Ride On, King Jesus!

There’s an old episode of Seinfeld in which Jerry’s new girlfriend has a terrible, hideous, ear-splitting laugh. Of course, she’s beautiful, funny, and likeable in every other way, but Jerry—a comedian—can’t date someone whose laugh he cannot stand. It just won’t work for them to be together. (I can't get the YouTube clip integrated, but you can watch it here.)

I am no comedian, but I am playful, and I make regular use of sarcasm and irony. Being around someone who doesn’t appreciate that kind of humor is tiresome—for both of us. I routinely say the most outrageous things (almost always with my tongue in my cheek), but the straight-laced individual I’m with can’t see through the sarcasm. Explaining one joke after another is agonizing.

I kind of feel like that when I read Sunday’s gospel lesson (Luke 23:33-43). This Sunday is the last Sunday after Pentecost—the last week before Advent starts—which means that most of us are observing the Johnny-come-lately festival of “Christ the King,” a designation for this Sunday that didn’t come about until Pope Pius XI instituted it in 1925. The point is to contrast Christ’s kingship with that of world leaders—the kingdoms of the earth that lead to the horrors of the Great War. Of course, that comparison is still apposite, but I worry that most of us (especially me) miss the irony of making it.

Christ the King. Those words go together without needing any explanation. Christians understand that Jesus Christ is God’s king (even if we don’t really get the theological significance of God having a king). And people who aren’t Christians probably aren’t surprised to hear that we would call the central figure of our faith a “king.” We’re always talking about how special Jesus is and how much we love him. Why not call him King Jesus? But go back and read Luke 23:33-43 and ask what in there seems even remotely monarchical.

I remember a seminary professor making a great deal about the Titulus—the sign that hung on the cross. It is attested by all four gospel accounts, and it seems so unusual and unexpected that even the most critical historians seem willing to accept its veracity. As a follower of Jesus who is so accustomed to talking about him as king, that sign seems to belong there. But of course it doesn’t. It’s ridiculous. It’s the most terrible, biting political satire of its day. “You want a king?” the Roman Empire asks. “Here’s your king. This is what we do to kings.” The sign that declares Jesus’ kingship is the blinking neon light of defeat. A king who is executed on a cross is not a king.

But, of course, we stand at the cross and gaze upon our king. Jesus’ kingship isn’t like that of the kingdoms of this world. The cross isn’t a mistake. It’s not a story of the Roman Empire or the Jewish hierarchy killing the one who belongs on a throne. Jesus belongs on the cross—not because of anything he deserved but because of who he is. This king accepted the cross as the sign of his kingship. The Titulus is doubly ironic. The Romans hung it there as a warning sign. And the gospel accounts leave it there to embrace the irony it declares.

It’s easy for me to look at Luke 23 as an accident—a temporary detour between Jesus’ feats of wonder (like the Transfiguration story from today’s Daily Office) and his triumphant resurrection. But I have to learn that we worship a king who not only happens to have died on the cross but whose very nature is to have died on the cross. What does it mean for Jesus to be king? It’s not just that he rose again. It’s also that he died first. That is the nature of his kingdom. That is the nature of the king whom we worship.

Give Us Our Daily Sandwich

Over the weekend, I was walking back to my car in the grocery store parking lot, when I saw a sticker on the back of the car parked next to mine. In the center, it had the letters RR and the outline of a dog on it, and there at the bottom in smaller letters was written, “Rhodesian Ridgeback.” The sight of it sent a shiver down my spine. Unconsciously, I raised my hand and tugged on my left ear.

A decade ago, I spent the summer working as a parish intern in a poor, urban Anglican church in Middlesbrough. Rather than bother to arrange a rotating series of hosts who would have me in their homes, the vicar, who had plenty of space in his own, welcomed me and gave me a room. (Honestly, I learned a lot more about being a vicar from living in his house than I did from working in the church, but that’s another post.) Living in the house were the vicar, his wife, his son (who had moved back in after a brief post-university career and was only there about half the time), their dog, and me. Oh, did I mention that their dog was a Rhodesian Ridgeback—the breed of dog that was bred to hunt lions?

