Category: Holidays

Alleluia, The Doctor Returns

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As posted at The Huffington Post Religion blog –

believeI’ll admit it: I was more excited about the return of “Doctor Who” than about Easter. Some may say this makes me a poor Christian — that it should be the communal celebration of the Resurrection that my hearts yearns for the most — but honestly, in the past few years it has been in this story of a self-proclaimed madman with a box that I have encountered the most meaningful depictions of the divine. Easter in many churches these days has become more about creating the most perfect liturgy, scientifically trying to prove the resurrection, or demanding that one must believe in divine child abuse in order to be saved than about celebrating a God whose healing love inspires us to believe and go do likewise. For that I have “Doctor Who.”

“Doctor Who” is one of the longest running television shows in history with its first episode airing in November 1963. In 2005, the BBC rebooted the show with a postmodern audience in mind and it has since gathered a worldwide fan base. The show follows the adventures of a witty and hyper-intelligent humanoid alien “Time Lord” known simply as The Doctor, who travels the universe in his time machine, the TARDIS. The Doctor generally travels with a companion and, as his title suggests, often finds himself in situations which are in need of healing and repair. One cannot argue that “Doctor Who” is necessarily a Christian or even theistic show (despite its habit of having Christmas and Easter specials) or even that the Doctor is intended to be equated with God. The two men who have creatively led and written many of the episodes of the BBC reboot of the show, Russell Davies and Stephen Moffat, are both self-proclaimed atheists. Yet, as producers and writers, they frequently address religious themes and use the character of the Doctor to challenge hollow and dangerous conceptions of God. It is in their attempts to use the Doctor to deconstruct inward-focused religion which has little relevance in a world full of injustice and pain that an alternative, more meaningful, vision of God emerges.

Jack Caputo has argued that a God that makes sense in our postmodern era is a God defined by weakness instead of strength. By weakness he does not mean a “weakness that lacks the power of faith or the courage for action” but a weakness that stands on the side of the powerless, that participates in the reversals which displace the high and mighty and lift up the lowly, and that keeps hope alive when life appears to be hopeless. Caputo writes in “The Weakness of God,” “You see the weak force that stirs within the name of God only when someone casts it in the form of a narrative, tells mad stories and perplexing parables about it.” It is in these mad tales that resonate with the imagination of the age that many of us are encountering an image of God more meaningful than what is being presented in many churches these days.

As we watch “Doctor Who,” we encounter the story of one who far from being above humanity, comes alongside us to not only suffer with us, but inspire us to do the hard work of creating a better world. We see in the tale of the Doctor an example of a figure who calls followers to lives of adventure and wonder, practices radical forgiveness, and welcomes the marginalized and defends the powerless. It is an potential image of the divine that inspires hope, and which (for me at least) grasps what it means to live the way of life Jesus modeled far better than do the pointless attempts to orchestrate the perfect worship service or defend the plausibility of miracles.

So, as the show returned this Easter weekend, I eagerly anticipated immersing myself once again in a narrative about one who saves the world by calling it to participate in acts of healing and love. I wish I could say that I knew I could encounter the same in churches this Easter. As a committed Christ follower, I am tired of Easter being reduced to mechanics. I want more than marathon services or reiterations of the details of Christ’s death and resurrection that try to convince me that merely believing that something happened is the purpose of being a Christian. I want to be called to join in on the adventure of healing the world, in welcoming the marginalized, and living in the revolutionary way of Jesus. Thankfully, “Doctor Who” is brave enough to tell such mad tales even when the church is not.

