Resurrection or Resuscitation?

I love my Pastor.  Father Frank is seventy-one, in Mississippi with his Irish brogue accent, plays racket ball and gives a great homily.  Recently the Gospel was Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life.  It is the season of Lent and we turn to Jesus performing one of his greatest miracles.

I have always thought of it as a “minor” resurrection.  A foreshadow of Christ’s “major” resurrection, that is until I heard Father Frank’s homily.  He started by noting how numerous the accounts are of people who have died and come back to life.  In fact, if you haven’t read 90 Minutes in Heaven, it is on this exact topic and is a fabulous read.  People see different things, some a light, some loved ones, some see heaven itself.  They all however, feel the same thing: content, happy, fulfilled and complete.  They don’t want to go back.  Afterwards, they all also say they no longer fear death.  There in lies the key, they all will experience death again.

So, too would Lazarus.  While Lazarus was dead for four days when Christ opened the tomb and yelled, “Lazarus, come out!”(John 11: 43 NAB) and most others who have had these experiences have only moments, they all will come to a day when they will take their last breath in this life.  While we don’t have the account of Lazarus’ death in the bible, we know it happened.  Father Frank pointed out that having to meet death again makes Lazarus’ miracle completely different from what Jesus did Easter Sunday.  Lazarus was a “major” resuscitation, not a “minor” resurrection.

Jesus came in his eternal, glorified body:  Perfect, holy, and beyond death.  He came free from any tendrils that death might try to ensnare him with again.  We, through Christ, hope in our own day of resurrection.  The amazing thing is that during our time on this Earth, we can participate in our own resuscitations and even help resuscitate others.  As Lazarus comes out of the tomb, he is “tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth.  So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.” (John 11: 44 NAB)

These are the moments I love.  The moments where Christ asks those around him to share in his miracle.  Come help resuscitate this man.  If it hadn’t been for Father Frank, I would have missed it.  If those around Lazarus hadn’t unbound him from his burial garments he would have suffocated within minutes.  Father asked a great series of questions.  If Christ asks us to help in freeing those who are bound,  then who in your life can you free?  Who can you give the amazing gift of resuscitation?  Who can you forgive?  Love?  Comfort?  Count a debt paid in full?  Father Frank went on to ask what has its tendrils wrapped around you trying to suffocate you?  From what do you need to be freed?

This Easter he asked the congregation to spend some time in prayer on these questions, ask for Christ’s breath of life and take steps to start to breathe life into others.

Play Dates

Passing on your faith to your kids is hard.  Ultimately you have no control over how they will respond.  They too have the assurance of free will.  While I can make them eat their vegetables, mind their manners and brush their teeth, I can not make them believe.

They start off very much like the townspeople of Sychar in Samaria.  After Jesus talks with the woman at the well, she leaves her water jar and goes into the town and tells the people, “Come see a man who told me everything I have done.  Could he possibly be the Messiah?” (John 4: 29 NAB)  First, I love her fearlessness.  John tells us that she goes out to draw water from Jacob’s well at noon.  The hottest point of the day when she is the least likely to come into contact with anyone.  She is an outcast among outcasts.  Yet, after meeting Jesus she leaves in haste, forgetting her water jar, and seeks out the very people she was desperately trying to avoid just moments ago.  Maybe out of sheer curiosity the next line in John 4 is, “They went out of town and came to him.” and further we are told, “Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified.”

Most of us avoid talks of faith, we don’t blog about it or discuss it with friends.  We avoid it along with politics and money.  In fact, most of us would rather share intimate stories about our love life, exposing our own soap operas before we would share our faith.  However, when you become a parent you become a reluctant teacher of faith.  What you teach is up to you, but through what you say and don’t say, do and don’t do, you preach to your kids.  For those who try to introduce their children to Christ, we start with the same message to our kids as the Samaritan woman, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have done.”  We are often filled with a sense of urgency to set our children’s feet on the path of faith.

It is the second part of this story that is the critical part, if our children are to fashion and put on their own armor of God.  Jesus is invited to stay with the people of Sychar for two days.  After spending time with Jesus themselves, they say to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.” (John 4: 42 NAB)  As parents we need to set up play-dates with Christ.  A child may start believing on the word of their parents but it is not enough to sustain that faith.  I have found the best play dates are not necessarily in church.  They happen through the corporal works of mercy.