King was, for the most part, a friendly dog. Like many Rhodesians (dogs not countrymen), he was more like a cat than a dog and only played with you when he felt like it. He had been the dog of a professional footballer (think soccer player), who loved to rough-and-tumble with his canine companion. When his girlfriend became pregnant, she drew a line in the sand and declared it was either her and the baby or the dog, so the dog was sent to the RR rescue society, where my vicar, who was looking for a protective dog that would help keep his family safe in their council-estate vicarage. When the doorbell rang, he gave out a nasty bark that made both his and my hair stand on end. And the vicar and his wife both gave me a very clear instruction: don’t get down on the ground with him.

One day, I was sitting in the den rubbing King’s belly—a peace offering on my part for a dog who still wasn’t quite sure why I was in his house—when the doorbell rang. King did his show of aggression, and the vicar, after hissing at his dog to be quiet, got up to answer the door. The dog calmed down and lay back down on the floor, where I continued rubbing his belly. He rolled back and forth on his back, almost purring with joy, but then he rolled just out of my reach. Without thinking about it, I dropped off the couch onto one knee and reached out over him to stroke his belly. It happened in an instant. The dog flipped over and bared his teeth as he jumped off the floor. I instinctively sprang up and turned my face away from his open mouth, and I remember very clearly, as his teeth sank into my ear, wondering whether I should pull my head away or hold still in the hope that he wouldn’t rip my ear off. After that one bite, he let go disappeared down the hall.

I walked to the front door, where the vicar was standing on the steps talking with a woman about scheduling a baptism for her new baby. I tapped on the glass with my right hand since my left hand was clutching my ear, staunching the blood with paper towels. The vicar turned around, thought I was telling him that there was a phone call, waved me off, and then went back to his conversation. I paused for a moment to consider the circumstance but decided that this was indeed a reason good enough to interrupt him. So I tapped on the glass once more. When he turned around with an annoyed look in his eyes, I removed my hand from my ear, exposing the mangled flesh. His frustrated countenance changed in an instant as the blood drained from his face.

We went to the hospital, where the fun really began. First, the attending physician in the emergency department informed me that I had, “a good chance of ending up with a significantly misshapen ear.” His plan was to cut off the bit part to avoid infection. The vicar, who was in the waiting room, cringed when I reported those words to him. As the day went on, I was passed from one doctor to another to another. Eventually, the plastic surgeon—a lovely man from Austria who insisted that he wasn’t a “doctor” but rather a “surgeon”—decided that I could keep my ear and did a wonderful job of sewing all the parts back together. All told, the NHS provided me with a host of nurses, several doctors, a skillful surgeon, a few techs, and—the real point of this post—with two lovely meals. And I never had to pay a dime.

It was the meals that really struck me. They knew I wasn’t going to spend the night, but I was given a “bed” to sit on while I waited for my surgery. And, while waiting, because my anesthetic was only local, I ate a lovely chicken sandwich and crisps. Then, after my surgery, I returned to my bed, where, because I had missed “snack time” both a sleeve of crackers and a sleeve of cookies was waiting for me since I hadn’t had the opportunity to choose for myself. Lastly, because the evening meal is served early in hospitals around the world, I was given a plate of roast beef, mashed potatoes, and vegetables while I waited on my discharge to go through.

In today’s gospel lesson (Matthew 15:29-39), the crowds follow Jesus for three days, bringing him “the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute and many others.” He cured them all, and the witnesses were amazed when they saw those whom he had literally put back together. But that wasn’t enough. Jesus pulled his disciples aside and said to them, “I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way.” Even if we can’t quite remember how many loaves and fish were involved, we know how the story ends. Jesus takes a tiny little bit and miraculously provides for everyone. They are all fed with plenty left over.

It is not enough to heal them of their disease or restore their disability. It is not enough that they should be made whole. Jesus feeds them. He gives them what they need to make it through the day. He sees the need below the surface and responds to it. He addresses the daily issue—not just the presenting problem.

So often I hear preachers (me included) celebrating the huge stuff that Jesus did—heal the sick, cast out demons, raise the dead—but I often lose sight of the little things. The salvation that God provides in his Son Jesus Christ is about the big things. It is about overcoming death and being raised to new life. But it’s also about making it through today. When we look for salvation, sometimes we think only of heaven. Yes, heaven is where we’re headed, but probably not today. Yet today’s needs must be met. And God is giving us what we need—even if it comes on a hospital tray.

