Hills and Valleys

For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God. ~Baruch 5:1-9

Building roads is hard work.  Building roads over valleys and hills and mountains is harder.    You have to blow up that mountain, level that hill, and make a raised highway through that valley.   It's hard work.  In the old days, it was dangerous work as well.  Before explosives, it was so hard that God had to do it because we couldn't.

Bringing the mountains low is not an easy thing to do.   Neither is crossing a mountain without it having been made low.   I'm a little strange in that I believe that when Jesus said the time is coming and is now here when the Kingdom of God shall appear on the earth, he didn't mean blow the whole thing up and start over.  I think he meant right here, right now, usher in the kingdom of God.   We have to get ready to be able to do it, that's what Church is for, and we have to do it in the world in which we live right now because that's the Gospel.

It's actually happening.

 Luke 3:1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"  

 And the harbinger's mother is old and barren when she becomes pregnant, and meets her young cousin, the Messiah's mother, who starts talking about her unborn child.   

He has mercy on those who fear him *
    in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm, *
    he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

I'm pretty sure this is class warfare.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *

Yep.

    and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things, *
    and the rich he has sent away empty.

In plain English (translated from Aramaic to Greek to plain English)

He has come to the help of his servant Israel, *
    for he has remembered his promise of mercy,

This is the Kingdom of God.  It works better if we all work together to fill the hungry with good things, so the rich don't necessarily have to go away empty, but that doesn't always work out.  Right here, right now, this is actually happening... so we should do what we're told and get to it.  God is going to make this happen... and he's doing it, right now, through us. 

Good Friday and cats

I woke up this morning with a cat on my back. Janie Cat is strange little thing. If you try and pick her up, she runs from you like you're going to kill her (or take her to the vet), but if you sit still she will sit on your lap and absolutely not move for anything.

Except a sneeze. A sneeze or a loud noise or anything remotely "scary". If you sneeze or or spray air freshener that cat will rocket off your lap (or back) like

the devil is after her.

She's been like this since she was a kitten. I woke up this morning with her perched and purring on my back and I realized, laughing a little bit, what would happen if I sneezed.

She'd shoot out of the room like a rat out of an aqueduct. The readings at church last night came to mind. Peter and his enthusiasm. First, that'd he'd never let his master serve him, and then, when Jesus explained himself, that he, errr... over do it. (For context, click here) His emphatic denial that he would ever himself deny his relationship with Christ, and his subsequent denial of Christ. No, it wasn't a sneeze. It was much, much, scarier. He didn't run either. He stayed there to see what would happen, and when threatened with association, he said he didn't know those people. Peter seems like an emotional man who manages to make calculated choices under pressure.

I think the God-part of Christ's mind understood that about him. The God in Man part seemed to be having a harder time. In the garden, his friends, drunk from Passover dinner, can't stay awake with him even when he asks. He implores them, begs them to stay up with them. He's upset, he knows he's going to die, and there they are, too drunk and tired to stay up with him. (I realize I'm making a big accusation here, to some people, but wine is a customary part of a Seder and given everything that was going on I think it's safe to say they may have been inclined to overindulge a bit) They just don't understand what's going on, or they don't want to, and they can't seem to get it together to help him through this.

I think that's part of the tragedy of the crucifixion. Jesus, who couldn't catch a moment to himself during his ministry, who had to hide from people to pray, was all by himself on the night he didn't want to be. The people he was trying to help, out of fear and jealousy, were going to murder him. His disciples were too frightened, drunk and confused to stay up with him. I'd like to say I would have done things differently, but I know better.

I know better.

I hope you do too. We call this day Good Friday because it's the day we remember that we were redeemed at a great price. The Son of Man suffered, and suffered alone, to rescue us all from ourselves. To show us that we don't have to be afraid, that God is bigger than our weaknesses, stronger than our worst moments, and kinder than we deserve when we scatter like... frightened cats at a scary noise.

Even when we're too drunk, tired, and scared to do stay up and pray with someone we love who's freaking us right out.

I didn't ask you to

Call this an irritation series or a series on irritation (Let's face it, I probably won't post more than one of these) ...

