Monday, November 03, 2008
The Day Before Obama
Some words ought to be said before tomorrow's election. It will be good to remember in years to come how deadening this moment in history was and what dreams we harbored for a new day.Nobody's thinking very clearly right now. Some of the most sensible people I know are spouting off the most ridiculous things under the influence of blogs and pundits. I am the same. I compulsively check the polls for any signs of weakening. I know more about the 2nd Congressional District of Nebraska than the people living there. But none of this knowledge has made me any wiser. It's just making me more stupid. Real debate on the issues we face has to wait until we're all sober again. Tomorrow.
So what do this election represent for me?
1) It's hard to overstate what a waste these last 8 years have been. A criminal waste. Following the atacks of 9/11 we had the opportunity for a truly deeper dialogue with the world and a deeper understanding of who we were in the post-Cold War world. A skillful leader could have used the occasion to expand our national conversation and introduce a new kind of American presence in the middle East. What if we had flooded the Middle East with new Western-style universities instead of troops? What if we had begun a radical program of energy self-sufficiency that helped the planet and choked off the petrodollars that fund radical Isalmic movements? What if we had not simplified the world into good and evil and had not answered every doubt with a synonym for 'resolve'?
Right and left were both equally guilty of falling back on old answers in the face of new questions. Which makes Obama's unique ability to choose reflection over reaction so attractive. If he wins I think the defining moment of his rise will be seen as his impromptu speech on race following the Jeremiah Wright flap this spring. It was so unexpected and so thoughtful - free of cliche and cant - that it reminded us of what we were hungering for. We didn't even know how much we needed it until we heard it. At that moment Obama began to be the person we could trust to be the difference we needed.
2) Our standing in the world has fallen so far that anyone else in the position of president will see it rise, but the change Obama will bring is immeasurably different. I sense that the rest of the world wants to believe in the idea of America. They, no less than we, want to believe that this is a land where 'the new' is always being born. That there is a dynamism that leads to ever-new rounds of self-renewal. Where things considered impossible only a few years before can be possible. Not only we, but the rest of the world will believe that again if Obama is elected. We say that it's the issues that matter, but the person does as well and who Obama is matters as much as anything he proposes to do.
3) I pray that this election will put to death a certain strain of Christian thinking that has turned very ugly. The people I have been most disappointed in have been Christians who have been willing to say all manner of evil against Obama for who knows what purpose. To the extent that American Christianity harbors old feelings of racism, xenophobia and fear it needs to die. Too many people assume that the Church is the last refuge for those who hold notions of American purity. They assume the Church is an ally in preserving the status quo and supporting the way things are or used to be. If only we could be about the way things should be in God's eyes.
Why do I say this? Persistent emails and whisper campaigns within the church identifying Obama as a Muslim and in league with terrorists. Denigration of his Christian beliefs as evidence that he is insincere. Faxes I have received saying that I should condemn Obama from the pulpit for his advocacy of child sacrifice and an expansion of partial-birth abortions. The fact that I now need to say that Obama supports neither of those is evidence of how far we have fallen.
There is tremendous fear among people on the right. I have heard folks say in all sincerity that that they believe Obama is the anti-Christ. But I pray for a breath following this election tomorrow - a deep breath in which the Church can exhale all the hatred and fear. Then we can all repent for our heretical belief that the future is really in Obama's hands and begin to reclaim the notion that God is, after all, at the helm. And so we are free to follow our hopes, and challenge Obama when he needs challenging and support him when he needs supporting.
Breathe deeply the air of that new morning which is to come.
Labels: politics Obama
Monday, October 13, 2008
Coldplay - The Perfect Soundtrack for the End of the Empire
I'm feeling a curious sense of liberation as the world economy comes crashing down around us. Something tells me that beneath the veneer that has constituted our American empire, there has been a truth waiting to be told - a freedom longing to be lived that has been dying of deadly thirst. I have felt it in my soul and have made the typical American mistake of thinking that it is all about me. Perhaps the hunger within for freedom and truth and community is the canary in the coal mine, signaling a greater menace in the land.
So how great is it that Coldplay is the soundtrack to the end of Empire? Viva la Vida is the catchiest tune about global decline I have ever heard. And there in the chorus are the words: "For some reason I can not explain/ Once you know there was never, never an honest word/ That was when I ruled the world."
Will we speak some honest word now to finally say that the emperor has no clothes, that our cheap energy- and equity-supported lifestyles have been plastic, that our longing for intimacy is not something to be buried beneath irony but lived? Bring on the Coldplay.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Hope Like a Marshmallow
No, it's not a collection of druids, just Bishops Palmer and Huie and the worship leaders opening the 2008 General Conference. But check out that table. Now that's the most impressive thing I've seen from the first news stories coming out of Fort Worth. It's the roots of a tree and its made from wood from the Gulfside Assembly Center in Waveland, Mississippi which was totally destroyed by Katrina. Better yet, the table is placed right in the middle of the gathered assembly.
Bishop Janice Riggle Huie, (a Perkins grad), preached at the opening worship yesterday and emphasized hope. She noted that in our everyday lingo hope is in danger of becoming a “marshmallow word. It sounds soft. It looks sweet and appealing. Get it close to the fire, and hope melts off the stick and drips on the ground.” Huie argued that resurrection hope is different. As Paul noted, it is "sure confidence of a future reality."
Today the agenda was filled with presentations. Bishop Bruce Ough gave the Episcopal Address and focused on the bishops' "Seven Vision Pathways," which sounds like an odd cross between Thomas Merton and an Eastern mystical tradition. Numbers are in at this year's conference. The general agencies presented the Four Provocative Propositions and Lovett Weems issued a widely-distributed document before the conference entitled Ten Provocative Questions on the state of the church. We'll see if any of them catch on.
As to the substance of Ough's remarks, I'm still waiting on the transcripts but the news report indicates that it was a kind of best practices report on what's working in transforming churches. The visions are closely tied in with the four areas of focus: developing young clergy leaders, beginning and reviving local churches, combatting poverty and embarking on a global health initiative.
The Laity Address by Lyn Powell of the North Georgia Conference stuck to very traditional themes of making disciples by personal evangelism. I did like the way it appears Powell talked about every member having a personal ministry, but, again, I'm waiting on transcripts to hear more.
New this year was a Young People's Address featuring six young people from around the world. The language in this address, at least from the portions available, seemed fresher than other addresses. I'm very glad to see this emphasis and very glad that the General Conference is giving this first-day billing.
Otherwise the day seems to have been filled with calls for unity and an end to fighting over intractable social issues questions. We'll see if that holds.
Thanks to United Methodist News Service for the work they're doing. All quotes above are from them.
Finally - there were liturgical dancers in the opening worship at the Fort Worth Convention Center last night and it reminded me of when I danced with the bishops in worship there in the early 1990s. While I was in seminary there was a great gathering on vital congregations held in Fort Worth and our church in Dallas was asked to do a liturgical dance for the closing worship. We practiced for two months ahead of time - a group of 8 of us ranging in age from teenagers to 70-year-olds. I was the only guy.
But the night itself was magic. It ended with a steel drum band playing "Amen" and the bishops leading a huge conga line that stretched throughout the center. The Spirit was moving and as a young person going into ministry in the United Methodist Church I felt that everything was possible. I pray for the same Spirit this week.
Labels: General Conference
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Return to Origins
It seems only right that this blog, which began four years ago as a place to offer commentary on General Conference, should be revisited as the delegates gather in Fort Worth to revise "The Book," (seen here as it vacationed recently on Assateague Island.) When we last left our happy elected global crew they were not so happy, ending their time together in Pittsburgh with broken chalices and the hint of a broken connection. I despaired and have despaired since that the General Conference had become a place that did not look like the church I know. And I have wondered if conferencing is still possible or relevant in this new age.
