An interesting article appeared in The Citizen on January 28. A church in Auburn was joining with thousands of churches across the world not to protest at the gates of “the one-percent” nor to raise funds nor to launch a petition drive on Facebook. It was a fast. Come to think of it, perhaps my word “movement” was inaccurate. A fast is not a movement at all; rather, it’s a “stay-ment.”
There’s nothing new, of course, in churches observing fasts—traditionally, withdrawal from food—to make, as one leader from Lakes Church put it, “a stronger connection with God and a commitment to aiding a community’s hurting members.” This one is called Awakening. Another one is known as Lent.
Awakening is modeled on the fast of the prophet Daniel in the Bible, a 3-week fast. Lent also takes its duration from the Bible. The 40 days of Lent correspond to (among other things) the 40 days Jesus fasted in the wilderness after his baptism. Awakening is scheduled for January, as a right beginning of the calendar year. Lent is scheduled before Easter, as a way to prepare for the observance of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Prayer, both individual and corporate, is stressed in both Awakening and Lent.
The article about Awakening included many features that I’ve come to learn about Lent during my years in the Episcopal Church. Fasting makes you hungry; it’s rough; it’s a time to seek God and to build communinty; there are unintended but happy health benefits.
There are reasons, I would guess, why Lakes Church and the others opt to establish Awakening as a new spiritual practice rather than simply latching on to Lent along with older denominations. Because of its long presence in Christian cultures, Lent has accrued lots of unedifying barnacles that can obscure the shape of the fast itself.
In Auburn, for example, do we think of Lent as a fast, or as a feast? The current rule of Lenten “abstinence” in the Roman Catholic Church (abstinence is the refusal of a certain type of food while fasting is the reduction in the quantity eaten) is to abstain from meat on Fridays. (Personally, I’ve never understood why fish is not considered “meat.”) The “Lenten Fish Fry” has now become so ingrained that we look forward to this bit of “abstinence” with the very opposite of a Lenten disposition: Hooray! Good food for the taste buds! A full stomach tonight! And Mardi Gras, the traditional “fat Tuesday” before Western Lent begins (the Eastern Church starts Lent on a Monday) is an all-out sin-fest in some locations. One wonders how many Mardi Gras revelers actually take up any kind of fast on Ash Wednesday.
I’m not pointing this out to throw cold water on anybody’s convivial parties. I’m merely saying that I understand why Lakes Church and others might want to steer clear of Lent if they are serious about fasting and self-denial as a means of spiritual renewal. Those in churches that do observe Lent might want to ask ourselves if there is anything to be gained by taking a serious look at the true purpose of Lent.
Is there anything that’s not funny? Is there ever a reason not to have a party? Is life nothing more than a cabaret, old friend? Can we be serious for once? These are genuine questions for our joke-filled age. I don’t say we need someone to tap on our shoulder at every bountiful dinner to say, “Children are starving in Somalia.” We know that children somewhere always are suffering; I hope we are responding with money and prayer. But what about the starvation in our own souls? What about that depth within that is not touched by the relentless shallowness of popular culture? Christians believe that, at our depth, every human soul cries out for the peace of God. As a psalm says, “One deep calls to another.” The depth of our need calls out to the depth of God’s peace. But, as another psalm puts it, we must “be still and know that the LORD is God.” That’s Lent, or at least it ought to be.
Fasting is both hard to do and hard to understand today. While some kind of abstinence (“giving up something for Lent”) and a willingness to be hungry from time to time without having to pop in a snack are fundamental to the Lenten fast, many modern Christians have seen the value of fasting from games, from Facebook, from news programs, even from the Weather Channel. It’s a good policy to look for something in your life that is so important that you’ll just “die” without it. Then go without it. Why? Because we need to “die” to our outer, frivolous self and live to God.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Life Deferred
Something strange happened in the news recently. We were discussing, in effect, Pope Paul VI’s 1968 edict known as Humanae Vitae. This is the document where he reaffirmed the Church’s longstanding opposition to artificial birth control. More specifically, we were debating whether our federal government could command employers who purchase health insurance for their employees to buy insurance that provides free birth control medicines.
Paul Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb came out in 1968 and began with this startling line:
The argument is still creditably made that population increases in some places will cause serious problems, but there is today an equally creditable worry about “demographic winter,” the looming situation in much of the world where the number of offspring is insufficient to pay for their elders’ debts, pensions, and other entitlements.
