among us

In Genesis 15 God forms a covenant with Abram

God promises Abraham that he will have descendants as numerous as the stars of the heavens. He will also give Abram this land after 4 generations and enslavement, exile and living the nomad. Yet as for Abram, he will die and be buried with honor after a long life. Abraham asks God for a token of his promise. And God asks for a blood offering of three beasts and two birds. Abraham cuts the beasts in half and lays them out as birds of prey harass him for the carcasses.

The key part of the enactment of covenant in a treaty such as this is demonstrated by two parties in this manner. The animal is cut in half and the two parties swear to each other as they walk among the pieces of the broken, lifeless animal essentially saying, “if I break this covenant with you, let it be to me as is with this broken, lifeless animal.”

When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. (v. 17)

The sun is gone and a darkness, like the darkness that fell at the crucifixion, covers the earth. A smoking firepot, like the pot of fire—the censer—that contained the holy fire of incense—worship—for the temple of God. It was a consuming fire, a purging fire, a fire that judged the 250 representative leaders of the uprising of the portion of the congregation that held them in the rebellion of Korah AND it was the fire pot of salvation that stood between the death of the plague of the “wrath of God” and the living who were saved from the wrath of the presence of God in that same rebellion (Numbers 16). The blazing torch or lamp of fire like the pillar of fire that lead the children of Israel out of the land of bondage at night. A light that represents presence and sighted guidance for the eye and drawing warmth for the body. You are a lamp unto my feet. We are the living body of Christ, not the dismembered body of the sacrificial animal.

In Revelation 1 from the revelation of Jesus Christ to John on the island of exile, Patmos, John is given a message for the 7 churches (the 7 lampstands).

And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands (like the menorah, like the blazing torch or the lamp of fire) v.12, And among the lampstands (among them like among the pieces of Abram’s sacrifice) was someone like a son of man (he is like us) dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest (he is our priest) v.13. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, (he is God) and his eyes were like blazing fire (like the torch or the lamp of fire). His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace (he is the burning fire pot), and his voice like the sound of rushing waters v. 14.

And when John saw him he fell down as though dead but is told to rise for he that is among the lampstands places his right hand on us and he is the living One who is us and is God and he holds the keys of death and Hades (v. 17, 18).

addendum

In word studies we learn to pick out key words from the texts and analyze their meaning as compared to other places in scripture where the term is used. This offers us a more robust understanding of the term and the scripture. I’ve been experimenting with doing the same sort of thing with movement and symbol and the expansive concepts attached to them. The covenant is a theme throughout scripture. The meaning of the movement…the darkness…the fire…the pieces in covenant ceremony is what attracts me here.

if...

If you live in the ghetto and your radiator cap got stolen because your hood won't lock, nor will your doors...and you don't have time or wanna spend the money to buy a spanking new radiator cap for the junkiest vehicle you've ever owned...and you don't know how much longer it will run...but you need to do something to keep the radiator fluid from spewing out of the radiator...this is your ingenious quick fix.

(1) Cut off the top and the bottom of an apple or a potato so that it is at least 2 inches thick. (2) Whittle the circumference of the apple down to the where you can wedge it into the radiator opening. (3) Wire the apple onto the radiator as pictured.

the price of a free gift

Miroslov Volf was a guest speaker at the Seminary last week. He spoke very eloquently on topics of forgiveness. It was all very impressive and sparked some very thoughtful conversations amongst my friends and associates. Thursday evening Volf talked about three categories or modes of existence. We can live in coercion, sales or gift. Living coercively involves using our charms and gifts to get those things we want from other people, whether they desire to give them to us or not. We exploit others and in that process we also exploit ourselves. Sales involves a this for that transaction. We know what that is all about. Everything is sales now-a-days. And gift—true gift—is very rare. One gives freely with no expectation of getting a return—ever! The later is what poets and idealists dream and write of. It is a risky grace. It shipwrecks a cost-benefit economy and also runs the risk of being shipwrecked by it in return. Yet it forces one to live in open-handed hope. Hope that a gift would be given freely in return and that the human community would be built up by pure gift. And that this community would begin with you and me. That this gift that the God of all being has given to us freely so that we can give a truly free gift in the agony filled hope that a free gift would be returned, so that the both of us would be enhanced in our being by the life-giving, mutual benefit of gift giving.

