The Grace of Space

For the longest time, one of my favourite bible stories has been the one we traditionally call “The Conversion of Paul.” I have a bit of an issue with the name, but first, the story.

If you’re not familiar, it appears in the Book of Acts, chapter 9. The earliest followers of Jesus are in trouble with the Jewish authorities - there’s “a severe persecution” of them, according to the author of Acts - and Saul of Tarsus has been rooting them out and arresting them. On his way to Damascus, looking for “any who belonged to the Way,” Saul experiences a bright light around him and hear’s the voice of Jesus ask why he’s persecuting him. He’s blinded for three days, after which he receives a visit from a disciple, Ananias, who has a vision of Jesus and is sent so that Saul “may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” It’s a few more chapters before we hear him called Paul, but this is where his new journey begins.

I’ve simplified the story a lot, but I think we do have a tendency to reduce it even further. Which is where the Saul/Paul thing comes in. I grew up with this being a “Saul bad, Paul good” story, made that way by a moment with Jesus. Saul, the villain, sees the light and instantly becomes a Saint. Literally.

But Paul is just the Romanized version of the Jewish name Saul. In the Jewish community, he would have been Saul, but travelling around the Roman-controlled Mediterranean, especially in gentile communities, he would have been called Paul. It’s the same guy. More or less, Or more. I’ll come back to that.

The name thing helps bolster the divide between the villainous Saul and the righteous Paul. Except, from a different perspective, Saul isn’t a villain. He’s a devout Jew who passionately - okay, maybe too passionately, even zealously - stands up for his traditions and faith. When the Jewish authorities perceive the followers of Jesus as a threat to their own way, they want to root them out and end it. So they send Saul to do that. He let that zealousness for law and tradition turn to hate, perhaps, and his own faith turned away from love in his actions, but in his heart, I think Saul thought he was doing what was right to protect what he believed.

Here’s the thing for me. I’ve liked the story because, knowing it that black and white, good and bad way, I always figured that, if Jesus could do that with someone like Saul, then he shouldn’t have any trouble with me. I’m no Paul, and I’ll have no ministry to rival his, but I figured Jesus could easily make me more well, godly, and make me a better person and a better representative of The Way.

That’s not what happens in the story, though. I don’t think Jesus makes Saul anything.

I think Jesus offers Saul grace. Not just the grace of forgiveness, but the grace of space: time, even just a few days, in which to choose a different road. In his truest heart, Saul was a child of God, made in love, in the image of God. Jesus offered him grace to see that he was blinded by his devotion to religion, and the space to choose to open his eyes to love. Grace that allowed Saul to choose to be more.

Saul was already filled with the Spirit. Now it was time to let it out in love. We are, too, and it’s not up to Jesus - or any other religious figure or religion to make us. We need to participate. We need to realize that God offers us the grace to choose.

Laughing With God

You can have a sense of humour in church. Sometimes, you have to. Really.

There’s even a long-standing tradition of the Sunday after Easter being Holy Humour Sunday. In the early days of the church, the week after Easter was observed as a time of joy and laughter with parties and carnivals, full of practical jokes and fun, to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection. They called it Bright Week, and the custom came from the idea of some early church theologians that God played a joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead. Easter was God’s supreme joke played on death - they called it the risus paschalis in latin: “the Easter laugh.”

Maybe early church theologians were trying to find a new path to joy. Perhaps we need that, too.

Maybe it can seem like church has no sense of humour because people often find themselves there searching for something that seems far removed from joy. We could be looking for comfort in our grief, strength when we’re struggling, affirmation when we feel marginalized and alone. 

Maybe it just seems like church has no sense of humour sometimes because we're looking at the institution and not the people. Just like people sometimes seem to think they know what church is all about even though they've never been. Church has a lot of baggage, both for itself and for those that have no real experience of it.

Maybe we're confusing a sense of humour - the universal giving of  joy, laughter and light-heartedness - with what we, personally, have judged to be funny. Or not. Then we might judge it to be dismissive, inappropriate and disrespectful.

It's funny, really, that we're often just as judgemental about how we communicate the message of God's love as we are about how people are living it out. And I don’t mean funny in a humorous way.

