Traveling in Place

Who Was That Young Man, Anyway?

If you try to harmonize all the biblical accounts of Jesus’ resurrection, you’ll get frustrated pretty quickly.  Some of the details supplied by the four gospels are mutually contradictory.  Does that make them untrustworthy?  I don’t think so.  If all four versions of the story were exactly alike, that would strongly suggest that they were all copying from a single source with no independent verification.  But the New Testament has preserved multiple sources witnessing to the same event.  Some of the differences are too basic to be dismissed as embellishments of one original account.  And yet, they all verify that on the Sunday after Jesus’ crucifixion, some disciples of Jesus (Mary Magdalene being the only one specifically mentioned in all four gospels) found that the stone sealing the entrance of the tomb had been rolled away, and the tomb was empty because Jesus had been raised.

In all four gospels, at least one woman meets some sort of messenger.  In Mark, the earliest gospel (written about A.D. 65), “a young man dressed in a white robe” was sitting on the right side of the tomb.  In Luke (written about A.D. 75), “two men in dazzling clothes” appeared beside the weeping women disciples.  In Matthew (written around A.D. 80), “an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and rolled back the stone” while the women were watching.  “His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow.”  Then, in John (probably not completed until sometime in the 90’s) Mary Magdalene found “two angels in white” sitting on the slab where the body of Jesus had been laid.

"Good" Friday?

One of my sons, when he was 9 years old, asked me, “Dad, why do we call the day Jesus died good Friday?  What’s good about it?”

When I heard that question, old tapes from my past immediately began to play.  I had to stop myself from saying that, even though Jesus’ death was sad, it was a good death because it made eternal life possible for all who choose to believe in Jesus.  But I did stop myself.  My son had asked a perfectly reasonable question, and I told him so.  “There wasn’t anything good about it,” I said. 

I came from a culture that didn’t even hold Good Friday services.  To do so was considered too “Catholic.”  My wife and I, both from the Deep South, were recently trying to remember whether our churches even observed Palm Sunday. There was certainly no processional or waving of palms. (Again, that would be too Catholic.)  We decided the only mention of it was in Sunday School, where it was referred to as Jesus’ “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem.  Growing up, we never heard the term “Maundy Thursday.”  If anybody in my congregation was in church on Good Friday, it was because the downtown churches were having a “community service” that – God help us – included Episcopalians, Catholics, and other pagans. 

Ironic as this sounds, those most likely to refer to the day of Jesus’ crucifixion as “good” are those least likely to observe it.  The logic goes like this: there’s no

Heaven on My Mind

I led another funeral service yesterday – the third in two weeks and the fifth in two months.  For some of my colleagues, that frequency might be fairly routine, but it’s more than I’m accustomed to and enough to have me thinking an awful lot about heaven and the promise of resurrection.  I remembered a post I wrote back in 2010 soon after I started this blog (and before most of my current readers knew it existed).  I decided to re-post it today.

Not long ago, I heard an impassioned sermon about how important it is to get our minds off of heaven and onto the world we live in today.  I found this sermon odd, because I frankly don’t know whom the preacher was addressing.  I remember growing up in a time and place where popular religion seemed a bit too other-worldly; not sufficiently concerned with the problems of hunger, poverty, and racism that were all around us.  But the sands have shifted dramatically in the last few decades.  By and large, American Christians are not more focused on heaven than on the here-and-now.  On the left side of the spectrum, Christians are standing up for human rights, immigration reform, efforts to stem global warming, and other causes that may be swept up into the broad category of “social justice.”  On the right, since Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority in the late ‘70’s, Christians have been fighting the “culture wars,” opposing abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, and finding ways to chip away at Jefferson’s wall of separation between church and state.  (And today, happily, Christians across the spectrum are beginning to find common cause on some of the most pressing issues of the day.)

In the sermon to which I referred, the preacher argued that when our minds are on heaven, we do not care for creation, and we turn a blind eye to the plight of the poor and the oppressed.  There can be no objection to seeking justice and morality in the here-and-now.  Acknowledging the existence of heaven, however, increases our thirst for justice.  “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” Jesus taught us to pray.  When we know that behind the curtain of time and space exists a greater reality where the justice we seek here is already fulfilled, we do not give up our struggle.  We are empowered to step up our efforts.

A Renewed Hope for Peace

After forty-five years of failed negotiations, it is always tempting to give up on the prospect of peace between Israelis and Palestinians – the one peace agreement that would likely have the greatest ripple effect in the cause of world peace.  But as frustrating as the situation is, I never cease to be amazed at the resiliency of the hope for peace.  And renewed hope always comes in unexpected ways.

