A Lenten journey into Job...

NOTE:  This Sunday we begin a five part in-worship look at the Book of Job for Lent. I will also connect the lectionary gospel and psalm to this study.

Introduction

I have yearned to lead an informed discussion about the book of Job. It is a rich and paradoxical folktale filled with theological wisdom that some people like to reference without ever having read. There are those who claim that Job explains the mystery of suffering and others who would have you believe it can help you live a more faithful life.  There are even some preachers and teachers out there – especially on-line – who will tell you that Job helps us comprehend the seemingly inscrutable ways of the Lord. But as far as I can tell, all of these assertions are simple-minded and wrong.

First, Job does NOT try to explain why an all-loving and all-powerful God would allow and tolerate the magnitude of human suffering that has cursed creation since the beginning of time. Yes, Job and others cry out in fear and despair, “Why me, Lord?” Who among us has not? But the wisdom poetry of this text never answers that question.

Second, Job does not try to “justify” or defend the mysterious ways of the Lord in a broken and imperfect world. Other texts attempt this, trying to clarify the ways of the holy to an anxious and bewildered people, but not Job. In fact, such intellectual and theological reductionism is the farthest thing from this poet’s mind.

For Job, you see, is fundamentally a portrait of what a maturing faith looks like in the heart of suffering. Job’s anguish answers no questions and solves no dilemmas – at least in an obvious way. Instead, Job shows us what a life of faith often looks like with all its warts, cracks, beauty and failures: Job doubts, questions, challenges, rebukes, resents, bargains with, fights, fumes and eventually embraces a path of faith that honors the holy even as he wrestles with the all too real human tragedies of death, disease, money problems, loss of social esteem, betrayal, emptiness, fear and anxiety.

That is why I figured that as I prepared to embrace a Holy Lent this year, it might just be as good a time as any – and maybe even the right time – to reconsider the wisdom of Job for our lives and our times.  Over the next five weeks I hope to lead you through a critical reflection on Job that will be part Bible study, part textual analysis, part historical description and part conversation in faith. So, if you want to bring your own Bible with you to worship, that would be fun, too.

Insights

There are three broad ideas I want to share with you that I hope will set up

our study. (I’ve also prepared an outline of the texts and themes I will be covering over the next month, too so if you want to do a little home work…. you can really go to the head of the class!) But for today, let’s see where these three themes lead us:

First, Job is part of what is known as the Wisdom tradition of the Old Testament – so I want to spend a little time coming to terms with what that is all about, ok?

Second, the roots of Job go deeper than Israel – they clearly come from a folk tradition that is non-Jewish in origin – that may go back to Babylon and certainly include words not used anywhere else in the Scriptures. This has led scholars to conclude that Job was probably translated from another language at some point in time, but began in an oral tradition that goes back to the second millennium BCE. It was probably written down more or less in the form we have today 500 years later by an anonymous Jewish poet but some of the speeches from Job’s friends come from an even later date. So this was a real work in progress.

And third, the opening question shaped by the strange narrative in the first three chapters of Job in essence asks us to wrestle with the fact that human suffering is ubiquitous. Suffering does not begin in sin, it is not the consequence of divine justice nor is it the product of evil alone. Suffering is built into the fabric of life – and Job was shaped intentionally to answer the fears and confusion that often come from a more fundamentalist faith. I’ll say more about that in a few minutes, but this is a key challenge: what does faith mean and look like in a life saturated with suffering?

Those are the three themes for this morning: Wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible, the Gentile origins of Job and the challenge of faith when confronted by human suffering.  So let’s get down to it, ok?

Earlier this week, as I was reading a blog from Fr. Richard Rohr, I came across this wonderful summary of both the organization of the Old Testament and a theological interpretation of that very structure.  Quoting Walter Brueggemann, one of our nation’s finest Old Testament scholars, Rohr writes:

The Hebrew Scriptures are divided into three major sections: the Torah, the Prophets and the Wisdom books. Walter Brueggemann says, and I think it is pure genius, that these three sections represent the ordinary and healthy development of human consciousness in a sequential way. The Torah gave the Israelites the Law and a sense of their chosenness. For healthy development, any culture or family must follow this pattern of first providing structure, which develops identity, boundaries, and self-worth as beloved and special.