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The Danger of the Light

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For Lent this year the church I attend is exploring the idea of light – of entering into the light, of letting light illuminate the truth. As much as Christians like to talk about the light shining into the darkness, we often forget how dangerous light can be. Light reveals things that we would rather keep hidden. Light forces us to face truths we would rather ignore. We forget in our haste to claim Jesus as a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path that carrying a light in the darkness isn’t safe. In the world pre-electricity, to go out into the darkness with a lamp or torch was not an act of the wise. Walking around in a pitch-black night with a torch made you a target for wild animals or other ill-intending creatures of the night. Hiding one’s light under a bushel is safe, shining a light is dangerous.

lachish_ewerAs I listened to the discussion last Sunday, the illustration that came to mind was the repeated attempts one reads of in the Hebrew Scriptures to remove the lampstands from the Temple. Granted, the scriptures speak of removing the presence of the pagan goddess Asherah and tearing down the poles or trees erected to her in the Temple, but as archeology shows, those poles in the temple were the lampstands or menorahs. Asherah as a symbol of the feminine and embodiment of sexuality and reproduction was depicted by a tree with seven branches in bloom (to represent fertility) as shown in the picture, exactly the way lampstands for the tabernacle/temple are described in Exodus 25. It was this symbol of the female and of sexuality that was repeatedly removed from the temple, only to return again and again.

I couldn’t help but think about the symbolism of this act of removing a lampstand of the feminine from the official place of worship. Light is dangerous. It illuminates structures of oppression and reveals the truth and beauty of women and the body. Such things are scary to a culture trying to cling to hierarchies of patriarchal power. It is easier to extinguish the light, throw the lampstands away, than to gaze upon that which it reveals.

This idea returned to me this week as I was discussing the scriptures read in the early church in one of my classes. The canon of books and letters Christians read pre-Constantine was significantly different than the established canon we have now. Most interestingly was that they included accounts of martyrdoms (like The Martyrdom of Polycarp) in the texts they looked to for worship and comfort. The point was made that pre-Christendom these texts of martyrdom that gave comfort to those suffering persecution as well as encouraged them to resist the ways of empire although popular in the early church were kept out of the canon once Christianity became the official religion of the Empire. Illuminating the oppressions and temptations of empire became too dangerous. It was easier to extinguish that light than to see what it revealed.

Even now to hold up lights illuminating the voice of women, the beauty of the body, or the ills of empire is dangerous. It is scary to have the truth revealed under the light. Doing so makes one a target of ridicule and accusations of heresy. Light makes it impossible to continue in the darkness of the status quo, once truth is revealed it cannot be ignored, only rejected. But that is the risk we take when we embrace the one who claims to be the light.

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Celebrating Valentine’s Day During Lent

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There is something a bit awkward about Valentine’s Day falling the day after Ash Wednesday this year. The day defined by chocolate, wine, flowers and basic indulgence following on the heels of the day when many Christians commit to fasting from such very indulgences presents a dilemma for those serious about observing the rhythms of the church year. The question arises – how can one participate in the Lenten practices of sacrifice on a day dedicated to celebrating the joys of love?

I wonder though if the problem is not so much this year’s particular calendar, but the individualistic ways we have come to view both Lent and love.

Lent traditionally is a season of penance and sacrifice intended to prepare the Christian community for the period of remembering the events of Holy Week, but in contemporary times those sacrifices are often only of the personal kind. We give up pleasures (chocolate) or habits (Facebook or TV) for the sake of drawing ourselves closer to God. But while pietism that relies solely on personal sacrifices that affect us and us alone can serve to draw us emotionally closer to God it can also make it easier for us to forget that our faith is not something that concerns just us.

If we believe in the Christian teachings that we exist as members of the body of Christ then the disciplines we engage in should always work towards the good of that body. The gospels speak of practices like uplifting the lowly, welcoming the outcast, and making God’s house a place of prayer for all peoples as part of what it means to work for the good of that body. While being personally closer to God might serve the good of the body in some ways, it is rare that Lenten practices are conceived in such a way. Giving up chocolate might help my diet and make it difficult to celebrate Valentine’s Day this year, but it has very little to do with working for the good of others.