The Anglican bishops in 1930 made us the first Christians to officially depart from age-old teaching about contraception. The bishops, with serious trepidation, authorized artificial birth control for married couples seeking to limit family size. How quaint that allowance seems today! Be that as it may, as Anglicans we are not bound by the Pope’s absolute decree.
But I can’t help admire the stability and pertinence of Humanae Vitae today, 44 years later. His concern that women would be treated as objects of men’s pleasure rather than as co-creators with God (a concern shared by the bishops of 1930) seems to have been a far more accurate prediction than anything Paul Ehrlich wrote. What the Pope perhaps did not see was that, in the name of equality, men could also become objects of pleasure, rather than faithful husbands and fathers.
And today’s artificial culture answers back, “So what! If we enjoy objectifying each other and deferring and ignoring our “serious role” in “the transmission of human life,” who cares?” I write this on Ash Wednesday. Today’s Citizen has stories about a coach’s wife discussing her and her husband’s appetite for young men; a man whose assault looks to have been triggered by an argument between his former and current girlfriends (i.e. sex partners); and a man breaking and entering the home of his ex-girlfriend, “the mother of his child.”
Over half of all American children born to women under 30 are born to unmarried mothers. Contraception has not only inhibited childbirth; it has also ignited “our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people,” sins which, on Ash Wednesday, “we confess to you, Lord.”
Paul Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb came out in 1968 and began with this startling line:
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.Compare that to the Pope’s opening lines:
The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator. It has always been a source of great joy to them, even though it sometimes entails many difficulties and hardships.I entered high school in 1969 and I well remember that in our small Midwestern town the “population explosion” was on everybody’s mind and the Pope was dismissed as a retrograde idiot. If we hoped to see the year 2000, the Pope would have to be overruled. As it happens, we are now discussing contraception and its cultural effects with some seriousness, while Paul Ehrlich (who refuses to admit he was wrong) looks to be the fool.
The argument is still creditably made that population increases in some places will cause serious problems, but there is today an equally creditable worry about “demographic winter,” the looming situation in much of the world where the number of offspring is insufficient to pay for their elders’ debts, pensions, and other entitlements.
The Anglican bishops in 1930 made us the first Christians to officially depart from age-old teaching about contraception. The bishops, with serious trepidation, authorized artificial birth control for married couples seeking to limit family size. How quaint that allowance seems today! Be that as it may, as Anglicans we are not bound by the Pope’s absolute decree.
But I can’t help admire the stability and pertinence of Humanae Vitae today, 44 years later. His concern that women would be treated as objects of men’s pleasure rather than as co-creators with God (a concern shared by the bishops of 1930) seems to have been a far more accurate prediction than anything Paul Ehrlich wrote. What the Pope perhaps did not see was that, in the name of equality, men could also become objects of pleasure, rather than faithful husbands and fathers.
And today’s artificial culture answers back, “So what! If we enjoy objectifying each other and deferring and ignoring our “serious role” in “the transmission of human life,” who cares?” I write this on Ash Wednesday. Today’s Citizen has stories about a coach’s wife discussing her and her husband’s appetite for young men; a man whose assault looks to have been triggered by an argument between his former and current girlfriends (i.e. sex partners); and a man breaking and entering the home of his ex-girlfriend, “the mother of his child.”
Over half of all American children born to women under 30 are born to unmarried mothers. Contraception has not only inhibited childbirth; it has also ignited “our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people,” sins which, on Ash Wednesday, “we confess to you, Lord.”
Friday, February 03, 2012
Prayer Breakfast: Love your enemies
Author Eric Metaxas's speech at the National Prayer Breakfast is one for the ages. Very (very!) jokey, but listen for the kind message to the President and the rest of us: we would be on the wrong side of whatever right side we are on, were it not for the grace of God. We're all wrong without Jesus. I love the joy with which he names the name of the Lord.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
A Look at 'Groundhog Day'
We knew Bill Murray could be counted on for a good laugh, so my wife and I chose Groundhog Day for our matinee one cold afternoon in 1993. After the fun, on the drive home, one thing dawned on me: virtue. Phil Conners, the main character, became a virtuoso on the piano. He had plenty of time since, within the magical world of the movie, he kept repeating the same day, Groundhog Day, over and over and over. He knew this was happening, but the rest of the people in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, appeared into Phil’s world each day brand new, as though they had just arrived from February 1. First, he was terrified; then he was liberated—or so he thought. Then he despaired, but even suicide could not free him: he’d just wake up again on February 2 and start the day all over again. Again. Finally, Phil became virtuous. Appearing for countless February seconds at the door of the local piano teacher, he eventually became a virtuoso.