We had stopped at our local Piggly Wiggly.  We were coming down the aisle.  I had one son in the seat of the cart and the two older sons following behind like ducks.  There, in front of the deli counter, was a display of  crackers.  An older woman who was not very mobile misjudged her cart and knocked the entire display over.  Everyone turned to see the cause of the crash.  My oldest son looked at me and asked, “Can I help her?”  Then my middle son, “Me, too?”  My youngest, not to be left out of anything, went to climb out of my cart while saying, “I can help, too.”  Now, I was trying for a quick trip to get back and start dinner but, it was time for a play-date.  ”Yes, go ahead,” was my reply.  I saw the woman’s demeanor change.  She started embarrassed, but as my three sons approached and started to help without any words, she smiled.  The lady thanked them and when they came back to me my oldest commented, “Mom, see we’re learning.  We can help.”

All three had big grins.  No, there wasn’t a big theological discussion.  The quiet words spoken in their hearts in that act and through the eyes and smile of the nameless woman spoke louder and deeper than anything I might add.  I did however, think of that verse, “We have heard for ourselves….”  I just thought, ‘Yes, I think you are.  Thank you God for that play date.”

One in the Crowd

Being one in a crowd isn’t always a bad thing.  First, there is safety in numbers.  As a female you learn early from all the safety experts to avoid being alone.  Second, being in a crowd can mean you are sharing something with those around you. Perhaps it is a concert, your child’s school event, or a Mass on a holy day when we all stand shoulder to shoulder.  It can be comforting to know there is a large number of people in your “same boat” or on your side.  Especially if you are in a place of struggle, being in a group with individuals who share your struggle can help ease your burden.  It can be an example of how misery loves company.

In the gospel of  Mark, in the second chapter Jesus has drawn a crowd to a home in Capernaum.  This is probably the house of Simon and Andrew.  The people get word that Jesus is in town and it says, “Many gathered together so that there was no longer room for them, not even around the door.” (Mark 2: 2)  The rest of the account is familiar.  A group of people come as well, four of them carrying a paralyzed man.  When they can’t get up close to Jesus, they decide to climb up to the roof of the home, dig a hole and lower the paralyzed man down to Jesus.  Their faith brings the man forgiveness of his sins and then healing of his body.

In the past I had asked myself if I was the sort of friend who would climb a house for someone so they could receive a blessing.  Or I asked if I, myself, had friends who would carry my weight and exert themselves in an effort to help me.  Would  I persevere through obstacles like the crowd, or see them and give up?  This time I was slapped in the face with a new question.

Was I a person in the crowd?  Had I come early, staked out my spot with my eyes forward listening to a message of self giving love, only to fail to practice that sort of love to one in the crowd?  I wonder if those four carrying the man were saying, “Excuse me.”  Even still, would no one in the crowd turn to notice those around them?  Did no one stop and recognize someone in need, give up their spot and move out of the way?  Had I ever been so focused on what was in front of me that I was blinded to what I should be doing with all that surrounds me?

Yes, I have been a member in the crowd.  A person whose look screams, “Wait your own turn!”  I am certain I have failed to make the path a little easier for someone else out of a self-interest to keep my own path clear.  How many missed opportunities have I let go completely unnoticed?  Did the crowd’s inaction frustrate Jesus?  I often pray to be kept from causing harm to my children.  Not is a physical sense but, to make certain that my words and actions never cause them hurt.  I don’t believe I have ever prayed to be kept from being an obstacle to someone who is trying to approach Jesus.  In a sort of arrogance I have never really thought it was likely.  Now, I know it is a certainty.  Thank God for those who have helped others to go around me or over me.   In the future may God bring a mighty wind and blow me over to keep me from ever being an obstacle again.  Better yet, may I gain some upper body strength so that I might be prepared to offer a hand and help the one step closer to Christ.

Raise Your Ebenezer

I love the hymn Come Thy Font of Every Blessing.  I have listened to the Chris Rice version a lot this holiday season.  I can sing out the words, slightly off-key, with abandon but, there was a line that has always caused a ping in my heart.  In the second verse it says, “Here I raise my Ebenezer, Here by Thy great help I’ve come.” By context, I always figured an Ebenezer to be some sort of banner or standard.  Of course, every time I sing it, I see an image of Ebenezer Scrooge in a night shirt and cap.  So, I went in search of Ebenezer.  I landed in the book of Samuel.

I like Samuel a lot.  I love that his mother, Hannah, kept her word without trying to get out of it and brought Samuel to the temple to serve God.  I love that she prayed, “The LORD has fill my heart with joy; how happy I am because of what he has done!  I laugh at my enemies; how joyful I am because God has helped me!” (1 SAM 2: 1), as she said goodbye to her son.  I think in the short time Hannah had Samuel she taught thankfulness. I love that when Samuel heard God’s voice late at night, thinking at first it was his mentor’s voice, he runs to Eli and says, “Here I am.”  He doesn’t say from bed, “What do you want? I’m sleeping.”  He doesn’t grumble under his breath about a mentor who is waking him in the middle of the night.  He runs. Then, after Eli realizes that God is calling Samuel, he tells Samuel to wait and how to respond if God calls again.  What does Samuel do?  He listens and follows the advice of his mentor.  God does call again and Samuel answered with the words his mentor gave him, “Speak; your servant is listening.”