In fact, according to the legends, Saint Valentine provides a better example of living into those gospel ways than our modern observances of Lent. The stories hold that Valentine was a Roman priest who lived during the reign of Claudius Gothicus. The official imperial policy of the day was that it was illegal for Christians to be married or receive aid of any kind, but Valentine chose to defy the laws of the land and marry couples anyway. For this he was arrested and martyred on February 14th.

To me, Valentine’s actions embody what it means to live as a member of a body. He chose to love and serve others despite the imperial voices dictating that he withhold aid. As a priest, he could easily have devoted himself in such a time of persecution to personal devotions that would have drawn him closer to God (and saved his own neck), but instead he opted to help those in need and include those the powers-that-be demanded be excluded. He became a martyr for the sake of love.

I wonder how different the church could be if during the season of Lent this year, we Christians chose not to see Valentine’s Day as an awkward dilemma to deal with but as a guide for our practices. What if we too chose to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of love?

Instead of giving up chocolate or Facebook for Lent, we could work to aid those our culture dictates we exclude. We could provide the blessing of marriage to those our culture forbids to let marry. We could provide aid to those our culture says are unwelcome sojourners in our midst. We could work to ensure that our churches truly are a welcoming house of prayer for all peoples. It may be uncomfortable and perhaps even difficult to work for the good of those our culture would rather us despise or exclude (although I doubt it will get us beheaded), but perhaps that’s what being a martyr for the sake of love means these days.

It is a lot easier to focus on our personal spiritual development than it is to work for the good of others. Perhaps not eating chocolate for a few weeks might help us pray more, but the way of Christ implies that the discipline of sacrifice should extend beyond just ourselves to help create the sort of world where the lowly are uplifted and the outcast welcomed. Having Valentine’s Day at the very start of Lent this year can be about more than just us feeling guilty about indulging during Lent, it can remind us that sacrificing ourselves for the sake of love is the greatest sacrifice of all.

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Advent 4 – Invited from the Darkness

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“O Come All Ye Faithful
Joyful and triumphant,
O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem.
Come and behold Him,
Born the King of Angels;
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.”

I heard this carol play on the radio recently and found myself cringing at the lyrics. Triumphalist religion has ravaged the world and the image of God in the world. For the faithful to claim to be triumphant is heard as the chains of oppression by many. Christ the Lord has very little to do with the triumphal attitude of the church throughout history. This is not a hymn I could sing honestly anymore.

Then I wondered, what if instead of assuming that “joyful and triumphant” are modifiers of faithful, I saw them as three distinct references. The faithful, the joyful, and the triumphant are all invited to come behold and adore the one born in Bethlehem. While at times the faithful might be joyful or triumphant, it does not necessarily follow that they will always be such things. Often to be faithful one must embrace the darkness and dwell in that dark night of the soul. While there might be a form of contentment there, it is rarely what one would describe as joyful. And those that faithfully follow the way of Christ where the last are put first and the first last and the humble uplifted and the mighty brought down from their thrones, are not the ones reveling in triumph. There are the faithful, the joyful, and the triumphant – but they are not always one in the same.

Even so, they are all invited to come adore Christ the Lord. All are welcome – those already full of joy, those who believe they triumph over others, and those who remain faithful despite (or because of) the darkness that surrounds them.

This is a helpful reminder as I wrap up my Advent reflections on embracing the darkness. So often in our churches, especially this time of year, it is only the joyful and the triumphant who seem to be invited. The image that is projected is that one must be joyful (it’s the most wonderful time of the year) and participate in triumphalist religion (Jesus is the reason for the season or else) in order to belong as part of the communal body that claims to be adoring the Christ.

But the darkness abounds. Sometimes it can be a peaceful and needful return to listening to God, at other times it is the weight of all the horrors of the world. Many of the faithful find themselves in this darkness without joy or (thankfully) delusions of triumphalism. They too are invited to come and adore, but all too often they are expected to discard the darkness before they are allowed into the institutions that lay claim to the right to direct that adoration.

But there are days when many of us cannot be joyful, and many of us fear any hint of triumphalism. But we are still faithful and come and adore in the midst of the darkness. It can just be difficult to hear that invitation from within the church anymore.