The second set of books involves the Jewish Prophets and they represent the birth of critical thinking. The Prophets have clearly been the most neglected part of Scripture for both Jews and Christians, because neither showed much capacity for healthy self-criticism. You can see the rise of critical thinking in young people, but it is mostly oriented toward others instead of themselves. Parents often feel their teenagers oppose them on everything! And yet it is a necessary stage, though it often doesn't go far enough… (Authentic prophetic criticism always includes the self and moves away from hubris towards humility.)

(And humility is what) the Wisdom section of the Hebrew Scriptures (is all about.) It includes the books of Job, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs and many of the Psalms. Such Wisdom literature reveals an ability to finally be patient with mystery and contradictions and the soul itself. Wisdom people have passed through a major death to their ego...

Structure and law – prophetic social and self-criticism – and paradoxical wisdom born of humility: Job comes from the latter category but always presupposes the former, ok?  The way of structure and law is heard in this morning’s Psalm: make me to know your ways, O Lord… lead me in your truth… for you lead the humble in what is right for your pathway is filled with steadfast love and faithfulness. The poet is NOT speaking of my pathway or YOUR pathway, but the Lord’s way.

+ All of us need structure, training and guidance; that is foundational. Games have rules, sports have well-defined practices and boundaries, religions and societies have essential laws and precepts.

+ Small wonder that both Proverbs 9 and Psalm 111 teach that: Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We have to start with the basics and create a structure.

But structure alone does not always create compassion or justice: for that we need the critique of the prophet.  Fr. Rohr suggests that prophets see our brokenness and our shadow sides and call them out into the light.

Prophets cry out against slavery and oppression, they challenge unfairness and injustice. They give a name to our narcissism and point out ways that we might live into faith, hope and love.

+ That is why the Lenten journey always includes the story about Jesus being forced out into the wilderness: he, too had to confront himself, his fears, his doubts and questions for 40 days and 40 nights.

+ Jesus needed to die to himself – to be fully humbled so that he could fully trust God – that’s why that story is included for us on the first Sunday in Lent.

For some reason, you see, it is only when we die to ourselves – when we own our own brokenness and are humbled enough to see and think and feel beyond the limits of our structures – that we can create alternatives. Marcus Borg, who sadly died not long ago, used to say that humility is at the core meaning of transformation:  only the humble have the ability to see and speak of an “alternative wisdom instead of the mere maintenance of social order, the status quo and conventional wisdom.” How did Jesus put it in the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the poor in spirit – blessed are the humble and meek – blessed are the pure in heart – for they shall become the comforted ones of God’s kingdom?

+ Are you still with me?  Job comes out of the Wisdom tradition – that collection of insights born of structure and prophetic self-criticism that gives rise to creative alternative insights.

+ And at the core of the Hebrew Wisdom tradition is a comfort with knowing that we can’t know everything.  It is embodied humility. The ability to trust without always seeing, to laugh at ourselves and know that there is always more light to be shared by God’s grace than we can know or even imagine.

In a word, the Wisdom tradition is comfortable with mystery. Think of Jesus in the garden before his Passion: what does he pray? Not MY will, Father, but THY will be done, right? St. Paul once said to the church in Corinth that was getting too big for its britches – treating some people as second class members – now some of you have become puffed up and full of yourselves… but, the Lord, willing, we’ll find out what you are really made of and put that arrogance to death.  A more tender statement can be found in Psalm 131:  O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things too haughty or marvelous for me.

Rather, I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child at her mother’s breast… hope in the Lord from this time and for ever more. The wisdom of Job is all about humility and trust. 

And that humility and trust is a fascinating development in the maturation of the Job cycle. In its original non-Jewish form, this folktale concluded with Job being rewarded for his faithfulness. If you already know the story, there are two very clear endings:

+ One takes place after the Lord rants at Job for five chapters because Job has presumed to comprehend the mystery of the Creator of Creation. God will have none of it and explodes with righteous indignation.

+ The other ending occurs in the final 17 verses of the book wherein God restores everything that had once been taken away from Job so that the epilogue winds up sounding like a fairy tale where everyone lives happily ever after. The scholar and author, Elie Wiesel, says in his commentary about Job that he doesn’t trust this epilogue at all; not only does it rings false to reality, it certainly rings false to the experience of Jews in history.

So what we have here is biblical and theological interpretation in action. 

Writer and poet, Stephen Mitchell, reminds us that one of the paradoxes of this great Jewish story is that “the hero is a Gentile… and the author of this story is as well.” He comes from the land of Uz – probably Edom to the south of Israel but maybe to the north in what might be modern day Syria – we don’t really know.  We just know that he isn’t a Jew – but Jewish poets and theologians played with the story and changed its original purpose to a more nuanced conclusion..

