Almighty God, we entrust all who are dear to us to thy never-failing care and love, for this life and the life to come, knowing that thou art doing for them better things than we can desire or pray for; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
A Prayer for Travelers, Book of Common Prayer, p. 523
Elizabeth took this picture of Theo in his car seat while I was in the convenience store getting some trail mix for my train trip. For a dog who was quite afraid of me in the beginning, and who still was a little spooky about me reaching out to him, his demeanor shows a huge change. He is truly anticipating my return to the car! Now, when I got back IN the car, he was still a bit pensive about me being forward towards him, but he didn't shake or shiver or bark.
What this photo makes me realize is that there is a joyful, happy, extroverted dog in there, that all the abuse and mistreatment of his formative years didn't extinguish. I think there will be a day that who he was when Elizabeth first got him, will only be a shadow. I think there will be a time that the only time we see the "old Theo" will be when his PTSD flares up, and if it does, Elizabeth has the skills and love to support him and help him back to his happy frame of dog mind. But it will be on God's time, not ours.
I believe that all of us have been in scary places in our lives--places that make us mere shadows of ourselves. When things happen to us in families or extended family structures, sometimes there are multiple people in scary places all at once. These things take time, and we can't force them. Sometimes, our shadows are interacting with their shadows, or a healthy us is interacting with their shadow, or vice versa. Our prayer from the BCP above is a great reminder that when we are dealing with those shadow places, there's usually not much we can do with how we are to be perceived, and that we have to give up our illusions of control and trust God knows how to level things.
When I find myself in those weird places with people, it has been a big jump in my life to finally be in the place, where, mostly, I can lay it on the altar. Theo reminds me that in everyone is a "happy dog," and it just takes time, and God's help to find their own happy barks and wagging tails.
(Rufus, in one of his multiple attempts to try to get Theo to play.)
O God, in the course of this busy life, give us times of refreshment and peace; and grant that we may so use our leisure to rebuild our bodies and renew our minds, that our spirits may be opened to the goodness of your creation; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
--Prayer for the Good Use of Leisure, Book of Common Prayer, p. 825
One of the more fascinating things I have been observing about Elizabeth's dog Theo has been in his interactions with Rufus, the Miniature Schnauzer that belongs to her other houseguest, Jon. Rufus is well schooled in play, to say the least. He attacks plastic soda bottles, chases balls, and does all the things that one would expect out of a dog bred to exterminate little critters.
Theo, on the other hand, finds these sorts of activities a bit bewildering. He seems to want to join in the fun, but it requires a certain amount of vulnerability towards not just Rufus, but everything and everyone in the room to do that. I imagine in Theo's world, growing up in a hoarding situation, survival meant claiming physical and psychological space, and the physical act of play demands giving a little of that up. In his old world, he would have almost certainly lost turf--turf that became just too hard to reclaim over and over.
One of the things I find myself able to do better and better in my own vacations is to truly "be on vacation." I think back to what I learned about vacations growing up. Most of my vacation trips were with my grandparents. As an only child and an only grandchild on that side of the family, it was about the three of us. Rarely, my mom would go, but they clearly treated her as an outsider, and in later years I discovered she felt like an outsider on these trips. You see, my grandparents had decided since I was a bright, curious child, these trips would be educational. They were intuitively right about this in one way--they wanted to expose me to things and places different from my small town life, but they were probably mistaken in not teaching me that vacation was also about play.
Vacation was Serious Business.
I realize now, that in my grandmother's eyes in particular, my mom's presence gummed up the works. Granny was rather Teutonic in how vacations were to be managed--there were schedules to make, times to keep, maps to follow, booklets to read even BEFORE you got to the museum or park. My grandpa was all about the car--having it maintained like an airplane on a transatlantic flight, keeping tabs of the gas mileage en route, the cost of gas in various states and how this affected the family budget. My grandparents, every year, religiously put a few dollars back a month in a "vacation club"--a special savings account our bank provided. I'm pretty sure we never went over that amount budgeted by much.