The Fantasy of What If

Several years ago, I received an invitation to join a fantasy football league made up of other seminary graduates. I had no experience with fantasy sports of any kind, and I had only a passing interest in professional football, but the opportunity to strengthen my connection with some classmates was appealing. Now, six or seven years later, I still know very little about professional football and fantasy sports, but I seem to care about both a great deal more.

Fantasy football is pretty simple. Before the season starts, a group of individuals (called “managers”) take turns drafting NFL athletes onto their teams. Then, each week, managers face off against one another, deciding which of their players they will “start” and thus count toward their weekly score. A certain number of points are credited for each player’s accomplishments. For example, in our league, a player who scores a touchdown in a real game also adds six points to his fantasy team’s total. Each line-up looks a little bit like a real football squad—a quarterback, a few wide receivers and running backs, a tight end, and some defensive players—but, because each team is made up of players from lots of different NFL teams, the decision on whom one should start in his line-up becomes a serious statistical consideration.

Life is filled with tough decisions. Should I take that job? Is he the one I should marry? When should we put our house on the market? When faced with a critical decision, many of us consider all the options, weigh the possibilities, and make what we think is the best choice. But, when things do not turn out as well as we had hoped, the inevitable “what if” questions arise. Maybe I should have stayed a little longer. Maybe I should have kept my options open. What if things had been different?    

In real life, those questions will never be answered. We can dream and imagine and relive those pivotal moments in our minds over and over, but the hypotheticals are destined to remain hypothetical. We will never know how life would have turned out…except in fantasy football. In any given week, if I choose to ignore the experts’ advice and go out on my own and start a long-shot rookie wide receiver, I can see the full and exact consequences of my choice. Regardless of my decision, the veteran, whom I left on my fantasy bench, actually played in real life, and his would-be statistical offering to my team is calculated and presented to me in painful precision. “Would things have worked out differently?” we ask over and over. In fantasy football, the answer is clear.

Maybe that is why I love fantasy football so much, and I am guessing that I am not alone. So often in life we search for closure that comes with the reassurance that the decision we made is the right one or that we could have done better. As anyone trapped by unhealthy obsessive tendencies can testify, there is a fatal trap in that kind of logic and human longing. We can get stuck in that place of “what if,” consumed by the consequences of our own choices. But how much can we really choose? Do our choices really matter? Could things have been any different? Is there such a thing as “what if?”

Although life is a series of choices, ultimately our ability to choose our own destiny is far less open than we might want to think. Can you choose your parents? Can you choose your personality? Can you choose your gifts and talents? The psalmist seems to have those questions in mind when he composed Psalm 139: “If I climb up into heaven, thou art there; if I go down to hell, thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morning, and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there also shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.” In other words, no matter where our choices take us, God is still there.

You cannot choose whether God will love you. No decision of yours can remove you from God’s love. What, then, is the point of wondering how else things might have gone? As a fantasy football manager, I agonize over my poorly-made choices and celebrate my own self-exaggerated wisdom. As a priest, I often sit with people while they wrestle with life’s unanswerable questions and try to remind them of God’s undeniable promises. As a child of God, I try to remember that there is nothing I could ever do to change the fact that I belong to God and that he loves me no matter what.

Debby Downer

The rotunda below the dome at the United States Capitol is amazing. Although it’s been a long time since I was there, I can still remember standing there staring up at its repeated pattern of images that go around and around and higher and higher. It’s the kind of sight one can get lost in.

Imagine, then, standing in the rotunda with your family. Kids and grown-ups alike staring up at the dome. The children are amazed, and the equally amazed parents explain to them why this is such an important building. “It’s so beautiful!” one child remarks. “How did they ever do it?” another one asks. Then, right at that moment, a stranger walks up and says to your family, “The days will come when it will all be torn down—not one stone left on another—all will be thrown down.”

That’s the image I have in Sunday's gospel lesson when Jesus walks up to the group in the Jerusalem temple and predicts its destruction. As Luke recalls the story, they were admiring how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God. They were in that moment of awe, and Jesus brings it crashing down. The temple was the center of life for Jerusalem. Having been destroyed and rebuilt, it was a symbol of national identity. Although a part of the Roman empire, the holy city still maintained its religious independence, and the temple was a place where the mechanics of worship—that which defined the Jewish people as distinct—took place. Jesus’ prediction, therefore, isn’t just a foretelling that a beautiful building will be destroyed. It’s a statement that everything the people hold dear—the very structure of their lives—will come crashing down. This must be Fun Jesus, huh?