You see, the hero in the Jewish version of Job DOESN’T win. He remains a victim – because that’s how real life often works out. Further, his piety is NOT rewarded. Contrary to some earlier Jewish theology – notably Deuteronomy – that can point towards a type of Hebrew karma where good people are rewarded and bad guys reap what they sow; here, the good and blameless servant, Job, gets the shaft. Talk about a paradigm shift: not only does Job’s name literally mean either HOSTILE or PENITENT, talk about paradox; but as the story unfolds the blameless one becomes NOT whole, NOT upright and maybe NOT even blameless.

Scholars tend to think that in the time after the destruction of the first Temple, during that period when Israel was returning to a devastated Jerusalem and some priests were reconstructing a theology of order and clear structures – think in the beginning God created the world… and on the seventh day (the Sabbath) rested – others in the wisdom tradition were working out a way of understanding faith from within the whirlwind of real suffering. Their experience showed that there is often no direct correspondence between evil and brokenness. Sometimes, life makes no sense. And that is what the opening of Job tries to convey to us if we are paying attention beyond our naiveté.

+ Chapter one/part one of the prologue introduces Job as a good man, blameless before the Lord – but he is also a man who is terrified of God. He is always second guessing himself, offering burnt offerings for this or that imagined transgression, a soul defined by anxiety.

+ And there seems to be a good reason for his anxiety, too as part two of the prologue unfolds:  on the day when the angels came to testify before the Lord God, the Accusing Angel, Satan, showed up and engaged the Lord our God in a cruel wager:  Let’s see if I can’t get your blameless servant, Job, to curse your face? To which the Lord our God agrees: Sure, Satan, give it a shot and let’s see what happens! (To which the father of depth psychology, Carl Jung, said in his commentary on Job: Good Lord, with a God like that who NEEDS a devil?!)

+ And then just to make sure we grasp the fear and trembling of Job’s life, a series of calamities occur:  invading enemies attack Job’s live stock and killed them all including his servants. And before one of the survivors could finish his tale of woe, another came along to report that not only were the oxen destroyed but also the sheep and the camels. And before that messenger could complete his report, another shouted that a huge windstorm had just collapse the house where Job’s sons and daughters were feasting and they were all now dead, too.

Got the picture? Job lived in fear of his God. God seems capricious and cavalier when it came to the lives of the faithful. And Job lost everything that gave his life value and meaning – his livelihood and his family – all because of a sacred wager with the Devil.  In his sorrow, Job cries: NAKED I CAME FROM MY MOTHER’S WOMB AND NAKED I SHALL RETURN. THE LORD GIVETH AND THE LORD TAKETH AWAY; BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD.  He grieves but he still loves and fears the Lord. 

To which Job’s wife shrieks:  Are you NUTS, man? You MUST have done

something wrong for the Lord to wreak such vengeance upon you.  Stop clinging to your innocence.  Just curse the Lord and die – and hurry up about – so we can get this over with! But Job replies:  Foolish woman, God has given us blessing so we must learn to accept the bad fortune that comes from the Lord, too. 

Do you sense the clash of theological perspectives I mentioned being defined here? How a traditional notion that God only punishes only the wicked is giving way to something more modern? It isn’t fully unpacked, but you grasp the tension?

Conclusion

We will leave Job’s story right there for today and pick up on it next week – with one caveat:  I believe that as contemporary, even post-modern women and men of the 21^st century, we need to do the same thing with the story of Job in our generation as did our ancient cousins in Judaism. And as contemporary Jewish scholars continue to do today:  and I mean wrestle with this story. Refuse to be entrapped by fear or superstition or even traditionalism.

+ Raise questions – and follow them to their prophetic and compassionate conclusions. Explore alternative and non-conventional wisdom in the spirit of Jesus and the prophets.

+ For then the way of the Lord becomes a living vessel – pregnant with the steadfast love of the Lord and God’s compassion – and aching to give birth to the fullness of God’s grace.

In this hope I ask you to pray with me:

It is because we long for peace, Lord, that we open our hearts and minds to you this day. It is because we long for wholeness that we hunger and thirst for your nurture. It is because we need forgiveness that we seek new beginnings born of your grace. So we come to you entering the depths of our soul to plead for peace, to summon true wholeness and to beg forgiveness for ourselves and one another. In this our soul is embraced by you and we are embraced with one another. Blessed are you, O Lord our God, the light within our longings.  

