unleashed

it may just be cheesy wordplay, but i find it very interesting that a group of lions is called a 'pride'... not a herd or a flock or anything else that has come to mean 'followers'. a pride carries with it all the pomp and power that befits the king of the jungle. (for more thoughts on this one, go here)

saul of tarsus belongs to a very elite pride of lions... and it is that same pomp and power that characterizes saul's movements in the early chapters of the book of acts.

as a jewish roman citizen, raised in a family of means and consequence, saul has attended all the best schools and received top marks for diligence in his studies. he probably has the torah, the books of the prophets and even the hymnal of his people committed to memory by the time he begins breathing murderous threats against those belonging to 'the Way'... the latest religiopolitical anarchist group to rise up in palestine following the teachings of the rabbi Yeshua Ben Yosef (Jesus, son of joseph)

murderous threats?

how does all that attention paid to the scriptures somehow lead to murderous threats and, ultimately, murderous action? well, let's face it, saul's case is neither the first nor the last time a little knowledge has or will become a dangerous thing, nor is it an isolated incident where religious fervor results in many lost lives. as poet and troubadour mark heard once cynically penned:

'everybody loves a holy war'

all throughout our history and into our fiction, both past and future, the Word of God (as coming to many cultures through many representatives of many gods... but that's probably a whole nother blog) is something that gets misused by men and women in order to realize personal ambitions and justify committing great offences against each other and against our planet.

saul's story is just one of these.
but he is no lion.
he is a man.

this man has a lion on a leash, however, which accompanies him everywhere. in fact, because the leash is so strong and the lion is so powerful, it is probably more accurate to say that saul accompanies the lion everywhere. that's just the way it is.

yes, saul belongs to a very elite pride of lions.
belongs, not in terms of being part of,
but rather in terms of being owned by.

for saul, the law is the leash that ultimately keeps him tied to this lion and its pride. the pride tells him he is in the right and the lion that drags him from place to place, seeking out the weak and the scandalous, carrying out its own little inquisition about a millennium before the spanish one, tugs so hard at its leash that saul has no control over it. he is a kept man, his eyes being used by the lion of the pride to hunt down and destroy its prey. the leash keeps him bound to this task.

so Jesus’ confrontation on the road is epic- complete with flashing light, loud noises, symbolic blindness and two complementary visions thrown in for good measure.

the point?
he needs to break the leash.

break the leash and you set the man free.

set the one man free and all those who are subjected to his disease will taste freedom as well. just ask anyone in a twelve step program who has endured 'family day.' this is how it works.

now, we've already said that this lion of the pride needs saul's eyes to hunt. it's pretty significant, then, that Jesus engages saul with a fairly symbolic wonder: the light in which he enshrouds himself is so bright that saul is blinded by it.

saul's exposure to the light has left him blind.

great metaphor, isn't it? the revealed word of God in scripture is described in the psalms (119.105) as 'a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path' and saul has been so exposed to this light that he has become blind to anything that is not light itself. it's much easier to kill people this way.

so to undo what has been taking place for awhile in the spiritual realm, Jesus accomplishes the same in the physical realm: saul is stricken blind through exposure to light.

this sets up some real problems for the lion that's dragging saul around, for the lion needs saul's eyes to hunt. without the use of his eyes, the lion no longer has use of the man. humbled, the man finds himself all alone- abandoned by the pride that once controlled him.

Many people begin coming to God once they stop being religious because there is only one master of the human heart. (Oswald Chambers)

hmm... okay, enough allegorical posts about zoo animals.

effervescing elephant

in john 21, Jesus returns to find a rather tormented leader out on the water with his crew once again. it’s as if everything and nothing has changed. peter’s elephant is in the boat with them.

elephant?

yes, the one that followed him home on the night Jesus was taken away. now it goes with him everywhere. he knows it's with him and so does everyone else. he takes good care of the elephant- he takes care of it the way all good pet owners do. he feeds it, takes it out for exercise and, most importantly, he pays a lot of attention to it. peter takes better care of his elephant than he does of himself.

don't we all.

so there they all are, out in the boat. peter's been a bit preoccupied of late- more so since resurrection day when he ran to the tomb and saw with his own eyes that Jesus was not where they had left him. truly a holy moment, especially since this was probably the only time since it began following him around that peter's elephant wasn't there with him, somehow informing everything by its presence. the thing just couldn't keep up with the hope that had driven peter to the empty tomb.

sadly, once the endorphins abated, the elephant was right there... imposing, demanding, controlling. the picture of codependence.

so now, peter's perspective has become so dark and tormented that, upon announcing to everyone that he is going out on the water, he finds his closest friends deciding to join him. see, they just don't trust peter these days, out on the water, alone with his elephant. who knows what might happen?

