Lent 2019: Saturday, March 9 - Divided Flesh

Peter Leithart describes the whole history of redemption this way: "From the moment of the fall, (God) began his ages-long war against and prosecution of flesh." (Delivered, 283)

We see moments early in the Bible as God makes evaluative claims against flesh.  In describing the flood, Leithart describes how "Yahweh's Spirit wearies of the struggle with flesh (Gen. 6:3) and grieves over the damage to creation (Gen. 6:6-7), the violence that flesh invariably produces (Gen. 6:13).  In the flood, Yahweh wipes the world clean of all flesh (Gen. 6:13, 17; 7:21). (85)

Noah represents a re-creation of the whole world, a new start in a world in which all the flesh, death, and violence of the world has been put to death.  Indeed, Noah plants a garden of his own - a vineyard.  Noah's name means "bringer of rest."  Perhaps he has brought the world from violence to Sabbath peace.  However God's post-flood evaluation of humanity as inclined to evil from youth (8:21) is ultimately confirmed in the great fall that takes place at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 where humanity is divided.

To appreciate the Tower of Babel, it will help to meet up again with our Jewish traveler.

The Jewish traveler we met in yesterday's post is part of a fictional travelogue which allows us to in-dwell an ancient sacrificial culture.  In three separate accounts, the traveler encounters an Egyptian, a Babylonian, and a Greek.  Here are his reflections upon entering Babylon:

"My fathers were here," I mused as I wandered the dusty streets of Babylon.  They had been captured and transported to this very place.  Perhaps the palace where Daniel had served Nebuchadnezzar was still standing, or the place where the king had set up his great image and commanded all in Babylon to bow to it.  Perhaps this square was the place of the great furnace where the three children sang as they stood in the fire with the son of God.

"The temples of the land between the rivers are very impressive.  As I have traveled along the Euphrates, I have seen great houses of the gods, some standing strong like fortresses, some in ruins.  Some structures rise up above the landscape like mountains made by human hands, with a temple at the top that seemed to scrape the edge of heaven.  They must have been one hundred cubits tall.

"I spoke to an old man who sat by the gate of the city.  Temples, he said, were the main elements of worship in Babylon.  They are divided into three main areas, a babu, a gate, and then the bitu, the house of the god itself, and the inner sanctuary is the kissumu, the dark room, the place that knows not daylight.  He told me that the man-made mountains were called ziqquratu, which meant a place highly built.  The temples were called the "bonds of heaven and earth," or the "highly built house."  I could almost hear Sennacherib's great boast at the walls of Jerusalem, and the boast of the king of Babylon of which Isaiah told. (Isaiah 36-39).  The temples of Babylon and Assyria are there to puff up the pride of kings." (Delivered, 49-50)

This account helps us to understand the Tower of Babel.  The tower is built not just to earn fame, but to be a temple, to connect heaven and earth.  It is to be a dwelling for Babylonian gods.  Though in exile from God's presence, this clan descended from Noah's son Shem wants to "re-establish the Garden." (A House for My Name, 59)  God's evaluation is two-fold: 1) although the mandate to Noah was to fill the earth, the Babylonians don't want to be scattered.  As a result, they'll be scattered more widely than they were to begin with.  2) They want to make a name for themselves, but the name they receive is "Babel" which means confusion. (A House for My Name, 60)

We see in this transition that there is a uniting power of flesh in the building of the Tower which is dissipated after God's judgment.  Post-Babel, the division and fragmentation are institutionalized and part of what flesh does is separate itself from other flesh.

Paul would later describe the works of flesh in this way - that it produces "enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissentions, factions, envying. (Gal. 5:20-21)  Flesh is still stronger than ever after Babel, but God's war against and prosecution of flesh goes on.  He is building the case.  We will see with Abraham that God now sets about creating a community that is radically devoted to opposing flesh at its very root, a community that will not exist for its own fleshly boasting, but will be God's means to reunite the world.  God will undo the curse of division from Babel, even as he undoes the curse of death from Eden.  Re-entry into Eden for the exiles.  Re-gathering of God's scattered, fragmented, Babel people.