                                                                                                          (John Philip Newell)

credits:
1) www.thepropheticscroll.org
2) mycentralnewyork.blogspot.com
3) www.pinterest.com

4) kalabalu.wordpress.com

And so it begins... anew

I did not grow up with Ash Wednesday - or any other sacramental ritual or observance save the annual trek to the corner lot to get a Christmas tree with my dad and maybe a chocolate Easter bunny. To be sure, while I was baptized into the Anglican part of the Christian family, we were not in any way religious as a young family. After all, my father's people were serious Christian Unitarians. My mother's family celebrated their Irish roots but only mildly when it came to religion as my grandfather left the Roman Catholic Church to marry my Protestant grandmother. There were weddings and baptisms - that was the order of things in those days - and midnight Eucharist on Christmas Eve from time to time and Easter Sunday. But that was mostly it.

In time, my father ached to sing the old sacred songs of the Christian Reformed tradition - he was a serious choir geek - so in second grade I found myself in the Newtown Congregational Church and that's where I've been ever since. I was confirmed in that tradition, held "in-care" as I explored a possible call to ministry and was ordained 33 years ago as a United Church of Christ clergy person with decidedly Congregational roots. But here's the rub: my beloved tradition threw the liturgical baby out with the sacramental bath water back - and we've been ever the poorer for it. Small wonder that my soul found solace when I stumbled back into the Anglican church while serving a congregation in Cleveland. 

As one old Anglican told me while on retreat, "This is Catholicism that makes sense." At the time I didn't know exactly what he meant - mostly a less autocratic line of authority and accountability - I just knew that I loved the smells and bells.  My daughters and I used to go from our Christmas Eve worship to the Cathedral midnight Mass - and you couldn't keep us away from the Easter Vigil. Thanks be to God I found my way back into a Reformed liturgical renewal with the Community of Iona as they have helped me bring a sacramental emphasis back to our worship life. 

Today at midday Eucharist a few of us listened to Psalm 51 again. We broke bread around the

communion table and then accepted the imposition of ashes. I will lead the "confession and imposition of ashes" part of the liturgy at tonight's ecumenical worship. Indeed, I just finished burning the palms from last year, grinding and sifting the ashes, too in anticipation. My old white alb has been washed - it is getting a little worn out after all these years - so I am almost ready to go. I love this time of year. My wife hates it - too long and hard - and for her I think that is true. But I love it.

This year I am following two blogs as my Lenten discipline - it is often new every year as I try to reclaim a commitment to prayer, fasting and caring for the poor - so let me share them both with you in the hopes they might be food for your journey.

+ The first comes from a blogging/facebook friend in Australia who turned me on to this daily discipline:  A Literary Reader for Lent. (http://www.themillions.com/2015/02/forty-for-40-a-literary-reader-for-lent.html) It opens with this overview:

"Lent,” wrote Thomas Merton, “is not just a time for squaring conscious accounts: but for realizing what we had perhaps not seen before.” Lent is the most literary season of the liturgical year. The Lenten narrative is marked by violence, suffering, anticipation, and finally, joy. Jesus Christ’s 40 days of fasting in the desert are the spiritual and dramatic origin for the season that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Saturday. While Advent is a time of giving, Lent is a time of reflection, penance, and reconciliation, all revealed through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Holy Week is a solemn sequence of days leading to the grace of Easter. It is a different form of joy than Christmas; Easter joy is cathartic and transformational. Lent, then, is a time of complex and contrasting emotions. Highs and lows. A time to be shaken and surprised.

+ The second comes from my brother from another mother in Canada: Steve Bell's Pilgrim Year (Lent). (http://blog.stevebell.com/2015/02/clean-monday-first-day-of-lent-eastern-rite/) It is rooted in the Eastern Rite Catholic Church - very close to the Eastern Orthodox in style and content - and offers this opening insight: Lent calls us to oppose sloth.

Sloth: The word used here does not imply laziness but rather indifference. Sloth is the condition of spirit marked by cynicism and apathy that makes of our life a spiritual waste. Schmemann calls it the “root of all sin because it poisons the spiritual energy at its very source.”

Blessings be to you all - those who enter into a Holy Lent - and those who reconnect to the sacred in other ways. For me, I am grateful the journey has begun...