I hate it when people respond to a statement about something you're doing or going to do with the words "I don't agree with that" like you asked them to. It happened to me more in college when people were more likely to be dumb enough to think I would care. Who does that anyway?

"Oh church is going to be so fun this weekend! We're baptizing a couple of babies and I'm making cheesecake that doubles as finger food and..."

"I don't agree with that."

Did I ask you to? No, I didn't. I told you what we're going to do this weekend. No one asked your permission. You don't ask my permission to do things at your places of worship. I don't particularly enjoy or agree with some of the things your 'people' do but you aren't asking me, are you?

I have the same problem with people who aren't religious. I have the same response. Okay... I knew that. Yep, sweetie, I've known you for ten years, known you were an atheist for about that long, still talking to you, dearest, not going to change.

Speaking of people who don't agree with a lot of what I do... I distinctly remember a girl asking me what I'd do if Jesus walked into my living room while my friends and I were drinking wine and watching horror movies. I looked at her, dumbfounded at the silliness of the question and said:

Offer him a glass and apologize for the quality of the vintage?

Love your enemies: It will drive them nuts.

No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Love your enemies--it will drive them nuts. (I took this bit from Romans this morning but Paul is quoting Jesus.) It's really a brilliant concept. If you're battling someone's depravity (racism or oppression) in the court of public opinion, it's absolutely deadly to their case. If you repay evil for evil, you play into their hands. People don't feel sorry for someone who's participating in a dog fight.

I've noticed something else about being kind (not indulging the behavior, that's different) to someone who is repeatedly ugly to me though--the relationship gets better. Sure, you can't make a pit bull stop being a pit bull, but you can make her want to bite less. If you refuse to play the game, it's not any fun for them any more. Once it stops being fun, they stop playing. If you're lucky, they start seeing you as something other than a target.

It gets harder and harder to attack someone you've stopped seeing as a thing and started seeing as a person. I'm convinced that this is why Christianity became legal in the first place. The Roman public stopped seeing them as things. They refused to fight back. They continued to help people even during times of extreme plague and more of them lived through the plagues despite being exposed to it. Nero's persecution of the Christians aroused public sympathy because they didn't respond with violence. By the time of Constantine, it was politically advantageous for him to make the religion legal---and that's exactly what he did. He didn't convert right away because he was a Roman Emperor, The Way was pacifist and he had a lot more people to kill. I don't know if he had a vision or not. I just know it Jesus' vision---responding to violence with compassion--that made it happen.

The Man Who Gave Himself Away

35 When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; 36 send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat." 37 But he answered them, "You give them something to eat." They said to him, "Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?" 38 And he said to them, "How many loaves have you? Go and see." When they had found out, they said, "Five, and two fish."

I remember encountering the other gospel's version of this story as a children's book titled "The boy who gave away his lunch." It focused on the little boy opening up his lunchbox to the crowd. Generosity was the lesson we were supposed to take from this. In this version, that hardly seems to be what the disciple had in mind. First, they were going away because they couldn't be left alone long enough enough to eat. The crowd follows them! They're tired, they're annoyed, and they have every right to be tired and annoyed. Jesus pities the crowd and teaches them. When the sun starts going down, the disciples beg Jesus to send them away on the premise that they must be hungry and there's nowhere to buy any dinner.

"You give them something to eat."

Seriously? They counter this, and Jesus feeds them all with what they have. I suppose if the disciples were hungry themselves, this solved everybody's problem. If they still wanted to be left alone, it definitely didn't. Jesus certainly understood that they were tired. He must have been tired himself. In doing all this, he was teaching them that some things are more important than what we want right now. I'm wondering if someone would like to rewrite that children's book and call it "The man who gave away himself" (and taught others to do the same). There would be time later for solitude. At that moment, they needed his attention.

You gotta wonder what the world would be like if everybody treated people that way.

The Road Home

1 "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 2 In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 4 And you know the way to the place where I am going."

I think we all know a thing or two about anxiety the older we get. Jesus knew a thing or two about anxiety too---and apart from it being true I think that's why he says this to the disciples. They needed to hear it. You already know the way. I'm going on ahead and I'll have the place ready for you.

Then Thomas---poor Thomas--- says what they're all thinking:

Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?"