Today, it comes from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  Before the overthrow of Hosni Mubarek, the Brotherhood was feared both within and outside of Egypt as a radical extremist element that, given the chance, would turn Egypt into a militant Islamic state.  This impression was reinforced by the Brotherhood’s public support of Hamas, the Palestinian group classified as a terrorist organization by the United States.  Hamas has been at odds with Fatah, the Palestinian party that supports peaceful negotiations with Israel to achieve statehood.  Fatah is backed by Western nations, but its efforts have often been sabotaged by Hamas, which controls the Gaza strip and thus divides Palestinians.

But the Brotherhood in Egypt, which scored huge victories in a democratic election, has shifted both the tone of its public statements as well as its relationship with like-minded Muslims.  Brotherhood officials are now urging

Reversing the Metaphor of Spring

“Lent” is an old English word that means “spring.”  This linguistic fact elicits a chuckle from Central New Yorkers.  The season of Lent usually begins while we are shoveling through deep snow and ends before the slightest sign of spring appears.  But this year has been different, as it has all over the country.  I heard on the radio that the cherry blossoms in Washington D.C. bloomed so early that they will all be gone before the Cherry Blossom Festival has ended. 

Here, the cherry tree in my front yard is also in bloom.  The buds on the hardwood trees have appeared a good six weeks ahead of schedule.  Crocuses have already popped up through the soil, daffodils are in full bloom, and we wore short sleeve shirts for most of last week.  This year, the beginning of Lent really did coincide with the first signs of a very early spring, and will not end before we’ve already cleaned off the patio furniture and fired up the grill.  Strange.

When Christianity spread northward through Europe in the early Middle Ages, missionaries appropriated already existing seasonal observances into their religious ceremonies.  So Christmas co-opted Winter Solstice festivals, and the celebration of Christ’s resurrection was named for the Germanic goddess of spring, Öster (Anglicized as “Easter”).  The hope was that new converts would recognize metaphors of the Christian story within nature. 

Wrestling with the Moral Questions in Afghanistan

The already fragile situation in Afghanistan deteriorated three weeks ago after U.S. servicemen accidentally burned copies of the Koran that had been stored for safekeeping but were then mistaken as garbage.  A week of rioting resulted in the deaths of six U.S. soldiers and 30 Afghans.  President Obama apologized, but to no avail.  Extreme elements of the Taliban effectively used this unfortunate occurrence to stir up resentment against U.S. military presence. 

Then, last week, Staff Sargent Robert Bales left his post in the middle of the night after drinking too much and went on a house-to-house killing spree that took the lives of 16 innocent Afghanis, including nine children.  Bales reportedly set some of his victims on fire.  Judging from comments by Bales’ attorney, his defense will be that he had been sent on one too many tours of duty, and that earlier brain injuries and the stress of war finally caused him to crack. 

Whatever the explanation, Bales’ nighttime massacre is a senseless tragedy that not only decimates the lives of those whose loved ones he killed, but also seriously undermines the legitimacy of the American mission in Afghanistan. 

And yet, protests over this horror seem strangely muted among the Afghan people, especially given the rioting that followed the accidental burning of Korans.  Why not more anti-American sentiment?  Probably because most Afghanis have very mixed feelings about the American presence in their country.  They know that this latest tragedy could well trigger a complete U.S. pullout.  According to observers on the ground, the Afghanis don’t particularly like us, but they also dread the day Americans leave.  

Compassion in the New Testament (Part 2)

Before reading this post, please read “Compassion in the New Testament (Part 1).”

As I discussed in the last post, the New Testament tells us that, in Christ, God’s relationship to humanity reached a new dimension.  God entered fully into human suffering.  This is what I call the “radical compassion” of Christ.

Many of us have been taught or heard it said that Christ “suffered in our behalf,” which implies that Jesus suffered the punishment for our sins; that he took upon himself a suffering that was really intended for us.  This “atonement” theology is undoubtedly present in the New Testament.  Paul specifically refers to Jesus’ death as a “sacrifice of atonement” in Romans 3:25.  By definition, “atonement” is an act of making amends for some wrongdoing.  The atonement sacrifice in ancient Israel to which Paul alluded was offered specifically for the purpose of receiving forgiveness for sins.  In the same vein, John 1:29 describes Jesus as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

But atonement is only one of several ways the New Testament interprets the meaning of Jesus’ death.  Those Christian groups that insist on “substitutionary atonement” as the only correct understanding of the crucifixion have limited themselves to a highly selective reading of the Scriptures.  There are other biblical images of Jesus’ death, among them the understanding that, through the cross, Jesus entered into the depths of human suffering.  And this was not a one-time event.  Even as the resurrected Christ, he continues to bear the marks of his crucifixion.  When Jesus appeared to his disciples after rising from the tomb, they did not recognize him until they saw the nail prints in his hands and feet and the scar in his side.  The fact that the wounds from his crucifixion remain in his immortal resurrection body indicates that Christ always shares in human suffering.  Christ knows intimately our afflictions, our frustrations, our failures, our grief, and our agony.  