On one of his many Groundhog Days, Phil tries to convince Rita, the woman he learns to love, that he knows everything about everybody in Punxsutawney. You see, he’d spent so many days in the diner chatting that, over time, he learned all the names and stories. “I’m a god,” he announces to Rita. “I’m a god, not the God. Maybe the real God’s not omnipotent. He’s just been around so long he knows everything.” Rita shoots him down: “You’re not a god.”
In a similar way, Adam and Eve are shot down in the Bible for their presumption to eat the forbidden fruit in their desire to “be like God.” Yet we learn later that their understanding of godlikeness is the problem. They want the immortality and omnipotence, but what good is that without virtue? Given the strange gift of immortality, how will Phil use it? Will he finally see his dark side, his shadow?
Virtue, the slow, tedious process of becoming incrementally better persons—not only finer musicians but more forgiving, more kind, better listeners, braver—can seem a waste of time. So it seems to Phil at the beginning of the film. He lives for the moment and for pleasure alone. The punishment that the movie script deals out—we could call it his Hell—is to have essentially what he wants. You choose to live for the pleasure of the moment, Phil? Well, here you go. Here’s moment after moment after moment, unending and undying.
When Phil is first habituated to his plight he does indeed see it as a grand stroke of luck. He can do whatever he wants with no consequences. Live like there’s no tomorrow! Later, when the horror of such a Hell dawns on him, he shouts, “What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today!”
Phil’s initial exhilaration sours because life’s purpose and challenge drain away. We long to live “in the moment,” and so we should, free from worry and regret. But when “in the moment” becomes “for the moment,” and we do not reach up for something higher and more noble, when we do not seek to make each moment of our life a gift, it becomes unbearable. Phil gets exactly the world he wants, and before long he’s desperately trying to escape from it. But he can’t get out.
So Phil does the next best thing. He becomes virtuous. Not only does he master the piano. He reads Chekhov; he sculpts ice; he protects the weak, the sick and the needy; he saves lives; he gives gifts that bring joy. The biggest change in Phil is his total transformation from a self-centered snob who sees the small town people as disgusting rubes into a genuine lover of mankind who delights in the beauty of every human soul no matter how humble. In the process, Phil himself becomes humble, even though he is now what he earlier only imagined himself to be: the most popular guy in town.
Then, gloriously, Phil is redeemed. He gets released from his Hell. The script alone is not very clear why this happens, but I think it’s because Rita buys him. She spends all she has (in her checking account) to “buy” Phil at a mock slave-auction fundraiser. The death he needed—death to self and to sin—prepared him for the gracious gift of a redeemer who would both own him and, paradoxically, free him.
Like the old man whose words are remembered by Christians on the February 2 feast that lies behind Groundhog Day, Phil can live life as a gift precisely because he can let go of it as a possession.
On one of his many Groundhog Days, Phil tries to convince Rita, the woman he learns to love, that he knows everything about everybody in Punxsutawney. You see, he’d spent so many days in the diner chatting that, over time, he learned all the names and stories. “I’m a god,” he announces to Rita. “I’m a god, not the God. Maybe the real God’s not omnipotent. He’s just been around so long he knows everything.” Rita shoots him down: “You’re not a god.”
In a similar way, Adam and Eve are shot down in the Bible for their presumption to eat the forbidden fruit in their desire to “be like God.” Yet we learn later that their understanding of godlikeness is the problem. They want the immortality and omnipotence, but what good is that without virtue? Given the strange gift of immortality, how will Phil use it? Will he finally see his dark side, his shadow?
Virtue, the slow, tedious process of becoming incrementally better persons—not only finer musicians but more forgiving, more kind, better listeners, braver—can seem a waste of time. So it seems to Phil at the beginning of the film. He lives for the moment and for pleasure alone. The punishment that the movie script deals out—we could call it his Hell—is to have essentially what he wants. You choose to live for the pleasure of the moment, Phil? Well, here you go. Here’s moment after moment after moment, unending and undying.
When Phil is first habituated to his plight he does indeed see it as a grand stroke of luck. He can do whatever he wants with no consequences. Live like there’s no tomorrow! Later, when the horror of such a Hell dawns on him, he shouts, “What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today!”