When my mom went along, it was clear my mom didn't understand that vacation was Serious Business. She saw things by the side of the road and wanted to see them on impulse. She wanted to go to waterslides and amusement parks. My grandmother would roll her eyes.
I still remember the time we did go to Disneyland. My grandmother mapped out the night before which gate we'd use, and how we would maneuver our way through Tomorrowland, Frontierland, etc., and how long we'd stay in each.
Well, you know, what I've come to realize is in this conflict between my grandparents and my mom was everyone was right, and everyone was wrong. I've come to realize it's a balance. Ten years ago my vacations were about seeing and doing things. They were enjoyable, and I'm glad I did them. But now, my vacations are about meeting my "Facebook friends I haven't physically met," and are more about "just being me" in their presence. Elizabeth and Jon and I have been having a running joke about how exasperated we've made her that we are truly happy to just do what she wants to do, because being with her has been the goal of the visit.
I look at little Theo, and I see how in so many ways, he doesn't even know who he is as a dog, yet. He doesn't know how to play because he doesn't quite know who Theo is and how he fits in the Kingdom of Dog.
When we extrapolate that to our own prayer lives, do we always understand that our relationship to God is also a balance between being guided/led/educated, and truly playing?
Or when I said that, dear readers, did a collective gasp emit and this thought emerge..."Oh no, our relationship with God is Serious Business.. Very Serious Business indeed. It's about our immortal souls, you know."
One of my biggest self-life lessons has been this: Yes, I have a job where some of my decisions are life and death. But not every single thing I decide out of the office is life and death. In fact, almost none of them are. Almost all of them can be reconfigured from a fallback position.
No doubt, those of us into high church liturgy understand there's some Serious Business involved in worship. There's Serious Business involved in maintaining a healthy, growing atmosphere in the life of the parish. It's important to understand the rules and the rubrics and the Canons and to take them seriously. Living up to our Baptismal Covenant is Serious Business. But it's important to leave room for play, too. It's important to have balance.
When we are comfortable enough in our own skin to be vulnerable in the face of God and in the lives of those dear to us, we create room to play, room to dream, room to imagine, and room not only to love, but to be loved for who we really are as a child of God.
Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of your love. Amen.
"A Collect for the Presence of Christ, Book of Common Prayer, p. 124
I'm spending my vacation with Elizabeth at her home along the canal here in Lower Slower Delaware. Now, it's been great to be here with Elizabeth. It's been great sharing my vacation time with her first, with Doxy, and now, Jon, but the true charmer in my trip has been "Mr. Wonderful"--Elizabeth's dog, Theo. (many apologies to Jon's dog Rufus, who is right behind Theo as a close second.)
Some of you know Theo's story. But for some of you who don't, Theo came from a home that hoarded dogs, and it's clear he has issues with strangers and trust. He's incredibly shy, fearful, and passive. It was clear the first day he met me, that he wanted to get to know me--I'm sure I reek of Boomer and Little Eddie--but he just could not bring himself to do it. Every move, every time I looked at him, he barked...and barked...and barked.
On day two, Elizabeth finally said, "I've had enough.". She promptly took out his leash, snapped it to him, sat next to me, and pulled him over between us. After five minutes of petting, he seemed okay with that, and she left him free to roam around with the leash still on. He still didn't want to come too near me, but there was no more barking.
Over the next 24 hours, Theo, still dragging his leash around, has improved by leaps and bounds. He now comes up to me unannounced. He walks by and sniffs me. He even hopped up in my lap to show Rufus that I was in his pack, not Rufus'. His face changed from eternally pensive to the smile you see in his picture. I suspect by the time I leave, Theo will be pretty okay with me.
Elizabeth and I have postulated what the deal is with the leash. Now, I'm not degreed in dog psychology, but I think it is this: Elizabeth's walks with Theo are a bonding experience between the two of them. The presence of the leash, even without Elizabeth at the end of it, makes him feel safer. Theo knows that relationship, and how it allows him to meet challenges.
