Friday, April 18, 2014

An Absolutely Irrefutable Version of the Easter Story

Yes, I realize it is Good Friday and Easter is still to come, but I thought this might be a helpful meditation for some as we live out the next couple of days. 

I’m thinking of two seminary professors who helped me come to an understanding of Easter that seems broad enough for just about every possible take on the Christian tradition.  I don’t know if that’s what they meant to be teaching at the time, but that is what I took away.  Here it is.

The first of those professors, Charlie Price, had left the seminary before I arrived, but he had made his mark, not just on that seminary, but on the larger church as well.  Several stories and quotes of Dr. Price’s were circulated around the seminary in a scriptural sort of way, by which I mean that they grew and were improved in their telling by the way they expanded in the hearts of the faithful.  One of my favorite “Price” stories had to do with his being challenged by someone after he had spoken about the Eucharist as being a symbol.  The hearer is reported to have asked, “are you saying the Eucharist is nothing but a symbol?”  To which Price is said to have responded, “I’m saying it is nothing less than a symbol.”  
It helps here to know that a symbol in that place was defined as a sign that not only points to, but also participates in the larger reality it represents.  The person who challenged that “symbol” statement seemed to think that calling the Eucharist a symbol flew in the face of doctrinal statements that affirm the reality of the Eucharist.  Price’s response was that the Eucharist participates in a reality that is too grand to define and should not be limited by our ideas about it.  Like I say, the story was circulating during my time at the seminary and I don’t actually know if it happened like that or if I have taken the intended meaning from the story, but I have always loved it.  I had never encountered in theology such a wide open, and yet challenging and freeing space.  Theologians love answers, but here was a theological position quite comfortable standing at the edge of a great mystery and saying “there is more here than we can imagine.”  Thank you Dr. Price.

The other professor who helped me with the Easter story was David Adams, who taught New Testament.  In our first semester, he led my whole class through the four gospels, pointing out all the ways in which basic human story-telling agenda had shaped them.  His job, he said, was to plow up the fields of our understanding of the gospels so we could see them in new ways.  After three months of deconstructing what most of the class held sacred, a time in which some of us were intrigued, some were demoralized and others became downright hostile, Dr. Adams summed up the whole semester for us on the last day of class.  He said he hoped we had learned that there is really very little we can actually know about Jesus.  His list was short.  He said we know that Jesus was born and that he was a traveling teacher who attracted a group of followers.  We know he got into trouble and was crucified.  And, he said, we know that after he was crucified, something happened.  


By the end of that first semester, I wasn’t sure what to believe about any of the tradition.  My field had been plowed and a lot of weeds had been turned under, I was pretty sure the crop had gone with them. I didn’t understand it at the time, and I still don’t know that I do, but somehow, that “something happened” line drew me back in.  I stopped worrying about any difference between human longing and divine revelation, understanding that whatever “happened” after Jesus’ death was a powerful sign of something real at work in the human heart.  Dr. Adams had shaken up the class and he had shaken those old stories until everything loose had fallen to the ground in a heap, and still I was left standing at the edge of a great mystery saying “there is more here than we can imagine.”  Thank you Dr. Adams.

John Baker

Saturday, April 12, 2014

84 Words

I believe there is a force, a power in the universe that has to do with love.  That power has something to do with us, it is present in us and around us and between us.  Somehow, it is for us. It becomes tangible in our caring for others and in fleeting moments of perceived connection to something larger, grander and deeper than our day to day experience.  Our attempts at community, contemplation and reflection can open us to a sense of its presence.  

I have hesitated to write because the landscape in front of me seems so new and so broad that I really have not been sure where to begin.  What does seem clear is that the faith statement I stumbled on a few weeks ago is changing my understanding of Jesus, this faith of ours, the church, and maybe most significantly for me, of belief itself.  In the days since I first wrote them I have painted those words, counted them, printed and posted them on the door of my office and on the wall across from my desk.  I have looked for something to edit in them, but have so far, not wanted to change a word.  They arrived composed, as if they had been forming out of sight in a process going on beneath the surface for some time.  I have hesitated to write also because these words seemed to have caused a shift within me, in my attitude toward some of those ideas I have pushed against for so long.  I’m still unwrapping that part of this experience, but I’ll share what I am thinking so far.

Being able to name what I believe seems to have taken the edge off of my need to push back against ideas in the tradition I have found troublesome.  I’ve had to think about that for a while.  Maybe you have known someone who not only has trouble with Christianity and its doctrines, but seems to have a good bit of emotional energy around their critique of the church.  I meet such people fairly often, and I have, at times, been one of those people.  I have had them come up to me after weddings and tell me how they “got over” the church.  I meet people who claim to want nothing to do with religion but who still seem to have an angry edge about the religion they claim to have dismissed.  It seems to offend some idea or standard they have decided to choose instead of religion.  I often like such people and feel like I know them.  Part of my problem with so many of Christianity’s words and doctrines has been that they seem opposed to some deeper belief that I felt but until now, had never named.  I think I have pushed back against problem ideas at times because I was trying to preserve a space where that underlying, grounding sort of belief could come into focus.  Now, having named that deeper belief, I hope I will be able to let down my guard a bit.  

As I look at the tradition I follow and serve in the context of this newly stated belief, I find connections I want to pursue and ponder.  If you ask me who is Jesus for me today, I can answer easily that he is the one in whose company I have come to believe that there is a force, a power in the universe that has to do with love.  ……..  When I celebrate the Eucharist and when I reach out my hands to take bread and wine, I think of the power that becomes tangible in fleeting moments of perceived connection to something larger, grander and deeper than our day to day experience.   I am reading my way through the gospels for the first time in a long time, and I hear Jesus saying the power that has to do with love has come near and that our attempts at community, contemplation and reflection can open us to a sense of its presence.  

Today I am listening to the tradition and to my heart, which I have come to trust and appreciate, in a new way.  As I head into Holy Week, I will be attentive to what resonates deeply.  That, I will embrace and celebrate.  The rest, I hope I can leave behind.  I wish I could offer that approach as a prescription in advance to all those who will be in church next Sunday against their better judgement, quite possibly because they love somebody who really wants to be there.  I will be truly glad to see them.  I like the company.  JB