Why NOT Mardi Gras?

Here is a note I sent to my congregation today - maybe it speaks to you, too.  

Today is Fat Tuesday - Mardi Gras - Carnival.  Historically Protestants haven't done much with this feast day except maybe eat and drink too much if we're going out with others. Or maybe we have a modest "Shrove Tuesday" donut party. But we don't go in for the wild stuff because 500 years ago we decided that our way of being the church was going to be different from theirs. And while I would never call into question the insights and importance of the Protestant Reformation and the emerging Reformed Tradition out of which we were born, it is clear to me that over the generations a shallow and ill-informed anti-Catholicism came to be the rule of the day. So we don't do this or that because they do - even if their rituals are rich with symbols and their sacramental theology liberating. 

I bump up against the remnant of such limited thinking every time Lent arrives - and nothing happens at Mardi Gras. I am not proposing a week long descent into bacchanalia as takes place in New Orleans or Rio. Nor am I interested in encouraging irresponsible excess of any kind. Rather, what captivates me about Mardi Gras as it morphs into Ash Wednesday and Lent is the rhythm it offers us - that ebb and flow of feast and fast, festival and introspection, light and dark - that is so missing from both the Reformed tradition and much of contemporary life. Carl Jung, the founder of depth psychology, once noted that whenever life giving and generative human rituals are corrupted or discarded, society creates pathological replacements. The need for these rituals never goes away, but the way we express them can shift from life to death. Think of our culture's obsession with dieting - and eating disorders - and then think back to the once standard rhythm of life guided by feasts AND fasting.

Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, one of our era's most creative and insightful Christian educators, puts it like this in To Dance with God. Nobody likes thinking about Lent - most of us hate it. So how do we get ourselves ready for this hard time? "By doing the opposite of dying? Carnival. Carnival precedes any efforts we might make at dying by allowing us to live in a compensatory period, briefly, in a kind of recklessness and daring make-believe way... it sets free for a time our negative, irrational and unacceptable aspects and, by reminding ourselves of the dark and steamy side of our human nature, gives warning to what global disasters the unconscious is able to create if left separate from our conscious selves." Carnival - the season between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday - gives us a chance to fully feel our flesh before putting it away for a season. Ms. Mueller-Nelson concludes: "For all its look of madness and its possible danger, carnival honors all that wells up from the forgotten level of our souls which, on every other day of the year we would rather not look at or recognize, but which does need a period of consideration and celebration."

One of my deepest hopes for the Reformed tradition is that we would find a way to reclaim - and reform - this tradition of balanced living. Not just with Mardi Gras (although that's a great place to start!) but with the day and the whole year.  It isn't foreign to our way of being the church IF we recall that through our Jewish roots we have inherited a set of spiritual practices that are at least 4,000 years old. And we are at least cousins to the wisdom of our Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox kin, too. What's more, our own Congregational history affirms a return to a way of living and being that honors the circle of life on Mother Earth. In 1884, Garett Horder took the poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier, an American Quaker, and brought it into the Congregational hymnbook at "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind." The penultimate verse is as follows: "Drop thy still dews of quietness til all our strivings cease; take from our souls the strain and stress and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace."

Please note:  1) this presumes there is order in our lives, yes? And 2) that the order nurtures peace and beautiful living. It is, of course, a passing nod to both the ancient Jewish and Christian monastic "ordered life" that invited prayer at the start of the day, at noon, at the close of the day and at bed time. You get my point. We at First Church have made a modest commitment to reclaiming the circle of life by consciously celebrating Advent into Christmas and Epiphany as well as Ash Wednesday into Easter and Ascension Sunday. Perhaps one day we will be bold and creative enough to explore a way of welcoming Carnival into our rhythm. Until then, eat a donut (or three) tonight, hoist a pint if your are so inclined, cook a steak, shake your booty and get ready for Lent, because Ash Wednesday comes tomorrow! Join us for our third annual ecumenical fast and Eucharist.

Culture care and the prophetic artist...