So now we gather again for some answers. The dynamics have not changed much in four years. Most of the cast of characters is the same, though some fire-in-the-belly conservatives have died in the interim and the global church, particularly in Africa, will be more heavily represented. Thematically we will see more emphasis on new church starts, though it remains to be seen how that will be envisioned and funded. It also is not clear whether we can turn this aging ship into a mission vehicle once more. The Holy Spirit has used more unlikely vessels, but we are in need of far more than a paradigm shift.
Some predictions: We will not change our language on homosexuality, though we will become less connectional as the General Conference reaffirms the decision of the Judicial Council that allows pastors to determine membership qualifications. We will not make any substantive changes that would simplify and clarify our theology and practice of ordination. We will end the practice of guaranteed appointments. There will be a revolt on apportionments and the quadrennial budget will be slashed from the increase that is recommended. We will approve a new hymnal committee. We will approve the Four Provocative Propositions that will set the major themes of the coming quadrennium including new churches, young clergy development, health and poverty initiatives. And finally, we will agree to be less strident and less earnest in the coming four years. (A guy can dream, can't he?)
My prayers are with our folks in Fort Worth. As I have come to know them more these past four years I have not loved them less. It is a strange and wonderful thing to be a United Methodist. I would feel homeless were it not for this connection. So I pray that some good may come and that we will be surprised. A steady diet of Tex-Mex in the Stockyards might do us all a world of good.
Labels: General Conference
Sunday, April 15, 2007
In Praise of Cities
Boston. Who knew? Seen here from atop the Bunker Hill Monument, it only hints at its charms. We came, we saw, we walked the Freedom Trail. It was a blast.
At the State House we were adopted by a kindly, legislatorial-looking gentleman and his staffer who happily showed us around the place including the House and Senate chambers. He was obviously very comfortable with the whole place. Standing on the floor of the House I asked our benefactor if he was, in fact, a representative. He laughed and said, "No, I used to be." Now he's a lobbyist. A sign of where true access lies. He probably represents a trade group for asbestos-using whale-killers, but we appreciated the hospitality.
But the real point of this post (besides signalling a resurrection of sorts for this blog): to praise those apostles of urban living of the past two decades. It would have been very easy to write off cities as a sad failure at the end of the 1970s. New York City was broke and depressing. Every major city was suffering an inner core meltdown. Suburbia was winning and exurbia was clearly on the horizon.
But driving through the Northeast over Spring Break this week I was amazed at how much good city living is out there to be had. People have not given up on the urban dream. It's not exactly affordable yet, but surely one of the success stories of our times has to be the return of the city. So I'll give a nod to Rudy Guliani, despite my reservations about his politics, and to all those mayors and New Urbanists who saw a future in the heart of the city.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Baccalaureate
The Baccalaureate service is always a high, holy moment of the Wesley Foundation year. As I deliver my last Baccalureate sermon as Wesley Foundation director, I give thanks for all the students who have blessed this place and my life over the last seven years.
And now...Vera and Grayson, Part IV:
Trusting the Hurricane
Acts 3:1-10 [NRSV]
One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, at three o'clock in the afternoon. And a man lame from birth was being carried in. People would lay him daily at the gate of the temple called the Beautiful Gate so that he could ask for alms from those entering the temple.
When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked them for alms. Peter looked intently at him, as did John, and said, "Look at us." And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them.
But Peter said, "I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk." And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong.
Jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God.
All the people saw him walking and praising God, and they recognized him as the one who used to sit and ask for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.
The voice on the television was clear. “What you need is the new Triple Cheddar Monster Thick Burger Deluxe with Bacon.” As the deep, urgent voice spoke the camera lovingly panned a huge, dripping cheeseburger that looked like it was just asking to be caught up in a steroids scandal. “What you need is a visit to Hardee’s.”
Gabriella threw a wadded piece of paper at the screen. “No,” she said, “What I need is some help with these stupid quadratic equations! What Einstein thought these up?”
Vera looked over at her friend. “Wasn’t it Einstein?”
“Very funny, Vera. Very funny.”
Gabby and Vera were sitting in the Cavalier Laundrette in Charlottesville trying to multitask their way to the end of their first year at UVA. While their clothes were spinning in the noisy, hot dryers and the TV blared overhead, they were poring over books and notes and trying to pretend to be ready for the next morning’s exam. Even though they could have used the laundry rooms at the dorms, they felt more like the strong, independent women they were when they got to get off grounds. So they lugged their clothes and books over to the Laundromat.
“What I need is a break,” said Vera. “I think if I spend one more minute trying to understand Shakespeare I’m going to lose my capacity for coherent thought.” She looked down at her notes scribbled on a hundred little pieces of paper and index cards. “This is out of control, Gabby.”
Gabby looked down at her own collection of numbers and formulas. “Tell me about it. But hey, looks like load number 76 is done.” She jumped up and walked over to a dryer that was just spinning to a halt.
Just then the door of the Laundromat flew open and a young man ran in, out of breath and with a wild look in his eye. He scanned the room quickly and when he saw Vera he ran to her and plopped down in the seat right beside her. “So, Vera, are you ready for a break?”
Vera smiled. It was Grayson. They had met during the first month of school when Grayson was playing Frisbee golf on the Lawn and nailed her in the head while trying to make a par two off of Homer’s butt. Since then he had been her muse and prophet with his free spirited ways and disarming questions. Grayson had a way of appearing just when Vera needed him to. In a year when so many things had changed for Vera, when she had been challenged in so many different ways, Grayson was her touchstone for understanding what was real. He was also becoming her boyfriend, though neither one of them had yet said that aloud or broached the DTR conversation (“Defining the Relationship”).
“How did you know, Grayson? I just told Gabby that I needed a break.”
“Excellent! Do you remember how I tried to get you to bungee jump off the Rotunda last month?”
Vera was nervous. “Grayson…”
“Chill out, Vera. I still haven’t found the right bungee cords for that. But I did find somebody who can get us on to the upper balconies around the Lawn. Are you interested?”
“Absolutely.”
“Cool. Well, meet me in front of Pavilion VIII at midnight.”
“Grayson?”
“Yes?”
“Will I be facing an honor trial after this?”
“No way, Vera. Trespassing charges at the most. Oh, and by the way, I need to collect for the plane tickets soon.”
“Right. Grayson…I don’t know about that. Is it too late to get your money back because my folks are really freaking out about this beach week trip.”
“Vera! You have got to go! You’re headed back to that strange little place you call home for 13 weeks. You’re going to work at an Eckerd’s and become a slave of the establishment. You’ve got to take this week before you go. Gabby’s going. Ike’s going. Beebo and Nimrod.”
“Yeah, Grayson…no, see I want to go. I think it will be great. But remind me again why we’re going to Nicaragua?”
“Vera, everybody’s going to Nicaragua these days.”
“No, they’re not, Grayson. They’re going to the Outer Banks.”
“Yeah, sure. NOW they’re going to the Outer Banks, but after they hear about our week at Puerto Cabeza de Cabra, it will be da bomb.”
“Grayson, you are not going to get 21st century people to go to this place if you keep saying da bomb. Nobody says that anymore.”
“Right, so you’re going?”
“Yes, I’m going. I’ll bring you the check at midnight. Pavilion VIII. I’ll bring some bail money for you, too.”
“Awesome. Thanks, Vera. You’re da bo…you’re great.” And with that Grayson bounced back out of the Laundromat while Vera smiled.
Vera was right about her parents. They did freak out when they learned about Nicaragua. On the plane ride down she wondered again why she had agreed to this crazy trip. She didn’t even know any Spanish! Her 200-level French was not going to help her here.