But Jesus’ terrible prophecy seems only to be a means to an end. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel (if you can call it that). Jesus explains that the temple will be destroyed and that nations will engage in war and that earthquakes and famines and plagues will afflict the earth and that his followers will be arrested, tortured, and killed. But, he says, they will be taken care of. Don’t worry. Despite all of these things, there is reason to hope: “not a hair of your head will perish.”

He’s right, of course. Terrible things do happen. The temple is destroyed about 40 years after his death. The Romans crack down on the Christian movement. Terrible persecutions occur. Yet, somehow, there are still followers of Christ boldly proclaiming the gospel even today. Hope, I suppose, isn’t always comforting. Hope, it seems, isn’t always nice. Sometimes the content of our hope is difficult to accept. We must die in order to be reborn. All that we hold dear will be stripped away. Yet we still have hope. It’s not a platitude. But it’s not Polyanna either. Hope is real and sometimes hard.

What about the Woman?

In seminary, I wondered how I would stay connected with colleagues--those who helped make me a better pastor, preacher, teacher, and Christian. How would I prepare a sermon without a dozen or so friends to bounce ideas off of? How would I handle pastoral crises when if I didn't have anyone to process the situation with? Well, blogs to the rescue.

I truly love the clergy colleague relationships that I have through blogs. On Monday, I scribbled out something on this Sunday's gospel lesson about the Sadducees and not getting sucked into their question about marriage in heaven. Steve Pankey then wrote an hilarious and helpful piece about Jesus resisting the Sadducees' trap. When I read his piece, which you can (and should) read here, it brought something else to mind: the woman.

What about the woman who gets married seven times and loses all her husbands? Sure, she's a hypothetical figure made up for illustrative purposes, but her pain is real. Right? We know people who have lost their spouse and then lost another spouse and even lost another spouse. The Sadducees toss her around like she's chattel. Our heart should break when we hear her story. But I must admit that I never stop to think about her. She's just an example. And her pain--and the pain of those we know--gets lost when we talk about the details of the resurrection.

What do you say to a woman who has just buried her husband? What do you say to a couple whose child has been killed? Pastorally, in those moments, I forget just about everything I learned about the Judeo-Christian tradition of resurrection and afterlife. The hows and the whens and the wheres don't matter--at least coming up with the "right" answer doesn't. In those moments of real heartbreak, the only things that count are hope and love and faith.

Yes, resist getting sucked in by the Sadducees' question. It is a silly question. They aren't really looking for an anwer. But don't ignore the pain of the woman depicted in their rhetorical test. Her pain is all around us. What will we say to those who are hurting? Will our doctrine triumph over our sensitivity? Where will hope be found? How will we talk about resurrection when it really matters--not in the classroom but in the hospital room?

Splitting Up at Death

Until we are parted by death. Until death do us part. As long as we both shall live. [But not after that.]

Since we dispensed with the marriage question in Sunday’sgospel lesson yesterday, I thought it fitting today to go back to it today. If you didn’t read Seth Olson’s take, you should. He says some good things about respecting the Sadducees and Pharisees as foils rather than enemies, and he also writes “that even the best relationships here on earth are not grand enough for post-resurrection life.” It’s that latter point off of which I’d like to spring for today’s post.

Let’s start by thinking like a Sadducee. (Most of us do, anyway, so it shouldn’t be hard.) Why believe in the resurrection? Things are complicated in the next life. Where will we be? Whom will we be with? What about people who get remarried after a spouse dies? I have people who come to me and quietly remind me that they want to be buried next to their first spouse and not next to their current one. It’s as if it is impolite to say to one’s current husband that one would rather spend the next few thousand years planted next to one’s first husband, who died a decade or so ago. Imagine, then, what it’s like when we get to heaven and discover that the woman we loved has decided to live with the new guy for eternity. The Sadducees are right to ask these sorts of questions. They are exactly the kind of thing that keep 21^st-century people (including professed Christians) from believing in the real, actual, literal, bodily, tangible, non-metaphorical resurrection.