and into this scene comes Jesus with his almost taunting greeting from the beach: "have you caught anything?"

no doubt there are those in the boat thinking
perhaps if we didn't have to try to work around this elephant here in the boat we'd have more of a catch- but thanks for asking!

but no one says anything... not even peter, who is known for having no difficulty in this area. quite the contrary, in fact. he is, of course, tending to his elephant again and hasn't really been listening.

so Jesus tries again.
‘you're throwing your nets on the wrong side... throw them on the right side of the boat and you might actually catch something!'

this one pokes peter. it pokes his elephant too. way back in their shared memory, there was a time when somebody claimed to know more about fishing than peter did. that somebody seemed to not only know about fishing, but about pretty much everything else, including the time and place that peter would go about procuring for himself one rather large and obtrusive pachyderm that is now becoming a bit cumbersome to have around.

he looks up at about the same time one of the others shouts out in triumphant recognition: the master! peter jumps into the water and enthusiastically swims to shore. the elephant remains in the boat with the others who paddle in.

as they eat breakfast, there’s a certain indescribable tension in the air. Jesus allows the elephant to remain there with them on the beach. he does not feed it. he does not tend it. he does not, however, chase it away either.

see, God seems to be okay with a little dramatic irony. apparently it is we who are in this big hurry to resolve every conflict and explain every mystery in a timely fashion.

There is nothing miraculous or mysterious about the things we can explain. We control what we are able to explain. Consequently it is only natural to seek an explanation for everything. (Oswald Chambers)

when the teachable moment is ripe, Jesus strikes up some casual conversation, flatly reinstating peter. after all, enough is enough. three times Jesus challenges peter to confess with his lips in greater measure than the original denial and in these moments of restoration, Jesus calls peter beyond the basic undoing of a wrong and into a new day, a new identity.

with Jesus’ resurrection and peter’s confession of love, the elephant in the room is finally put down.

The work that Jesus called Peter to do was the work of shepherding the flock of God... There could only be one motivation. Love. Not a love for the open fields. Not a love for shepherding. Not even a love for the sheep. It had to be more than that. It had to be a love for the Shepherd Himself. Everything had to come from there. Every sermon. Every prayer for the sick. Every search for someone who was lost... All of the work, even the lowliest part of it, had to come from there. (Ken Gire)

zombie apocalypse?

i couldn't help noticing this easter that one or two remarks have been made online concerning the whole zombie element to the easter story. however, rather than be shocked by the 'irreverence' of this idea, i decided to push the metaphor a bit and see where this led me... mainly because, as leonard sweet recently said in a talk that i attended:

"our currency is no longer words, but images,

and the essence of change is reframing with new metaphors."

so here's some evangelical spin on the zombie heresy that i left on my facebook page:

Christ rose from the dead, beginning a movement of spiritual transformation which begins with an albeit symbolic death to self, offering its adherents both a fearless existence and immortality in exchange for their autonomy. these followers are everywhere, inviting others to enter into the same experience which appears, to all outside of it, to be a form of spiritual fanatacism at its best, super-holy madness at its worst...

before Jesus’ resurrection, life led to death...
after Jesus’ resurrection, true life begins with death:

not a physical death, but a death to the temporal in exchange for the eternal... to self-satisfying behaviours and habits and all that crap that we cling to which inhibits the expression of the life and light within us that has been put there by Almighty God.

some of the zombie culture rhetoric refers to zombies as 'life-impaired.'

in this new metaphor, i almost wonder if the life-impaired are those of us that still insist on running things ourselves, informed by incomplete or otherwise flawed intel and powered by emotional, neural, cardiovascular and respiratory human batteries that eventually run down to expiration.

please tell me life isn't simply the sum total of our biological processes and body functions. please tell me there is something more- something eternal that continues on even after we have, as shakespeare put it in hamlet and monty python's john cleese shouted it in the parrot sketch, "shuffled off this mortal coil"!

one final thing occurs to me as i consider the zombie Jesus. within zombie literature and films, there is this time coming when everyone in the world falls prey to the zombie disease and unity is once again established. it is called zombie apocalypse.

however, if Jesus is patient 0 or, as we read (and warp a bit here) in revelation 1.5 firstborn of the dead, then what is the zombie apocalpyse but an event of unprecedented revival?

there's a new world coming

;)

to believe or not to believe

we're all familiar with thomas. even if we haven't read his story, we know his name. although scripture reminds us that he was also called 'didymus' (john 20.19-31) we have a different d-word for him.

doubting thomas

poor guy. makes one simple statement that anyone might make and is stuck with a deprecatory nickname for millennia to follow. just doesn't seem fair.