What she hadn’t anticipated was how everything seemed to change for her after her last exam. The semester had felt like a huge steamroller bearing down her so that she had to keep running every second to avoid being flattened. There wasn’t much room to think about the summer, her parents, the beach trip, or even how she was feeling. But as she turned in her last blue book and walked out of New Cabell Hall, a strange mixture of relief and apprehension settled in.
She was definitely feeling better with the steamroller fading into the distance behind her. Whatever grade she got on that Russian History exam, it wasn’t going to be bad enough to sink her semester. But in the pit of her stomach she also felt a sense of foreboding and instability that she hadn’t had since her first days at UVA when she was wondering if she had made the right choice in coming to school here at all. Back then her mom was having health issues and her old friends were back in Mattaponi, seemingly doing fine without her. But as she had learned to embrace the roller-coaster ride of college life, that feeling had passed. Now that she was going back to Mattaponi, it was coming back.
Gabby, who was sitting next to her on the plane, noticed that Vera was a little preoccupied. “Hey, Lady, what’s up?”
“Gabby, do you know what you’re going to do when you grow up?”
“Hey, what’s to say I’m not grown up already?”
“O.K., yeah, but I mean, what next? After UVA.”
“No clue, Vera. But you’re not supposed to answer my question with a question. Lets’ try again. Hey, Lady, what’s up? (Here’s the part where you say, ‘Thanks for asking, Gabby. I’m looking worried and unsettled because…’)”
Vera smiled. “Because…because, Gabby, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. I mean in Mattaponi I never thought about it. I never had much of a goal besides going to college. When classes are going it’s easy--I’m a student. But here I am going to another country and I’m going to hand over my passport and they’re going to say, “Welcome, Vera Allen,” and I don’t know who that is!”
“So, it’s about going to another country…”
“No, Gabby it has nothing to do with another country. I don’t know who Vera Allen is in the United States! I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m headed. I don’t know who or what to trust. I don’t know who God wants me to be. And it feels like freedom, but it also feels like really scary.”
“Vera,” Gabby said. “Before you take on life, the universe and everything, just try enjoying one day on the beach. Can you promise me that?”
But even that didn’t work out. They landed without incident in a small, one runway airport at the edge of a vast jungle. The customs official hardly glanced at Vera’s passport as she walked through. It was a little disconcerting to see how easy it was to get it, but a little bit thrilling, too.
The group boarded a taxi to head to the hotel where they were staying. Well, I say taxi, but it was really more like the bed of a pick-up truck. In fact, it was the bed of a pick-up truck with rough wooden benches fixed over each wheel base. Only the word ‘Taxi’ written across the pick-up gate gave away what it was. Ten of them squeezed together with their stuff for the short ride.
Nicaragua is a desperately poor country and Puerto Cabeza de Cabra (Port Goathead) showed the effects of the poverty. Their hotel was a collection of cinderblock cabanas with one wall of each consisting of a bamboo screen facing the Pacific that could be pulled back. A larger cinderblock building with a timber roof behind these cabanas served as the office, restaurant, and local health clinic. It was the most substantial building in a very small city. A friendly, elderly couple had showed them their rooms and then left them there.
Grayson looked at the modest digs and immediately pronounced them “Awesome!”, but no one else was ready to make that claim. The students threw their bags down and headed straight for the beach. It was warm and wonderful--very different from the oddly cold spring they had left behind in Virginia. A stiff wind was blowing off of the ocean and the setting sun was soon obscured by a raft of dark, billowy clouds on the horizon. Before dark the atmosphere was as unsettled as Vera felt.
When Vera called home a little while later to let her parents know that they had made it safely, they had some more unsettling news. They had been watching the Weather Channel and they talked about a hurricane headed straight for Central America. “Dad, are you sure? It’s too early for a hurricane, isn’t it? It’s only May.”
“It’s very unusual, but I’m sitting here looking at it on the screen right now, Vera.”
By noon the next day things had turned even more ominous. Though the local weather reports said that the main storm would hit north of them, the hurricane was large enough that it was going to cause some major problems in Puerto Cabeza de Cabra. Rain began to fall in the early afternoon and the winds became fierce. The hotel evacuated all of the guests to the main building where there were few windows.
Around sunset the electricity went out. When Vera peeked out at the ocean it was seething and tossing huge waves at the cabanas they had left. Somehow the thought of it encroaching on them in the dark was even worse.
She leaned up against a wall as one of the hotel owners handed her an oil lamp. In its flickering light she could see Grayson walking toward her. He put his back up against the wall beside her and slid down into a sitting position, just as he had done dozens of times before when she was studying in the hallway at Bonnycastle.
“So…want to play some cards?”
“No, Grayson. Thanks, but I just don’t think I could concentrate.”
“So, I guess bungee jumping off the roof of…”
“Don’t even try it, Grayson. It’s lame.”
Grayson looked away for a minute, pretending to be interested in a joke Ike was telling Beebo across the room. When he turned back to Vera he said, “You know, hurricanes are great.”
“Grayson…”
“No, really. It’s true. I took this Environmental Science course last semester and we talked about how they are one of the most efficient forms of heat transfer from the tropics to other areas.”
Vera looked mildly interested so Grayson kept going. “You see, the tropics get way more solar energy than they need and all that excess energy gets stored in the ocean water. Currents take some of it away, but hurricanes are like the bullet trains of heat transfer. They just take all that energy and chug straight on up to the northern hemisphere. It’s da bomb…I mean, it’s pretty nifty.”
“O.K., Grayson, I don’t know if this is true or not. I don’t think you even took an Environmental Science class last fall. But hurricanes are not ‘pretty nifty.’ They’re big and scary and they knock lots of stuff down while they’re transferring heat so efficiently. So if that’s supposed to make me feel better, it’s not working. I still hear the wind. I’m sitting in here in the dark wondering if the roof is going to blow off, and I think the whole world is coming apart around me. I need something more substantial than a stupid lecture to make me feel better.”
“What do you need, Vera?”
“I need to get out of here. I need to go home. I need to pray. I don’t know. What do you need?”
“Vera,” Grayson said, “Look at me.”
Vera turned her head to look into Grayson’s green eyes. He held her face in his hands as he had done once before in the time she had known him. The lamp cast strange shadows around his face, but he seemed remarkably calm. “Vera,” he said, “I don’t have a way to get you out or to take you home or to tell you that everything is going to be alright. I don’t know why we’re here. But I do have this to give you. You are God’s child. You need to trust the hurricane, and you need to dance.”
Dance? Dance? How ridiculous the words sounded in the middle of a hurricane! The world was blowing away around them. Vera’s life was an absolute uncertainty. She didn’t even know why she was in this odd little corner of the world. But strangely, Grayson’s words were enough. The character of the wind changed. It was no longer fierce and menacing, but mighty and musical. The huddled forms of people gathered around faltering lamps didn’t seem like helpless, small lights in the dark; they were people finding strength in each other. Even the darkness did not seem dark but somehow comforting. And within herself, Vera felt the deep, dark questions that absorbed her on the plane, melting into insignificance. Dancing. Yes, that’s just what should be done.
But before she was able to consider what this meant. There was a ferocious gale and the building shook and the simple timber roof shuddered and then lifted up into the air, floating away into the night skylike Dorothy‘s house in the Wizard of Oz. Suddenly rain poured in on them and the winds howled overhead. It was terrifying and yet amazing. Most of the oil lamps blew out immediately.
Then an old woman staggered to the center of the room and looked up at the raging heavens above her. She gestured to an old man to join her. Vera recognized them from check-in the day before. It was the owners of the hotel who had now lost everything. Or so it seemed. The old woman and the old man looked at one another and as if they had been practicing for this moment for some time, they began to raise their hands into the air and then to stomp their feet and then to shout in a loud voice and then, o my, and then to dance.
