Nov. 20, 2016
Luke 23:33-43
There he is with nails in his hands and feet, blood pouring from his side and dripping from the thorns that are tearing at his skull. He’s been stripped and whipped and hung on a cross to die. And, in this moment of unimaginable horror and pain he says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
A few verses later our passage ends with Christ’s words to a similarly hanged criminal who, though guilty, has the courage to ask (and hope) that with this particular Jesus there is still somehow some mercy to be had. “Truly,” Jesus says, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”
What I get is this: Even here, even now, as all the forces of humanity’s brokenness and will to get in its own way conspire to destroy its greatest blessing, what pours from Christ’s mouth is salvation. Salvation when they are faithful, and salvation when they are not. Salvation that breaks into the world as newborn life, and salvation that will not die even when it is killed.
There on the cross Jesus is not the one who saves himself. Even on the cross his agenda is not self. Jesus was and always is the one who saves others. This has to in some way be what it means to say that “Christ is king.” For, today is Christ the King Sunday, always the Sunday before the first Sunday of Advent, and always a confusing proclamation unless we understand that he’s not a normal king, unless we are willing to change the way we think.
Charley had a baseball coach who was a bit old school, kind of gruff, some might say cranky, but he knew the game, had a big heart for the kids, and had bigger priorities than making sure the kids won. I was glad that he was Charley’s coach.
At the end of the season parents, coaches, and kids all let loose for a pizza party. The coach whom I had known tangentially for years from running into each other at CCD drop off laughingly asked one of his assistant coaches about his faith. “Jim, how’s your spiritual life these days.” It was something of a joke (enhanced by a Porkey’s restaurant filled with pizza and crazy kids) based on the same question that his newly born-again, fundamentalist brother-in-law asked him not too long ago. Clearly, he thought it was a goofy question, and not the kind of thing that would ever occur to him to start a conversation with.
And though I got his point, I couldn’t help but ask how he handled it. “What did you do when he asked you that question? What did you say?”
“I just told him that Jesus and I are fine. We’re on good terms. I do what I’m supposed to do, and I see him every a week at Church. Nothing to be concerned about.”
And, I’m not concerned about him. I believe that he’s a great joy to God (whether he knows it or not), just as I believe that about all of us flawed and loved people. But, I did wonder: “Is that all you want out of faith? Is that really a spiritual life: being on ‘good terms,’ doing what you are supposed to do, seeing God once a week at church?’
Is that the way most of us see faith? As a friend says, “God to most people is like a sweater vest. It makes an outfit look nice, but it’s not necessary.”
Might we want more from our faith? Shouldn’t our spiritual lives offer something more than that? Shouldn’t we want them to offer something more?
Here’s a non sequitur for you: are you aware that about 2,400 years ago Aristotle identified 10 categories of reality? It was his “First Philosophy” or “Philosophy of Being,” and here are the ten: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, and affection. What is important to know is that he identified substance as the top category because substance is independent. All the rest are accidental. Substance depends on nothing else; the others are all contingent and exist in relationship.
Because Aristotle so convincingly claimed that substance was superior so did the great minds who followed him, and so did the great theologians who later reflected upon the nature of our God. Naturally, since God is great the greatest quality would be ascribed to God. God would be perfect substance, which means that God would be perfectly independent, which would translate to mean that God is detached, a critical observer, a judge, a king sitting on his throne ruling from up above, punishing, rewarding, granting favors or not, depending on his disposition at any given time.
No one needs to know Aristotle to be influenced by the implications of his philosophy. A substance view of God still dominates much of our thinking about God. God, to many of us, is the one to whom we must try to measure up. God is the merciful parent reluctantly granting forgiveness. God is the great dispenser of favors from a heavenly paradise that is in need of nothing. God is our ticket to heaven if we’ve done a good enough job of pleasing him.
The thing is, this is not how Jesus thought of God; it’s now how he was God, is God, manifested and reflected God. To Jesus God was “Abba.” To “Abba” Jesus was “Son.” “I and the Father are one,” Jesus said, and when he prayed for his disciples he prayed that they might know that oneness too, so that “I might be in them, and you in me.” For Jesus, substance wasn’t dominant. It was relationship that mattered most; relationship was the ground of reality; relationship was the source of being and meaning.
Franciscan priest and author, Richard Rohr writes, “What physicists and contemplatives alike are confirming is that the foundational nature of reality is relational; everything is in relationship with everything else.”[1] [In fact, according to quantum physics, “an observed quantity can be at the same time determined and not determined. An event may have happened and at the same time may not have happened.”[2] In fact, the only way to describe quantum realities, the realities of the sub atomic parts that make up that which we think of as substance, is to describe them in relation to one another. If I understand what I’ve read (and I certainly didn’t understand it completely) they can only be described by their relationship (their effect on another) and not on their own as if they existed as an individual, independent, substance.]
When I looked for simple scientific examples I found that I was in over my head. However, I found an interesting parallel in the world of economics. Herbert Simon coined the term “satisficing” to describe our human tendency to create “cognitive limits” in order to seek solutions within complex systems that are “good enough,” not optimal, but rather just satisfactory. When we do that we embody what he calls, “the administrative man.” Simon writes, “Because he treats the world as rather empty and ignores the interrelatedness of all things (so stupefying to thought and action), administrative man can make decisions with relatively simple rules of thumb that do not make impossible demands upon his capacity for thought.”[3]
I wonder, has something like this happened in the world of faith? Have we settled for the god of our intentionally limited thinking? Rather than make impossible demands on our cognitive abilities, have we settled for a sweater vest kind of a god, a god who is “good enough” to get us through, keep us in line, help us behave, or remind us what to do?
In his book, The Divine Dance, Richard Rohr talks about a Trinitarian Revolution – a reclaiming of an old idea by understanding it newly in the way that it was always intended. The Trinity is this impossible idea of one God existing as three persons; it is the idea that God exists essentially in relationship; God exists as a perfect flow of eternal, unshakable, unstoppable love. The Good News, the transforming news of the Christian message, is that we are invited into that flow. We are meant to participate in the exchange of that love. We are meant to know enduring life, and purpose, and meaning within the perfect fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
If that sounds abstract, I’ll share with you what I think are the implications. It means that the Christian life is not about passing God’s judgment (we can let that go!); rather, it is about joining God’s life – being deeply, eternally, essentially loved. It is not about doing the right thing. (There’s no good deed quota to fill.) Rather, it is about being part of the goodness of God in the world – participating with God in what God is doing. It is not about getting into heaven. Rather, it is about knowing something of heaven’s eternal beauty right now. It is not about being okay with God. Rather, it is about being one with God.
What I am suggesting this morning is a shift in the way we think. Nothing more than that. Just a shift. But, I’ll tell you this also. A shift in thinking can change your entire life.
[1] The Divine Dance, page 69.
[2] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-relational/
[3] http://www.economist.com/node/13350892