Phil’s initial exhilaration sours because life’s purpose and challenge drain away. We long to live “in the moment,” and so we should, free from worry and regret. But when “in the moment” becomes “for the moment,” and we do not reach up for something higher and more noble, when we do not seek to make each moment of our life a gift, it becomes unbearable. Phil gets exactly the world he wants, and before long he’s desperately trying to escape from it. But he can’t get out.
So Phil does the next best thing. He becomes virtuous. Not only does he master the piano. He reads Chekhov; he sculpts ice; he protects the weak, the sick and the needy; he saves lives; he gives gifts that bring joy. The biggest change in Phil is his total transformation from a self-centered snob who sees the small town people as disgusting rubes into a genuine lover of mankind who delights in the beauty of every human soul no matter how humble. In the process, Phil himself becomes humble, even though he is now what he earlier only imagined himself to be: the most popular guy in town.
Then, gloriously, Phil is redeemed. He gets released from his Hell. The script alone is not very clear why this happens, but I think it’s because Rita buys him. She spends all she has (in her checking account) to “buy” Phil at a mock slave-auction fundraiser. The death he needed—death to self and to sin—prepared him for the gracious gift of a redeemer who would both own him and, paradoxically, free him.
Like the old man whose words are remembered by Christians on the February 2 feast that lies behind Groundhog Day, Phil can live life as a gift precisely because he can let go of it as a possession.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Out with the Old; In with the New
It’s inevitable. Tonight you will surely hear these words sung: “Should auld (old) acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot and auld lang syne (roughly, ‘time long past.’)?” The expected answer to these rhetorical questions is, NO!
Hold on to the memories, to the days long ago! Don’t let them merely fade into oblivion. The “for auld lang syne” of the song’s refrain pretty much means “for old time’s sake.” The song is often sung after some robust drinking, and it milks the maudlin and wistful feeling that alcohol sometimes produces. (If you’re Irish instead of Scottish, just think of “Danny Boy.”)
Nothing characterizes our society more than the idea of progress. We are convinced that we are smarter than people who lived a hundred, fifty, maybe even twenty years ago. Why, they didn’t know how to operate a smart phone! Their particles didn’t accelerate like ours. They hadn’t tittered their way through still one more “envelope” being “pushed” ridiculing or condemning the morals and cover-ups and stilted phoniness of auld lang syne. Forget them!
Obviously, I’m exaggerating. Most people are perfectly kind and gentle toward the old. Many of us respect and seek out the wisdom of age. The problem is that we don’t have a framework of thought on which to hang these sentiments. The assumptions of our day are strictly “progressive.” I don’t mean the politics that sometimes goes by this name. I mean the assumption that the present is and must always be an advance on the past. The past, in other words, is just raw material for the present. “New and improved” is not just an advertising slogan for us. It’s our way of thinking.
But what if the opposite is true? What if the past was better than now? What if it was more human, more neighborly, more honest and more respectable? This line of thinking doesn’t work any better than the first. Sure, nearly everybody longs for a time when people didn’t text and drive, but almost none of us is willing to be the first to give up the cell phone. And we must admit the past had its evils aplenty.
The trap we’re in, I think, is historicism. We are convinced that history has to go somewhere. So, either things are getting better and stronger and freer, with the future an improvement on the past, or things are getting dingier and less valorous, with the future as a frightful wasteland of conflict and brutality. Our official belief—mouthed constantly by politicians and advertisers—is the first: things are ever better. Our dark fear is that the second is true, and this nightmare is often manifest in “apocalyptic” movies.
We might find a Buddhist or pagan argue that history has no meaning, but I’m a Christian and we officially believe that history is going somewhere. We teach that history is headed toward a conclusion that goes by many names: last judgment; second coming of Christ; kingdom of God; new heavens and new earth. Perhaps this belief is responsible for the drivenness of Western culture, for the feeling that there’s always important work undone. Even the Bible seems of two minds in that it reveals both a coming kingdom of peace and reconciliation and at the same time nightmarish explosions of war, disease and horror. So, which is it? Is the world getting brighter or darker?
How about both? Yes, Christians believe history has a destination, but full-throated theology also stresses that that end of time is entirely God’s doing. When the Christian idea of history jettisoned belief in God and became the Western idea of history, our culture started its breakneck race toward change, improvement, and final solutions. The world we now live in is sick with stress brought on by ever-increasing speed of change. And for what? Are we really improving? Maybe this is the apocalypse. No wonder we’re nostalgic for auld lang syne.