However, the pinnacle moment was when Volf mentioned in passing that these concepts are only articulated out of the shining examples of his saintly nanny and his father. Later, someone prompted him to tell us about the examples his father left him. And this was the most memorable of anything he said. He went on and on, telling us stories about his father. One of them was about when he was young and his five-year-old brother had died at the hands of a man, in an accident with a cart. His father, in response, spent an entire day traveling to find this man, to tell him that he did not hold him responsible.

This demonstration of forgiveness and love is a gift of more value than anything in the world that money can buy. Thus, whatever the price, whatever it costs to offer such a gift, one should take it, even if it takes a lifetime to find the person. Even if it costs a thousand dollars. Even if it costs a million dollars and all your energy and health. If you sacrifice everything: this is a true gift. The greater the offense…the greater the price…the greater the opportunity to give an EXPENSIVE gift for FREE.

But most of the time the gift won't cost us a million dollars. We wish it would. Instead it will cost us pride, fame, fortune. To give such a gift will humiliate us and correct us.

those churches where they roll around on the floor

Sometimes I tell personal stories and use jargon that make people respond to me as though they are kindly acknowledging my charismatic Pentecostal perspectives. That’s really funny to me because I’ve never been a part of a charismatic Pentecostal church service for more than a Sunday or two. I’m familiar with some of the “traditions” and expressions of that movement—about as familiar as I am with the African American church traditions.

What is interesting is how people often assume how their named traditions have informed my seeing the world. However, for me it has been different. I grew up in a buffered community where emotionalism was a misnomer for charismaticism. Generally nobody had any proof for what went on in “outsider churches”or traditions because no one ever went there. But there were always opinions about what happened in those churches when the rare topic emerged. It was experiences for which I had no words that drove me to begin looking for an expression for it. I’ve struggled to put language to the experience. I found some expression and language for these mystical experiences in the “charismatic dictionary” so to speak but not enough to snag me. I’ve heard about word of knowledge, prophetic utterance, speaking in tongues, casting out demons, holy laughter, slain in the spirit and holy rollers. After a bout of reading at a U of M library, I would begin talking about premonitions, extrasensory experience, centering, transcendental meditation, multiple personality disorder, shape shifting, projection.

As for the experiences.

At times it was as if a viewing window to the future opened and closed for me. Sometimes I would feel an emotion that was not my own but came from someone standing near me. Once I was with a friend when he spoke to me in voices other than his own voice. It was as though he was bleeping in and out of himself. Sometimes I could unexpectedly feel someone’s presence in a particular location of a campus of buildings and out of curiosity I would go to see and there he/she was.

Once after a period of time in a concerted search for language, two of my mentorees who had decided to leave the Mennonite church, approached me with a story they thought would shock me. They too were on a search of their own and had ended up in a church as they described—“Well, last night we randomly went to a church in town. And, you know those churches where they roll around on the floor. Well, we went up front at the end of the service and we were rolling on the floor too.”

the giver and taker of life: reflections on death and who done it

When we speak of God as the giver and taker of life, we speak of him as the Creator. If he had not created, then there would be no life but his own. There would then also be no death. In this we speak of God as the ultimate Cause-creation the effect. Conclusively, God is the giver and taker of life.

There then is no question that God gives life both eternal and human life. But there is a question of whether he is the taker of life. For if he is also the taker of life then he must be called a murderer. But how can God create such as he does then destroy that which he created in a murderous act. Such a being would not be God.

Perhaps we are making to large of a statement when we say, "God is the giver and the taker of life." To say such within the realm of infinity would be to make a correct statement. But to say so within the context of our human experience would result in making an incorrect statement or it would result in calling God a murderer. If God is God he could not be a murderer. For if God were a murderer, he would not be God. Thus, within the context of human finitude, God does not take life. Mankind takes his fellow's life. Man takes his own life. Woman conceives and gives life to another. Woman takes life. A child's life is snuffed our nearly as soon as it speaks. The child is not born. Is God responsible?

