Tag: Sin

Acts 10:17-33 Capable of believing anything

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

As I said yesterday, Peter is able to go and visit Cornelius the Centurion because he’s willing to give up the purity that allows him to enter the temple. His understanding of God has moved beyond the controlled structure of temple worship. It’s also moved beyond any understanding of the divine that the Roman empire has, and it’s for this reason that the early Christians were often accused of being atheists. Something dangerous is going on here. G.K. Chesterton once wrote that “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” The priests of the temple and the Roman authorities have good reason to suspect the kind of free thinking that Peter is showing himself capable of. It’s part of our human nature to take things too far, and there have been many false prophets and cult leaders who try to replace a belief in the old religious dispensation with nothing other than a belief in themselves and themselves alone. The ego desires to make a god of itself, and dangerous people have arisen throughout history, and are present now, who are happy to let others worship their egos.

Peter is not one of these people, and he refuses to let Cornelius and his household treat him as one of these people. We’ve just seen that he can do many of the things that Jesus did. He can heal the sick and raise the dead. Yet he doesn’t fall into the trap of thinking that this means that he is Jesus. Miracles can be wonderful, especially if they heal people. But miracles are not what this new religion, this nascent Christianity, is all about. Later, many of the mystics and saints of the Christian tradition will express some wariness about miracles. Miracles, they’ll say, are all well and good, but if you take them too seriously, and begin to think that you’re special just because you can perform them, you are essentially opening yourself up to evil. You are allowing that egoic self to feast on its own sense of importance, and doing more harm to your life with God than can be compensated for by any miracle. Anything that makes you forget your own powerlessness and reject grace is not worth thinking too much about.

Peter’s rejection of Cornelius’ worship points to what this new religion is all about – seeking union with the divine. Or, to put it in a way that doesn’t make it seem like we have much power to accomplish this, it’s about getting our egos out of the way so that divine love can reach out to us and embrace us. We can’t really do this on our own. Like Peter, the Holy Spirit will snap us up, lead and guide us, take us to unusual places, cause us to accept strange friendships, and heal us, but it won’t be because of our merits, and it certainly won’t be because we’re worthy of any kind of worship.

 

Luke 7:1-35 Faith and Repentance

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

The centurion is a man of faith.  He is able to trust, and trust blindly.  He hasn’t even met Jesus, but he trusts that this new figure, this new healer and preacher, can help his beloved servant.  And he trusts in his own actions, that they will get results, even though he describes himself as not worthy. None of us are ever worthy when we set out to act on behalf of others, but the essence of faith is to act and trust without needing to rely on a sense of our own perfection, or even of our own readiness.

It’s no accident that Luke brings John the Baptist back into the story at this point.  John’s whole mission was to preach repentance from sin, and to baptize those who repented.  The Greek word for sin that’s used in the Gospels is hamartia, which was used in the theater to describe a hero’s tragic flaw.  It could also be literally translated as “missing the mark.” By using this word, the writers of the New Testament were saying two things: all of us have tragic flaws and are, like the centurion, unworthy; and, because of that flaw, when we try to do good, we will miss the mark (as Paul put it, “I find it to be a truth that when I try to do good, evil lies close behind).  John offered baptism to people who had missed the mark and become aware of their own inherent flaws. But his baptism was one of repentance, which meant that those he baptized weren’t supposed to sit in a zero gravity, antiseptic state of inaction. They were supposed to take aim and try again.

John reveals the basic spiritual action – try, fail, repent, and try again.  Jesus reveals the content of our attempts, the things that we should be trying for.  “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard,” he says to John’s disciples. “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them.”  These are the things we should be attempting: seeing the world as it really is; trying to heal the world; returning people to our communities; hearing the truth in compassion and love; continuing along the path of our own deaths and resurrections; and being in active relationship with poor people.  

We can’t do it without repentance.  To add another Greek word into the mix, repentance is our translation of metanoia, which means “be of a higher mind.”  To repent, we must move beyond our small, personal concerns, hopes, and worries, and try to see the entire world through the eyes of God.  The Gospels assert that God cares for every hair on our heads, every flower of the field, every sparrow that flies and falls. If we were to look through God’s eyes, we would be as compassionately engaged with everything as God is, and we could treat nothing lightly (although we could, and should, treat it joyously).  

Faith is the trust that we can do the things that Jesus tells us to, and even see through the eyes of God, even if we’re unworthy.  It’s the hope that leads us to attempt an imitation of Jesus’s healing and teaching, because we see the fragility and beauty of everything.  Such faith is, as Jesus points out, going to be derided and misunderstood. And we will fail many, many times as we try to live it out. But as we repent, and try again, our conversion will continue, and our tragic flaws, which may never leave us, will slowly be redeemed.

Luke 1:57-80 Joy, Community, and Wilderness

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

When Elizabeth gives birth to John, her neighbors and relatives gather around in joy.  This is the second gang of people we’ve seen in Luke’s Gospel, the first being the crowd at the temple who gathered around Zechariah after he emerged from his encounter with an angel.  I think it’s fair to say that they were a random assembly, not a true community. It’s the true community that comes together after John’s birth, and the true community that responds to his birth with rejoicing.