Without Elizabeth's presence, sacramentally transmitted through the leash, Theo would rather bark than meet the challenge.
The prayer above, from the Rite II Evening Prayer service, reminds us of our own leash--not a leash designed for constant control, not a leash for God to pull us around at his "beck n' call," but one that simply reminds us of presence. Like Theo's leash, it connects us to a trusting, loving relationship, even when no one is tugging on the other end. If I can trust that Elizabeth would never leave Theo connected to his leash alone, and allow him to be entangled and snarled up, I can trust Christ to not leave me alone on mine.
(Amnon and Tamar, Jan Steen, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
(This post originally appeared in the Speaking to the Soul blog Sunday, August 7, 2011)
Readings for Sunday, August 7:
Psalms 66, 67 (Morning)
2 Samuel 13:1-22
Romans 15:1-13
John 3:22-36
Psalms 19, 46 (Evening)
Without a doubt, our Old Testament reading today, describing the incestuous rape of Tamar, is one of the most disgusting and one of the least redeeming stories in the Bible. It's hard to come away with any sort of redeeming lesson from reading this passage. Its place in the Daily Office, sandwiched between some fairly joyful and comforting passages, seems totally out of kilter in the day's readings. One has to wonder about the discussion that ensued in committee prior to its gaining a spot in the Daily Office. Where does one put this in the lectionary? What possibly is to be learned from such a brutal story? In fact, the richness of both the Gospel passage for today the Epistle, and the Psalms, provide a wonderful escape hatch, so that if one chooses to, the icky story of the rape of Tamar can be pushed aside entirely in our spiritual imaginations.
Yet, that tendency, to me, is exactly what this brutal story is all about--dealing with what I call "The Great Unspoken." The Great Unspoken is made up of all the terrible stories that all families have, and how unspoken it is often is directly proportional to the dysfunction the family has carried from generation to generation. It's made up not of what we say, but what we don't say. When we look at this story, the tempting tendency is to simply ignore it--and we see a lot of ignoring going on.
Let's start at the beginning--it seems rather implausible for Amnon to be burning with lust for Tamar as much as he was, and no one in the family even noticed. People don't just wake up one morning and say, "Gee...I think I'd like to have sex with my half-sister." David had to see something, and Absalom had to notice something, and royal households being a little bit like small towns, it just seems highly unlikely that the relatives and the hired help knew nothing. In fact, Cousin Johnadab's involvement in this story, and the fact he initiates the conversation with Amnon about how to trick Tamar affirms this. Tamar had to have noticed the extra attention she was getting and struggled with her own complicated feelings.
Meanwhile, The Great Unspoken keeps growing and growing. David sends Tamar in to Amnon without so much as a "be careful." Amnon intuitively knows what he did was wrong, going so far as to convert his unspoken shame to loathing for the victim. He even dehumanizes her vocally, calling to have "this woman" put out from his presence. (Shades of "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," a couple of presidencies ago!) Tamar, herself, loses the wise voice we saw earlier in this story and tears her virginal clothes, pours ashes on her head with the same hands that previously made a gift of bread, and Absalom more or less says, "get over it," but at the same time takes her in. (Did he do it to be kind, or did he do it because he knew and felt guilty, or did he do it because "this doesn't happen in 'nice' families?") As we travel further in the Daily Office this week, it will become apparent that the Great Unspoken will continue to wreak havoc in the royal family.
This story becomes a reminder that there are far better ways to deal with The Great Unspoken--whether it is among our kin, our network of friends, our workplace, or our parish. Yes, there are consequences to honesty or being proactive in the face of deceit or mental instability, but there are generally far worse and longer lasting consequences when we stuff those feelings or cause them to be manifest in a "sideways" fashion. I find it interesting in this story that nowhere do we see any of the characters approaching God for guidance, or lamenting or expressing their fears in the face of God. There's a Great Unspoken here, too.