Lent 2019: Friday, March 8 - Taste Not, Touch Not

In a series of encounters with Gentiles, a Jew converses with an Egyptian in the ancient world.  They talk of their sacrificial systems.  The Egyptian says:

"We are most scrupulous for cleanliness," he was saying.  "We believe that purity is necessary if we are to please the gods.  We drink from cups of bronze and rinse them out every day.  We wear garments of linen that are always newly washed."  He gestured elegantly at his robe, which was indeed dazzling white.  "We priests - we are called wab because we are purified - we shave ourselves all over our bodies every other day, so that no lice or any foul thing comes on us.  We wear only linen, and sandals of papyrus.  We wear no wool in the presence of the gods.  We wash ourselves in cold water twice a day and twice in a night, in the sacred lake near the temple.  Before we enter the temple, we have to chew natron to cleanse our breath and we have to fumigate ourselves with incense.  We must keep ourselves from women during the days before we are to serve the god.  We have countless services to perform for our gods, so they will be favorable to us." (Leithart, Delivered, 44)

The same Jewish traveler in Greece makes observations about a statue of Athena:

"In one hand she held a spear and in the other a shield depicting the Athenian slaughter of the Amazons.  Another battle, between gods and giants, was depicted on the inside of her shield, and her sandals were decorated with scenes of the war between the Lapiths and the centaurs.  The rest of the building was decorated with other scenes of the tale of Athena - her birth from the head of her father Zeus on the east pediment.  Their temples are temples to gods of battle, but I wonder if the Athenians are not more worshipers of their own strength than the strength of the gods.  I wonder if they do not boast more in their own flesh than in their gods." (Delivered, 58)

We sense here in the Jewish traveler the dubious sensibility that this is all a charade, which caused Jews and Christians to nearly do away with sacrifice entirely:

"Christianity entered the world, after all, announcing the end of sacrifice.  The letter to the Hebrews contrasts the multiple, yet impotent, offerings of the Levitical system with the once-for-all offering on the cross, which has power to save forever.  Deviating from both Judaism and paganism, most Christians gave up animal sacrifice entirely and introduced a nearly unthinkable religion without temples and altars, without blood, fire, and vapor of smoke." (Leithart, quoted from First Things magazine)

This traveler is mindful that the sacrificial systems of the ancient world operated in sham purity and cleanliness rituals.  Established to hold death at bay, they keep entire societies in thrall to death.  Christianity puts an end to all sacrifice.  Nearly.  It nearly does this, but not entirely.  Because sacrifice is still important, not because we need many rules and policies to govern purity and cleanliness.  Christ has taken care of that.  We need sacrifice because death needs to be put to death.  And for that to happen, "flesh" needs to die, and the old "elementary forces" need to end.

Paul describes the way Christ has dealt with flesh in Colossians 2:8-23:

"For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness.  He is the head over every power and authority.  In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands.  Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead." (Col. 2:9-12)

Flesh as it is expressed here, is not referring to our bodies of flesh and bones.  That flesh is good.  Flesh, as Leithart writes, is a "master metaphor to describe the condition of humanity following the fall." (Delivered, 78)

Another key phrase from Colossians 2 is what Paul describes as the "elements:"

"See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ." (Col. 2:8)

"Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: "Do not handle!  Do not taste!  Do not touch!" (Col. 2:20-21)

Our Jewish traveler encountered people living under the elements according to flesh.  No one will ever pass into Eden this way.  Paul is telling us in these passages that Christ's death allows people to cross over death, to pass into Eden, without actually dying.  As they participate in Christ's death through baptism, they are not literally put to death, but are able to pass into the "Christian era", so to speak, where they are able to live by a different physics that is not according to flesh and the elemental spiritual forces of the world.  Flesh is killed.  So are the elemental spiritual forces.

