You shall not abuse any widow or orphan. If you do abuse them, when they cry out to me, I will surely heed their cry" (Ex 22:21-23). The resident alien, the widow, and the orphan stand for all the most vulnerable and unprotected in their own society. These laws protected the vulnerable people among the Israelites from violence and were to a degree extended to all non-threatening nations. When a town was set to be conquered, the people of Israel would first offer terms of peace (Deut 20:10). If they accepted, the people of that town was placed in forced labor. The major exception to this policy were the nations already living in the promised land: the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites (Deut 20:17). They were to be totally annihilated, including women and children.

Those passages of the Torah are more than a little chilling. As a reader living in the 21st century, I would be remiss to read them with a look of self-righteous indignation on my face. The more I reflect on those commands to violence, the more I realize that I am reading them as a product of over 20 centuries of exposure to the Gospels. Even a cursory understanding of the Gospels tells us that Jesus condemned violence and vengeance. If he described violence at all it was either in descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) terms (cf. Matt 10:21f), in a cautionary context (cf. Matt 26:52), as an outright prohibition (Matt 5:38f), or within the narrative of a parable (Luke 10:25ff, 20:9ff). In Matthew 10:34-39, Jesus ambiguously speaks of of his mission not as one of bringing peace, but of bringing a sword, "to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;and one's foes will be members of one's own household" (Matt 10:35-36). It seems clear that the reference is not to actual violence, but the situation of strife that the Christian message can cause within a family if not everyone accepts it. This seems far more realistic than people give it credit for being. If you can think of a family where siblings or parents do not share the same convictions, then it's not hard to imagine conflict arising out of that.

In his 2010 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation "Verbum Domini", Pope Benedict XVI discussed the "'dark' passages of Scripture". I think it's the most useful tool to approaching stories of violence in Scripture.He noted that such stories need to be read within their historical context. Above, I mentioned that that laws regarding warfare or the conduct of a king make sense when you place them within their cultural milieu. The corrective to violence in the Bible is the message of prophets. Pope Benedict XVI notes that "in the Old Testament, the preaching of the prophets vigorously challenged every kind of injustice and violence, whether collective or individual, and thus became God’s way of training his people in preparation for the Gospel."

But above all of that is our need to acknowledge the uneasiness that violent stories in the Bible cause in us. One extreme is to say that stories of violence nullify the worth of the Bible for modern society. For one, so many of those stories are cautionary tales and yield great value if you finish the story. But also, acknowledging the place of the Bible in Western Civilization is simply a matter of fact. Western Civilization is built on not only the Greco-Roman culture but Jewish culture as well. To excise the place of the Biblical tradition from our collective patrimony is an exercise of extreme postmodern narcissism, where all established narratives are nothing more than acts of cultural imperialism. The origins of our laws, our art, our modes of expression, and our ways of thinking are simply unthinkable without this tradition, whether they were formed because of this tradition or in opposition to this tradition. It is among our culture's first great ideas and projects.

Lastly, these stories make us uncomfortable because we have inherited the fruit of this tradition, namely the laws of love, sacrifice, and compassion that are established in the life and teachings of Jesus. Pope Benedict makes this point when he writes that "we should be aware that the correct interpretation of these passages requires a degree of expertise, acquired through a training that interprets the texts in their historical-literary context and within the Christian perspective which has as its ultimate hermeneutical key 'the Gospel and the new commandment of Jesus Christ brought about in the paschal mystery'”. The Gospel established the reprehensibility of violence. We feel uneasy precisely because of the revolution in Jesus' teachings.

If you accept even the broad sketches that make up this story, then this last point is a wondrous thing. God works with His people as a father works with his child. The father speaks to his child in ways that they can understand. A father tolerates certain expressions of immaturity as the children are in the process of growing and learning. A father will speak with language that the children can understand even if there is more to say on a subject. A father acknowledges that a child grows and matures slowly and isn't afraid to challenge them along the way. It would be foolish to expect a father to speak to his adult son or daughter in the same way that he did when they were small children. A father will expect more from a relationship with a grown son or daughter than he did when they were small children. The constant is the relationship.

In Christ, God says something definitive to His children. He acknowledges their often violent past but also instills in them a healthy regret for perpetuating it. When we acknowledge that past, we can learn from it: the pain, the sorrow, the regret. In Christ, our neighbors become our brothers and sisters. To spill their blood is ultimately to spill our own. We cannot go there again.