The story of the rape of Tamar is a call to remind us that no Great Unspoken is too disgusting or nasty to take to God. It's a reminder that when we don't fully understand people, or they seem to behave in an odd or weird fashion, or over-react to a simple issue, that they may be carrying a Great Unspoken of their own. Finally, it's a call for us to address our own Great Unspokens.
What Great Unspokens block us in our own ability to be invited into full relationship with the living God? Are there Great Unspokens that create wedges in our relations to each other? Is today the day to fearlessly bring them first, to our prayer life, and later, to the place where reconciliation begins?
(Maze at Scone Palace, Perth, Perthshire, Scotland, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Daily office readings for August 6:
Psalm 87, 90
2 Samuel 12:15-31
Acts 20:1-16
Mark 9:30-41
Evening Psalm: 136
Children figure prominently in this sequence of readings. In 2 Samuel, we are shown the sequence of events surrounding the death of the child conceived as a result of David and Bathsheba's affair. Our Acts reading focuses on young Eutychus, who is literally "sleeping like the dead," and in Mark's Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples that welcoming the child on his lap is to welcome both himself and God. We see children illustrated as symbols of grief and loss, mistaken perceptions, and divine hospitality.
Unlike today, where entire shopping malls are devoted to children's clothing, toys, and games, and a dropped pacifier in the grocery store is liable to result in a parent extracting a hermetically sealed, sanitized replacement in a zip-closure bag in a matter of seconds, children in Biblical times were expendable commodities. Children did work as soon as they were able. They were an insurance policy for one's well-being in old age--the more you had, the more likely you'd be cared for. If a family could not care for them, they were more or less turned into the street to fend for themselves, and generally, it was expected that a certain percentage of them would not live to adulthood.
All three readings show a certain degree of unusual behavior towards children and youth for the times. David displays what must have been, for his servants, a bewildering and unsettling amount of grief. Eutychus (whose name, incidentally, means "good fortune") is discerned to be alive when it's clear those who found him would prefer he be left for dead. Finally, it must have been bewildering for the disciples that Jesus would have grabbed up a dirty street waif, plopped the child on his lap, used the child as the gold standard of hospitality and welcome.
Bewilderment is as much a part of the Christian experience as joy, but we are not always accepting of it.
I've thought a lot about how as our relationship with God deepens and matures, there is a part of that growth that, frankly, doesn't feel like growth. Think about it like this. As small children, our notion of God is two-fold: God is this unseen being who protects us, and, in our child-like way of thinking, gives us what we want. As little children, we don't always know the difference between need and want.
I honestly think there are Christians who never get too far away from that notion. Even those of us who are more spiritually mature like to rationalize that "What I want is what God thinks I need."
Yet, as children, I think we are pretty accepting of God being the "in charge" one in this relationship. After all, everyone in our world at that age is in charge, and we're not. But as we become adults, we become accustomed to more "equal partner" relationships at home and work. Sure, there are people "in charge" of us at the workplace, but if we don't like it, we can find another workplace, or over time, we become the one in charge.
I think back to me as a young adult. My goal was to be in charge of my destiny. Many of my life choices were based on that. Now, in middle age, I am faced with this interesting bewilderment, because what I sense is coming through in the subtle ways God connects with me, is that God's desire for me is to be obedient in ways that have been the minority of my life experiences. At a very early age, I connected "obedience" to obeying out of fear. Fear of being beaten, fear of emotional abandonment, fear of humiliation. There were definitely times I obeyed out of love, but they were not the majority. I don't think it was some evil plot on the part of my family, I think it was just the offshoot of a family that historically lived an economically hard life with roots in the Depression and who knows what before that. When a family learns, generation after generation, that life is hard, there's simply an emotional hoarding that comes with it, and it's hard to reconcile that.