A "taste not, touch not" ethic like we've encountered here leaves its participants as children and slaves.  Christ's sacrifice, in putting flesh to death, allows for growth and maturity, so that we don't do away with sacrifice, but enter more fully into Christ's sacrifice.

Lent 2019: Thursday, March 7 - Death as a Power

Adam and Eve were not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge under the threat that if they were to do so, they would die.  When they eat, this is the curse of Eden that falls upon them and upon the creation, that though they were dust, they would also return to dust in death.  The way back into Eden is cut off from them by sword and flame, meaning anyone who tries to enter will be killed, but before they leave, God makes garments of skin for Adam and Eve, meaning an animal was killed.

The imagery of death abounds, in ways that both reflect the curse of death, but which also begin to show us the role death plays in God's redemptive plan.  Death expels Adam and Eve from the Garden.  But death is also their only way into the presence of God, and the only way that Adam and Eve can ever make it back into the garden.  Peter Leithart writes: "From Adam on, if anyone wanted to enter the presence of God, he would have to pass through the sword and fire of the cherubim.  No man could return to feast in the presence of God unless he first died.  Yahweh performed the first sacrifice by providing animal skins for Adam and Eve, and from that point on no one could approach God's presence unless he were clothed in an animal.  He could return to life, feasting and the presence of God only by passing through death." (Delivered, 77)

The death of Adam and Eve must be put to death.  The drama is this: how can this be done without actually killing us?  How can we be put to death without actually being put to death?

What is death anyway?  From the perspective of Christ's completed work, Paul reflects in his Letter to the Romans on the nature of death as a "power."  He writes: "...death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come."  Again, Paul later writes, "...death reigned through that one man" just as grace and righteousness reign through Jesus.  And finally, Paul writes, "...just as sin reigned in death," grace also reigns. (Rom. 5:14-21)  Paul is telling us that death under the first Adam and grace under the second Adam, Jesus, are two opposing reigns, two opposing kingdoms, two different realms or aeons.  His point ultimately is that Christ has put the old reign to death.

But we must stop to appreciate that death is a power.  It is its own kingdom that governs by its own rules.  It turns a harmonious, orderly cosmos into chaos, under its own twisted order.  Leithart writes: "Flesh is not only a motivating power for individuals but also a principle of religious life and social organization.  It is a "power" in the Pauline sense, a transpersonal reality that dominates and may enslave human beings." (82)  Fleming Rutledge writes: "Paul's preferred way of identifying the occupying Enemy is in its various manifestations as Sin, Death, and the Law - or alternatively, as principalities and powers, as kurio (lords), thrones, authorities, and other designations." (Rutledge, 378)  Rutledge elsewhere invokes the fiction of Cormac McCarthy for powerfully conveying this.  "In (McCarthy's novel) The Crossing, we meet one of (McCarthy's) enigmatic sages: "The old man (said that) the wolf...knows what men do not: that there is no order in the world save that which death has put there." (Rutledge, 202)  Notice that death has agency in this line.  It put something there.  This gets at the ways that Satan orders these things to impose his rule over this age.  Think of the authority Satan claims in the temptation passages with Jesus in the Bible.

Finally, it is important for us to see that if death is a power, if it has agency, then all humanity are active in bondage to it.  Philip Ziegler writes: "To be lorded over by Sin is to have been engaged to be its representative, "member, part, and tool."...In our very existence "we are exponents of a power which transforms the cosmos into chaos," our lives actually "making a case" for the power that possesses us and in whose service we are enrolled.  This is why Paul characterized the guilt of Sin not in terms of ignorance, but rather in terms of "revolt against the known Lord." (quoted in Rutledge, 179)