Vera looked over at Grayson, who was sitting, shocked, against the wall. She said to him, “Grayson, look at me.” He looked. “Grayson, it’s time to dance.”
They joined the couple in the middle of the room in a dance that was at the same time primitive and glorious. As they danced the winds began to die down. The rains came to an end. The clouds parted to reveal a sky full of diamonds and a crescent moon. The rebuilding had already begun, and for Vera it was as if she had taken her first step. There were many things yet to do, many questions yet to answer. But she no longer needed a passport to tell her who she was. She was a child of God.
I don’t know if a hurricane is the best metaphor for this time of transition, but I know it feels that way sometimes. The Wesley community is a transient community that is graced for awhile by amazing students who come and live here so fully that we can’t remember a time when they ever weren’t here. David, April, Rachel, Joel, Will, Gardner, Susie, Gin, Missy--you have all be that kind of presence, though you might not have realized it.
When you go it feels like a mighty wind has blown through here, until…until we get e-mails, letters, and news from your new settings for life and work and know that you are being a blessing in a new place…until we get a new group of folks with new gifts to form a new community here…until we see you again at a reunion or a wedding or a visit back to Charlottesville.
If it feels like that for us, how much more of a hurricane it must be for you in the transition! Nothing seems stable. Nothing seems sure. Will I have what I need? Will I have people around me to assure me that I’m loved? Will I feel God’s presence in this new time? This year, as I move, I’m asking those same questions with you.
But we have old stories to tell us what it should be like. In the early Church, shortly after Jesus’ resurrection and the huge transition and tumult that the disciples went through…Soon after the hurricane that was Pentecost, Peter and John confronted a man who had not been able to walk since birth. He lived an entirely passive live, being carried to the Temple each day to receive gifts from passers-by. When Peter and John see him, that’s how he is--sitting and asking for alms.
Peter is not content to toss him a coin. He doesn’t even have a coin to toss. He tells the man, “Look at us.” And the man does, expecting to get something from them. But Peter says, “I don’t have what you think you need or what you’ve come to expect. But I do have this: In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, stand up and walk.”
This man is not content to walk, though. He has not moved on his own since birth, so his first move away from passivity, his first act, is to praise God and to dance.
As we go out into the world, fellow transition-ers, let’s never accept complacency when God gives us choreography. I don’t have much to give to you tonight, but I do have this: You are a child of God. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, don’t just walk; dance with me. Thanks be to God.
And now...Vera and Grayson, Part IV:
Trusting the Hurricane
Acts 3:1-10 [NRSV]
One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, at three o'clock in the afternoon. And a man lame from birth was being carried in. People would lay him daily at the gate of the temple called the Beautiful Gate so that he could ask for alms from those entering the temple.
When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked them for alms. Peter looked intently at him, as did John, and said, "Look at us." And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them.
But Peter said, "I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk." And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong.
Jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God.
All the people saw him walking and praising God, and they recognized him as the one who used to sit and ask for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.
The voice on the television was clear. “What you need is the new Triple Cheddar Monster Thick Burger Deluxe with Bacon.” As the deep, urgent voice spoke the camera lovingly panned a huge, dripping cheeseburger that looked like it was just asking to be caught up in a steroids scandal. “What you need is a visit to Hardee’s.”
Gabriella threw a wadded piece of paper at the screen. “No,” she said, “What I need is some help with these stupid quadratic equations! What Einstein thought these up?”
Vera looked over at her friend. “Wasn’t it Einstein?”
“Very funny, Vera. Very funny.”
Gabby and Vera were sitting in the Cavalier Laundrette in Charlottesville trying to multitask their way to the end of their first year at UVA. While their clothes were spinning in the noisy, hot dryers and the TV blared overhead, they were poring over books and notes and trying to pretend to be ready for the next morning’s exam. Even though they could have used the laundry rooms at the dorms, they felt more like the strong, independent women they were when they got to get off grounds. So they lugged their clothes and books over to the Laundromat.
“What I need is a break,” said Vera. “I think if I spend one more minute trying to understand Shakespeare I’m going to lose my capacity for coherent thought.” She looked down at her notes scribbled on a hundred little pieces of paper and index cards. “This is out of control, Gabby.”
Gabby looked down at her own collection of numbers and formulas. “Tell me about it. But hey, looks like load number 76 is done.” She jumped up and walked over to a dryer that was just spinning to a halt.
Just then the door of the Laundromat flew open and a young man ran in, out of breath and with a wild look in his eye. He scanned the room quickly and when he saw Vera he ran to her and plopped down in the seat right beside her. “So, Vera, are you ready for a break?”
Vera smiled. It was Grayson. They had met during the first month of school when Grayson was playing Frisbee golf on the Lawn and nailed her in the head while trying to make a par two off of Homer’s butt. Since then he had been her muse and prophet with his free spirited ways and disarming questions. Grayson had a way of appearing just when Vera needed him to. In a year when so many things had changed for Vera, when she had been challenged in so many different ways, Grayson was her touchstone for understanding what was real. He was also becoming her boyfriend, though neither one of them had yet said that aloud or broached the DTR conversation (“Defining the Relationship”).
“How did you know, Grayson? I just told Gabby that I needed a break.”
“Excellent! Do you remember how I tried to get you to bungee jump off the Rotunda last month?”
Vera was nervous. “Grayson…”
“Chill out, Vera. I still haven’t found the right bungee cords for that. But I did find somebody who can get us on to the upper balconies around the Lawn. Are you interested?”
“Absolutely.”
“Cool. Well, meet me in front of Pavilion VIII at midnight.”
“Grayson?”
“Yes?”
“Will I be facing an honor trial after this?”
“No way, Vera. Trespassing charges at the most. Oh, and by the way, I need to collect for the plane tickets soon.”
“Right. Grayson…I don’t know about that. Is it too late to get your money back because my folks are really freaking out about this beach week trip.”
“Vera! You have got to go! You’re headed back to that strange little place you call home for 13 weeks. You’re going to work at an Eckerd’s and become a slave of the establishment. You’ve got to take this week before you go. Gabby’s going. Ike’s going. Beebo and Nimrod.”
“Yeah, Grayson…no, see I want to go. I think it will be great. But remind me again why we’re going to Nicaragua?”
“Vera, everybody’s going to Nicaragua these days.”
“No, they’re not, Grayson. They’re going to the Outer Banks.”
“Yeah, sure. NOW they’re going to the Outer Banks, but after they hear about our week at Puerto Cabeza de Cabra, it will be da bomb.”
“Grayson, you are not going to get 21st century people to go to this place if you keep saying da bomb. Nobody says that anymore.”
“Right, so you’re going?”
“Yes, I’m going. I’ll bring you the check at midnight. Pavilion VIII. I’ll bring some bail money for you, too.”
“Awesome. Thanks, Vera. You’re da bo…you’re great.” And with that Grayson bounced back out of the Laundromat while Vera smiled.
Vera was right about her parents. They did freak out when they learned about Nicaragua. On the plane ride down she wondered again why she had agreed to this crazy trip. She didn’t even know any Spanish! Her 200-level French was not going to help her here.
What she hadn’t anticipated was how everything seemed to change for her after her last exam. The semester had felt like a huge steamroller bearing down her so that she had to keep running every second to avoid being flattened. There wasn’t much room to think about the summer, her parents, the beach trip, or even how she was feeling. But as she turned in her last blue book and walked out of New Cabell Hall, a strange mixture of relief and apprehension settled in.