The first Easter Day wasn’t full of joyful alleluias, it was full of fear and doubt, maybe some wonder, at best. I think that’s why the author of John’s gospel thought it was so important to make an example of Thomas. Thomas, the story goes, doubted Jesus was alive when the others told him because he hadn’t been there to see it. Jesus later appears to him as well (and many others) but reminds us all that “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Sure. But what if Thomas already believed. That’s why he wasn’t there, he was out telling everyone about Jesus, just like Jesus told them to. He was already making sure Jesus was alive. What if he thought the others were pranking him and he made fun of their fear and their lack of belief because they were hiding rather than boldly sharing the story of Jesus with others. That could be a funny story for Bright Week, couldn’t it?

Later, on Pentecost the story goes, everyone around the disciples heard them speaking in their own languages. Isn't that really what we're seeking, a way to communicate the message that speaks to people in a way that they find most understandable, relevant and meaningful?

Maybe the road to true joy in our faith needs laughter as much as tears. “A good God-themed joke,” to quote singer Regina Spektor (in “Laughing With”), can bring comfort as well as joy, relief to tension and anxiety, maybe even a little more openness to faith in a heart full of doubt. After all, real faith isn't about believing without question, it's about believing enough to question more, to seek deeper truth and find deeper love.

Signs of Life

We’re surrounded by symbols. Everything from emojis to icons, traffic signs, logos and flags. Good ones can convey a very specific meaning. Sometimes, like the words they may be replacing, they might come to have alternate meanings or come to represent a legacy that we may or may not wish to remember.

The church is full of symbols. Lots of them have specific meanings, some are even particular to a certain church, denomination or faith. Some have very personal meanings, some more universal understanding. Some, all of the above.

Our church has a rainbow sidewalk. It also has doves here and there, hearts, fish, angels, a turtle, candles, handprints, stones, pine cones, sheep and a variety of other symbols, all of which have their own meaning. Sometimes they can mean much more than just one thing.

And a cross.

Universally recognized and deeply personally held, the cross has been the primary symbol of Christianity since the second century. It has come to be understood by Christians as representing God’s act of love in the sacrifice of Jesus in death and the victory of Christ over death in his resurrection.

I guess. It does seem to carry a lot of baggage, and struggle with its image a lot.

For me, every Easter I wonder a little about the symbol of my faith being an instrument of a very torturous, agonizing death at the hands of a ruthless oppressor. That’s what it was, in Jesus’ day, a very public, very painful means by which an empire struck fear into the hearts of those it had conquered. The story of Good Friday is brutality, pain and death and there can be no Easter resurrection story without it.

I understand that may be the very thing that redeems it as a symbol, but I also believe that Jesus was all about life and I wonder if there aren’t better symbols for that. While some may choose to focus on the atoning sacrifice and the defeat of death, I find what brings me closer to God is how Jesus shows us life, even before the new life of resurrection. For me, that resurrection moment just affirms that the same divine spirit alive in Jesus is alive in me. And you. And everyone. That’s how Jesus is alive and how we are, too.

So maybe, at Easter, we might also consider some other symbols of our faith. Symbols that might remind us that Jesus’ life itself is an example of living love the way that God wants us to live - live, not die - and that divine love is in all of us. Shouldn’t the symbol of Easter, for example, be the empty tomb, not the instrument of Jesus’ death?  How about the rising sun of Easter morning or the spring flowers of the garden around the tomb?  How about the butterfly who’s new life comes from the shadow of the cocoon? Why not eggs, even chocolate ones, and a lively, rambunctious bunny?

Those symbols are all around us in God’s creation, reminders of God’s love in our every day. Human hands made the cross. Perhaps they should let it go and embrace the light of a new day.

Make Some Noise

I think I’ve always felt a little conflicted about Palm Sunday.

Holy Week, the one time in the story of Jesus when you can actually follow him day-to-day for seven days, begins with Palm Sunday, a celebration of his arrival in Jerusalem. Things turn darker pretty quickly before the celebration of the resurrection the following Sunday. And if you don’t follow the story through the week, it can easily feel just like that, celebration to celebration. Read the story.

But, back to Palm Sunday.

That story’s covered in all four gospels, with some varying details, but basically I think we tend to tell it in a similar fashion to the Christmas story: we conflate the four stories into one basic narrative. Jesus’ disciples get him a colt, the foal of a donkey, from town. He rides it into Jerusalem from the direction of the Mount of Olives. That fulfils an ancient prophecy from Zechariah that the Messiah will arrive this way. The crowd cheers for Jesus, shouting hosanna and waiving branches from palm trees, which they also throw on the ground in front of him along with their cloaks to form a “red carpet” suitable for a king. The story is often titled “Jesus’ Triumphal Entry Into Jerusalem.”