"Culture Care," writes artist/theologian Mako Fujimura, "is to provide care for our culture’s “soul,” to bring to our cultural home our bouquet of flowers, so that reminders of beauty—both ephemeral and enduring—are present in even the harshest environments where survival is at stake. We may need to learn to cultivate these reminders of beauty in the same way flowers are cared for and raised. Culture Care restores beauty as a seed of invigoration into the ecosystem of culture. Such soul care is generative: a well-nurtured culture becomes an environment in which people and creativity thrive." (On Becoming Generative)

It is essential for me to hold Mako's wisdom about culture care close to my heart these days for this is a season of ugly fear, relentless exploitation, cruel manipulation and bone-chilling despair. In contrast to what some Buddhists tell us is creation's organic state of suffering, a reality in which any hope of justice and shalom are as much an illusion as "reality" itself, my experience suggests otherwise: I have known moments in my culture and our history when compassion and hope were stronger than fear and pain. A careful exploration of our past points to other eras more grounded in truth and beauty than our current state of the union, too. To be sure, "there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9) and all things "like grass soon fade and whither like the spring flowers" (Psalm 37:2) Yet simultaneously, we can see seasons of generativity woven through the fabric of time like gold in a tapestry of earth tones.

Again, Mako is helpful in his definition of what is generative and de-generative:

We call something “generative” if it is fruitful, originating new life or producing offspring (as with plants and animals) or producing new parts (as with stem cells). When we are generative, we draw on creativity to bring into being something fresh and life-giving. We can also approach generativity by looking at its shadow, “degenerate,” the loss of good or desirable qualities (a term also frequently used of generations). What is generative is the opposite of degrading or limiting. It is constructive, expansive, affirming, growing beyond a mindset of scarcity.

To be generative, therefore, requires a commitment to creativity and self-criticism. Fr. Richard Rohr recently observed that the Hebrew prophets are unique in religious traditions because they lovingly - and even generatively - critique what is degenerate in their culture, religion, politics and economy. He writes:

 The presumption for anyone with a dualistic mind is that if you criticize something, you don't love it. Wise people like the prophets would say the opposite. The Church's sanctification of the status quo reveals that we have not been formed by the prophets, who were radical precisely because they were traditionalists. Institutions always want loyalists and "company men"; we don't want prophets. We don't want people who point out our shadow side or our dark side. It is no accident that the prophets and the priests are usually in opposition to one another (e.g., Amos 5:21-6:7, 7:10-17). I think it is fair to say that the prophetic charism was repressed in almost all of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christianity. None of us have been known for criticizing ourselves. We only criticize one another, sinners, and heretics--who were always elsewhere! Yet, Paul says the prophetic gift is the second most important charism for the building up of the Gospel (1 Corinthians 12:28, Ephesians 4:11). (Richard Rohr)

Perhaps that is why it is usually only those outside our institutions who are able to prophetically  articulate in a loving way what has become degenerative within and among us. This morning I read Chris Hedges' biting critique of the film "Fifty Shades of Grey." He entitles his commentary: "Pornography Is What the End of the World Looks Like." (http:// www. truthdig.com/report/item/pornography_is_ what_ the_ end_of_ the_ world_ looks_l ike_20150215) I confess that it often pains me to read Hedges. It physically hurts to take in his conclusions. And not simply because I am repelled by his flirtations with rhetoric. No, what is agonizing for me about Chris Hedges is his brutal expose of the degenerative nature of our culture. He is a prophet, pure and simple. He loves what is true, what is good, what is noble. He loves people as only a prophet can. That is why he has been marginalized and ridiculed by those with much to lose. He loves real people profoundly.

 “Fifty Shades of Grey,” the book and the movie, is a celebration of the sadism that

dominates nearly every aspect of American culture and lies at the core of pornography and global capitalism. It glorifies our dehumanization of women. It champions a world devoid of compassion, empathy and love. It eroticizes hypermasculine power that carries out the abuse, degradation, humiliation and torture of women whose personalities have been removed, whose only desire is to debase themselves in the service of male lust. The film, like “American Sniper,” unquestioningly accepts a predatory world where the weak and the vulnerable are objects to exploit while the powerful are narcissistic and violent demigods. (Chris Hedges)

Artists of all types have a calling - and it is neither to distract and titillate nor sentimentalize and white wash reality. Rather, it is a prophetic calling that takes us deeper into the complex truths of our era. It helps us discover the truly gratuitous nature of life - the reality of grace even in our hardships and hope within our fears -- and shows us how "gratitude can galvanize us to  ask and welcome questions beyond our own context and experience."