a statement that anyone might make.

see, thomas requires hard data. he isn’t a pessimist- he’s a realist. it’s not that he doesn’t believe in Jesus... it’s that he doesn’t necessarily believe in his friends. after all, they’ve been under a lot of stress lately.

he does NOT say ‘It’s a lie.’

he simply says ‘prove it.’ (20.25)

so Jesus returns at the end of the week

challenging Thomas to make a choice:
‘to believe or NOT to believe- that is the question.’ (20.27)

gazing upon the scars of the passion of just a little over a week earlier, thomas’ lordship issue is broken, and the breaking resulting from the collision of his skepticism with this incredibly hard data prompts his confession of faith: ‘my Lord and my God!'

for doubting thomas, this visual proof not only establishes Jesus’ credentials as the Christ, but also this Christ’s divinity.

thomas is now ready.

it's interesting that scripture does not share whether tom takes Jesus up on the challenge and extends a timid finger into the wounds of his master or hangs back, sheepishly. i suspect the latter. after all, Jesus has not only exposed his lack of faith, but also his hyperbole. more importantly, perhaps, Jesus gives him another opportunity to believe without physically experiencing. Jesus invites thomas to further experience the proof, or simply believe his eyes. the choice is his.

and the choice is ours.

it is always ours.

recently, a friend sent me a note that sounded a bit like, perhaps, the kind thomas might have sent in that moment. my friend was facing a personal situation that was pushing him beyond the natural realm where the causalities are certain and control is sure and into the supernatural, where everything is bigger, faster, more absorbent and therefore all consuming. life, it seems, has the capacity to drive even the most self-assured of us to our knees:

Essentially I've depended on sound logic and self-reliance to guide me through life because I knew those things would never let me down. I've had a long relationship with God that has gone well with logic, and I could always rely on my own strength and determination to translate that logic into action.

I realized today that God has seen (my) situation before and he has a plan for recovery. Unfortunately the path he has laid out for the broken to walk on isn't designed to be walked alone. In order to walk this path I have to cast aside logic and accept true supernatural intervention. And instead of just pounding through the problem myself I'll have to rely on the wisdom and care of others. I'm not ok with this. I'm private by nature, and given any task, any mountain to climb, I know I can power through it most efficiently by myself. But this path isn't designed for that. If I wasn't so awesome I might even say I was scared.

to believe or disbelieve... that is the question

***

one of my favourite bands of the 90's was a band called the prayer chain.

their song 'dig dug' puts it this way:

It comes creepin...

Can you hear me?
Do you even know me?
I'm just like the rest
Need to stick my finger in your wrist

Dig in deep...

Can you hear my heart beat?
Do you even know my heart?
When i hold the doubts of thomas
As hard as i hold your promise?

Dig in deep
And bury me
Let it grow
Let it believe

(sadly, this recording is from 2003. the youtube vid from their heyday back in 1994 is so out of sync that it is unwatchable... in my view)

the way out

there are words in songs that we often get wrong, and getting it wrong can change the whole message of the lyric. here are some faves:

Great is my faithfulness, Lord unto thee...

(from 'Great Is Thy Faithfulness')

Then sings thy soul, my Savior God to me: How great thou art...

(from 'How Great Thou Art')

He arose a victim from the dark domain...’

(from 'Up From The Grave He Arose)

the first couple are just ridiculously self-centred, unconsciously betraying an egocentricity that probably needs to be explored on its own in a separate post. however, the third one says something different about our worldview and, more importantly, how we see ourselves and Christ as victims in this big mean place.

Jesus was NOT victimized.

Jesus stepped into this calamity with a spoiler alert:

he knew where the story of redemption had to climax.

that's the big difference between being the victim and the victor...

Jesus wasn't a helpless puppet.

Jesus was the man in charge.

one of the most dangerous things about films like The Passion of the Christ becoming more frank about how Jesus was treated is that it becomes easy to forget that Jesus was the one in charge... we are so emotionally moved by the lamb being led really roughly to the slaughter that we lose track of the ultimate victory that God is orchestrating there.

but it's an easy mistake.

we often forget that God is God.

once again, we are dealing with the scandalous and confusing message of God's grace on human terms and, in our pathos, find ourselves occasionally even feeling sorry for God, as though the almighty creator of the universe was some big old guy sitting on a cloud somewhere all depressed because he is constantly misunderstood, mulling over the unfaithfulness to the point of murder of his crowned of creation and wondering where he went wrong as a diety. our post-Genesis3 understanding of the way things are makes it difficult for us to actually see what’s going on because our perspective is so clouded by the inescapability of sin and its wages.

and yet untying the knots of our fallenness is the whole point of the resurrection.