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Advent 3 – Waiting in the Darkness

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“If it wasn’t for the night
So cold this time of year
The stars would never shine so bright
So beautiful and clear”
– David Wilcox “If it Wasn’t for the Night”

The night isn’t just the in between time. It isn’t just the period of space where one is simply waiting for the day to return. We need the night, that time of darkness where it seems like all hope is lost to learn how to see the beauty that is already there. The stars can only be seen at night and we can miss that if we fear the darkness.

I want to affirm those treasures in times of darkness. That there are truths to be revealed, hopes to be discovered, and peace to be found even when we are not surrounded by the comforting presence of the light.

And then Connecticut happens.

Even as I struggle to find peace in the darkness, I can’t even pretend to find hope in that. I know some can conjure up platitudes of “God has a plan” or “All things work for the good” but even the most shallow and saccharine of Christians know such to be lies we tell ourselves so that we don’t actually have to face the horrors of the darkness.

What are we waiting for, eagerly expecting in light of this?

I had a teacher once who had a countdown calendar to the end of the school year. Each day she would cross off a box on the calendar until she reached much anticipated the end of the school year. On that last day, the day the school year ended, her teenage daughter was killed in a car crash. All the teacher could think was that she had been counting down, eagerly anticipating the day of her daughter’s death.

Are we prepared to wait in the darkness? For the darkness?

If it wasn’t for the night – what? Yes, the stars shine bright, but they are still cold, distant, and unfathomable. Are we prepared to wait in a place we don’t understand, for something we will not comprehend, and let the pain of that place shape us without us trying to shape it into a manageable fragment of itself?

Darkness is real. We need it, but we most certainly can’t deny it. It is there inviting us to wrestle with what it holds in its depths. It is there waiting to break our hip as we demand it answer our questions. We are fools to think we can understand it but even greater fools to ignore it. It is in this darkness that we find God – sometimes offering possibility and beauty, but more often than not simply residing there in solidarity with those suffering in its midst.

I find no hope in events like this school shooting. I find no hope in thinking that it is part of God’s plan or that God can acquire glory from it. Those lies are ultimately hopeless. All I can do is know that God is in that darkness suffering there too. I cannot anticipate a coming Advent, but I can wait in the darkness – sit in communion in the place God already dwells. It is more a waiting with God in the darkness that a waiting for God to skip over the darkness that is the reality of so many of our lives.

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Advent 2 – Embracing the Darkness

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Advent used to be a period of repentance and fasting like Lent. With the Church’s decision to celebrate the Mass of the birth of Christ at the same time as the established observance of the solstice, Advent therefore came to correspond with the days of increasing darkness (since Christianity was still a Northern hemisphere religion at the time). In pre-modern times, people found more meaning in the turning of the seasons. While we might be aware that the days are growing shorter in our contemporary world, it is not something that concerns us too greatly given that we have wired houses and glowing screens to chase away the darkness that encroaches.

But when the lengthening of the nights brought the darkness ever closer, it had to be faced for what it was. Without the distractions of the light which provide the space to keep hands and minds busy with work and play, one has to be alone with the parts of life many of us would often rather avoid. Without light to distract us, there is nothing to silence the reminders of grief or the inevitability of death. The questions that haunt us, the memories we fear, and the reminders of the pain surrounding us come creeping in with the darkness.

And for much of human history, this period of opportunity to face the darkness was embraced.

Rituals were devised to help one face the darkness and to even grapple with the darkness within oneself. The period of Advent, mirroring the cultural habits of the season, similarly became a period of repentance and fasting as Christians found the time in the longer periods of darkness to look inward and face the questions that often get brushed aside in the everyday busyness of life. It was a time of vulnerability, a time when it was okay to mourn, to admit to doubts, and to do the hard work of recognizing the parts of oneself that needed to be healed or changed.