Then we come to Ebenezer.  The Philistines know the Israelites are gathered together with Samuel in a place named Mizpah.  A perfect time to ambush.  Samuel, perhaps heeding the lesson of his mother, prays for help.  God answers and “thundered against them (the Philistines).”  They became completely confused and fled in panic. (1 SAM 7: 9-10)  ”Then Samuel took a stone, set it up between Mizpah and Shen, and said, “The LORD has helped us all the way—and he named it “Stone of Help” (1 SAM 7:12)  What name means “Stone of Help” ?  That’s right, Ebenezer.

Ebenezer is a monument to the faithfulness of a God who helps.  A God who tells us if you have the faith of a mustard seed you can say to a mountain, “MOVE” and it will move.  A God who will thunder from heaven for you. Samuel knows that we tend to have a very short memory span.  Setting a monument named “Stone of Help”  for generations to see will lead them to ask, “What is the story behind the stone?”  It will bring the memory front and center.

It is said that Dickens got the inspiration for Ebenezer Scrooge from the grave marker of a man named Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie.  It read a “meal man”. Apparently, Ebenezer was a corn merchant, but due to fading, Dickens reads it as “mean man”.  Dickens reportedly wrote in his diary that it must have “shriveled” the soul of this man to carry “such a terrible thing to eternity.” While the corn merchant was the beginning, I wonder if there is more.

What a perfect contradiction in the name Ebenezer Scrooge.  The first part calling to mind a God who helps you and the last name speaking of a miserly misanthrope who helps no one.  I even see a shadow of Samuel in the Dickens’ story.  In A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer gets a warning from the ghost of Bob Marley.  In the story of God’s people, Samuel brings a message from the grave of foreboding to King Saul.  Now Saul does not have a conversion of heart like Ebenezer but, the people of Israel do.  I see, in the character of Ebenezer a bit of truer wisdom.  Ebebezer says yes to the spirits and goes along with them on a journey.  He repents at the end and asks for help.

“Spirit!” he cried, tight clutching at his robe.  ”Hear me!  I am not the man I was.  I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse.  Why show me this, if I am past all hope!” …..”Good Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it:  ”Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me.  Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me by an altered life?”  The kind hand trembled.  ”I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.  I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.  The Spirits of all three shall strive within me.  I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.  Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!”….Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom’s hood and dress.  It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindles down into a bedpost.”  ~A Christmas Carol

So Ebenezer Scrooge gets his own “Stone of Help” in the form of a stone grave marker.  He is given help even before he asks for it but, is smart enough to say yes when help comes.  I will never sing the words of that hymn the same way again and now I can do what  1 Corinthians instructs , “I will sing with my spirit, but I will sing also with my mind.”  Hopefully, I also learned from Samuel and Dickens to set up my own Ebenezer along the way that I may remember, “My help comes from the Lord.” (Psalm 121).  May we each recognize our moments of help, erect our own Ebenezer and help mark the path for others.

Why Should I Help?

I asked my eldest son to help his middle brother with something.  I don’t remember what anymore.  I do remember his response.  ”Why should I help Ryan?  When was the last time Heeeee helped me?”  Can you hear the eight year old emphasis in his voice on the word he?  Do you hear shadows of your own thoughts behind his question?  At first I wanted to go down the road marked, “YOU DON’T TALK TO YOUR MOTHER THAT WAY.”  or sometimes marked, “YOU BETTER GET THE UGLY OUT OF YOUR VOICE AND TRY AGAIN.”  If you have children, you know it is a road they try to travel down all the time and unfortunately too many adults end up living there permanently.

What I heard was a modern take on one of the very first questions recorded in the bible.  I think perhaps God recorded it because for as long as we are in this world it will bubble up to the surface in each of us.  ”Am I my brother’s keeper?” Gen 4: 9 (NAB) The first thing that strikes me about that question is the reversal of God’s name in it.  Am I.  A clue I think to the state of the heart when we ask it.  Next is that word keeper.  In Hebrew it has a lengthy definition:  to guard, observe, give heed, preserve, protect, celebrate and my favorite, to treasure up in memory.