When I was a kid, growing up in a “high church” anglican setting, it was a solemn and serious occasion. We processed around the cathedral singing hymns and carrying our huge palm branches on our shoulders. As I got older and worked as a musician in churches, I remember how often the procession became a parade, an opportunity to connect the story to children by giving them palms to wave and songs to sing and hosannas to shout. It was busy and noisy, a great party. Jesus arrives in triumph, after all.

Later, I began looking at the stories more closely. And one of these is not like the others.

The way the Gospel of Luke tells it may surprise you. It’ll certainly disappoint you if you’re looking for palm branches and hosannas, the mainstays of the event, because there aren’t any.

The way Luke tells it, Jesus sends disciples for the donkey and he rides it in from the Mount of Olives, but it’s all very much planned that way. It’s not coincidental that it fulfills the prophecy, Jesus sets it up to be seen that way. And yes, “the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen,” but there are no hosannas. There’s plenty of cloaks to make a carpet, but no palm branches and, most important of all, the Temple authorities, the Pharisees, are on hand and demand that Jesus tell his follows to cut it out. But Jesus says that “if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

The stones would shout out. 

I wonder if Luke sees this less as a celebration, a triumph, and more a pointed reminder of what Jesus has really been about: healing and restoring the lost and broken, shouting down injustice and speaking up for the marginalized who’ve lost their voice, crying out for the grieving and challenging the status quo, challenging what the pharisees and oppressive rulers have - and haven’t - done. These are “the deeds of power” the crowd is shouting about.

Voices raised against oppression, injustice, hate, cruelty and indifference will not be silenced. These voices make change happen. Follow Jesus lead and use your voice. Don’t leave it to the stones.

Are We Being Short With Them?

I don’t suppose Zacchaeus is a very common name. If you’ve heard it, it’s probably from church and you might even know a song about him from Sunday School. His story makes for a catchy Sunday School song.

If you’re not familiar, the gospel of Luke tells that Jesus was passing through Jericho and a guy named Zacchaeus, who’s the the local “chief tax collector and was rich,” comes out to see him with the rest of the crowds. Jesus meets him and invites himself over to his house for supper, something which upsets the crowd, of course. Tax collectors are reviled by everyone. (No offence to Canada Revenue Agency who are very nice people please don’t audit me.) 

But then, Zacchaeus joyfully declares that he’s giving away half his fortune to the poor and paying back - y four times as much! - anyone he might have over taxed. Jesus responds that “salvation has come to this house” because Jesus has come to seek and save the lost. Mission accomplished. The end.

Except. There’s some added detail to consider. First of all, Zacchaeus gets a name, something that doesn’t often happen when Jesus meets people. More often than not, they’re “the rich man” or “the blind man” or “the lepers” or even “a Samaritan.” This seems more personal. Zacchaeus means “innocent” or “pure,” by the way.

And he’s short. “He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.”

Wait. What?

It may seem silly, but, more often than not, the gospels tell stories with a certain economy of detail. In fact, one of my favourite things to do is try to figure out how what’s missing in the story might help us understand it better or at least give us another avenue to explore. But this time, it’s the opposite. Why do we need to know he’s short and has to climb a tree to see Jesus? And what’s with the name? He’s a tax collector, isn’t that all we need to know? After all, tax collectors are a special enough kind of sinner to get their own reference: how often do we see “tax collectors and sinners” as the people Jesus hangs out with?

Here’s a thought. Maybe it’s not about being able to see, but rather be seen. By Jesus. As the chief tax collector, Zacchaeus would have been known well enough by the community, but being of diminutive stature would have helped him hide a bit. Being in a tree, though, would have made it not only easier to see Jesus, but for him to be seen by Jesus. And it works, of course.

He’s also seen by everyone else, though, and the crowd’s not happy about Jesus going to his house for supper. Not only is Zacchaeus not intimidated - either by the crowd or Jesus - he has an announcement to make. He wants both Jesus and the crowd to know he’s turning away from sin and Jesus is happy to accommodate him. Maybe he’s a better man than we think. Maybe Jesus knows it, too.

And here’s the thing: we sure know what the crowd thought of Zacchaeus before, but we don’t get to see if their view of him was changed by this moment of embracing Jesus. This is where the story ends. Jesus came “to seek out and save the lost,” says Luke. But what happens next? 