Up from the grave he arose with a mighty triumph o’er his foes

He arose a victor from the dark domain
And he’ll live forever with his Saints to reign
He arose! He arose!
Hallelujah, Christ arose!

(Robert Lowry)

the challenge of response...

...is to discern the difference between the needs that exist in our field of vision and those which are actually in our path because attending to every need within our field of vision will result in a really random path.

is finding/navigating God's will for a life or a church simply a matter of connecting the dots or does this approach actually impede progress?

and what is progress anyway?

lost passion

so in reflecting a bit on easter, good friday, lenten fasts etc, i was drawn back to an old blogpost from 2005.

i have a question: why the recut?
mel gibson's controversial film 'the passion of the Christ' has been recut with the more 'offensive' stuff removed.

i have another question: feel better now?

once again we have opted for a tidy retelling of the story- as if there aren't already enough of those. about a month ago my marcy and i were tossing around some of film's more comical (:-0) portrayals of Jesus' story.

***
marcy said
This all started when I started asking people who they thought the worst ‘Jesus Actors’ of all time where. I mean, we’re talking from Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion’ on down through ‘The Robe’ and what-not, the worst Jesus Actors of all time.

We’re talking the worst method actors known to cinema: “A November Boston Globe review of Jesus Christ Superstar called the non-Equity show "so unspeakably awful it's enough to make a writer give up theater criticism forever and set up a shoeshine stand in the middle of a mudslide."

Anyways, here’s a partial list of Jesus Actors:
Willem Dafoe in The Last Temptation of Christ
James Caviezel in The Passion of the Christ
Jeremy Sisto in Jesus (made for tv)
Brian Deacon in Jesus (from '79)
Claude Heater in Ben-Hur
Kenneth Colley in Life of Brian
Ted Neeley in Jesus Christ Superstar
William Powell in Jesus Of Nazareth
Max Von Sydow in The Greatest Story Ever Told
Jeffrey Hunter in ‘The King of Kings’ (61)

Okay, but Willem Dafoe also played the mad scientist in the Spiderman movie. Enough said there.


to which i felt compelled to reply:
as for willem dafoe, thank God actors play roles, rather than live them (another plug for "Jesus of Montreal" yay!) because a bunch of the guys on this list have either taken bizarre/embarrassing parts somewhere along the way, or have never worked again...

ted neeley played 'curly' (the creepy cowboy with a glove full of vaseline) in the 70's version of john steinbeck's "of mice and men"

"max von sydow was 'brewmeister smith' (a deranged scientist who goes for global mind control by adding hallucinogens to canadian beer at oktoberfest)in bob and doug mckenzie's "strange brew" (major canadiana piece there) and has portrayed mostly malevolent authority figures ever since, in mind-bending psychological films like "minority report" and "shutter island"

jeffrey hunter went on to be commander pike in the "star trek" pilot, returning to the little screen in a recut version of it called "the menagerie"

there's probably many more great laughs we could have over the aesthetic folly/curse (it's kinda interesting that in casting the new superman, both jim C and willem D were not even considered because they had both already played JC. darned do-gooders!) attached to playing Jesus- i just don't have my big fat cross-referenced movie book handy to go digging further.

i am just glad that malcolm mcdowell has never played the Christ (unless you include "a clockwork orange"- but that one's probably just conjecture) because i don't think that i could see "Caligula Christ" without becoming really uncomfortable.

and on it went...
***

point is, there are already a bunch of 'biblical epic' type portrayals of Jesus' passion which just don't rate, and clearly it's not about visual desensitization, because desensitized people would dismiss the flogging scene as merely running too long without moving the story forward...

it's about letting love in. we hate that a good person could be so cruelly treated; or we hate that people will watch a film and weep, but will eat supper on the couch while watching wars and their atrocities chronicled on cnn; we hate the idea that such horrific torture could be undergone by the son of God on our behalf (although that is still too personally and spiritually problematic for many- let's just stick with the good person part; it permits filtered consciencing.) telling a story is one thing, but depicting a troubling historical event in such extreme detail is somehow too much.

give us 'kill bill.' we know that that's silly. we know that that isn't supposed to get into our hearts. we know that people are not, as presented (brilliantly, i might add) by tarantino, huge sacks of blood just waiting to explode, and therefore we can laugh at our mortality rather than fear losing it to face a loveless forever, completely absent from the presence of God.

don't kid yourself- none of us has any idea how dark the darkness really is. how dark can you imagine? does it compare to what we find offensive about the original cut of the film?

Jesus said 'forgive them, for they have no idea...'

sometimes it feels like we've given up truth for lent.