"To be in charge" meant to control the hard things, and to be independent, to not have to rely on another single person for your destiny. But I've come to realize other people did shape my destiny. I've really thought about that during the recent illness of a special mentor. He came from that kind of background, too, and I've discovered an odd bond begin to form between me and his daughter. She should be jealous of me, honestly. But she's not. She decided to assuage her own family hurts by showing me love.
What I've come to learn in my own spiritual maturity is that "being in charge" is not all it's cracked up to be, and in that journey, I've come to see that a relationship with God is, paradoxically, a very complex critter, indeed, but with simple requests. We are not always protected from harm. Bad things happen to us, and to those we love. We are abandoned at times in the world. We are humiliated. Yet the way to peace with God is to accept God doesn't "fix" all this stuff or give us our wants, like Santa Claus. To be raised from the dead emotionally and psychologically means we have to die inside at times and grieve. The paradox is that all God asks from us is to love, and obey--not obey from fear, but in love--to enter that childlike place where it's just assumed we are loved by God.
Frankly, for me, this is a bewildering place. I learned to love to please others. I have relatively few memories on which to draw where I "assumed I was loved." To go to that place with God seems like a "new" place although I'm sure it's not; I just don't have many conscious memories of it. The bewilderment, I think for many of us is that in middle age part of what we hear God telling us is "Stop giving so much of yourself to please others and care for yourself. Stop worrying about whether what you are doing is "productive" and simply spend time hanging out with me so you can see how much I love you." The catch, of course, is that this obedience requires us to give up some old goals of controlling our destiny.
I have always had a sense I was supposed to get along with less. I used to think it was so I could protect and insulate myself in my old age, so I would be independent and beholden to no one. I now realize I have been schooled in getting along with less because I'm simply supposed to get along with less "stuff" and shoot for more "relationship." What I'm starting to see in the generation ahead of me is no one can control that stuff--no one dies old and independent--everyone old has to depend on a lot of somebodies. Old age puts that belt around your waist and takes you where you do not wish to go, and the way to survive it is not to fight tooth and nail for our independence but to instead become accepting of our dependence. For me, the first step in middle age is to become open and vulnerable to love in new ways--accepting I'll be hurt now and then and accepting I'll grieve. Only then, does divine hospitality enter.
(Photo of service bulletin by Thomas Jackson)
I've pasted the Sunday, July 31 sermon from Molly Haws out in California, who presided over our blogging colleague Kirstin's memorial service on July 30. I invite you to take the time to read it before I go on with my thoughts:
Hopeward
by Molly Haws on Sunday, July 31, 2011 at 4:51pm
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost Year A (Proper 13)
Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 17; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:13-21
"Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward toward the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it."
--Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan
We have today the Grand Slam Double Feature lectionary.
We start with the single most famous Big Time Wrestling Smackdown in Judeo-Christian history. We finish with Jesus hosting Picnic-Palooza for, not only five thousand of his closest friends, but also women and children unnumbered.
These are stories that are foundational to our tradition. They are epic.
And yesterday morning, instead of digging into the Hebrew up to my shoulders and wrestling Matthew’s account to the floor until my hip popped out of the socket,
I was presiding at my friend’s memorial service.
But as these things sometimes happen, I found that as I listened to people speaking, and as I myself spoke, about Kirstin at the reception following the service,
she had some things to teach me about Jacob, and blessing,
and feeding humongous hungry hordes.
Kirstin was a brilliant mind
and a gifted writer
and in her writing she spoke with a prophet’s voice.
And like so many of the prophets we meet in the pages of Scripture,
Kirstin in person was, at times, Too Much.
Too loud, too many words spoken too fast, too un-finessed, too awkward, too raw.
Too much.
Kirstin walked through the world naked. She didn’t know she was naked. We knew. We saw her nakedness and it made us ashamed. And afraid. And our first instinct was, understandably, to cover her up. And when she kept being naked, no matter how many blankets and robes and perfectly good hand-me-downs we gave her, our discomfort grew and grew until sometimes it became resentment.