A story Jesus tells involves servants waiting for their master to return home. It’s a parable of the last day, of the end of history. “Blessed is that servant,” Jesus says, “whom the master finds at his appointed tasks when he returns.” Not, “Blessed is the one who has made improvements.” Not, “Blessed are those who completed their bucket lists.” Just “Blessed are those faithfully doing their tasks.” Every moment and every era in history is equidistant from the kingdom of God because that kingdom comes from outside this world, from outside history. We say, “from heaven.” It is God’s gift, not our accomplishment.
So here’s a way out of the stress nightmare—trust in God. Maybe we should raise a glass to Carly Simon and sing, “these are the good old days.”
Hold on to the memories, to the days long ago! Don’t let them merely fade into oblivion. The “for auld lang syne” of the song’s refrain pretty much means “for old time’s sake.” The song is often sung after some robust drinking, and it milks the maudlin and wistful feeling that alcohol sometimes produces. (If you’re Irish instead of Scottish, just think of “Danny Boy.”)
Nothing characterizes our society more than the idea of progress. We are convinced that we are smarter than people who lived a hundred, fifty, maybe even twenty years ago. Why, they didn’t know how to operate a smart phone! Their particles didn’t accelerate like ours. They hadn’t tittered their way through still one more “envelope” being “pushed” ridiculing or condemning the morals and cover-ups and stilted phoniness of auld lang syne. Forget them!
Obviously, I’m exaggerating. Most people are perfectly kind and gentle toward the old. Many of us respect and seek out the wisdom of age. The problem is that we don’t have a framework of thought on which to hang these sentiments. The assumptions of our day are strictly “progressive.” I don’t mean the politics that sometimes goes by this name. I mean the assumption that the present is and must always be an advance on the past. The past, in other words, is just raw material for the present. “New and improved” is not just an advertising slogan for us. It’s our way of thinking.
But what if the opposite is true? What if the past was better than now? What if it was more human, more neighborly, more honest and more respectable? This line of thinking doesn’t work any better than the first. Sure, nearly everybody longs for a time when people didn’t text and drive, but almost none of us is willing to be the first to give up the cell phone. And we must admit the past had its evils aplenty.
The trap we’re in, I think, is historicism. We are convinced that history has to go somewhere. So, either things are getting better and stronger and freer, with the future an improvement on the past, or things are getting dingier and less valorous, with the future as a frightful wasteland of conflict and brutality. Our official belief—mouthed constantly by politicians and advertisers—is the first: things are ever better. Our dark fear is that the second is true, and this nightmare is often manifest in “apocalyptic” movies.
We might find a Buddhist or pagan argue that history has no meaning, but I’m a Christian and we officially believe that history is going somewhere. We teach that history is headed toward a conclusion that goes by many names: last judgment; second coming of Christ; kingdom of God; new heavens and new earth. Perhaps this belief is responsible for the drivenness of Western culture, for the feeling that there’s always important work undone. Even the Bible seems of two minds in that it reveals both a coming kingdom of peace and reconciliation and at the same time nightmarish explosions of war, disease and horror. So, which is it? Is the world getting brighter or darker?
How about both? Yes, Christians believe history has a destination, but full-throated theology also stresses that that end of time is entirely God’s doing. When the Christian idea of history jettisoned belief in God and became the Western idea of history, our culture started its breakneck race toward change, improvement, and final solutions. The world we now live in is sick with stress brought on by ever-increasing speed of change. And for what? Are we really improving? Maybe this is the apocalypse. No wonder we’re nostalgic for auld lang syne.
A story Jesus tells involves servants waiting for their master to return home. It’s a parable of the last day, of the end of history. “Blessed is that servant,” Jesus says, “whom the master finds at his appointed tasks when he returns.” Not, “Blessed is the one who has made improvements.” Not, “Blessed are those who completed their bucket lists.” Just “Blessed are those faithfully doing their tasks.” Every moment and every era in history is equidistant from the kingdom of God because that kingdom comes from outside this world, from outside history. We say, “from heaven.” It is God’s gift, not our accomplishment.
So here’s a way out of the stress nightmare—trust in God. Maybe we should raise a glass to Carly Simon and sing, “these are the good old days.”
Monday, December 05, 2011
It's Wonderful, Life Is.
My VHS copy of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life contains a short addendum that tells us two things about that great, upstate New York, 1946 movie that seem to be contradictory. First, the movie was controversial because the villain, Mr. Potter, gets away with his evildoing. Never does he have to face the light of justice. Second, the movie was criticized for being “Capracorn,” that is, a corny feelgood film designed to tug at the heartstrings. Can both of these critiques be true? Can a world in which the wicked are not punished still be wonderful?