To protect themselves in their period of vulnerability and introspection, people in European cultures would hang evergreen branches around the openings of their homes. These symbols of hope that life survives the darkness were thought to keep evil spirits from entering and taking advantage of the vulnerable rituals of the darkness. But the protections were not against the darkness as people knew that the darkness was a natural part of the rhythm of life. The protections were only against that which would take advantage of people as they tried to open themselves up to wrestling with the scary parts of life that must be faced in order for one to grow.

Embracing the approaching darkness was not merely about awaiting the return of the light. The light was celebrated once it returned, but the period of darkness was not just survived but embraced as a necessary part of what shaped the development of the holistic person.

Too often in Advent we rush towards the light. We make it all about preparing for the event of the Christ child without taking the time to be in the darkness. We look forward to a light to distract us without wrestling with the meaning of the darkness. Perhaps we should return to the habit of embracing the darkness instead.

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Advent 1 – Sitting in the Darkness

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I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing façade are all being rolled away—
– T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”

We’ve grown comfortable with the façade. The pretty backdrop of our lives, the rote stories that prop up our faith, the habits that keep us so distracted that we forget that there is anything more than the construct of life we skim across.

We rush toward Christmas, letting the familiarity of the stories lull us into a contentment with our knowledge of the event. We speak of the return of the light or of the light breaking into the darkness, but often those words are just platitudes we use to pretend that there is some meaning to our experience – that the busyness and the trappings of the season are for a purpose, even if we can’t fully articulate what it is. Even if all we can do is insist on restating the story as we know it to be.

Even the period of anticipation and expectation has become a front for casting judgment on those who display a different façade. Advent often is not about experiencing God in the waiting, but ensuring that the waiting is done properly. If anyone dares mention a Christmas carol, put up a Christmas tree, or (God forbid) use the wrong color candle in an Advent wreath they are resoundingly condemned for not observing the rituals properly.

We are so comfortable with our façades that we miss that there is a deeper story to tell, a drama yet to unfold, a mystery to encounter beyond the constructs we have grown accustomed to. If we will only settle down, let the lights go out, and wait for the imposing façade to be rolled away then perhaps there will be space for the drama to commence.

But turning off the lights is scary. The light distracts us, allows us to only see the façades that we find safe and comforting. Even if they are hollow, they are known. Darkness is unsettling; we don’t know what it might hold, what might by moving within its unseen corners. We would rather embrace the known even if that means that we never encounter where God might be moving than risk having the worlds we have built for ourselves challenged.

Yet, when the darkness surrounds us so does possibility. The potential for God to move and entice us toward encountering mystery enters in with that expectant darkness. The Spirit can hover and in its rumble of wings stir up new ways of being in this world – new stories to tell and depths to explore.

But that is only when we allow the lights to be extinguished and the darkness blanket our imaginations. When we stop simply reiterating the expectations of the season, the words we know by rote, the images we let glaze over our eyes and sit in that darkness, then we might find some meaning in the waiting.

We must sit in that darkness so that we can anticipate not just a preconceived or tired idea of Advent, but the actual advent of God appearing mysteriously and wonderfully in our midst.

To wait implies that no matter how much it might frighten us, we actually expect God to show up.

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Life, Advent, Writing

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It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything here. Life got complicated. More complicated than usual. And blogging seemed to be the easiest thing to step away from for a season. It was hard to write, but I’m discovering that it’s even harder to not be in the practice of writing. I need writing to think, to work through ideas, to be alive. But I’ve slipped out of the habit. I’ve stopped working at getting the words out of the murkiness of my head onto (figurative) paper.

I need that. I need to write again.

And I want to use the season of Advent to do that. For the past six years, my Advent meditations have been my form of spiritual reflection during this time of year. Working through ideas, dwelling on particular themes and creating a reflection out of that is my language of worship. I need to do that again. I’m saying that here, so it is out there, so I have to do it.