Compassion in the New Testament (Part 1)

My thanks to the Southern Cayuga (County) Wider Parish, an ecumenical gathering of churches representing several denominations, whose steering committee invited me to lead their weekly Lenten program this past Sunday evening.  This year, the subject of the Lenten series is “compassion.”  My assignment was to speak about compassion in the New Testament.  Following my presentation and a spirited question and answer period, several participants asked if they could have a copy of my remarks.  Since I only had notes with me rather than a manuscript, I promised I would write up an abbreviated version of my talk and post it on this blog.  I don’t think blog posts should get too long, so I’m spreading it over two posts.  Here is Part One of “Compassion in the New Testament.”

Before addressing the subject of compassion in the New Testament, I want to say something about compassion in general.  Com-passio literally means to “suffer with.”  In Latin, com means “with” and passio means “to suffer.”  “Passion” is suffering, which is why we talk about “the Passion of Christ” during Holy Week.  I remember having to explain this to my boys when they were younger.  It seemed odd to them that we would refer to the crucifixion as “passion,” since they associated passion – like a lot of us do – with the ecstasy of romantic love.  In fact, “passionate” love is a depth of feeling so intense that it hurts.  True love always involves suffering.  Suffering is an inevitable consequence of the deep joy that comes with binding oneself to the heart and soul of another, which is why the traditional vows of marriage are “for better and for worse.”

Amazing Balance

Our strange, nearly snowless winter is limping toward its conclusion.  (Yesterday, the temperature reached 68 degrees.)  All the snow that’s fallen here in Central New York has melted within a couple of days, or even a couple of hours.  Northeast of here, more snow has fallen, but total accumulation has still been well below normal.  Thankfully, enough new snow has blanketed the Adirondacks in the last couple of weeks to provide good conditions for snowshoe climbing.  So Tuesday, I took the day off and drove north.

I strapped on the snowshoes and climbed Pitchoff Mountain up to the broad ledge where the famous “balanced rocks” are located.  This shoulder of the mountain sits about 500 feet below the summit, but it offers a full panorama in the middle of the High Peaks region.  In the warmer months, the 1.6-mile trip up would probably take me about an hour.  But the thick ice in the steepest places made this a challenging climb that took 90 minutes.  In a couple of spots, I had to find something to grab hold of and pull myself up.  But the trip was well worth the effort.  The view of Cascade Mountain just to the south, snow-capped Algonquin Peak to the southwest, and all the ponds and peaks to the west and north made for a gorgeous winter display.  The cold wind was stiff and unmerciful on the open ledge, where most of the snow had also blown away.  But when I crouched between the eight-foot-high balanced rocks, I was quite comfortable.

Cartoon Christianity

In the last couple of weeks, the Christian witness in America has taken a beating.  

It all started with a perfectly reasonable debate about freedom of religion. When the Department of Health and Human Services issued a requirement for religiously-affiliated employers to provide birth control to women as part of their health coverage, Roman Catholic bishops cried foul.  Since the Catholic Church officially opposes artificial birth control, they said, such a requirement infringes on religious liberty.  The ensuing bi-partisan and ecumenical opposition to the requirement lent legitimacy to the bishops’ objection.  At issue was not the merit of the Church’s position on birth control (which is ignored by most rank-and-file Catholics), but the First Amendment principal that no religious organization should be legally required to violate its own teachings.

In response, President Obama announced a compromise: employers who oppose birth control for religious reasons will not be required to provide it, but their insurance carriers must provide it directly.  The president didn’t win over the bishops, but satisfied the Catholic Health Association as well as Catholic Charities, which stood to be most directly affected by the ruling.  Still, the compromise was more in principle than it was specific, so the controversy continued to churn, dividing Catholics and driving yet another wedge between Democrats and Republicans who are already badly polarized from one another. 

From there, the public conversation deteriorated.  Republican Presidential