She was definitely feeling better with the steamroller fading into the distance behind her. Whatever grade she got on that Russian History exam, it wasn’t going to be bad enough to sink her semester. But in the pit of her stomach she also felt a sense of foreboding and instability that she hadn’t had since her first days at UVA when she was wondering if she had made the right choice in coming to school here at all. Back then her mom was having health issues and her old friends were back in Mattaponi, seemingly doing fine without her. But as she had learned to embrace the roller-coaster ride of college life, that feeling had passed. Now that she was going back to Mattaponi, it was coming back.
Gabby, who was sitting next to her on the plane, noticed that Vera was a little preoccupied. “Hey, Lady, what’s up?”
“Gabby, do you know what you’re going to do when you grow up?”
“Hey, what’s to say I’m not grown up already?”
“O.K., yeah, but I mean, what next? After UVA.”
“No clue, Vera. But you’re not supposed to answer my question with a question. Lets’ try again. Hey, Lady, what’s up? (Here’s the part where you say, ‘Thanks for asking, Gabby. I’m looking worried and unsettled because…’)”
Vera smiled. “Because…because, Gabby, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. I mean in Mattaponi I never thought about it. I never had much of a goal besides going to college. When classes are going it’s easy--I’m a student. But here I am going to another country and I’m going to hand over my passport and they’re going to say, “Welcome, Vera Allen,” and I don’t know who that is!”
“So, it’s about going to another country…”
“No, Gabby it has nothing to do with another country. I don’t know who Vera Allen is in the United States! I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m headed. I don’t know who or what to trust. I don’t know who God wants me to be. And it feels like freedom, but it also feels like really scary.”
“Vera,” Gabby said. “Before you take on life, the universe and everything, just try enjoying one day on the beach. Can you promise me that?”
But even that didn’t work out. They landed without incident in a small, one runway airport at the edge of a vast jungle. The customs official hardly glanced at Vera’s passport as she walked through. It was a little disconcerting to see how easy it was to get it, but a little bit thrilling, too.
The group boarded a taxi to head to the hotel where they were staying. Well, I say taxi, but it was really more like the bed of a pick-up truck. In fact, it was the bed of a pick-up truck with rough wooden benches fixed over each wheel base. Only the word ‘Taxi’ written across the pick-up gate gave away what it was. Ten of them squeezed together with their stuff for the short ride.
Nicaragua is a desperately poor country and Puerto Cabeza de Cabra (Port Goathead) showed the effects of the poverty. Their hotel was a collection of cinderblock cabanas with one wall of each consisting of a bamboo screen facing the Pacific that could be pulled back. A larger cinderblock building with a timber roof behind these cabanas served as the office, restaurant, and local health clinic. It was the most substantial building in a very small city. A friendly, elderly couple had showed them their rooms and then left them there.
Grayson looked at the modest digs and immediately pronounced them “Awesome!”, but no one else was ready to make that claim. The students threw their bags down and headed straight for the beach. It was warm and wonderful--very different from the oddly cold spring they had left behind in Virginia. A stiff wind was blowing off of the ocean and the setting sun was soon obscured by a raft of dark, billowy clouds on the horizon. Before dark the atmosphere was as unsettled as Vera felt.
When Vera called home a little while later to let her parents know that they had made it safely, they had some more unsettling news. They had been watching the Weather Channel and they talked about a hurricane headed straight for Central America. “Dad, are you sure? It’s too early for a hurricane, isn’t it? It’s only May.”
“It’s very unusual, but I’m sitting here looking at it on the screen right now, Vera.”
By noon the next day things had turned even more ominous. Though the local weather reports said that the main storm would hit north of them, the hurricane was large enough that it was going to cause some major problems in Puerto Cabeza de Cabra. Rain began to fall in the early afternoon and the winds became fierce. The hotel evacuated all of the guests to the main building where there were few windows.
Around sunset the electricity went out. When Vera peeked out at the ocean it was seething and tossing huge waves at the cabanas they had left. Somehow the thought of it encroaching on them in the dark was even worse.
She leaned up against a wall as one of the hotel owners handed her an oil lamp. In its flickering light she could see Grayson walking toward her. He put his back up against the wall beside her and slid down into a sitting position, just as he had done dozens of times before when she was studying in the hallway at Bonnycastle.
“So…want to play some cards?”
“No, Grayson. Thanks, but I just don’t think I could concentrate.”
“So, I guess bungee jumping off the roof of…”
“Don’t even try it, Grayson. It’s lame.”
Grayson looked away for a minute, pretending to be interested in a joke Ike was telling Beebo across the room. When he turned back to Vera he said, “You know, hurricanes are great.”
“Grayson…”
“No, really. It’s true. I took this Environmental Science course last semester and we talked about how they are one of the most efficient forms of heat transfer from the tropics to other areas.”
Vera looked mildly interested so Grayson kept going. “You see, the tropics get way more solar energy than they need and all that excess energy gets stored in the ocean water. Currents take some of it away, but hurricanes are like the bullet trains of heat transfer. They just take all that energy and chug straight on up to the northern hemisphere. It’s da bomb…I mean, it’s pretty nifty.”
“O.K., Grayson, I don’t know if this is true or not. I don’t think you even took an Environmental Science class last fall. But hurricanes are not ‘pretty nifty.’ They’re big and scary and they knock lots of stuff down while they’re transferring heat so efficiently. So if that’s supposed to make me feel better, it’s not working. I still hear the wind. I’m sitting in here in the dark wondering if the roof is going to blow off, and I think the whole world is coming apart around me. I need something more substantial than a stupid lecture to make me feel better.”
“What do you need, Vera?”
“I need to get out of here. I need to go home. I need to pray. I don’t know. What do you need?”
“Vera,” Grayson said, “Look at me.”
Vera turned her head to look into Grayson’s green eyes. He held her face in his hands as he had done once before in the time she had known him. The lamp cast strange shadows around his face, but he seemed remarkably calm. “Vera,” he said, “I don’t have a way to get you out or to take you home or to tell you that everything is going to be alright. I don’t know why we’re here. But I do have this to give you. You are God’s child. You need to trust the hurricane, and you need to dance.”
Dance? Dance? How ridiculous the words sounded in the middle of a hurricane! The world was blowing away around them. Vera’s life was an absolute uncertainty. She didn’t even know why she was in this odd little corner of the world. But strangely, Grayson’s words were enough. The character of the wind changed. It was no longer fierce and menacing, but mighty and musical. The huddled forms of people gathered around faltering lamps didn’t seem like helpless, small lights in the dark; they were people finding strength in each other. Even the darkness did not seem dark but somehow comforting. And within herself, Vera felt the deep, dark questions that absorbed her on the plane, melting into insignificance. Dancing. Yes, that’s just what should be done.
But before she was able to consider what this meant. There was a ferocious gale and the building shook and the simple timber roof shuddered and then lifted up into the air, floating away into the night skylike Dorothy‘s house in the Wizard of Oz. Suddenly rain poured in on them and the winds howled overhead. It was terrifying and yet amazing. Most of the oil lamps blew out immediately.
Then an old woman staggered to the center of the room and looked up at the raging heavens above her. She gestured to an old man to join her. Vera recognized them from check-in the day before. It was the owners of the hotel who had now lost everything. Or so it seemed. The old woman and the old man looked at one another and as if they had been practicing for this moment for some time, they began to raise their hands into the air and then to stomp their feet and then to shout in a loud voice and then, o my, and then to dance.
Vera looked over at Grayson, who was sitting, shocked, against the wall. She said to him, “Grayson, look at me.” He looked. “Grayson, it’s time to dance.”
They joined the couple in the middle of the room in a dance that was at the same time primitive and glorious. As they danced the winds began to die down. The rains came to an end. The clouds parted to reveal a sky full of diamonds and a crescent moon. The rebuilding had already begun, and for Vera it was as if she had taken her first step. There were many things yet to do, many questions yet to answer. But she no longer needed a passport to tell her who she was. She was a child of God.