Artists at their best help us with such questions by presenting an expansive vision of life that reveals beauty in ever-wider zones. They can reveal new facets of human flourishing even in the midst of tragedy or horror, pointing toward hope and meaning. (Mako Fujimura) 

One of the most insightful and prophetic artists of our era, Leonard Cohen, knows of a time when culture was not frought with fear and angst.  He, like myself, is haunted by the stark contrasts and describes the new world order in the terrifying song: The Future. Like Hedges "he's seen the future, brother, and it is murder!"

He isn't kidding when he laments for all of us: "When they said REPENT.. I wondered what they meant." And so he keeps at it - creating a catalog of the culture's degenerate truths - but never for shock or pornographic value. He is too much the lover - and prophet - for anything so shallow. No, what Cohen aches for is a change in direction - repentance social as well as personal - as only a practicing 21st century Zen Buddhist Jewish prophet could proclaim in song. 

There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code 
Your private life will suddenly explode 
There'll be phantoms 
There'll be fires on the road 
and the white man dancing 
You'll see a woman hanging upside down 
her features covered by her fallen gown 
and all the lousy little poets coming round 
tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson 
and the white man dancin' 

Give me back the Berlin wall 
Give me Stalin and St Paul 
Give me Christ 
or give me Hiroshima 
Destroy another fetus now 
We don't like children anyhow 
I've seen the future, baby: 
it is murder 

The artist - the prophet - must awaken us to what is degenerate and then nurture us in what is grace-filled, life-giving, creative. Another Jewish poet/prophet, Isaiah, said "I have come":

...to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

Rohr concludes his essay in much the same way Mako does: when we name and ache over what is broken - when we face the paradox of hope and fear in our hearts and confront the degenerate - we can break into something deeper. 

Human consciousness does not emerge at any depth except through struggling with your shadow. I wish someone had told me that when I was young. It is in facing your conflicts, criticisms, and contradictions that you grow up. You actually need to have some problems, enemies, and faults! You will remain largely unconscious as a human being until issues come into your life that you cannot fix or control and something challenges you at your present level of development, forcing you to expand and deepen. It is in the struggle with our shadow self, with failure, or with wounding, that we break into higher levels of consciousness. I doubt whether there is any other way. People who refine this consciousness to a high spiritual state, who learn to name and live with paradoxes, are the people I would call prophetic speakers. We must refine and develop this gift.

Such is the calling of the artist - always - but especially at this moment in time. Cohen's most recent contribution gets it right.

 I saw some people starving

There was murder, there was rape
Their villages were burning
They were trying to escape

I couldn’tmeet their glances
 I was staring at my shoes

It was acid, it was tragic
It was almost like the blues
It was almost like the blues

I have to die a little
between each murderous plot
and when I’m finished thinking
I have to die a lot

There’s torture, and there’s killing
and there’s all my bad reviews
The war, the children missing, lord
It’s almost like the blues
It’s almost like the blues

Though I let my heart get frozen
to keep away the rot
my father says I’m chosen
my mother says I’m not

I listened to their story
of the gypsies and the Jews
It was good, it wasn’t boring
It was almost like the blues
It was almost like the blues

There is no G-d in heaven
There is no hell below
So says the great professor
of all there is to know

But I’ve had the invitation
that a sinner can’t refuse
It’s almost like salvation
It’s almost like the blues
It’s almost like the blues

credits:
1) www.makotofujimura.com
2) nagasawafamily.org
3) www.makotofujimura.com
4) www.boomerinthepew.com

Jazz for the journey - introducing a sabbatical blog

I think we are ready to go public with this - or almost ready. One of the

commitments the Lilly Foundation requires of those who have been awarded a sabbatical grant is "keeping the congregation up to date" on what's happening with the sabbatical. I thought it would be both fun and creative to ask ALL the players to write blog posts whenever they felt so inspired. We've created "Jazz for the Journey" to allow that to happen.

The key players for this are the church moderator, David; my colleague and musical director, Carlton (who will supervise and implement our in-house programming while I am away); our guest interim pastor, Bob, who has lived and ministered in the Berkshires (and was the first clergy person I met in the area); and Di (my sweet heart and co-collaborator.) There is a place, too for comments from the congregation and/or readers.

You may only have passing interest in this, but I wanted you to know what was shaking and welcome you to the journey should you want to go deeper.  

Check it out @ https://jazzforthejourney.wordpress.com/

image of jazz band silouette comes from Keri Speidel at Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/keri_speidel/wall-mural-ideas/)

A sacrifice of thanksgiving...