Notice what is missing from that definition:  To rule over, to dictate, to judge over.  I think the rub of this question is in misunderstanding what it is to be a keeper and to be open to being kept.  We rush to images of leashes and cages, and rules and regulations.  We either don’t want the burden of enforcement or the consequence of them being enforced upon us.  This is a false worry.  Keeping is not enforcing or allowing yourself to be kept.  It is not imprisonment.

So what is the role of keeper?  How does the verb  ”to keep” act and move in the world.  Jesus gives us the answer in the New Testament.  While the question is only recorded once in the bible.  The answer is given to us at least 11 different times.  Jesus is asked which of the commandments is greatest.  His response in Matt 22: 37-38 (NAB) “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest commandment.  The second is like it:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Notice Jesus moved the marker on the field.  Cain was at brother and keeper.  Jesus transforms it to neighbor and love.  He tells us a neighbor is anybody we come into contact with, even those we may consider enemies.  The love he refers to in the word agapao goes well beyond guarding and preserving.  This is a self-sacrificing, an aiding, a self-giving, an unconditional love and all done with a glad spirit.  This marker is so much more it makes many of us ask, “Can we go back to being keepers?”

The marvelous thing about this kind of love is that it does more for the giver than for the receiver.  It is a love that is contagious.  Once you have felt it, you want others to feel it.  Once you are a part in helping others feel it, well, you are hooked.  I believe this is one way we recognize it.  We have all felt it.  We have worked really hard, sacrificed much, given all to see the gift of love received and the joy in the eyes of the receiver.   We have given life to agapao.

So, to my son I reverted to the Veggie Tale movie on St. Nicholas that we watched several times this pass Christmas.  ”Kevin, do you remember St. Nicholas asking why the nun was feeding the poor?”  ”Yes,” came a soft reply without any ugly tone.  ”What was the answer ?”  ”I can love because God loves me..” He started to sing.  It is a song we sang a lot last Christmas.  ”You help because you can, because you know that each time you choose to help you are taking the opportunity God has given you, no one else, to be his helper.  It is his invitation to you to be his helper.  Now go help your brother.”

What about the Dinosaurs?

It seems my minivan has become the favorite venue for my eldest son to pose theological questions.  Maybe it’s the hum of the engine or the Message radio station I usually have playing that gets his synapses firing.  His latest question is one that we have all asked ourselves before.  Some of us let it become a nail in the coffin as we slowly bury our faith over time.  ”What about the dinosaurs, Mom?”  This came out of no where so my first response was a quick retort,  ”What about them, Kevin?”  He went on, “Well, how do they fit in creation?  They aren’t mentioned in the bible, are they?  Did humans live the same time as them?  Why did God make them and then why would they die?”

I know there are some christian traditions that take a strict adherence to the literal text of the bible.  The Catholic tradition allows for the use of literary forms and figurative language.  The two accounts in Genesis are a great example of this.  A simple reading of the Creation account in Genesis does seem worrisome.  How do you reconcile six days with physics’ assertion that the universe is roughly 12 to 14 billion years old and the earth is 4.5 billion years old?  The math doesn’t add up and we know the saying “numbers never lie.”  In Genesis the Hebrew word yom is used for day.  This word is used in several other places and is translated in different ways.  When looking this word up you find it can mean a 24 hour period or a figurative space of time.  One clue that yom in the Creation account doesn’t mean 24hrs is the fact that the sun wasn’t created for our galaxy until Day 4.  You also have the language “evening came and morning followed” after each creation day.  Again, there is no sun until the fourth day.  This points to this language also being figurative.  It is used to denote the beginning and ending of a creative period not the rising and setting of the sun.

Many scholars point out that the Creation account is really divided into two halves.  The first three days God brings the building blocks of our material world into existence and brings order and form to the universe and to our planet.  He makes the sky, the sea and the land.  In the final three days of Creation, God adorns his order.  He gives the sky its stars and moon and the waters its fish and sea creatures.  He then gives the land its animals and finally makes humans to be stewards of it all and to be in relationship with him.  The closing curtain is a pronouncement of the Earths’ and of humans’ inherent goodness.

Figurative language is used again when we read,”he (God) rested on the seventh day.”  Yet, we know from other scripture that God doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t get weary.   He is omnipresent and omnipotent.  God puts himself  at rest or abstained from work to give us an example.  We are creative beings too, but we are not omnipresent or omnipotent.  We need to rest.  The meaning of God resting is deeper than just giving us a good example to follow.  In Exodus 31: 17 the author recounts creation and uses the word naphash.  This word is the root of the Hebrew word for soul (nephesh).  By breathing freshness on this day and “ensouling” it, God set it apart and sanctified it.  To read this passage in a literal fashion strips it of its meaning.