I don’t know if a hurricane is the best metaphor for this time of transition, but I know it feels that way sometimes. The Wesley community is a transient community that is graced for awhile by amazing students who come and live here so fully that we can’t remember a time when they ever weren’t here. David, April, Rachel, Joel, Will, Gardner, Susie, Gin, Missy--you have all be that kind of presence, though you might not have realized it.
When you go it feels like a mighty wind has blown through here, until…until we get e-mails, letters, and news from your new settings for life and work and know that you are being a blessing in a new place…until we get a new group of folks with new gifts to form a new community here…until we see you again at a reunion or a wedding or a visit back to Charlottesville.
If it feels like that for us, how much more of a hurricane it must be for you in the transition! Nothing seems stable. Nothing seems sure. Will I have what I need? Will I have people around me to assure me that I’m loved? Will I feel God’s presence in this new time? This year, as I move, I’m asking those same questions with you.
But we have old stories to tell us what it should be like. In the early Church, shortly after Jesus’ resurrection and the huge transition and tumult that the disciples went through…Soon after the hurricane that was Pentecost, Peter and John confronted a man who had not been able to walk since birth. He lived an entirely passive live, being carried to the Temple each day to receive gifts from passers-by. When Peter and John see him, that’s how he is--sitting and asking for alms.
Peter is not content to toss him a coin. He doesn’t even have a coin to toss. He tells the man, “Look at us.” And the man does, expecting to get something from them. But Peter says, “I don’t have what you think you need or what you’ve come to expect. But I do have this: In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, stand up and walk.”
This man is not content to walk, though. He has not moved on his own since birth, so his first move away from passivity, his first act, is to praise God and to dance.
As we go out into the world, fellow transition-ers, let’s never accept complacency when God gives us choreography. I don’t have much to give to you tonight, but I do have this: You are a child of God. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, don’t just walk; dance with me. Thanks be to God.
Sunday, May 01, 2005
The Unknown God
Zion United Methodist Church
Wesley Foundation at UVA
Acts 17:22-31
Then, standing up in the middle of the Areopagus, Paul said, "Brothers and sisters of Athens, I see how very religious you are in every way possible. For in passing through the city and observing your altars, I also found a shrine on which it was inscribed, 'To the Unknown God.' Now that Unknown One that you worship is the one I proclaim to you.
"The God who made the universe and everything that is in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in shrines built by human hands and does not need to be served by human hands, as if God needed anything, but rather he gives to all life and breath and everything. He made from one all the nations of humanity living upon all the face of the earth, fixing their appointed times and the boundaries of their dwelling place, so that they would seek out God and perhaps even grope their way toward God and stumble upon God, though really God is not far from every single one of us. For in God we live and move and are, just as some of your poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'
"Now since we are offspring of God, we should not suppose that this is a god made of silver, gold or precious stone, a thing crafted by human skill and a reflection of a human being, to be a likeness. Therefore while God overlooked the unknowingness of these times, now God commands all people everywhere to repent, because God has fixed a day on which to have the inhabited world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, bringing faith to all by the one resurrected from the dead."
About eight years ago I went back to school. It was a silly thing to do. I mean, I already had my college degree. I’d been off the seminary. But somewhere along the line I developed an addiction to school and eight years ago I entered UVA one more time to get a degree in, of all things, philosophical theology. Philosophical theology is a scary thing to get a degree in. Theology alone is bad enough, but when you throw in philosophy on top of theology, well, what you get is a combination that will give you a million-dollar vocabulary of big, long words and an area of expertise that will qualify you teach some of the most unpopular courses in seminary.
But some of us are called to that. We actually like to sit in coffee shops and discuss the meaning of life. We like to get in huge, raging arguments about how Hegel’s dialectic is nothing more than a revision of Augustine’s notion of fragmented time. We can’t believe that someone would actually take Descartes seriously in this day and age. And sometimes we wonder if the hokey pokey really is what it’s all about. That’s what philosophical theologians do, and for five years, while I was serving a church and being campus minister and being a father, that’s how I spent my spare time. I finally gave it up but there is a part of me that really loves philosophy.
Which means that were I living in ancient Greece back in the time of the Apostle Paul, I would probably have been one of those folks hanging out at the Areopagus, the philosopher’s hill outside of Athens. The book of Acts describes the scene very well. Paul was traveling through Greece, you see, preaching about Christ. He’s been running into resistance at every step along the way because, you know, Paul is a troublemaker. When he goes with Silas to the synagogue in Thessalonika and tries to convince them that Jesus is the Messiah, they get some converts among their fellow Jews, but they also stir up a lynch mob and they have to be whisked out of town under cover. When the mob finds out Paul’s gone, they say, “This man is turning the world upside down! Saying Jesus is a king. Who ever heard of such?”
Paul and Silas start preaching at Beroea in the synagogue and things are going all right there until the Thessalonika folks hear where they’ve gone and they bring the lynch mob on over to Beroea, too. There are riots and threats and everyone is in an uproar. So they have to slip Paul out of town again and they say, “Now where can we send Paul where he won’t cause any trouble? I know, how about Athens? They’re all very philosophical down there and everybody knows that philosophers don’t riot. Let’s send him there.”
So that’s how Paul ends up in Athens, but he’s not happy with what he sees. He’s walking around town and sees idols here and altars there. There’s a shrine to Athena and Apollo and Ares and Zeus. There’s the Parthenon. Athens is your one-stop shop for religious life—kind of like the Wal-Mart of the gods. But nothing about Christ. So he goes to the synagogue, but he also goes to the marketplace and hangs with the philosophers because that’s where all the cool people in Athens hang out. In Charlottesville on the Downtown Mall, to be cool you have to be a Goth and dress in black and pierce your nose in thirteen places. In Athens, you go to the market and discuss the latest release from Epicureus. It’s one of the only places in the history of the world where it was hip to be a philosopher. This is why I would have been there. The market in Athens was like my coffee shop--the Mudhouse.
The Bible says they were hanging out in the market there, the Epicureans and the Stoics, and they were kind of intrigued by Paul. They don’t get all worked up by Paul like the folks in Thessalonika did. They just say, “What is this guy babbling on about? I can’t understand it so it must be good stuff. Let’s take him up to the Areopagus and find out what’s going on here.”
Now the Areopagus was the place to go for philosophical debate. You know how if you really want to know what’s going on in town you go to the beauty parlor or the barbershop, well, in Athens if you really want some good philosophy talk, you go to the Areopagus. They get Paul up there and they say, “Would you please enlighten us as to the implications of your Jesus theory for ethical and eschatological exploration? We’re very interested to know what you’re talking about.” (That’s my loose translation.)
So Paul’s got center stage and he could cause a lot of trouble, but instead he talks like a philosopher. Paul is good at this, you know. In another places in the Bible he says, “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law…so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.” [1 Co. 9:20-22, NRSV]
Paul is becoming one of them and he starts out with some sarcasm that they don’t get.
What he actually says is, “I have noticed that you people are a very religious people.” Well, they are not religious people. They may have a lot of religious stuff hanging around, but it has not made them passionate about God or about their lives. At least the people in the synagogues cared enough about their faith to know that Paul was turning their world upside down. These folks were content to say, “Hmmm. How very interesting.” and let Paul go on his merry way. So, Paul is pulling their leg a little bit here.
He says, “I have noticed that you are very religious in every possible way, because as I’ve walked around I have seen shrines to all sorts of different gods. I even saw an altar to the Unknown God.” You see, the Athenians were trying to cover all of the bases and just in case they missed a god somewhere along the way, they had constructed an insurance altar. But this is the altar Paul is going to use to make his point.
