2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10 (first published 9 July 2006)
Lately there has been a rash of books relating characters from modern pop culture--literature, television, and film--to the biblical message. Probably the first, many years ago, was The Gospel According to Peanuts. More recently there have been The Gospel According to Tolkien, The Gospel According to the Simpsons, The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss, and The Gospel According to Harry Potter. Maybe the most surprising title I've seen is The Gospel According to Tony Soprano. My initial reaction upon hearing of the book was, "What in the world can Tony Soprano teach people about the gospel?" That was before I had seen any episodes of The Sopranos. A friend of mine suggested that I try looking at a few and see what I thought, so I did. I still haven't seen that many episodes, but I do think there's something in the character of Tony Soprano that might be of relevance to a modern person trying to make sense out of life. Tony Soprano is a flawed man, to say the least. He is not faithful to a single woman. Sometimes he kills his enemies. He loves his family, but he's often an absent father. When he spends time with his family, he frequently misunderstands them. His closest friends are other guys, who are not members of his immediate family. He's been in the same business from the time he was a very young man, and sometimes it seems like he wishes he weren't in it, though at other times he clearly enjoys it immensely. Tony Soprano is a flawed individual, to be sure, but he longs to be a good family man (I'm talking about his immediate family, not la famiglia). More than that, I think he wants to be a good man, period. However, a combination of his background, circumstances, and personality conspire against him, making it hard for him to fulfill his inner longing for redemption. In many ways, the biblical character that most reminds me of Tony Soprano is King David. After the previous mob boss--I mean king--is rubbed out, the people come to David seeking a new leader. David has already had an important leadership role under Saul as Capo, and later he had led his own crew, independent of Saul. When he becomes the new boss, he immediately establishes his authority by taking over the biggest city in the region, Jerusalem. Like Tony Soprano, David has many different women, is often violent, has a dysfunctional family, and often seems to prefer the company of other men to his immediate family. Also like Tony, David is a natural leader. Other people respect him, because they see in him a person who has the potential to accomplish great things. Perhaps the primary difference between David and Tony Soprano is that David has a relationship with God that is important to him, whereas Tony doesn't seem to see much need for God, other than an occasional superficial gesture. Even with his commitment to God, David is a deeply flawed individual, but maybe that's what makes him so great. And maybe that's why people today continue to gain inspiration from the story of David. David was a great king in many ways, but he had trouble with his own family. He sinned against God more than once, but he was always willing to ask God for forgiveness. Like David, and Tony Soprano, we all have our weaknesses, our secret sins, our character flaws. Will we, like David, continue to seek a relationship with God, even when we have failed? If we do, then we can be confident that God will accomplish great things through us as well.
In 1965 Harvey Cox published a remarkable book called The Secular
City. In this book he argued that Christians, far from seeing the
increased urbanization and secularization of the world as a threat,
should embrace the changes in society, customs, technology, and
settlement patterns. The world is an increasingly secular place in the
sense that science rather than supernaturalism is viewed as the
explanation for natural phenomena, and the social sciences are invoked
to explain patterns of human interaction. Some religious people decry
this development, but Cox argued that Christians should revel in both
the excitement of new ways of doing things and in the challenges to see
God at work in all areas of life, even the secular. Modern scholars
like Cox were not the first to envision God working through human ideas
and accomplishments. The humanists in the fourteenth century and beyond
similarly saw God at work through human subjects, and so did the
psalmist who wrote Psalm 48. After extolling the beauty of Jerusalem in
the earlier part of the psalm, he closes with these words: "Walk about
Zion, go all around it, count its towers, consider well its ramparts; go
through its citadels, that you may tell the next generation that this is
God, our God forever and ever. He will be our guide forever." With an
appreciation for beauty that flows from the human imagination, the
psalmist urges the hearer to join him in worshiping the creator through
the works of human beings, the pinnacle of God's creation.
Architectural masterpieces can be found throughout the world, but they
are concentrated in cities. The Eiffel Tower, the Chrysler building,
the Colosseum, the Parthenon, the Opera House, the Temple of Heaven, and
the Pyramids of Giza augment the grandeur of the cities of Paris, New
York, Rome, Athens, Sydney, Beijing, and Cairo, respectively, and they
are only a tiny fragment of the architectural wonders present throughout
the world's cities. Yes, urbanization and industrialization are often
associated with crime, overpopulation, and poverty, but when inhabitants
of the cities and their respective countries think of cities as
communities rather than merely large conglomerations of individuals or
individual families, cities can become great monuments to human
achievement, and for people of faith, locales through which God can be
our guide forever.