Has God taken this life? Is God a murderer? These are inappropriate questions for they force infinity into the confines of finitude. Yet to answer appropriately within the finite context we say, "No, God has not murdered, yet his angels have taken the soul to the Lord's bosom." Yet the body remains lifeless, dead, rotting in the soil. Who then has done THIS thing?

You and I have. Satan has. We have made Satan our god and we have rebelled against God and caused this dead, rotting in the soil thing.

So, whether we pull the trigger or whether we sin and someone dies or I die. We have done murder. Our decision to rebel has taken the life of another and takes our own life as well.

keeping short accounts

Everyone knows what it’s like to be wronged by someone else. Everyone knows what it’s like to realize suddenly that you have wronged, offended or hurt someone. Yet there is a world of difference between the response possibilities when in the middle of either scenario.

Recently, I “accidentally” put an end to 8 years of avoidance between two parties involved in an ancient love triangle. I invited a friend to a birthday dinner for another friend. The birthday girl invited her best friends; a couple that I had lost touch with over the years. So, the couple and the birthday girl and I were sitting in a restaurant waiting for my friend to show up. He came through the door. I watched as the couple recognized him and their eyes turned into saucers as they gripped the table with white knuckles and ashen faces. My friend sat down. Everyone maintained normalcy for the birthday dinner. However, the story came out over coffee after my friend left. Evidently, 8 years ago, the female part of the couple had been out on a date with my friend, who had joined us. Her roommate called her while she was on this date and it was conveyed to the roommate’s companion (the female’s present husband) what she was up to—to which he responded, “Oh, NO!” The female overheard this cry of distress over the phone, while on the date with my present friend. A short time later a “rescue party” (among them her present husband and then roommate) showed up to interrupt her date. Her husband recalls simply making a lame excuse, grabbing her by the arm and leading her away. In the end, evidently, she had liked her present husband all along, however, since he was sitting on his duff...er, wasn’t initiating, she had begun to accept other offers.

So, a few months after the interrupted date, the duff sitting man, now alter standing man and the woman got married, without their community’s blessing because of numerous other convoluted circumstances. But here’s the most bizarre part about the story. For the past 8 years, this couple has been avoiding this young man. If ever they happened to be at the same gathering, the couple would pick up and leave. Their feeling of guilt was apparent and the moment of culpability was just like it happened yesterday.

I have several reactions to this scenario. One, I in no way feel apologetic for any discomfort I caused anyone that evening, because of one uncomfortable evening around the table of celebration, the said Lord’s supper, 8 years of running away was put to an end. It was as if this was a foreshadowing of things to come in the kingdom of God for those who intend to sit down at God’s table with brothers--only to be made uncomfortable. Two, it never ceases to amaze me what folks sacrifice on the alter of Eros. This couple had sacrificed community, church and all their former friends. Three, it amazes me as to what gymnastics are performed to avoid the difficult moment in the process to resolution: a full encounter of wrongs committed and forgiveness given. Given this and other stories like it, I think someone should write a book series, the first should be entitled, “War: pacifism in a culture of violence.” And the second should be entitled, “Love: pacifism in a culture of addictive love.”

Keeping short accounts is essential to being Christian and more importantly to being a pacifist Christian. Wrongs committed would be made right quickly, so that the gospel of peace would not be defamed among Christ’s followers. The personal and social agony of unresolved tensions causes more discomfort and than the uncomfortable moments in the process to resolution. I would prefer almost anything to 8 years of running away. It seems that offenders could so quickly put an end to their own feelings of guilt by simply apologizing and asking for absolution. This is the story of the prodigal son. Or even if the “offender” is paralyzed by his offense to the other (be it however minor), could “the other” not emulate Christ to his brother by pursuing him relentlessly, proclaiming, “I forgive you!” This is the story of the Father who has pursued us while we were yet in our sins.

I think ultimately the root of the matter is: we don’t really believe in forgiveness. We fear that we are not forgiven.

All is fair in love and war—Christ rules only over my mediocrity.