“I have an important announcement for you, Athenian philosophers,” Paul says. “The Unknown God is the one I am proclaiming.” And then he proceeds to talk about how God is the one who created the heavens and the earth. This is a God who created all things out of one, who gave life and breath to everyone, who fixed the order of time and place, who created a means for people in the world to discover God. All of these things would have sounded very reasonable to these philosophers because that’s the kind of god they spent their time talking about. And Paul even quotes some of their own poets and philosophers as he talks. “Your people have said that it is in God that we live and move and have our being, right? They said, ‘We, too, are God’s offspring.’ Well, I am telling you that a God like that isn’t like an altar made of gold or silver. A God like that doesn’t need to worshiped with an idol or an image. A God like that doesn’t need anything we might have to offer.
“But if we are God’s children, then we are called to turn back towards the one who made us and God has given us the means to do that through a person whom God appointed to judge us all, a person raised from the dead, a person named Christ.”
The resurrection language turned off some of the philosophers but the rest of them nodded their heads and said, “Very good. We’ll talk about this more later on.” Because that’s what philosophers do. They plan for another session at the coffee shop. But some of them did a very un-philosopher-like thing. Some of them followed Paul. We have the names of two of them—a man named Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris. I like to think that if I had been there, I would have followed Paul, too.
So what does this mean for the rest of the world which doesn’t like philosophy? What could this passage mean for us in an age where Tom Bodett from the Motel 6 commercials is the closest thing we’ve got to a public philosopher? What could it mean for people who couldn’t care less about the debate about whether the universe is one or many? Better yet, what could it mean for us, a people who sometimes treat our churches as if they are shrines to an unknown God?
Oh, there’s the rub. Because you see, I think that we are sometimes to content with an unknown God. We don’t have altars made of stone with an inscription to the unknown God, but some of us are content to lock God away in a church building and only go to visit that God on Easter and Christmas. Some of us are content to leave this God in church when we go out into the world and we are content to let other gods direct our actions and our decisions about politics and behavior and caring for those in need. What does God have to say about this? I don’t know. God’s up there in the Church or over there in that closed Bible, but there’s an ad on the TV that I hear twenty times a day, there’s Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Phil, there’s Ozzy Osbourne on MTV—they are offering me some models. Maybe I’ll listen to them.
We’ve got our own Unknown God, you know, and the sad thing for us is that it is the God of Jesus Christ! And so we can’t get our minds clear about how to live our lives, how to govern our cities, how to elect our officials, how to treat other people, how to manage our relationships, how to control our addictions, how to look for healing, how to hang on to hope, how to give as we ought to give, how to love as we ought to love, how to dream as we ought to dream, because we have forgotten the one who has given us life. We haven’t spent enough time in this Biblical story to let it be our story. We haven’t encountered the God who is closer to us that we are to ourselves. The greatest irony in our whole, God-forgetful world is that the God whom we say we so desperately want to meet--the God who gave us life, who breathed that life into us, who loved and nurtured us, and who calls us each by our own unique and irreplaceable name—this God is the one in whom we already live and move before we even realize it. We are like fish swimming and swimming and madly searching for the ocean when it is already all around us.
Oh, we’ve got an Unknown God all right, but this God is not unknown to us because God hasn’t revealed God’s own self to us yet. God has been revealed and it has happened in Jesus Christ. As Christians this is the story that we keep telling to remind ourselves of who we are. Jesus showed that the way to life was open to every person—not just the Jews, though it is for them—not just the Greeks, though it is for them, too—not just to the blacks, though it is for them—not just to the whites, though it is for them—not just to the Americans—not just to the Iraqis—not just to the Israelis—not just to the Palestinians—not just to the poor—not just to the forgotten—not just to the Hokies—not just to the Cavaliers—Jesus opened the door to knowing God to every person, tribe and race. That’s a message for us to proclaim in every language that we know. Whether our audience is a roomful of overly reflective philosophers or the newborn child at our side, we are called to reflect the God we know in Jesus Christ.
I was in Cokesbury recently—the United Methodist bookstore in Richmond. Cokesbury is a wonder to me because it has a little bit of everything. I was looking for a Bible and there were Bibles of every kind—leather-bound, hardback, and paperback---red, black, white and maroon—women’s, men’s, youth, and children—King James, New International and New Revised Standard Version—so many choices. But none of those Bibles, not a single one will transform a life unless it is opened and read and shared and loved. When Paul talked to the philosophers about their unknown god, he knew that his words alone would not change their lives and their minds. It was only when folks like Dionysius and Damaris decided to follow him that the journey was begun.
Our spiritual journey is not a matter of placing God in this sanctuary and going to visit when the time seems right. Our journey towards God begins when we follow Christ into the world, serving and loving and inviting the people out there to discover the truth that we know through the story of Jesus—that the unknown god is none other than the God who made the universe including you and me. That’s a God worth knowing as much as God knows us. Thanks be to God.
Wesley Foundation at UVA
Acts 17:22-31
Then, standing up in the middle of the Areopagus, Paul said, "Brothers and sisters of Athens, I see how very religious you are in every way possible. For in passing through the city and observing your altars, I also found a shrine on which it was inscribed, 'To the Unknown God.' Now that Unknown One that you worship is the one I proclaim to you.
"The God who made the universe and everything that is in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in shrines built by human hands and does not need to be served by human hands, as if God needed anything, but rather he gives to all life and breath and everything. He made from one all the nations of humanity living upon all the face of the earth, fixing their appointed times and the boundaries of their dwelling place, so that they would seek out God and perhaps even grope their way toward God and stumble upon God, though really God is not far from every single one of us. For in God we live and move and are, just as some of your poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'
"Now since we are offspring of God, we should not suppose that this is a god made of silver, gold or precious stone, a thing crafted by human skill and a reflection of a human being, to be a likeness. Therefore while God overlooked the unknowingness of these times, now God commands all people everywhere to repent, because God has fixed a day on which to have the inhabited world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, bringing faith to all by the one resurrected from the dead."
About eight years ago I went back to school. It was a silly thing to do. I mean, I already had my college degree. I’d been off the seminary. But somewhere along the line I developed an addiction to school and eight years ago I entered UVA one more time to get a degree in, of all things, philosophical theology. Philosophical theology is a scary thing to get a degree in. Theology alone is bad enough, but when you throw in philosophy on top of theology, well, what you get is a combination that will give you a million-dollar vocabulary of big, long words and an area of expertise that will qualify you teach some of the most unpopular courses in seminary.
But some of us are called to that. We actually like to sit in coffee shops and discuss the meaning of life. We like to get in huge, raging arguments about how Hegel’s dialectic is nothing more than a revision of Augustine’s notion of fragmented time. We can’t believe that someone would actually take Descartes seriously in this day and age. And sometimes we wonder if the hokey pokey really is what it’s all about. That’s what philosophical theologians do, and for five years, while I was serving a church and being campus minister and being a father, that’s how I spent my spare time. I finally gave it up but there is a part of me that really loves philosophy.
Which means that were I living in ancient Greece back in the time of the Apostle Paul, I would probably have been one of those folks hanging out at the Areopagus, the philosopher’s hill outside of Athens. The book of Acts describes the scene very well. Paul was traveling through Greece, you see, preaching about Christ. He’s been running into resistance at every step along the way because, you know, Paul is a troublemaker. When he goes with Silas to the synagogue in Thessalonika and tries to convince them that Jesus is the Messiah, they get some converts among their fellow Jews, but they also stir up a lynch mob and they have to be whisked out of town under cover. When the mob finds out Paul’s gone, they say, “This man is turning the world upside down! Saying Jesus is a king. Who ever heard of such?”
