Two movies

I love the Coen brothers movies. So, I was waiting to grab their latest one when it came out on DVD this week. Hail, Caesar is many things and as with all Coen brothers films you can get more out of it with each viewing. First of all, it is a throwback to the old Hollywood epics and the fantasy of how and why movies were made back then, i.e., entertainment for the common man. There is a religious sub text running throughout like other Coen brothers movies. The most hilarious scene in the movie is when Mr Mannix, head of production, invites several local clergy to read the script of their new Bible epic, Hail, Caesar and tell him if there is anything offensive to their church members in it. It's like a joke: what happens when a Rabbi, a Priest, a Pastor get together.... and it is funny. The movie within the movie is a Ben Hur type Biblical epic. George Clooney (all the Coen's favorite actors make appearances) plays the Roman Centurian who has an encounter with Christ and comes to faith except he forgets a word when he gives his testimony before the cross. Pretty important word, too (faith). Faith is played with throughout the film. Mr Mannix is a decent man of faith who goes to confession (too much his priest tells him) and mainly confesses trivial sins while his job is to cover up major scandals  caused by the stars of his Hollywood productions. Well played, sharp, smart script and plenty to think about and discuss in this Coen brothers offering.

History of Violence is a much different and more disturbing movie. It is violent with many brutal killings but the violence is not gratuitous, as they say. It has a purpose; it shows the reality and consequences of violence. In these days where violent crimes, terrorism and war crimes are on screens before our eyes daily, we can get numb to the reality of it. Violence becomes a game we play on our screens. We buy guns because we believe the gun lobbies who tell us all we need is a gun to be safe. The more people who are armed the safer we are. This film makes you think about that - a lot. It depicts the blunt trauma of violence and it's effects on us and our society.

Learning to see

I preached at our church on Sunday. When our pastor asked me to take that Sunday she also said I could preach on whatever I wanted. We usually follow the church lectionary readings. I skipped that reading and went for Mark 8: 22-26. I had been thinking about that for a while probably on and off since I retired from my job as a pastor. I had done that for a long time, too. It was not an easy transition. "Retirement is not in the language of a Christian" wrote James Houston in A Vision for an Aging Church. I think he meant retirement in the sense of the time of life when you devote yourself to leisure activities. Retirement means a transition from paid work to finding other ways to live out God's call in your life. It is captured in the old fashioned term, vocation. R. Paul Stevens says, vocation gives the whole of our lives meaning in the sweet summons of God (Aging Matters, p35). After retirement is the time to discover your late life calling. It's there. Elizabeth O'Connor says, we ask to know the will of God without guessing that his will is written into our very beings. It's there in your calling, your way of life. The calling does not change but the expression of it will. It is discovering what to do with your life now. Karl Barth said, "In every moment we meet the call of God anew, and so in every moment it is as if we are just starting out."

Mark 8: 22-26 speaks to me about this. I call it learning to see. Our lives are a long process of learning to see. Eugene Peterson called it a long obedience in the same direction. The gospels are always playing with the idea of blindness. Jesus heals the physically blind and the spiritually blind. Sometimes the ones who can see are the most blind. I am still learning what my blind spots are.

I don't know why Jesus used a mix of spit and mud to heal this blind man in Mark 8 and I don't know why it only worked halfway the first time. I think I know why Jesus took his hand and led him out of the village though. Our villages blind us. The ways we were raised, what we were taught, how others showed us what to see. Blind spots can cause us to see things in the Scripture that are not really there. They can cause us to see what we are looking for or to find what supports our thinking.

I mentioned on Sunday that growing up in my village during the civil rights movement I never saw a connection between the marches led by Dr. King and our Sunday services. I never saw any women in the role of a public spiritual leader, as a pastor or deacon. I never saw a gay person in church or heard that issue addressed. I heard God's love was unconditional but I experienced a love that came with lots of conditions.

Part of my calling (our calling) is learning to see more clearly. Segundo Galilea says, "All spirituality springs from this fundamental fact of a God who loved us first....If Christian spirituality is, before all else, an initiative by and a gift from God who loved us and seeks us, spirituality is then our recognition and response, with all that entails. This path of spirituality is a process, concrete but never finished, by which we identify ourselves with God's plan for creation....the Kingdom of God and it's justice, spirituality is identification with the will of God for bringing this Kingdom to us and others." (quoted in R. Paul Stevens, Aging Matters, p66.)