Two things are important to note here.  First, we're part of the mess.  Ignorant or not, we remain in revolt, in league with Death, sworn enemy of the Lord.  Hiding this fact, that we are in bondage to death, we try to push death to the margins of our lives as much as we can.  We hide from it.  We protect ourselves from it.  We deny it.  We fear it.  We puff ourselves up, because we don't want to be afraid.  Leithart writes: "Vulnerability to loss, lack, death and damage leads to fear, and fear produces protectiveness, protectiveness produces violence and aggression." (80)  It is a type of boasting.  A deeply ironic one to be sure, because so much of our displays of strength are just our attempts to hide this core vulnerability.  All human boasting, prowess in battle, sexual prowess, public debate, etc., all greed, cruelty, rivalry between genders, rivalry between races, even religions - its all fleshly boasting.  Leithart again: "Flesh is good.  Even mortal flesh is not evil in itself.  Flesh becomes a motivator of sin and evil when human beings seek to compensate for finitude, mortality, weakness, when they refuse to accept their vulnerability and trust their Creator for all good gifts." (81-82)

Second, we can see that we are helpless to do anything about this.  If sin, death, and the devil were just behavioral dispositions in each of us, maybe we could develop some better habits and improve things.  But when Death is a power, a rival kingdom, its another story.  But this frees us to see what it means that Christ's reign doesn't come from within this reign of death, but from outside.  It is a revelation.  It is a disclosure.  It is "an electrifying bulletin from somewhere else, over against and independent of anything, religious or otherwise, that we human beings could ever have dreamed up or projected out of our own wishes." (Rutledge, 140)  In other words, Christ's reign doesn't come as good advice, but as good news.

Lent 2019: Ash Wednesday, March 6 - Fleshly Impatience

Ash Wednesday reminds us that we all will die.  While this feels morbid, the beginning of the Bible tells us is that we should have taken death more seriously, and that I'm very likely hide the fact of my death from myself.  It isn't pathological to attend to death in this way.  In fact, it's one of the healthiest things we can do!

When God first created the universe, he made a garden where he placed the man and the woman he had created.  However, there is a rich symbolism that underlies the garden.  When God creates the world, he creates skies, land, and seas to be a type of three-story house.  He divides things on the first three days to create these spaces, and then on the second three days, he fills these places with other things - stars, birds, animals.  To be precise, the sky has two parts - the highest heavens and the firmament.  He divides up the land and makes a garden within the larger land of Eden.  The garden serves in the role of a sanctuary where God would meet with Adam.  Adam's priestly work was in the garden, protecting it, while his kingly work was in Eden, working.  The garden, the land of Eden, and the outside lands all correspond to a picture of the world and of heaven, in which there is no division between the religious sphere of our lives and the secular sphere of our lives.

When we read Genesis 1 and 2 and ponder an existence before the fall, we wonder what that would be like.  Given that our lives are so often driven by the worry that something could go wrong, its hard to imagine a flawless world and not think it would be a little boring.  It would not have been.  Adam and Eve, as with all of us, were created in God's image.  God says on the sixth day: "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals." (Gen. 1:26)  We see that humanity are made in God's image.  First, this means that all of creation is in some way a sign or symbol of God.  Second, this means that humanity are the ones who recognize this and participate in this process.  James B. Jordan writes: "God has been presented as one who determines, creates, evaluates, names, takes counsel among Himself, etc.  These things are what man uniquely images." (Through New Eyes, 31)  This also suggests something extraordinary about this world that we often forget.  Just because things change doesn't mean things get worse.  Adam and Eve were commissioned to have dominion in the world.  They were to garden and cultivate, to bring latent potentialities and possibilities out of the creation.  Peter Leithart writes: "Even before Adam sins, it is not easy to rule creation.  Animals need training, trees are tough to cut, the earth is hard to dig, and rocks are hard to break."  This work is to make the world useful for Adam, but not only for Adam.  It should become more pleasing to God.  More Leithart: "God does not want Adam simply to have children; He wants Adam to have faithful, godly children who worship and serve Him.  God does not want Adam to use iron to hurt other people; He wants Adam to use iron to make useful tools and musical instruments.  Adam is the king of the world, but he is always a servant to a higher King.  If Adam subdues the world as God commands, he will be building a house for God within the house that God has built for him." (Leithart, A House for My Name, 51-52)