Paul and Silas start preaching at Beroea in the synagogue and things are going all right there until the Thessalonika folks hear where they’ve gone and they bring the lynch mob on over to Beroea, too. There are riots and threats and everyone is in an uproar. So they have to slip Paul out of town again and they say, “Now where can we send Paul where he won’t cause any trouble? I know, how about Athens? They’re all very philosophical down there and everybody knows that philosophers don’t riot. Let’s send him there.”
So that’s how Paul ends up in Athens, but he’s not happy with what he sees. He’s walking around town and sees idols here and altars there. There’s a shrine to Athena and Apollo and Ares and Zeus. There’s the Parthenon. Athens is your one-stop shop for religious life—kind of like the Wal-Mart of the gods. But nothing about Christ. So he goes to the synagogue, but he also goes to the marketplace and hangs with the philosophers because that’s where all the cool people in Athens hang out. In Charlottesville on the Downtown Mall, to be cool you have to be a Goth and dress in black and pierce your nose in thirteen places. In Athens, you go to the market and discuss the latest release from Epicureus. It’s one of the only places in the history of the world where it was hip to be a philosopher. This is why I would have been there. The market in Athens was like my coffee shop--the Mudhouse.
The Bible says they were hanging out in the market there, the Epicureans and the Stoics, and they were kind of intrigued by Paul. They don’t get all worked up by Paul like the folks in Thessalonika did. They just say, “What is this guy babbling on about? I can’t understand it so it must be good stuff. Let’s take him up to the Areopagus and find out what’s going on here.”
Now the Areopagus was the place to go for philosophical debate. You know how if you really want to know what’s going on in town you go to the beauty parlor or the barbershop, well, in Athens if you really want some good philosophy talk, you go to the Areopagus. They get Paul up there and they say, “Would you please enlighten us as to the implications of your Jesus theory for ethical and eschatological exploration? We’re very interested to know what you’re talking about.” (That’s my loose translation.)
So Paul’s got center stage and he could cause a lot of trouble, but instead he talks like a philosopher. Paul is good at this, you know. In another places in the Bible he says, “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law…so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.” [1 Co. 9:20-22, NRSV]
Paul is becoming one of them and he starts out with some sarcasm that they don’t get.
What he actually says is, “I have noticed that you people are a very religious people.” Well, they are not religious people. They may have a lot of religious stuff hanging around, but it has not made them passionate about God or about their lives. At least the people in the synagogues cared enough about their faith to know that Paul was turning their world upside down. These folks were content to say, “Hmmm. How very interesting.” and let Paul go on his merry way. So, Paul is pulling their leg a little bit here.
He says, “I have noticed that you are very religious in every possible way, because as I’ve walked around I have seen shrines to all sorts of different gods. I even saw an altar to the Unknown God.” You see, the Athenians were trying to cover all of the bases and just in case they missed a god somewhere along the way, they had constructed an insurance altar. But this is the altar Paul is going to use to make his point.
“I have an important announcement for you, Athenian philosophers,” Paul says. “The Unknown God is the one I am proclaiming.” And then he proceeds to talk about how God is the one who created the heavens and the earth. This is a God who created all things out of one, who gave life and breath to everyone, who fixed the order of time and place, who created a means for people in the world to discover God. All of these things would have sounded very reasonable to these philosophers because that’s the kind of god they spent their time talking about. And Paul even quotes some of their own poets and philosophers as he talks. “Your people have said that it is in God that we live and move and have our being, right? They said, ‘We, too, are God’s offspring.’ Well, I am telling you that a God like that isn’t like an altar made of gold or silver. A God like that doesn’t need to worshiped with an idol or an image. A God like that doesn’t need anything we might have to offer.
“But if we are God’s children, then we are called to turn back towards the one who made us and God has given us the means to do that through a person whom God appointed to judge us all, a person raised from the dead, a person named Christ.”
The resurrection language turned off some of the philosophers but the rest of them nodded their heads and said, “Very good. We’ll talk about this more later on.” Because that’s what philosophers do. They plan for another session at the coffee shop. But some of them did a very un-philosopher-like thing. Some of them followed Paul. We have the names of two of them—a man named Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris. I like to think that if I had been there, I would have followed Paul, too.
So what does this mean for the rest of the world which doesn’t like philosophy? What could this passage mean for us in an age where Tom Bodett from the Motel 6 commercials is the closest thing we’ve got to a public philosopher? What could it mean for people who couldn’t care less about the debate about whether the universe is one or many? Better yet, what could it mean for us, a people who sometimes treat our churches as if they are shrines to an unknown God?
Oh, there’s the rub. Because you see, I think that we are sometimes to content with an unknown God. We don’t have altars made of stone with an inscription to the unknown God, but some of us are content to lock God away in a church building and only go to visit that God on Easter and Christmas. Some of us are content to leave this God in church when we go out into the world and we are content to let other gods direct our actions and our decisions about politics and behavior and caring for those in need. What does God have to say about this? I don’t know. God’s up there in the Church or over there in that closed Bible, but there’s an ad on the TV that I hear twenty times a day, there’s Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Phil, there’s Ozzy Osbourne on MTV—they are offering me some models. Maybe I’ll listen to them.
We’ve got our own Unknown God, you know, and the sad thing for us is that it is the God of Jesus Christ! And so we can’t get our minds clear about how to live our lives, how to govern our cities, how to elect our officials, how to treat other people, how to manage our relationships, how to control our addictions, how to look for healing, how to hang on to hope, how to give as we ought to give, how to love as we ought to love, how to dream as we ought to dream, because we have forgotten the one who has given us life. We haven’t spent enough time in this Biblical story to let it be our story. We haven’t encountered the God who is closer to us that we are to ourselves. The greatest irony in our whole, God-forgetful world is that the God whom we say we so desperately want to meet--the God who gave us life, who breathed that life into us, who loved and nurtured us, and who calls us each by our own unique and irreplaceable name—this God is the one in whom we already live and move before we even realize it. We are like fish swimming and swimming and madly searching for the ocean when it is already all around us.
Oh, we’ve got an Unknown God all right, but this God is not unknown to us because God hasn’t revealed God’s own self to us yet. God has been revealed and it has happened in Jesus Christ. As Christians this is the story that we keep telling to remind ourselves of who we are. Jesus showed that the way to life was open to every person—not just the Jews, though it is for them—not just the Greeks, though it is for them, too—not just to the blacks, though it is for them—not just to the whites, though it is for them—not just to the Americans—not just to the Iraqis—not just to the Israelis—not just to the Palestinians—not just to the poor—not just to the forgotten—not just to the Hokies—not just to the Cavaliers—Jesus opened the door to knowing God to every person, tribe and race. That’s a message for us to proclaim in every language that we know. Whether our audience is a roomful of overly reflective philosophers or the newborn child at our side, we are called to reflect the God we know in Jesus Christ.
I was in Cokesbury recently—the United Methodist bookstore in Richmond. Cokesbury is a wonder to me because it has a little bit of everything. I was looking for a Bible and there were Bibles of every kind—leather-bound, hardback, and paperback---red, black, white and maroon—women’s, men’s, youth, and children—King James, New International and New Revised Standard Version—so many choices. But none of those Bibles, not a single one will transform a life unless it is opened and read and shared and loved. When Paul talked to the philosophers about their unknown god, he knew that his words alone would not change their lives and their minds. It was only when folks like Dionysius and Damaris decided to follow him that the journey was begun.
Our spiritual journey is not a matter of placing God in this sanctuary and going to visit when the time seems right. Our journey towards God begins when we follow Christ into the world, serving and loving and inviting the people out there to discover the truth that we know through the story of Jesus—that the unknown god is none other than the God who made the universe including you and me. That’s a God worth knowing as much as God knows us. Thanks be to God.