That is a vision for retirement.

Family reunion

Family gathered around my Mom in Western New York Memorial Day weekend. Not everyone could be there but a pretty good number were on hand. I was reunited with siblings and members of my tribe I had not talked to in a long time. I was a bit startled to realize that this significant chunk of humanity was all together because of two people - my Mom and Dad. Life surprises. Lives surprise I should say. These lives lived over the years as mine had. I had not kept up very well other than snatches of information about so and so every so often. There were graduations and grad schools, marriages that brought outsiders into the family unit, and many birthdays. We were older, no doubt. There had been sicknesses, and deaths; divorces and remarriages; children who seemed to be doing well and others who were struggling with all the things people struggle with today. There were grandparents raising grandkids, single parents raising children on their own and gay parents raising their children in traditional ways. There were married, and unmarried and formerly married and never married. There were plenty of stories if you had time to listen. A variety of stories but that was no different from most family gatherings. There were persons who had and were making great sacrifices in family, or marriage or career choices. Not that they would say so but I thought so as I listened. I thought in these days of Trump, who models a life so totally wrapped up in himself, that it was good to find so many people wrapped up in others. I don't know why I was surprised to find this; I had not gone looking for it. But, I was glad to be back with my family celebrating my Mom's 90th birthday. After all she had done for us.

Bathroom battles

The words of Jesus between his teaching on marriage and divorce and the blessing of children in Matthew 19 are often ignored. Eunuchs are not much under discussion today. However, they just might provide a window to see where Jesus might come down on the bathroom battles of our day. Eunuchs were common in Jesus own day. They are mentioned in the Old Testament and in Isaiah 56 they are singled out for a special welcome in the Kingdom of God. Philip baptized a eunuch into the church of Jesus Christ, a story told in Acts 8. And so in Matthew 19 Jesus' positive words regarding eunuchs are not surprising. What is surprising is that Jesus makes a place for them in the Kingdom and even uses them as an example of discipleship if marriage proves too tough for some disciples.

Eunuchs were the in between sex of their day. Not matching either gender perfectly they had no means of reproduction. They were non sexed (although seen as sexy by some; Nero married a eunuch), effeminate and viewed as unmanly. They were often mocked, ridiculed and avoided. Not welcome in the church, Jesus' words and Luke's recording of Philip's acts seem directed at their lack of acceptance by the church. It is not a stretch to say the situation was similar to our relationships with transgendered and homosexual persons today. The bathroom battles championed by many evangelical Christians make it clear that there is no place for them - not in church or even bathrooms. Most of the discussion involves safety for the rest of us. "They" must accommodate and not inconvenience us. They must use the bathroom of their biological gender. But, what if they are dressed like the other gender? Or what if they are intersex and so are of ambiguous gender (see Sex Difference in Christian Theology by Megan DeFranza). These are human beings and there is no place for them. Literally, not even a pot to pee in.

The battles over bathrooms are not really about bathrooms but about fear of the "other". Those who are different, who have been called freaks and labeled by Christians as "examples of the fall" deserve a place in the church and in bathrooms. Isaiah thought so, so did Philip and Jesus, too. It's time we considered eunuchs.

Pentecost Sunday

Today is Pentecost Sunday. Like many pastors my pastor spoke about the Holy Spirit today. She used texts from Genesis, Joel, Isaiah, Luke and Acts. The Holy Spirit pops all over the Bible. Yet, as she said, we wonder, Who the heck is the Holy Spirit? In some churches, the Holy Spirit seems to be in much more evidence than others. We might associate the Holy Spirit with healing, or inspired utterances, strange languages, or passionate singing. Others might think of the Holy Spirit active in works of  social justice, compassion and service. For some, even the mention of the Holy Spirit brings to mind uncomfortable experiences in churches which have struggled with, Who the heck is the Holy Spirit?

Isaiah 45:15 talks about God as the God who hides himself. God is a mystery for the most part. God is not at our beck and call. God shows himself in ways he chooses to. We know God best and most fully in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit makes the truth of God in Jesus Christ known to us and our world. Genesis 1 says in the beginning the wind (or breath, or spirit) of God was acting on the face of the earth. Ruach is the Hebrew word that can be translated wind, or breath or spirit. Breathe in and out. Ruach. God is as close as that. When we fight over who the heck the Holy Spirit is, we limit God's Spirit. God is active all over the place, from the farmer growing the food we eat, to the person who prepares if for our plates to the one who cleans up. God is active in and through the church, too, but not only there. R. Paul Stevens insists we must cooperate with the God who loves us and seeks to humanize us. Where that is happening, there is the Spirit of God.