All this shows us that Adam and Eve were to grow and change.  They were to have experiences.  They were to sweat and toil.  They were to have children.  They were to mature and grow ever-more into the dignity and image in which they were created.  Part of this has to do with freedom, with learning to say yes, and also learning to say no.  God wasn't going to force feed them the Tree of Life.  And he wasn't going to fence off the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  It wouldn't always be off limits.  What role it played, it played within the economy of God's equipping.  Leithart writes that Adam was a "child" who was destined to be elevated to kingship.  The tree of judgment would signify "his eventual entrance into mature kingly wisdom." (Delivered, 76)  Much as we would perhaps learn the lesson of gravity, Adam is placed under a curriculum.  Adam, taste not.  Touch not.

Humanity in their original, created dignity were not superheroes.  They weren't sinners, but they were still vulnerable.  Leithart writes: "Adam and Eve were created as flesh - limited, weak, vulnerable, touchable, woundable.  That was good, very good.  They might have accepted their vulnerability and the precariousness of their fleshly life, trusting the Father to care for them.  Adam might have been content to wait for the Lord to open his hand to satisfy his desires, might have trusted his Father to give him his full inheritance when the Father saw that he was ready.  Eve might have rejoiced in fleshly weakness and trusted her Father to supply whatever strength she needed." (Delivered, 76)

We'll treat the judgment for eating of the forbidden fruit tomorrow.  For now, we emphasize Adam and Eve's impatience with their own flesh.  They wanted to transcend the vulnerability, weakness, and limitations they knew in their humanity.  The vulnerability they wanted to escape now becomes cursed, a type of prison.  They leave the created dignity of vulnerability.  They leave the Garden and the Tree of Life.  But we already know from the end of the Bible that the redeemed in Christ will find the Tree of Life again. (Rev. 22:2)  Eden must stay before our eyes throughout the Bible.  The yearning for Eden is there on every mountain top, in every sacrificial encounter with God mediated through priest and tabernacle, in every wedding, in every scene of flourishing in the broken world.  Whatever Christ will do must have to do with breaking the curse of Eden and gaining re-entry for those cast out.  And the restored humanity will be like that which Adam and Eve cast off - a vulnerable, touchable, weak humanity with emotions and senses, images of God, yet part of the world.

What we find today on Ash Wednesday, and what we'll explore tomorrow is how much death defines so much of the broken reality of this life.  Death is the quintessential mark of the Enemy-occupied world.  It is the devil's greatest tool to gather all of us up, to shape all of our decision-making so that we are complicit, bound up together in corruption.  Christ's victory over the devil allows Ash Wednesday to sober us, to extinguish our fear of death with the cool baptismal water which tells us that we belong to Christ, that he will usher us through death to eternal life, that he alone is the one who can lead us back to Eden.

Lent 2019: Tuesday, March 5 - What Was Finished?

When Jesus died on the cross, the Gospel of John tells us that he said, "It is finished."  Here is the quote in larger context:

"Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I am thirsty."  A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips.  When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished."  With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit." (John 19:28-30)

When Jesus died, and he said "it was finished," what was he referring to?  Personally, as Christians, we sense that Christ has taken away sin, death, and hell.  We read of it in Scripture.  We have grace, new life, forgiveness of sin, fulfillment of promises, and assurance of salvation.  Yet, while these may be included in Jesus' "it", is this all we could find?  Have we canvassed the whole terrain?

At stake here is the question of how the world can be changed.  Now maybe you've heard - you can change the world!  Or maybe you've heard that you can't.  Still, to live today seems to include a yearning to change the world, and to have a sense that we should want to.  If the world has let us down, where do we get this yearning for a different sort of world?  What do we do with that yearning?  If Jesus finished something, why doesn't the finished product look more like the redeemed world we'd (perhaps) like to see?  Is Jesus' completed work for a few scattered individuals, or is there something in it for the world in general?