What are you talking about? I think I may know what you're talking about, but right now it's a little foggy. You haven't flat out said anything in plain Aramaic about where you're actually going.

6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."

I remember when I was a teenager that I had the craziest dreams about talking to my guardian angel. Peter Pan was one of my favorite movies (Yes, it's racist, but ignore the big stupid stereotypes and let yourself enjoy it and on the surface it seems like three tweens have landed in paradise, mmm kay?) and when I'd how to get to heaven from there the answer was always "Second star to the right and straight on till morning." I knew what he meant---You already know the way. You've known since before you were born. Stop being silly and asking for a map to go home by.

We know the way Home. We do. The one who made us put the map right in our hearts the day we gave them to him.

Don't worry. You'll find it.

Prisoners of Hope

Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
today I declare that I will restore to you double.

I didn't want to write about Palm Sunday.

I'll admit it. I even entertained sticking in a "zombie Jesus" metaphor so I would offend enough people so as to never again be asked to take Sundays or Fridays for E-devotions during Lent.
Then I realized that some people would not only get it--they'd think it was hilarious.

As I read through Zechariah this morning though, I realized that the war metaphors, the talk of prisoner's and commanding peace is appropriate for what happens next. He rides in a donkey colt like a conquering hero--and then commands peace. He says "no" to every invitation to violence at the cost of his own life. It's really rather humiliating for his accusers as well if you think about it. He doesn't yell, or lose control. He doesn't even fight back. He makes them look like insecure bullies carrying on with their violence out of fear.

10 He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.

He isn't taking up the battle bow--he isn't riding that war horse--he's cutting them off. He's saying no. No to violence. No to playing their game.

There are some historians who actually cite the rise of Christianity as a cause of the fall of Rome. (I disagree, actually, but I won't get into that.) If you think about it though, there isn't a place on Earth that hasn't been changed by what happened there in Jerusalem all those years ago. It certainly changed the way the world works.

But we're still waiting. We are still prisoners of hope. Waiting for something to happen. Until he makes us strong enough to follow his example and command peace.

The wrong side of the bed?

Today has not been the most exciting day of my life. It hasn't been the most invigorating or the most thrilling. I was running late to work, stepped in stray cat poop taking the trash out in the rain, and came home to the smell of dirt permeating my home. My cat had finally murdered the houseplant I keep in the kitchen window. There was and is potting soil in the kitchen rug, the kitchen sink, and it's just generally a giant mess.

I didn't even sell anything at work today---which is depressing and worse---boring. It was so slow I'm actually caught up. I can't even think of anything I could do if I went in for overtime Saturday night now. I also got un-friended without explanation by someone. It's not particularly devastating but it is annoying and a little rude. I get home and there it is. Right there on facebook. I knew it was coming but I didn't foresee the source.

It was the annual "Easter is Pagan!" article. Only four days left till Palm Sunday: I thought it might keep until Holy Week. I don't mean to pick on my friend. Someone had to do it. Someone always does. I suppose it might as well be him. One thing that struck me in the comments (I'll admit I didn't read the article. I read it the first time it appeared in my life and every one since has been a repeat so I've stopped.) was the remark about ritual rather than closeness to God.

Sunday's gospel reading features Mary's bizarre display of affection just prior to Jesus' final journey into Jerusalem. She takes a jar of nard, an expensive perfume, and anoints his feet with it. Then she dries it with her hair. Judas, flabbergasted and a little frustrated she didn't let him sell that to "feed the poor" (the aside in the gospel suggests he was likely to pocket it) stupidly rebukes her for it. Jesus' response is telling, "You will always have the poor with you. You will not always have me."

It's okay to be extravagant about our worship of God. We want to do it. More than that, we need to do it. Sometimes, even in this world of electric lights and smells emanating from "plug ins", we need to light a candle. We need to have extraordinary beauty in our worship spaces. If it's a choice between feeding the poor and putting in a stained glass window--by all means, feed the poor-- but if you can afford to do both--let yourselves love God lavishly.