2 Corinthians 12:2-10 (first published 9 July 2006)
Over the years I've jammed every finger on both my hands playing either
basketball or football. I've sprained my ankles innumerable times playing
basketball, twisted my knee playing racquetball, and had several
high-speed collisions with other people--either teammates or
opponents--playing baseball or softball. I've even broken my nose, and
possibly a bone in my wrist (I never went to the doctor for that one),
playing basketball. Despite all these injuries, I still love to play when
I get the opportunity. I like sinking a long shot, dunking the ball (not
any more :-( ), and making over the head catches, but to me the purest
moment of ecstasy in sports is really getting ahold of the ball--either a
baseball or a softball--and knocking it out of the park. None of the
injuries I've ever had playing sports do anything to diminish the joy of
hitting a home run, or scoring from second on an infield single, or
sliding safe into home--even in shorts! I've had a few religious
experiences that compare with many sports moments, and the difference in
feeling between walking to first and hitting a home run is something like
the difference in feeling between hitting a home run and an experience of
religious ecstasy, except that the latter difference is greater. Paul
talks about a divine-human encounter that he had the privilege of
experiencing, and then he describes a "thorn in the flesh" that he
believes God sent to keep him from getting too overjoyed. We don't know
what the thorn in the flesh was, but we know that Paul was almost
desperate to get rid of it. Yet would Paul have traded his experience
with the divine for a permanent alleviation of whatever problem he had?
I don't think so. The setbacks we have in life may be painful--either
physically or emotionally--but they do not compare to moments of joy we
feel. In particular, our highest moments of spiritual ecstasy, whatever
they may be, make the suffering we experience in the mundane world well
worth it. Would you forego your greatest spiritual experience to avoid
your greatest personal suffering? Many people would say no, but I'm sure
that some would say yes, when the loss they've experienced seems greater
than they can bear. If you're in the latter camp, remember that God
occasionally lets us experience glimpses of the divine glory in order to
give us strength to face the challenges of life, no matter how difficult.
Sometimes our suffering seems too great to bear, but over time the sense
of loss usually diminishes. The feeling of ecstasy rarely does, and it
gives us the strength we need to carry on with the life God wants us to
lead.
Mark 6:1-13 (first published 9 July 2006)
Probably the biggest complaint that some people have about The Da Vinci Code is that is presents Jesus as an ordinary human being--well, perhaps as an extraordinary human being--capable of falling love and having a family like everyone else. The tendency to balk at such thinking is nothing new. In fact, it is possible that verse 3 in today's Gospel reading suffered from textual corruption at an early date in order to avoid a similar connotation, albeit at the beginning rather than near the end of Jesus' life. Where the traditional text reads, "Isn't this the carpenter, the son of Mary?" several important witnesses to the text, including some of the most ancient, say, "Isn't this the son of the carpenter and Mary?" If this reading were original to Mark, what would it mean? Remember that Mark says nothing about the Virgin Birth, or about any kind of supernatural birth attributed to Jesus. It's certainly possible to read the second variant as nothing more than a statement about what the people of Jesus' day thought about his origins; they assumed he was the son of Joseph and Mary. However, it is likely that some people believed the second variant to be a threat, so they changed it to match more exactly with their theology. What is it about Jesus' human nature than makes so many people feel threatened? Early theologians said that unless Jesus were wholly divine he could not effect salvation for the human race, but who says what God could or couldn't do? In a more mundane way, Jesus' humanity may be threatening to people who use Jesus' divinity as an excuse not to try too hard to imitate him. A wholly divine Jesus is someone to worship, not to emulate. Sometimes we tend to associate humanity with weakness, and that's certainly fair. We humans need to eat and sleep, we get sick, we go to the bathroom, we get bored, and we get mad. If Jesus were human, then he did all these things as well. Falling in love is another human trait, but did it apply to Jesus? Clearly there is no evidence, either from the New Testament or from early church tradition, that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene or anyone else, but from a purely hypothetical perspective, could the human Jesus have fallen in love, regardless of whether he acted on it? If he did, would that negate his divinity? Despite the church's longstanding claim that Jesus is both fully divine and fully human, historically the church has emphasized Jesus' divinity at the expense of his humanity. It is time to reclaim Jesus' humanity, for a purely divine example of living is no example at all for ordinary human beings.