Not unlike what I imagine being in the presence of John the Baptist might have been.
Too. Much.
Even for those of us who were somehow able to withstand her nakedness, who were able to understand that our discomfort was born of our own shame and pain, not hers, that she never demanded we cover her up or rescue her or fix anything for her, that our impulse to try to do those things came from within us, not her—even realizing and owning all that, being with Kirstin was sometimes a struggle. Sometimes being with her was as exhausting as wrestling all night with a nameless stranger.
And it was always a blessing.
I don’t think Kirstin chose to walk in the world naked. I think she just was naked. And she chose to walk in the world.
I don’t think, given his druthers, that Jacob would have chosen to meet his older, bigger, stronger brother—who he expected was carrying a full-grown, twenty-year-old grudge along with his army of four hundred—I don’t think Jacob’s first choice was to go to that meeting exhausted, and injured, and in pain, limping on a dislocated hip.
But morning came, and he was exhausted, and injured, and in pain. And it was time to meet his brother.
We don’t get to orchestrate our circumstances. We don’t get to choose our conditions. We only get to choose the direction of our movement.
Standing still is not an option. Mother Earth is turning toward the morning and she is taking us with her. We can’t change that any more than Jacob could. What we get to choose is the direction we face.
Jacob’s choice was between flight or freedom. He could have tried to run for it. He’d been avoiding his brother for twenty years, after all. He’d given himself in servitude to Laban in order to build his family and his household in safety. And he succeeded. He was safe in servitude. But he was not free. And now, he had a choice: to face Esau’s strength in the moment of his greatest weakness, or to run, and keep running, and never, ever be free.
The choice may be a hard one.
Jacob chose freedom. He chose to turn in the direction of his greatest fear, to walk in pain and hope toward the possibility of reconciliation with a brother who has no reason to accept him.
This is what blessing looks like. It is not easy, nor safe, nor fair, nor particularly attractive. It is making the choice to walk in hope—in whatever condition we find ourselves: injured or afraid; un-covered, un-prepared, un-whole; running or limping or hopping on one foot; moving, in hope, toward the possibility of the unreasonable.
I sat for a while at the reception next to a Muslim man who had worked alongside Kirstin in outreach to the homeless in Sacramento. He spoke of her commitment to this great work and as he spoke his own passion for this ministry shone clear and bright. On his other side was a man who was a member of the congregation at Trinity Cathedral, who said that when he met Kirstin he had been trying for two years, without success, to convince the Cathedral to open its doors to allow the homeless to sleep there in the Great Hall at night. He was at the point of giving up, he said, when Kirstin came along and flung herself headlong toward this purely unreasonable goal.
Trinity Cathedral now hosts homeless people in their Great Hall every night. Kirstin just kept pushing relentlessly toward the possibility of the unreasonable until the decision-makers ran out of “no.” And, Mohammed added, since Trinity began this ministry, 24 churches, one synagogue, and one mosque in Sacramento have followed suit.
"[T]he disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.’ 16Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’"
Jesus has a bit of a penchant for the unreasonable himself.
The job is Too Much. There are too many hungry and we simply do not have the resources. Five loaves and two fish? Are you kidding me? It’s not even a drop in the bucket—it’s nothing. We don’t lack for compassion. We know they’re hungry; that’s why the disciples are saying, send them somewhere they can get food to eat.
‘You give them something to eat.’
Jesus, relentlessly pushing toward the possibility of the unreasonable.
Five thousand men, plus women, and children. Five loaves. Two fish. And Jesus, saying, ‘You give them something to eat.’
What can we possibly say in the face of that?
OK. Here.
Here it is. Here’s what we have. Here’s everything we have. It’s nothing, and it’s everything there is. Here.
Here.
Choose.
Here.