Anyone who’s lived in a community knows that communities are complex, as full of willful hurting as they are of spontaneous rejoicing.  But with this first real community in Luke, we’re shown what they should be like when they’re authentic. The communities that Luke will portray throughout his two books are often a little awkward, confused, and stumbling.  Sometimes they’re downright funny. And this first community of Elizabeth and Zechariah’s relatives has all of those qualities. They think of themselves as the keepers of tradition, maybe even without realizing it. Of course the boy should be named after his father!  That’s how it’s done. And Zechariah, if he could speak, would say the same. I find it hard not to imagine Elizabeth’s frustration with this, and the frustration of any woman reading this story and remembering those times when what she’s said has been ignored or discounted.  This community of loved ones is stumbling through its joyfulness, getting things wrong. They don’t know that they’re dealing with the Holy Spirit, and that things are about to get weird.

No wonder they’re fearful after Zechariah writes John’s name on a slate, and then begins to prophecy.  It’s obvious that during his nine months of silence, he’s been pondering some things. The Holy Spirit directs his words, and what comes out of his mouth is so rich and profound that it’s become a canticle of the church, said or sung during Morning Prayer or Lauds.  The most surprising thing about Zechariah’s prophecy is that it’s not about things that will come true, but about something that already has come true.  God has already redeemed the people of Israel, has already made good on the divine promise that was given to them.  Zechariah is speaking about Jesus, of course, but Jesus hasn’t even been born yet. It’s as if the very promise of Jesus, the very possibility that God would become human and show us how to approach divinity through our lives and actions, is enough.  And this promise is already working in us. Because of it, we will be able to serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness all of our days. Because of this promise, our sins are forgiven, and we will know how to walk in the way of peace.

Imagine being part of the community that first heard those words.  Some of what Zechariah’s saying makes sense, you might say to yourself.  We are descended from Abraham, and we have been waiting for certain promises to be redeemed for quite awhile.  And we get that John is going to be a nazirite, like Samuel was, and live in the wilderness and never cut his hair.  It’s a little old-fashioned, but we remember when people used to do that. But what about this new thing, this mighty savior that he’s talking about?  Who is this person? Where will we find him? What will he be like? And why are Elizabeth and Zechariah packing their bags and moving to the wilderness with their baby?

That last question is the most immediately important one to Luke’s narrative.  This portion of his Gospel, that starts with a community coming together to rejoice, ends with Zechariah and Elizabeth choosing isolation from community.  And this points to one of the things that Luke wants to say about community in general. Community is a good and important thing. But it’s not the most important thing.  Sometimes it will hurt and betray you. Sometimes you will need to leave it behind. In fact, if a new community, full of holiness and righteousness and hope is to be born, it’s necessary that the old community scatter so that bad habits will be broken, good habits regathered, and new practices ushered in.

Julian of Norwich

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

Julian of Norwich didn’t see sin, and the pain and suffering which accompany it, as a problem which could be solved theologically.  For her, sin is an existential state of ignorance, which humanity can escape from by arriving at a greater knowledge of God.  This knowledge can be obtained not only by casting one’s eyes up to the heavens, but also by looking within.  In our own souls we find a duality, Adam and Christ, both servants (270, 292).  Adam falls into the briar patch and flails around in agony, unaware that God is looking on in compassion.  Christ is forever aware of God’s inward presence, and turns away from the thorns.

The briar patch is part of creation, and Julian understands creation to be very small: “this little thing which is created seemed to me as if it could have fallen into nothing because of its littleness (183).”  Our spiritual movement cannot be towards this tiny hazelnut of created things, but towards the great expansiveness of God.  Yet God does not neglect creation because of its smallness.  In fact, God has sent us out to cultivate creation, and to return with the fruits of our labors.  When we go out as servants to do God’s bidding, we carry our duality with us.  We as Christ are sent out to gather food for our Lord, we as Adam fall into the briar patch (273-5, 279).

The agony of the briar patch deceives us into believing in its own importance.  It hinders us in our longing for God (224).  “We contemplate this and sorrow and mourn for it so that we cannot rest in the blessed contemplation of God as we ought to do (232).”  Our tendency to place sin in opposition to God creates a false dichotomy.  Sin becomes another God, an idol which we wail against and accuse.  If we turn our desire and will from this false idol, it loses all power over us (229).

Prayer begins this process of turning from sin to God, from our inner Adam to our inner Christ.  To truly pray, we must trust God, and this trust is already a movement away from the briar patch (251).  True prayer is an unveiling of our own existence in God.  “Behold and see that I have done all this before your prayer, and now you are, and you pray to me (252).”  When we pray rightly, we turn from the Adam within us to the Christ within us.  “Prayer is a witness that the soul wills as God wills, and it eases the conscience and fits man for grace (253).”

Human purpose resides not in the briar patch, but in the contemplation of God.  This is the food which we return with to our Lord.  We understand that Christ, not Adam, is our true nature.  “For God is endless supreme truth, endless supreme wisdom, endless supreme love uncreated; and a man’s soul is a creature in God which has the same properties created.  And always it does what it was created for; it sees God and it contemplates God and it loves God (256).”  This is the totality of human purpose.

Julian of Norwich.   Showings.  Colledge, Edmund and Walsh, James, trans.  Paulist Press, New Jersey, 1978.