P.T. Forsyth writes about this hope:

"The gift and grace of God for the whole world is there.  It is not simply nor chiefly the love of Christ for his brethren that is in the Cross.  That was indeed uppermost in Christ's life; but in his death that is not direct but indirect; and the primary thing is Christ's obedience to God, and his action, therefore, as the channel of God's redeeming love.  It is the love of God for the godless, loveless, hating world that is there.  And it is there, not simply expressed but effected, not exhibited but enforced and infused, not in manifestation merely, but in judgment and decision...The prince of this world is already judged.  He acts today as a power, indeed, but only as a doomed power.  His sentence went out in the Cross.  And he knows it.  Humanity was rescued from him there.  The crisis of man's spiritual destiny is there.  The opus operatum of history is there.  It is not simply revelation, but revelation as redemption.  It does not show, it does." (The Cure of Souls, 40-41)

Forsyth's bold claim that humanity was rescued at the cross is grounded in what we know of the event.  Christ did not only die for his disciples.  Christ died for those who put him to death.  He died for the "godless, loveless, hating world."  Paul extrapolates from that to say that this is how we know he has saved us: "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Rom. 5:8)  I can only sense that Chris Konker is loved by Christ as I have an understanding for what Christ did for an entire rebellious world on the cross.  My own individual salvation is best understood within the larger story of what God has done for all of creation in Jesus Christ.

This blog series will explore that question of what Christ has done for the world.  We will wrestle with the topics of weighty words like atonement and justification.  The payoff from this will be an increased sense of what God has already done for you, me, and the world that nothing can take away.  We have every reason to expect a lot here.  As Paul writes, "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:18).

Lent seems a great time to explore this in a condensed way.  The 40 days of Lent have historically been a time for the church to look again at what it means to answer Christ's invitation to take up our cross and follow him.  The Bible is our chief guide, but we'll also have two theologian companions: Peter Leithart and Fleming Rutledge.  Both wrote mammoth books about the crucifixion three to four years ago.  This blog series will allow me an opportunity to work through their books some more.  Leithart's book Delivered from the Elements of the World seeks to chart an understanding of Christ's death that is deeply attentive to levitical sacrifices.  Fleming Rutledge's The Crucifixion is a deep dive into seven biblical motifs for understanding Christ's crucifixion.  Although her book is several hundred pages longer than Leithart's, Rutledge's book is easier to read.  That said, it is Leithart's presentation that will be way more influential on this blog.  My headings for the 40 days mirror the layout of Leithart's book.

I'm humbled as I begin this, not because I expect much from my endeavors, but because I know I'll fall short.  I have not read any book that has quite seemed to do justice to all I feel about the cross, to the point that it has seemed to me better to sit and ponder the cross itself rather than to chart guesses as to what it means.  I still feel that way.  My prayer is that these Lenten reflections will motivate us to sit in silence in front of the cross more often.  And I also pray that you would join me in answering the question, "what was finished?" with a resounding answer of, "A LOT!"

Un-Screening - Post 3

My favorite line of Iron Man 2 was when Pepper Potts and Tony Stark are on an airplane.  There is a smoldering guilt, under which Tony persists the whole movie about how awful he’s making Pepper’s life.  On the plane, he tries to distract from the gathering relational, corporate, and psychological chaos by suggesting a vacation.  “Everyone needs to recharge their batteries.”  But Pepper takes him literally.  “No, Tony, I don’t run on batteries.”  Tony has become the machine man.

Can technology save the world?  By wedding ourselves to technology, will we progress as a human race?  Will we be at peace?

These superhero movies are violent in a way that makes me wonder if the violence is inherent, latently present in our technology, or at least our visions of technology.  Charlie’s games with cars are always more violent than his games with faced, and presumably en-souled figurines.  Playing with cars, there are few alternatives to banging them into each other.