I'm sure Judas was embarrassed by Mary's display. I'm also sure he wasn't the only one. The story has always struck me as a bizarre one. I'm not sure what to make of it. I only know this weird ritual was an act of love and submission. I know that Jesus did not ask for it. I also know that he accepted it for what it was and rebuked the people who would have scolded her for it.

Sometimes I feel like people are still scolding her for it. When I see the comparisons, when people tell me that I can have rituals or a personal relationship with God, I balk. I stop. I feel like a little kid telling her mother "but but but but I didn't mean it that way!" It's not either/or. It's and/or. You don't have to do this---but if it helps---go ahead. Use the good china! Wear your new dress! Eat the chocolate bunny---ears first of course. My mother buys me that not as some bizarre pagan symbol of fertility (new life, resurrection? Did anyone else make that non-idolatrous connection besides me?) but because she loves me. I have a few Easter rituals of my own. Every year I go to Wal-Mart (for shame!) and buy a cheap bouquet of flowers. Then I go to church and I give them all away to the other folks whose yards aren't blooming yet either. I love this... and I keep the big flower for myself.

Because it wasn't always certain he was going to come back from that. We didn't always have him. He had to surrender to us before he could save us. He had to do something bizarre and extravagant.

Quid pro quo?

I know I'm not going to succeed, but I can try, can't I?

"Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?"

WARNING!~ Terrell does not have her politically correct face on today. I'm going to be rude to everybody--equally.


" The Jews answered him, "Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?"

I read this exchange in the gospel reading for morning prayer today and it reminded me of something. First, let me point out that calling Jesus a Samaritan was a 'racial epitaph' as they say. The gospel writers, in their turn, refer to them as "The Jews" like Jesus wasn't one so the racism goes both ways. It reminded me of what is going on at Capital Hill right now with the health care debate. (If you haven't heard the latest on the Republican response, click here.)

"The Jews" don't like what Jesus has to say and they're getting frustrated. They can't even argue with him anymore because they're running out of good arguments. This guy they've decided is a total nut job is too smart to argue with. Naturally, the next step is name calling. Naturally, they ask him to agree with them. "Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?"

They just accused him of being possessed! Of being possessed and a Samaritan. Being a Samaritan meant your blood line was all mixed up with some local dirty gentiles and that you didn't do things in just the right way in just the right place. The implications of this rivalry have always bothered me in ways I don't care to expound on today, but I'll admit the words "pure blood pollution" come into my head every time I give it any significant thought. It drives me a little nuts.

Then Jesus throws out the kicker after calmly repeating his claims:

^"Jesus said to them, 'Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.'"

In case you missed it, this is one of those places we're pretty sure he's claiming to be God. Since they don't have a decent argument to combat that, this follows:

^"So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple."

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Uber Christian

Repost from Facebook and Livejournal but worth it:

One of my customers was complaining today about her supervisor getting upset because she was wearing a pentacle. (Keep in mind my office doesn't have any religious items in it all and the only clue she'd have had was the rather inobvious cross around my neck as to my faith. Oh yeah, and I talk about that sort of thing frequently.) She noticed my little broom I keep on my desk around Halloween that says "The Witch is In" (The other said says the Witch is Out) and commented that she'd like to find one, and that's what brought it up. I told her I bought it several years ago at Wal- Mart and after only a few days decided it had to come to work with me. She tells me her supervisor at work is "uber christian" and had told her that she couldn't wear her pentacle at work because it was create a hostile work environment. Now, she isn't taking it lying down, she told the woman that if she had to take hers off, all the little crosses need to come off their necks too. I told her she could probably have a little fun with a fake voodoo doll sitting on her desk and just not saying anything about it...

It has occurred to me since then and I want to know: How does her being an insecure bully make her an uber Christian? On what planet is being so insecure that everyone around you has to conform or pretend to conform to your beliefs or else considered a Christian value? A Christ-like quality? Did I miss the part in the gospels where Yeshua bitch slapped the Pharisees and kicked Samaritan bitch in the jaw for being mouthy? What about the part where he laughed at the people who didn't think like he does and told them they couldn't talk about it in front of him? Or when he boycotted the market because they didn't tell him Happy Hanukkah?

It's pretty sad that people who act like they have a stick up their behind have become the public face of my religion to people who don't practice it. Pretty sad indeed.