Science and Genesis are not at odds.  There is a great book The Science of God by Dr. Gerald Schroeder that is an excellent read on just that topic.  Some will ask “Why didn’t God just say “In the first billion years…..”  I don’t know the answer.  I do know that ancient people didn’t have calculators and I would imagine Moses’ first question back to God would have been, “What’s a billion?”  Maybe this is why God doesn’t give Abraham an exact number of his descendants but uses the figurative language of grains of sands to count them.

I told my son that Genesis never says dinosaurs didn’t exist.  I explained that the six days was a framework God used to explain a very complex subject in a way people could easily understand.  Just like Jesus used the imagery of seed, wheat and chaff  and treasure to teach concepts.  God giving us his account of Creation isn’t about us knowing the exact number of days.  He isn’t giving us a science lesson.  It is about showing us that he is Elhoim (God the Creator) and El Shadai (God Almighty).  It is also showing us how much he loves us through the time and care he took in creating us.  Finally, it is God telling us we are at our core good.  We may be fallen and imperfect but that has not overcome the goodness in our fashioning.  We all know the expression,  ”Don’t miss the forest for the trees.”    Well, “Don’t miss the goodness and the love for the Dinos.”

A Forever Attitude

“Mom, can I have your iPod?”, my seven-year old asks.  Then, “Mom, can I get the iPad 2?”  This is normally followed up by,”What about the 3D Nintendo DS?”, “We really want a puppy.  Can we get one?” and “Do you think Santa would bring me an iPod Touch?”  Each day I am bombarded with a litany of I want, will you buy and can I have questions.  My children are pretty well stocked with most of the “in” toys and gadgets that boys want.  They have very generous grandparents and aunts and uncles.  When you are peppered with the I wants all the time you start to wonder if you are failing to instill thankfulness for the plenty they have and just letting greed or indulgence take root.  Is there a way to let your kids have without raising spoiled unthankful adults?  Are you failing as a teacher when your children’s first question to their grandparents is, “Did you bring us anything?”

We were at the Winn Dixie when I came under a new assault of the I wants.  I turned to face the three of them and gave a big,”SHHHHHHHH!”  I told them, “You need to stop and take a breath.  Just because you see or hear about something and the thought pops in your heart that you want it doesn’t mean you should ask for it.  The things that you are asking for are expensive and you have to earn them.  You need to show me and Dad that you are responsible for your things and for yourself by making sure your playroom is kept neat, by cleaning up after yourselves without being reminded, by using your manners at home and outside and by taking the time to sort through everything you want and picking ONE thing and working to earn it.  Until I see a change in your attitude there won’t be any iPods, or puppies or whatever else may pop up in your hearts.  You need to earn and fill up the trust bank and every time we hear the I wants it is going to take you longer.”  My little speech kept them quiet so I could get my groceries and get home.

The next day my middle child came down the stairs into the kitchen to tell me he had helped his little brother with something without me having to ask.  ”See mom, I am changing my attitude,” he stated proudly.  ”Ryan, it is a good start.  But, it needs to last.  You need to make it a forever attitude,” I replied.  It is terrible as a parent when you hear yourself say things and then become filled with an immediate sense of hypocrisy.  You feel like Pinocchio and want to make sure your nose hasn’t grown.  I know it is the Holy Spirit giving me a little taste of my own medicine.  It makes me ask myself what is the attitude God wants of me?  How am I doing?  How often do I get a case of the I wants in front of him?  How much have I deposited in the bank of Trust and Faith?

“This is the day the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psa 118:24 NAB)  ”Above all, let your love for one another be intense, because love covers a multitude of sin.  Be hospitable to one another without complaining.  As each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as stewards of God’s varied grace.” (1Pe 4: 8-10 NAB) “Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant.” (Mat 20: 26 NAB)  These are just three looks at the attitude Christ is looking to foster in us.  There have been times, I call them mountaintop moments,  when I have felt embraced by God.  When the grace given to me has been overwhelming.  When perhaps I have grown enough in my trust for God to give me a clearer look at his perspective.  We can’t live on the mountaintop, however.  The view is spectacular but life happens in the valley.  I think the special grace of the mountaintop moments are given to seed our own forever attitude of service.  They are given so we can descend to the valley to love and strengthen the life found there.

It got me to pray.  Lord, foster in me a forever attitude.  Replace the worldly I wants with mountaintop grace.  Give me the perseverance to rejoice in each day, to serve each day and to love each day.  Keep complaints from my lips, out of my thoughts and off my heart.  I ask these thing in your name.  Amen.