A Sound of Sheer Silence

A while back in this space, I told a story about my first really significant encounter with a personal faith .  It was an experience that came about via the medium of stories, more specifically the stories of this particular person named Jesus who lived a long time ago in a far off place.  I wouldn't have had that vocabulary at the time, but it was a "poetic" experience and encounter.  It wasn't like I read what was said in the Gospel passages and concluded that the "arguments" it was making or the facts that were laid out seemed correct.  Instead, my reaction happened in a different key, on a more emotional and symbolic and abstract level.  Indeed, the reaction occurred at a moment when I was very consciously and very explicitly struggling with the "prose" dimensions of the faith I was being taught.  And nothing in that experience really changed that struggle, except in the sense that it pointed to some other dimension to this whole faith thing, s...

I am going to vary up the order a little bit, since we find ourselves in Holy Week, making this topic especially relevant.  And, I am going to approach this topic from something of a round-about direction. In the March 30th episode of the Inglorious Pasterds  podcast, Michael, Brad, and Matt had a long and excellent conversation about "manliness" and the overwrought and toxic versions of manliness that is endemic in both our secular culture and in much of our Christian religious culture.  It is an outstanding conversation that covers a wide range of issues--parenting, Trump, psychology, gender roles--and I would highly encourage everyone to check it out. At one point in the conversation, the guys were talking about listening to another dude complain that his wife wasn't having sex with him as much as this guy would have liked.  "I don't get it," the no-sex dude recounted, "I do these things for her, and she still won't put out."  "Mayb...

On the third day [Jesus] rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead. . . . [I believe in]  the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.   (1 Corinthians 15:13-19). Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and th...

I don't want to be a jerk and demean other forms of Christianity, but I think non-liturgical churches are really missing out on something fundamental.  Without liturgy, you are left with various forms of talking--preaching and singing.  And talking means you are left with a religion of ideas.  The problem is, I don't think Christianity is religion of ideas.  At least not at it's heart. Instead, I see Christianity as a religion of encounter.  Ultimately, it is a story of a transcendent creator reaching down to interact with His creation, which culminates in Jesus's life, death, and resurrection.  In turn, we are invited into that encounter.  Encounters can be described, but that description is going to be a pale substitute for being drawn into the encounter to experience it for yourself. Liturgy is, or at least can be, the gateway to that encounter.  I find that when I am the most confused intellectually about my faith, experiencing liturgy is ...

The sermon I heard today asked "what does the cross mean to you?" For me, it is a symbol of suffering and humiliation.  To die that way--in pain, slowly, in the sight of everyone--is one of the worst ways I can think of to die.  Perhaps there are ways that are as bad, but I have hard time coming up with something worse. But it is not simply the brutality of the death, though it is brutal.  It is also the humiliating way that it was carried out.  Pilate placed "The King of the Jews" on top of the cross not as a confession of faith but as a sign of contempt for an oppressed people under his rule--if your "king" would die in this lowly way, think how low the rest of you are.  His own people scorned and mocked him.  His Apostles ran away.  The only people that were present to witness His death were women, who were worth little at that time. And yet, Jesus picked that way to die.  He could have come at a different time, and suffered a different d...

There is a segment of non-religious people who take the position that being a religious believer is a crutch.  According to this theory, religion is a way to avoid the difficult questions of the meaning of life and a person's place in the universe by putting one's trust in God or some other transcendent reality.  It's easier to believe in these "stories," these folks will tell you, than to rely on yourself. I can't say for sure whether this is true--I've never tried not being a believer.  But I can say that I have not experienced being a believer as a particularly easy road.  I don't know what kinds of existential crises a non-believer experiences, but I have found that believing is not a get-out-of-jail free card for existential crises.  Saying you believe is not the same thing as meaning it, which is not the same thing as feeling  it. In the Gospel reading for Holy Thursday, Jesus tells Peter "What I am doing, you do not understand now, but ...

Palm Sunday could be called Drama Sunday.  It starts with Jesus's entry into Jerusalem, with the crowds lining the streets waving palms.  We then follow on to the Passion Gospel (Matthew this year), with Judas's betrayal, Peter's denial, the condemnation of the Scribes and the Pharisees, and, of course, the crucifixion of Christ.  These are events of high drama. The sermon I heard today encouraged us to find our place in the Holy Week story.  In other words, we should try to identify the player in the drama that resonated with where we were at the present time.  Perhaps ironically, during a day of high drama, I was drawn immediately to the least dramatic part of the story--the end. After the crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea took the body of Jesus and buried it in the tomb, while Mary Magdelene and the other Mary (which Matthew describes as "the mother of James and Joseph") went to the tomb to keep watch.  In Matthew's account, we are given no indication...