As I read this, my first thought was, "Hmmm. Several of us could lay claim to being tagged as "Too much."" Now, Kirstin had a neurologically legit reason. She discovered well into adulthood that she had a rare congenital neurological defect known as agenesis of the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is the main structure in the brain that hooks the left brain to the right so they can work together. People with this defect are often mistaken for someone with Asperger's syndrome or some other diagnosis in the autism spectrum disorders. Even though I never met her in person, I could tell there was something even in her postings that she was a little different, somehow. Turns out it was because her left brain and her right brain didn't have a whole lot to say to each other.
Yet she spoke in the blogging and Facebook world with a prophetic voice. She was also loved deeply by those in her physical live-time life, despite being, admittedly, Too. Much.
Many of us wish we could blame a neurological defect for our too-much-ness. But I'm afraid the vast bulk of us are stuck with the etiology of our being too much, being because we are, simply, too much at times. I know for a fact I wear out my friends. I know for a fact more than one person in my life has thrown up their hands over my too-much-ness and told me to get lost because they no longer wished to have their life defined by my too-much-ness. I have no excuse. I have no neurological defect. I have no Axis II psychological disorder. I have no diagnosis of any of the autism spectrum disorders (although, with my prolific cursing at times, I'd like to lay claim to Tourette's syndrome.) I have no cognitive, behavioral or neurological fallback position, and I know this because more than once in my life I have been evaluated for these things. I keep coming back as "normal, with a few issues, but well within the normal range."
But the people of the world of too much, are, in my opinion, in good company. John the Baptist was too much. Jacob was too much. Paul was too much. Peter was too much. The woman at the well, the woman with hemorrhages, and Jesus himself were all too much.
Christianity is a message of abundance. We're called to act like we have too much and it is burning a hole in our pocket. God asks us to give just a little more of our stuff away than is comfortable, love people who don't appear all that lovable, and worse yet, change our attitudes to the point we appear so naked in it, that people also wish to cover us up to save ourselves from embarrassment we never possessed but others seem to own.
God even uses the people who are too much to spread the Gospel light forward into a dark and dreary world. Maybe God ESPECIALLY uses people who are too much.
(This post originally appeared on Speaking to the Soul, July 31, 2011)
John 1:43-51:
The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
Nathaniel only appears in John's Gospel; given that he appears in context with Philip, as does Bartholomew in the Synoptic Gospels, it is assumed they are the same person. Tradition and early writings tell us that Nathaniel/Bartholomew was from Cana. Towns and villages had great rivalries at the time, without benefit of sports teams to diffuse the rivalry. In that frame of reference, Nathaniel's comment, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" is akin to the retort any loyal Missouri Tiger would use about a Kansas Jayhawk on first meeting, or that of every other Texas school towards a University of Texas grad.
Yet something happens to show Nathaniel that those initial words are meant to be eaten. What that "something" is, unfortunately, is not revealed in the passage. We know that Jesus saw Nathaniel doing something under the fig tree, but we are not told what. Much scholarly speculation has been made about that, including use of the fig tree as a symbol of studying the Torah (ancient yeshiva students often met with their teacher under a tree,) and the use of the fig tree as an apocalyptic image of Israel, but spending too much time on that merely detracts from what is shown in this story.
What we do see clearly is that the Gospel, right from the get-go, is spread by action, and not just by Jesus himself. Philip is shown in this passage spreading the Good News in Christ in the very first chapter of the Gospel of John, and later, Jesus himself tells Nathaniel what we would now say in modern-day language, "You ain't seen nothin' yet."
The most effective evangelism tool in spreading the Good News in Christ is comprised of our actions--often actions we didn't even think about at the time--and we don't always know who saw us out under the fig tree. We are not always privy to how those actions change the lives of others, or plant a seed of thought in another person's head to be invited into a closer relationship with God. We don't know when we might be even called to eat our own words and get a miraculous surprise in the process! When it happens, would it be so easy for us to, like Nathaniel, blurt out its divine nature? Or would we try to rationalize it?
When we are open to the Divine Hand in our everyday dealings, we "ain't seen nothin' yet," either.