Maybe that’s for us to wonder about. To wonder, not just at Jesus’ compassion and care for the lost, but at our own. Are we open to offering grace to someone turning their life in a new direction? Are we willing to offer mercy, compassion and, most importantly, space for someone who was lost and is finding their way to their true self.

The Company We Keep

Apparently, Jesus keeps just the worst company. According to the Temple authorities, anyway. Jesus, you see, hangs out with “tax collectors and sinners.”

No offence to any employees of Canada Revenue Agency, I’m sure they’re all very fine people, but in Jesus day, they were not. They were working for the Romans, and probably ripping you off as well, for their own personal gain. As far many people were concerned, there weren’t much worse in the sinner department.

So, in Luke’s gospel, the leaders of the faith community are grumbling about who Jesus spends his time with. I’m sure I would have just had Jesus point out the abundantly obvious, that he’s here to save people who need saving, not to sit with the spiritually healthy, but Luke’s more creative and way smarter than me. Instead, Jesus tells a series of three short parables, each of which has a similar pattern: someone or something is lost, it’s found, there’s a celebration when they’re restored.

There’s one with a lost sheep. A shepherd with a hundred sheep loses one so they leave the ninety-nine to look for the one. Great celebration when they find it. There’s a lost coin. A woman loses one of ten coins so she lights a lamp and sweeps the house until she finds it. Great celebration when she does. And then there’s the really famous one, the Prodigal Son. A son asks for his inheritance early, takes it, leaves and squanders it in a foreign land. When he runs out of money, he realizes he’s better off at home so he returns, ready to beg for help. His father welcomes him with open arms, and calls for a great celebration. His other son, though, is a little put out. He stayed and was a good son and he gets nothing. But his father says, exactly, you’ve always been here, but your brother was lost and is found. Time for a great celebration.

See. Jesus is here for those who need saving, that’s why he spends so much time with them. The end.

But hang on a minute. It’s more than that.

First, in each of the stories, there’s a moment for celebration because the lost is found … and restored. That’s the celebration: not just that they’re found, but they’re restored to the flock, the money pouch and the family. That will need the grace, welcome, acceptance and willingness of the flock, pouch and family. Perhaps not that hard for the flock, definitely not for the money pouch, and most certainly for the son. In fact, his brother is angry about it. Does he come round? Jesus doesn’t say.

Second, and it’s related to that, if Jesus is here for sinners and Jesus reminds us frequently that the temple authorities are, well, sinners, then why isn’t Jesus here for them also?

He is. These stories he tells remind us, I think, that to live authentically as Jesus in the world means being prepared to step out and look for the lost, to reach out to them and bring them into community. It also reminds us that being authentic community means to offer grace to the lost, especially to those who feel they don’t belong, to those who are different, who don’t “fit in,” who struggle, who are marginalized by the community. How often do we judge - like the temple authorities - instead of opening our hearts, finding empathy, and offering a space for others. Jesus is here for them, too.

How We Grow

Aren’t we all tired of it? I know I am. This constant chaos and upheaval, anxiety and frustration. The world can be exhausting.

I get that we’re all different and we can disagree on things. Oh, can we disagree. I get that we’re all different and that can sometimes be scary to people. And oh, can we be fearful. Really, really, really fearful. I get that we’re all different and we really want our own way. Oh, can we want our own way.

But that turns so quickly to hatred, anger, bullying, violence and fighting.

Disagreement ought to be met with discussion and debate. Fear of difference ought to be met with interaction and learning. Wanting our own way ought to be met with a healthy openness to new ideas.

Idealistic, I know. But it seems like discussion and debate has turned to mean spirited attacks, name calling and demonizing, factual information is being replaced with uncritical opinion and new ideas are rejected out of hand, if they’re even allowed to be expressed. It seems like we’re at a whole new ugly level of bitterness and recrimination.

Unless, of course, you’re lucky enough to avoid the news or social media - especially social media - or you live like a hermit in the wilderness. There’s far too many examples of what I’m talking about, everyday, everywhere. If you’re like me, you’re not just tired of all that, you’re tired of people talking about it.

Here’s a different way to look at it.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells a parable about a fig tree in a vineyard that wasn’t producing any fruit. The owner of the tree is angry that it hasn’t produced anything for three years so he tells the gardener to cut it down. “Why should it be wasting the soil?” he asks. But the gardener asks him to give it another chance. The gardener will care for it and feed it and if it doesn’t produce, then it could be cut it down.