Assuming that the Sadducees are coming to Jesus in order to engage in lighthearted theological banter, let’s rephrase their question in a less hostile, less ridiculous way: how do people in this world make sense of life in the next? What’s the same? What’s different? If it’s bodily, do we eat? What do we eat? Do we get old? Do we stay young? How do we (created, temporal beings) live in a universe where there is no time? Their point—and it’s a good one—is that we can’t make sense of the resurrection using terms from this life. It just doesn’t work that way. Heaven isn’t puffy clouds and streets paved with solid gold. Those are just analogies to get us excited about construction delays on the heavenly highway. So what are we supposed to believe?

Children of the resurrection neither marry nor are given in marriage. Yes, the resurrection is real, but, no, it’s not quite like this life. In resurrection life, priorities change. If you want heaven merely to be more of this life only qualitatively and quantitatively better, you’re hoping up the wrong tree. You don’t get to be married in heaven because heaven is so totally better than that that married life doesn’t fit. Is marriage wrong? Heavens no! I love being married. But those of us who talk about resurrection as if it has clear analogues in the pre-resurrection world are missing the point. And, more importantly, we’re driving the Sadducees away.

The world around us is listening. They hear Christians like me talking about heaven. And the more they hear Christians like me talking about heaven as if it were “more of the same only better” the less likely they are to believe. I think we live in a skeptical, rational, Sadducee world. I think evangelists and preachers like me need to find ways of inviting people to hope beyond this life and into the next. The Sadducees question is a good one. It’s not purely an expression of spite. It’s a genuine question of wondering. What’s our answer? Are we willing to think of the resurrection in ways that burst even our most hopeful expectations?

It's Not About Marriage

Don’t fall into the Sadducees’ trap. They set it for Jesus. He didn’t ignore it, but he refused to get bogged down in it. Push on through and get to the real issue.

In this Sunday’s gospel lesson (Luke 20:27-38), Jesus is tested by some Sadducees, “those who say there is no resurrection.” They propose to him a hypothetical situation that, because of its ridiculousness, is memorable. A man and a woman marry, and the man dies, and his brother marries the widow as the law requires. This pattern repeats itself until all seven brothers (note the number of completeness) have taken their turn and died. Finally, the woman also dies. Whose husband will she be in the resurrection?

Actually, it’s a good question—good for those of us who believe in the resurrection. If you start from a position of faith, it’s worth asking what marriage will be like in heaven. Will I live with my spouse? Will that relationship matter? What if I am remarried? What if I am married to a man I loathe when I die? Those are real, good, and valuable questions for those of us who genuinely believe that one day we will be with God in heaven. But they are useless questions for someone who is trying to punch holes in our belief in resurrection. That is because they are essentially unanswerable. They don’t have clear, definite answers. Ultimately, we don’t know what heaven is like. We get glimpses of it in scripture, but we cannot know the fullness of that which awaits us. So, for the person of faith, these questions remind us that our hope is real but flexible. For the cynic, they lead to nothing—empty, cyclical proof of the proposition that the cynic holds dear.

Jesus gives an answer—perhaps a surprising one. There is no marriage in heaven. Period. The end. Try arguing around that! It’s “until we are parted by death,” baby. After that, you’re on your own. But I urge the reader and the preacher not to get tangled up in that web. That’s not the point of Jesus’ response. This passage isn’t a teaching about the nature of marriage in the afterlife. It’s a chance for Jesus to refute the Sadducees claim that there is no resurrection.

When asked a cynical question by a cynical person, sometimes the right thing to do is give an inarguable response. You want me to trap myself in answering your ridiculous question, but I refuse and instead give an answer that leaves you no room for a come-back. The only problem with that is that the answer I give isn’t necessarily what I’d say to a person who really wants to explore the answer with me. For example, when I’m having a theological argument with someone about the nature of God and the nature of the universe (Bentley Manning), it’s easy for me to offer extreme, inarguable responses if that person is coming to me from an opposite perspective. But, when I sit down with someone in a pastoral setting who wants to gently explore the tough questions of life, brute force is not needed. This gospel lesson is Jesus hitting the Sadducees over the head with a powerful statement. He’s not ministering to widows who just lost their spouse.

Push ahead to the end. What’s the real point? “And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” God is God of the living. In him there is no death. For Jesus, resurrection is a given, and that’s the real point here. This isn’t a teaching on the nature of marriage after the resurrection. It’s a lesson on the resurrection. Jesus tackles the trap set for him, but he doesn’t get bogged down in it. It would be a shame, therefore, for a preacher to lose the forest for the trees. Preach resurrection and save the pastoral conversation about marriage for another day.