Perhaps so. While Mr. Potter is not a murderer or a rapist and maybe not even a thief (he does not purposefully intend to steal the cash from Bailey Building & Loan; he simply fails to return it when he finds it), he is unquestionably bad. Would not a world in which bad people are always punished and good people always rewarded be a better world than one where these things do not happen?
Let’s consider George Bailey’s world. It is a world where the good are not always rewarded for their labors. George, his father and others do not receive what they deserve for their hard, honest work. George in particular wants to travel the world like his outrageous pal, Sam Wainwright. He never gets to. Why? Because he’s, well, too good. He gives his honeymoon money to B & L depositors in order to keep the shabby business open; he pays himself too little for a decent car; he keeps Uncle Billy employed; he fathers four children. In a film noir version of this movie, nothing good would happen to George Bailey; instead, we would put on our pensive look and contemplate the irony of a world in which, to quote other pop verses, “only the good die young” and “nice guys finish last.”
But this is Capracorn. Good things do happen to George, wonderful things, but they are not the good things he wanted. The community raises the money to keep George and Billy from prison and George is showered with love and affection. He still can’t go to Paris. He won’t ever go to Paris. He’ll stay in Bedford Falls knowing that even though evil lurks around every corner, a wonderful grace and peace belongs to those who do what’s right in life. That is not only the world George Bailey lives in, it’s the world we live in.
The movie utilizes a silly device, of course. An angel working to get his wings lets George enter an unreal world—the world as it would be without George Bailey ever having been born. It’s an infernal cauldron of revenge, debauchery and fear. Could one ordinary man make such a difference in the world? Really? The device reveals to George not what a great guy he really is (that’s what the viewer sees) but what a Wonderful Life his is. Released from the hell-world to breathe fresh air again, George runs through Bedford Falls in love with absolutely everything and everybody, the good, the bad, all of it. He does not yet know that the money has been raised. In fact, he’s ready to go to prison, smiling and leaping for joy. He is free on the inside; no bars can take that away.
Could it be that the world Clarence the Angel produces for George and that world of our fantasies where all wrongdoers are punished and all doers of good are rewarded in exact proportion to their good or their wrong—could it be that these two unreal worlds are the same? Maybe Bert and Ernie (the cop and the cab driver) don’t deserve the happiness they have in the real world. Maybe their misery in the George-has-never-been world is exactly what they have coming. The Martini family doesn’t deserve the free car ride for their goat to their new home. Consider Bert and Ernie serenading George and Mary on their wedding night. The pouring rain signifies the wretched Depression. But evil cannot conquer grace. Indeed, evil cannot even comprehend grace. A presumably better world where every crime is exactly punished and every honesty exactly rewarded is a world without grace where nothing’s extra, nothing’s unexpected and nothing’s new.
I don’t want to fall into the trap of arguing that ours is the best of all possible worlds. It could be a lot better. But no good world can exclude grace, and any world that includes grace, both the common grace of affection and generosity and the cosmic grace of sacrifice and forgiveness, is a wonderful world. Perhaps the movie’s odd title makes this point. We expect A Wonderful Life, referring to George’s. But the movie is about life itself: It’s a Wonderful Life.
Perhaps so. While Mr. Potter is not a murderer or a rapist and maybe not even a thief (he does not purposefully intend to steal the cash from Bailey Building & Loan; he simply fails to return it when he finds it), he is unquestionably bad. Would not a world in which bad people are always punished and good people always rewarded be a better world than one where these things do not happen?
Let’s consider George Bailey’s world. It is a world where the good are not always rewarded for their labors. George, his father and others do not receive what they deserve for their hard, honest work. George in particular wants to travel the world like his outrageous pal, Sam Wainwright. He never gets to. Why? Because he’s, well, too good. He gives his honeymoon money to B & L depositors in order to keep the shabby business open; he pays himself too little for a decent car; he keeps Uncle Billy employed; he fathers four children. In a film noir version of this movie, nothing good would happen to George Bailey; instead, we would put on our pensive look and contemplate the irony of a world in which, to quote other pop verses, “only the good die young” and “nice guys finish last.”
But this is Capracorn. Good things do happen to George, wonderful things, but they are not the good things he wanted. The community raises the money to keep George and Billy from prison and George is showered with love and affection. He still can’t go to Paris. He won’t ever go to Paris. He’ll stay in Bedford Falls knowing that even though evil lurks around every corner, a wonderful grace and peace belongs to those who do what’s right in life. That is not only the world George Bailey lives in, it’s the world we live in.