It seems pretty obvious what’s happening here. If you want the tree to produce fruit, you can’t just stick in the ground and wait. It needs to be cared for. I’ll “dig around it and put manure on it,” says the gardener. You know he means the good kind, right?  Just like with people, he means to feed and nurture with healthy loving, compassion, care, respect and grace. And empathy. Especially empathy.

It’s not the kind of manure we’ve seen people, especially politicians, dumping on each other lately. Sure, you might need to prune the tree, but you do it with care with the goal to be more fruitful, not to be destructive. And if you really want the tree to produce something exciting, you want it to cross-pollinate or you might even splice in a branch from a different tree. Carefully. You most certainly will want to make sure it gets all the light it needs. You’d never keep it in the dark.

That light, by the way, is the same light we all need to live and thrive. We all grow and bear fruit when we are watered, fed and nurtured in body, mind and soul. And yet.

Here we are, worn down by frustration and anger, surrounded by the darkness of fear and hate, overwhelmed by manure of a different kind. Negativity seems so much easier.  Perhaps its results are quicker or maybe we want some kind of guarantee that we’ll get the fruit we want - expect, rather - before we invest in all that work, feeding and nurturing it with something positive.

But Jesus’ story doesn’t end with fruit or, for that matter, the tree being turned into firewood. It ends with the gardener asking for another chance. Jesus doesn’t say what happens after that. The story ends with the opportunity, not the result. The expectation of fruit, or lack of it, shouldn’t predetermine our effort to nurture and care for the tree. In every moment is the opportunity for new life, for growth and for bearing fruit, and we should seize that moment as Jesus does: with love.

Full and Whole

There’s a pretty obvious question most people will want to ask themselves when they hear the story of Jesus visiting the home of Mary and Martha, two very different sisters (Luke 10:38-42). Martha welcomes Jesus, as a good host should, but then is too busy to visit with him because of the many chores that go with running a household, especially one with an important guest in it. She ends up doing everything by herself because Mary just sits and listens to Jesus talk.

That's a little annoying to Martha who asks Jesus to tell Mary to help her. But Jesus tells Martha that it's Mary who's doing the right thing. In her haste to be the perfect  hostess, Martha has lost the focus on her guest, it seems, but Mary has found the one thing that's needed: time with Jesus.

The obvious question we go to, then: are you Mary or Martha, a listener or a doer?

Tricky to answer, though, because I’m sure we’ve all been in Martha’s shoes at some point, feeling like we’re doing everything and getting no help. It can be frustrating, exhausting and pretty annoying. But Jesus, in the story, clearly seems to think that Mary’s doing what’s important. And she is, in the story. 

And that's the point, don't you think? Jesus isn't meaning to take sides and make a universal statement about our behaviour, he's making an observation about this moment. But step back and look at the bigger picture. I think this is another moment when Jesus isn’t an either/or kind of guy, he’s an and/with. There's a time for busy-ness and there's a time for rest. Both are necessary. That’s even more obvious when we read what's around this story in Luke.

Before Jesus is welcomed to the home of Martha and Mary, he’s talking to a lawyer about what he "must do to inherit eternal life." What he must "do." Jesus’ answer includes the parable of the Good Samaritan that challenges him to consider who is his neighbour and how to do the neighbourly thing . That story ends with Jesus telling him to "go and do likewise" (Luke 10:37). That's a whole lot of doing, a whole lot of living love into action.

Immediately after his visit to the home of Martha and Mary, Jesus is asked to teach about prayer. He offers the words of what we know as The Lord's Prayer and a story about the importance of being persistent in prayer.

Doing, listening, praying.

It's not that any one is more important than the other in general, it's discerning which is most important in the moment. Which is "the only one thing" (Luke 10:42) needed in this moment?

In our world of usefulness, utility, multi-tasking and rushing from one thing to another to see how much we can cram into 24 hours, it might not seem practical to focus on what really needs your attention in this moment. 

But Jesus knows that wholeness comes with the interconnectedness of these things, not the dominance of any one. Each is important in their time, each offering an opportunity to experience a moment more fully and more completely.

It's what makes for harmony and wholeness in their home: Mary, the listener, Martha, the doer, are sisters. Jesus is the Word.  Don't pick one or the other for all things, let your home be full and whole.