When I read Bruce Springsteen’s memoir, he made much of a charmingly flawed math equation.  To his way of thinking, one and one can equal three and this happens when band members make a sound or a moment greater than the sum of their parts.  For Springsteen, this is rock n’ roll.  If we think of humanity again, faced people, ensouled people (there are no other kinds!), we find that they have parts, they are complex, but not complex the way a machine is.  There is a depth to every person.  We describe all things in a way that they transcend the sum of their parts.  It strikes me that this is why we struggle to articulate this depth.  We use the language of religion and symbol.

I reminded a neighbor of this.  Yes, I’m a pastor.  But when I ask if you are religious, I’m not asking your opinion of doctrine.  I want to know if you know how deep we all are.  Everybody knows that a face is not just the sum of its parts.  Everybody.  We are all more religious than we let on.  No matter how many technological fireworks distract me from it, I’m thankful for Pepper Potts’ little line: “No, Tony, I don’t run on batteries.”

I was with a friend today and asked him if he was going to talk to somebody about prayer, how would he talk about it.  Ultimately, he wasn’t sure.  And I felt that was a good answer!  Religion has to do with the depths inside each human person.  It has to do with many things: memories, Scripture, spouses and children, mothers and fathers, tradition, bad desires, good desires, images, symbols.  Compared with how these things strike us in prayer, we often find words to be inadequate tools to get these things across!  We are more than the sum of our parts.  We are more than machines.  We don’t run on batteries.

Un-Screening - Post 2

The sky and sea seemed to meet.  For Hank, it’s as though they were one element again.  The boat was calling to him.  The fish were calling to him.  He went inside and picked up the phone.  It was time to get all the guys together.  It was time to go fishing.  Nobody admitted how much trouble it was to set the date.  One couldn’t find a pen to write it down.  Another was in the car at the time the text came through.  Everyone had problems like these.

Once he’d grabbed four neighbors, Hank was able to get the boat tipped over, as green, brackish water came gushing out onto the dirt.  He sat, and tried to resist eating the entire bag of Kettle chips.  Stray cats walked by.  Storm clouds lingered to the north, and he tried to delete old pictures off his phone.  He saw a picture of his dad.  He swiped faster than he had been.

Despite the fact that each man had their heart set on fishing, each man also discovered how much he had regretted agreeing to go.  There were moments that day that they hated themselves for going.  It’s bad manners to get into their lives too much.  But each of them found themselves sitting at a table, sighing, holding their head in their hands.  The only thing that kept them going was that spark of anticipation that they might get a little nibble on the line, and the other men would roar, “Cheers!

Hank had sat the night before looking out at the deep, dark sea.  What was it like to be dead?  To be part of that incredible stillness?  He missed his dad’s strength, and appetite for life.  His dad could whistle through his teeth like nobody’s business.  Hank almost thought he could hear it on the sea breeze.  He almost felt like he’d been punched in the gut.

He prayed a most helpless prayer.  Like he imagined some wounded dog might do, he howled on the inside, with low moans emitting.  The room felt really cramped.  He pictured all the people he loved, waiting to talk to him.  He got up to wash his hands and face.  He stared at a bowl of split pea soup, drowned in goldfish crackers, but he didn’t eat.  He made a vow not to eat until he was eating a fish he himself would catch.  Not in the habit of doing things like this, he struggled.  He lay in bed with his stomach growling.  He dreamt of mugs of beer. 

He sat on the beach the next day with only four other people around.  He went out into the surf with the water up to his neck, lapping at his chin.  He floated, light as can be, the sky like a great bowl above him pouring blue goodness into his eyes.  The salty smell of the sea filled him with such hunger.  Later, he would sit, waiting at the dock with his father’s empty boat.

After many fish had been caught, Hank sat among his friends, showing them the picture of his father when he’d been caught in the rain, his face all squinched up.  The grill hadn’t been lit yet.  Nor had they docked the boat.  But they could smell it already.  And they could already taste it too.