As all too often happens when I get caught up in fretting: I didn't sleep well last night. Four hours is enough, I guess, but I feel better prepared with seven or more. But that was not to happen as I was worried about the snow, about how we would "do" our burying the Alleluia without a practice, what would the choir be like with illness and weather taking out the entire alto section and blah, blah, blah. And just to add insult to injury, my custodian called out sick today at 5:45 am meaning the parking lot would be a mess. 

But... it all worked out. It always does, yes? Volunteers got there early and did the necessary snow shoveling. Others got the coffee pot on - and then cleaned up. I had 12 volunteers help me carry out the "Alleluia" during the "burial ceremony." And the choir pulled together and sang with verve and tenderness with tenors helping altos and sections singing another part just to make sure it hung tight. It was what a faith community is supposed to be, but only sometimes is. 
And then 15 youth turned up for our after worship music discussion: we played Bruno Mars, Panic at the Disco, Phil Collins, Sara Bareilles and Priscilla Ahn. We talked about cliques and social expectations, trust and betrayal, hope and safety - and laughed at my technological awkwardness as the teens sang the words to every tune played. It was for us all a holy time. Then one very talented young woman said to me that she wanted to play me a song she's been thinking about asking to do in during worship...I can only say that I quietly sang a song of thanksgiving in my heart as she played her request.  She is so creative, bright, talented and wonderful and so very cautious about letting us see her deeper self.

After I heard the song, you can bet your last freakin' dollar I'm going to find a way to make it happen. It was an living encounter with what Psalm 50 told us in worship: unless we bring a sacrifice of thanksgiving, all the rest is shit. (Ok, it doesn't say shit, but you know what I mean.) 

After all that fretting and sleeplessness, my heart was caught up in a sacrifice of thanksgiving - and I am so grateful that today happened.

Diggin' Meshell Ndgegeocello...

So I am profoundly excited about a performer new to me who has been around since the late 80's: Meshell Ndgegeocello.  She is a German born, American artist who sings, grooves, tells stories, plays with genre and gender bending in ways that take me to new places, performs on the bass while weaving together jazz, hip hop, soul, funk, electronica and rock. Her tow most recent recordings, "Pour Une Ame Souveraine - A Dedication to Nina Simone" and "Comet, Come to Me" are stunning. While very different,they are both creative works of art that have touched my soul in ways I haven't experienced since first hearing Cinematic Orchestra's "All Things to All Men," while browsing in a London shop 9 years ago. 

"There were moments of such intensity during Meshell Ndegeocello's Lincoln Center American Songbook concert on Wednesday night," wrote Stephen Holden in the NY Times, "that she and her musicians seemed to be conjuring a supernatural trance...Ms. Nedgeocello is a direct descendant of Ms. Simone, who played by nobody's rules and paid for it dearly. But unlike Ms. Simone, Ms. Ndegeocello is not driven by anger, outrage or an acute sense of injustice."

Reading about her roots makes me like her even more: she auditioned for the bass job with Living Colour (a killer African American rock fronted by English guitarist, Vernon Reid, who also fused rock with jazz, funk, hip hop and heavy metal), paid her dues while working the Washington, DC "go go" scene, recorded a duet with John Mellencamp ("Wild Nights"),  played with Herbie Hancock on an fund raiser for HIV/AIDS  and rapped alongside Madonna. She's done time with both Alainis Moresette and the Stones and toured with the Lilith Fair troupe in the mid 90's, too. Damn, I've heard some of her cuts over the past 15 years but never got down with her solo work - and it started in 1993! Bad on me!

The NY Times brought her to my attention yesterday during my sabbath morning tea and newspaper ritual. (check it out @ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/arts/music/review-meshell-ndegeocello-hails-nina-simone.html?_r=0) I started listening to her on You Tube and could not get enough. So now, after a binge fix of her music, I want to start savoring it - letting both the soul and surprises wash over me  -and into me. This artist knows how to speak to the head and the heart simultaneously.

Times critic, Stephen Holden, wrote: "I have rarely heard sophisticated electronica deployed expressively enough to outfit each song in its own climate. Ms. Ndegeocello is the opposite of the a histrionic drama queen. Although the lyrics for many of Simone songs are charged with rage and sorrow, Ms. Ndegeocello let their words speak for themselves..." This is one musical artist/performer I am going to keep my eyes and ears open for in the weeks and months to come. Here's hoping our paths cross over the next six months because I want to experience her live concert - it will be like going to church (in all the best ways!)