What's love got to do with it

I pulled out an old volume of T. S. Eliot's poems. So old the price on the cover was 95 cents! I bought it used and it was complete with some one else's margin notes. The first poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", was not marked at all. Perhaps the original owner did not read it or she did not understand it. I can empathize. First time through (I may have read it before but it was so long ago I had forgotten), I didn't get it. It was not much of a love song; it seemed kind of depressing. I found out Eliot wrote it when he was only 23 and he spent years working on it. So why was a teenager writing about old age and dying? It seemed to me that's what it was about, anyway. Eliot had some great lines in it like, "I have measured out my life in coffee spoons"." Coffee drinker that I am, I could relate to that way of looking at your life. But, you see, who would want to?

I read the poem several more times. I picked up on references to Shakespeare (Hamlet), the Bible (Ecclesiastes, "a time to murder and create and a time for all the works and days of hands"), and other literary references. The poem begins with a quote from Dante as if to say, here we are in hell. Depressing, but I don't really think Eliot was writing about hell, perhaps, hell on earth. Is that what growing older seemed like to him?

I googled the poem. Students today are fortunate to have so much help online! Too much help it seemed to me. It was confusing to read so many different interpretations of the lines of the poem. After sampling a few, I went back to simply reading. And reading. I am starting to like it.

It reminded me of the parts of the Bible that seem so foreign and all the questions we have about Genesis and Isaiah and the stories about the prophets, or Joshua or the Kings. How many commentaries are there on the Gospels? How many study Bibles that seek to explain verse by verse what the Bible means? Why don't they all agree? Some times I am more confused after reading a few of them. There is literary criticism, and historical criticism and cultural background to keep in mind to help you interpret correctly just like there is with Eliot. Sure it helped to know a little bit about the background of the poem. But knowing too much about what so many experts thought got in the way of my experience of the writing. That happens with the Bible, too. The internet has brought an explosion of information about the Bible. Everyone can know what the experts say each word means even if they don't agree all the time. We have become expert at proof - texting. We know where to go to prove our points. Donald Trump pointed to Two Corinthians when he spoke at Liberty University just to show he had Christian bona fides.

What did Christians do before there were verses? Just a story. Eliot took a lot of time to say what he said. Each of us can get what he meant but it will take some time, too. Reading online shortcuts won't do it. God has a story for us in the Bible, as well. It took a long time to come together; it takes a long time for us to make some sense out of it. We will never get it exactly right. That's not the point; the point is to keep reading and in time God's story becomes our story.

Worship in the garden

Sunday was our last worship service themed on creation. Appropriately, we met in a sustainable community garden. Surrounded by homes in various states of disrepair and repair, the garden plot covered two city lots. One of the lots had a for sale sign in front making the garden in the city more like a dream or a miracle. There were rows of vegetables and one of bees. Beehives, we were warned not to get too close. The beekeeper who was also the community gardener dressed in white overalls with a canvas meshed hat covering his head. He was feeding the bees. Chickens were coming next as a partially finished coop on the property looked hopeful. We had stations set up around the grounds. One invited us to ponder the fruits of the Spirit especially the ones lying dormant in our lives. What would need to happen for them to grow? Another offered a community hymn from the Psalms, praising God for simple bounties. The fruits of the Spirit station doubled as a communion table. Fresh baked bread along with grape juice followed our confession of needed fruits. The table overlooked a large compost pile topped off with egg shells and their cardboard containers, hopefully symbolizing what God was still going to do with our lives. At the end of our ponderings, praying and conversation around the stations we were invited to a table of simple fare created out of the produce of the neighborhood. There was lettuce from the garden and mulberry jam from the wild mulberries growing in the alley. More breads, locally made sausage from Alvarez Farms in the country and egg dishes made possible by the donations of the chickens living in a coop at our pastors's house. Before we left we learned about the needs of the community garden and we washed our dishes that we brought from home under the water pump. No plastic and paper products to throw away which is never away but to a landfill close by. We left with a word thanking God for his bounty and with the hope of learning to live more in harmony with creation.