The movie utilizes a silly device, of course. An angel working to get his wings lets George enter an unreal world—the world as it would be without George Bailey ever having been born. It’s an infernal cauldron of revenge, debauchery and fear. Could one ordinary man make such a difference in the world? Really? The device reveals to George not what a great guy he really is (that’s what the viewer sees) but what a Wonderful Life his is. Released from the hell-world to breathe fresh air again, George runs through Bedford Falls in love with absolutely everything and everybody, the good, the bad, all of it. He does not yet know that the money has been raised. In fact, he’s ready to go to prison, smiling and leaping for joy. He is free on the inside; no bars can take that away.
Could it be that the world Clarence the Angel produces for George and that world of our fantasies where all wrongdoers are punished and all doers of good are rewarded in exact proportion to their good or their wrong—could it be that these two unreal worlds are the same? Maybe Bert and Ernie (the cop and the cab driver) don’t deserve the happiness they have in the real world. Maybe their misery in the George-has-never-been world is exactly what they have coming. The Martini family doesn’t deserve the free car ride for their goat to their new home. Consider Bert and Ernie serenading George and Mary on their wedding night. The pouring rain signifies the wretched Depression. But evil cannot conquer grace. Indeed, evil cannot even comprehend grace. A presumably better world where every crime is exactly punished and every honesty exactly rewarded is a world without grace where nothing’s extra, nothing’s unexpected and nothing’s new.
I don’t want to fall into the trap of arguing that ours is the best of all possible worlds. It could be a lot better. But no good world can exclude grace, and any world that includes grace, both the common grace of affection and generosity and the cosmic grace of sacrifice and forgiveness, is a wonderful world. Perhaps the movie’s odd title makes this point. We expect A Wonderful Life, referring to George’s. But the movie is about life itself: It’s a Wonderful Life.
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
For Those Who Weep
Sunday School students are often quizzed on Bible statistics. What is the shortest verse in the Bible? Answer? John 11:35: “Jesus wept.” It’s strange that it should be that verse. Christian doctrine develops a view whereby Jesus cannot be moved by anything other than his own will. That’s rather close to a Jesus with no emotion. Yet the Bible is not afraid to show Jesus hungry, tired, angry and, yes, sorrowful.
Jesus does not weep at his own horrific torture and execution. It is not himself he weeps for but another. The only mention of Jesus weeping is beside the grave of a beloved friend named Lazarus. The other mourners are weeping; the two sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha, are weeping. Jesus wept.
Recently I saw the interesting movie The Tree of Life. It has the most penetrating view of childhood, including toddlerhood, I’ve ever witnessed in a movie. Children are fully human, not just creatures on their way to being persons. During a sad set of images, Mozart’s “Lacrimosa,” a choral piece from his Requiem, played as soundtrack. While often translated “Mournful,” the word lachrymose comes from the Latin word for tears. The composer’s genius and the story’s sorrowful plot together with the pierced innocence of childhood was indeed tear-worthy.
We associate crying with children. After all, babies cry, and it’s a first response for us for many years after we emerge from infancy. Maybe that’s why so often we are told by the adults in our lives to stop crying. Our ability to control our emotions—and thus to control our tears—signifies maturity. I don’t understand it, but I’ve known men who claim that the imperative to stop crying was so hammered home to them that now, as adults, they are unable to weep. That is a great loss.
If maturity is signified by our ability to stop ourselves from weeping, a deeper and more full-blooded maturity abides in the grown person who is not afraid to cry. It is a weeping not from cowardice and fear, but from sorrow and grief.
As Jesus was walking to his crucifixion, carrying his cross, a group of women approached him, weeping in the demonstrative fashion of the often-paid mourners of his day (“beating their breasts and wailing.”) Their show didn’t impress Jesus. “Do not weep for me,” he instructed, “but weep for yourselves and for your children. For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” He seems to be rejecting sentimentality. We need to think hard about the way a sentimental response to some story that tugs at the heart strings can blind us from considering the larger injustices that underlie sad stories. And yet, in the right moment, Jesus wept.
Another piece of music that can awaken deep emotion is any of several works based on these words from the stories of King David: “When David heard that Absalom his son was slain, he went up to his chamber and wept, ‘O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!’” Absalom had rebelled against his father and David’s troops put down the rebellion, killing Absalom in the process. For a time, David forgot his duties as king—to congratulate and reward his army—and sank into the grief of a bereaved father. At times the pain of life is simply too great to bear without tears. It is not sentimental to grieve with tears; it’s human.