But it will be different this year. In the past I have been drawn to the idea that Advent is a period of waiting for the light. And that still is an idea that resonates strongly with me. But leading up to this season this year, I’ve been repeatedly encountering the idea of finding the beauty in the darkness – of living faithfully in that darkness. It’s a theme that has come at me from so many different arenas recently that I feel like I have no choice but to reflect on that this Advent. What does it mean to wait in the darkness?

So from that I plan on writing reflections this year on the Sundays of Advent exploring the darkness. It scares me, but of course that means I need to face it and wrestle with it.

As part of that, I have also collated and revised the past five years of my Advent reflections in a Kindle eBook. As I focused on anticipating the light during those years, the book is aptly called Celebrating the Light: Reflections for the Sundays of Advent. It is intended to be used for personal or family worship, or to be read in corporate worship gatherings. Permission is given for the reflections to be used in any way that benefits others as long as attribution is given. So if you, your friends or family, or your church is looking for a resource this Advent season, please check out Celebrating the Light.

But as we enter into Advent this year, I will be thinking about darkness and invite you to join me there.

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Reading the Magnificat During Lent

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I’m taking a class on the Gospel of Luke this semester and one of my assignments is to engage in an ongoing spiritual practice related to that particular Gospel. So for the entire semester I am reading the Magnificat daily. It’s a passage that I’ve been drawn to in recent years, but it has been particularly illuminating to be dwelling on it during Lent this year since it is typically confined to the Advent season. Somehow the triumphal language of the justice that God has already accomplished fits with the modern treatment of Advent as a celebratory season. But Lent is a season of penance which puts an entirely different spin on the text.

I’ve been intrigued to discover as I study Luke this time that the language in the Magnificat of the mighty being brought down from their thrones and the lowly uplifted is a recurring motif throughout the book. John the Baptist changes the scripture he quotes from Isaiah to talk about every valley being filled and every hill and mountains made low. Jesus always comes down from the mountain to preach on a plain, and Luke even has the Beatitudes delivered on a plain instead of a mount. God is at work making all things level – bringing down those who prosper now and uplifting those who suffer now. A message that we sometimes can accept at Christmas with its reminder that the Savior of the world was laid in a lowly manger. But in Lent it is far more unsettling.

This is a season of penance and sacrifice, but often only of the personal kind. We give up pleasures or habits for the sake of drawing ourselves closer to God. For many the discipline of such sacrifice is simply a means of reorienting their worship and devotion to God so as to strengthen that commitment overall. The discipline prepares one for deeper relationship with God. But as John proclaimed, preparing the way of the Lord involves bringing down and lifting up. And as Mary asserts, one magnifies the Lord because God has and is in the process of continuing to bring down and lift up. But how often do our Lenten practices participate in this sort of leveling out?

Pietism that relies solely on personal sacrifices that affect us and us alone can serve to draw us emotionally closer to God, but our faith is not something that concerns just us. We exist as a body and as members of the body of Christ the disciplines we engage in should always work towards the good of that body. While being personally closer to God might serve the good of the body in some ways, it is rare that Lenten practices are conceived in such a way. The recent popularity if the images included here attest that at least in popular perception Lent has nothing to do with working for the good of others, of righting relationships that are unbalanced, but is instead merely a selfish (and therefore) pointless practice.

What if our acts of repentance and confession instead served to care for the body as a whole? What if we confessed the ways we have uplifted the mighty (ourselves included) and brought down the lowly? What if our penance and sacrifice involved reversing that imbalance and preparing the way of the Lord by leveling out those relationships? Yes, it is far more difficult to sacrifice a position of privilege and power than it is to give up chocolate or coffee for a few weeks, but it seems to far better reflect the ways God has called us to worship and follow after him. Sacrifice just for the sake of ourselves misses the point. The reminder to bring down and uplift pushes us beyond ourselves to acts of love, repentance, and worship that serve the entire body and not just our particular part.

So while Magnificat is not normally a Lenten text, my meditation on it this year is teaching me that perhaps it should be.

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