“Weeping may spend the night,” says Psalm 30, “but joy comes in the morning.” Ultimately, the Christian story is a great, divine comedy. That is to say, as the Bible does in Isaiah and again in Revelation, that God will wipe away all tears from our faces. As we’ve already seen, this belief does not in any way make faith sugary or unreal. Just the opposite. Because we believe that, as an early English mystic put it, “all will be well and all will be well and all manner of thing will be well,” precisely because we believe that, we are free to plumb the greatest depths of human sorrow. We are not required to pretend that life is easier or cheerier than it is because we know that the pain and grief will not overwhelm us forever. They may last the night, but joy comes in the morning.
Sorrow and crying and pain cannot solve anything. They’re not meant to. They are simply signs of heartache. But they are not ultimate; they don’t get the final word. Joy does. Now, here’s a little secret. “Jesus wept” is not the shortest verse in the Bible, at least not in the Bible’s original language. In Greek, the shortest verse isn’t “Jesus wept.” It’s “Rejoice always.”
Jesus does not weep at his own horrific torture and execution. It is not himself he weeps for but another. The only mention of Jesus weeping is beside the grave of a beloved friend named Lazarus. The other mourners are weeping; the two sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha, are weeping. Jesus wept.
Recently I saw the interesting movie The Tree of Life. It has the most penetrating view of childhood, including toddlerhood, I’ve ever witnessed in a movie. Children are fully human, not just creatures on their way to being persons. During a sad set of images, Mozart’s “Lacrimosa,” a choral piece from his Requiem, played as soundtrack. While often translated “Mournful,” the word lachrymose comes from the Latin word for tears. The composer’s genius and the story’s sorrowful plot together with the pierced innocence of childhood was indeed tear-worthy.
We associate crying with children. After all, babies cry, and it’s a first response for us for many years after we emerge from infancy. Maybe that’s why so often we are told by the adults in our lives to stop crying. Our ability to control our emotions—and thus to control our tears—signifies maturity. I don’t understand it, but I’ve known men who claim that the imperative to stop crying was so hammered home to them that now, as adults, they are unable to weep. That is a great loss.
If maturity is signified by our ability to stop ourselves from weeping, a deeper and more full-blooded maturity abides in the grown person who is not afraid to cry. It is a weeping not from cowardice and fear, but from sorrow and grief.
As Jesus was walking to his crucifixion, carrying his cross, a group of women approached him, weeping in the demonstrative fashion of the often-paid mourners of his day (“beating their breasts and wailing.”) Their show didn’t impress Jesus. “Do not weep for me,” he instructed, “but weep for yourselves and for your children. For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” He seems to be rejecting sentimentality. We need to think hard about the way a sentimental response to some story that tugs at the heart strings can blind us from considering the larger injustices that underlie sad stories. And yet, in the right moment, Jesus wept.
Another piece of music that can awaken deep emotion is any of several works based on these words from the stories of King David: “When David heard that Absalom his son was slain, he went up to his chamber and wept, ‘O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!’” Absalom had rebelled against his father and David’s troops put down the rebellion, killing Absalom in the process. For a time, David forgot his duties as king—to congratulate and reward his army—and sank into the grief of a bereaved father. At times the pain of life is simply too great to bear without tears. It is not sentimental to grieve with tears; it’s human.
“Weeping may spend the night,” says Psalm 30, “but joy comes in the morning.” Ultimately, the Christian story is a great, divine comedy. That is to say, as the Bible does in Isaiah and again in Revelation, that God will wipe away all tears from our faces. As we’ve already seen, this belief does not in any way make faith sugary or unreal. Just the opposite. Because we believe that, as an early English mystic put it, “all will be well and all will be well and all manner of thing will be well,” precisely because we believe that, we are free to plumb the greatest depths of human sorrow. We are not required to pretend that life is easier or cheerier than it is because we know that the pain and grief will not overwhelm us forever. They may last the night, but joy comes in the morning.
Sorrow and crying and pain cannot solve anything. They’re not meant to. They are simply signs of heartache. But they are not ultimate; they don’t get the final word. Joy does. Now, here’s a little secret. “Jesus wept” is not the shortest verse in the Bible, at least not in the Bible’s original language. In Greek, the shortest verse isn’t “Jesus wept.” It’s “Rejoice always.”
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