Here it is – Like
Whitman, I contain multitudes. I am Legion.
“That’s not
funny, Carter. I’ve always said you were Satanic.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Give me my influences. Give me my heroes. Le t me name them:
Archibald MacLeish
– librarian poet Madeline L’Engle – universalist author,
Christian author Burroughs – both
Edgar Rice and William William Booth –
the only General I would follow
Howard Zinn – historian Marc
Chagall – dreamer, poet, painter, fool
“You’re a fool,
Carter. Everything you say only confirms it the more…”
Gustavo
Gutiérrez – Dominican liberationist and Roger Corman
– the king of cult “You
go too far.” Give
me scream queens. Give me Elvira, Give me Neil Young and Nick
Cave. Give
me Camus and Kierkegaard Give me the blessed Saint Francis and
Sister Death “Stop.
Stop. You’re only embarrassing yourself with this… contortion.
This confession.” Kropotkin.
Cash. Dylan. Brian
Wilson. John Coltrane and John Yoder (though, I acknowledge the
danger) Umberto Eco, and Echo and the Bunnymen “I
don’t even know these names. No one cares.” Poe,
and King, and Dick Sartre, Beauvoir, Silverstein Give me
Black Francis screaming into the void “You
need to stop. This is unhealthy.” Give
me Martin Luther King Junior “He
was an adulterer” I
know, but give me Tillich. “Pornographer.” I
know, but give me… “No.
I will give you nothing.” Give
me Jesus. “Jesus!
The Blasphemy you breathe…”
That’s an exciting way to begin a
sermon. I use it somewhat tongue in check, not to indicate the imminence of
Jesus’ return or the end of the world – though with the gospel reading for
today, it would be understandable if you leapt to that conclusion. But the end
is near – the end of the liturgical year. We are coming to the end of the
church’s calendar and we will soon, with the beginning of the Advent season,
begin a new year. But now, in these last few weeks before advent, the
lectionary readings take a turn toward the eschatological – things related to
death, judgement and the end.
I grew up in an Evangelical church,
and for many evangelical Christians in America there is a peculiar fascination
with all things eschatological. I grew up with those heightened apocalyptic
expectations. I vividly recall being at the church building with my parents and
not knowing where they were and being scared that I had missed the rapture – at
least until I heard their voices again. I still remember dreams that I had as a
young boy of volcanoes and blood falling from the sky, dreams that could rival
the visions of John recorded in the book of Revelation.
As a young minister, I spent a lot
of time studying the prophetic and apocalyptic books of the bible, reading commentaries
on, watching documentaries on the various interpretations, and going
conferences on the topic. I even spoke at a couple of conferences dealing the
study of eschatology. I was fascinated with the subject.
But these days I’m less interested
in apocalyptic speculation. Less interested, but not disinterested., I still am. The novels that I’ve written, especially my first, have a decided influence from the apocalyptic genre. My interest has waned but not disappeared
completely. Meanwhile, the Christian community these days, at least in America,
is fired up on the topic again. It seems to flare up with regularity every time
there is renewed conflict in the Middle East. I see many of my friends on
Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) posting memes and messages about the soon
expected coming of Jesus. When I listen to Christian radio, I hear them talking
about the thrill of “living in these last days…” And, honesty, I find a lot of
what they are saying and posting to be a little disturbing. I’m not sure I
trust people whose religious faith is excited
by the imminent expectation of the end of the world.
So I come to this parable of Jesus
with mixed feelings. I like the topic and still find it fascinating. But I also
find it wearisome. Tiring and thrilling
at the same time.I’m difficult. I know.
“The Kingdom of Heaven will be like
this: Ten wedding attendants took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom
and the bride.” This is how Jesus’ parable recorded in Matthew 25: 1 – 13 begins.
And already we have some difficulties to examine. The first thing we should
note is that most English translations stop with “the bridegroom.” A few
include a footnote to indicate that “other ancient authorities add and the bride.” The bride is missing
from some manuscripts, “probably because the ‘bridegroom’ was understood as an
allegorical reference to Christ, and the copyist could see no way of fitting
the bride into the allegory (Johnson 556).”
First – this is a parable and not
an allegory. Allegories need a specific referent. The novel Animal Farm by George Orwell is an
allegory about the Russian Revolution of 1917. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory of the
spiritual life from baptism through trials to heaven. Allegories need a
specific referent. Parables do not. Parables don’t need a point by point
comparison, this equals that, in order to be understood. They are simple
stories that point beyond themselves to greater truths.
But the Church got stuck reading
this particular parable as an allegory of Jesus as the Bridegroom and the
sudden appearance of the bridegroom at midnight as the Parousia - the expected
second coming of Christ, and eventually ‘the bride’ dropped out of the parable.
For how could Jesus, the bridegroom, come with his bride, the church, at his
second coming?
The allegorical interpretation was
fleshed out, point by point, to make the foolish Virgins, or maidens a reference
to Israel and the wise Virgins, or maidens to Gentile believers – further exacerbating
the tensions between Jews and Christians over the years. (Jeremias 51 - 53) Interpreted
thusly, the parable is used to encourage believers to not fall asleep – like the
Jews, or other non-believers, so that we can be ready when Christ appears to receive
his bride at the rapture or the second coming. (Never mind the fact that the
story clearly says that all ten of the waiting virgins, both the foolish and
the wise) fell asleep as they waited…)
Maybe the confusion is to be
expected. After all Jesus said that he taught the people with parables so that
they would not understand. His disciples asked why he taught the people using
parables and Jesus said, “The reason I talk to them in parables sis that they
look without seeing and listen with hearing or understanding. So in their case
what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah is being fulfilled: Listen and listen, but never understand! Look and look, but never perceive!
This people’s heart has grown coarse, their ears dulled, they have shut their eyes
tight to avoid using their eyes to see, their ears to hear, their heart to
understand…” Matthew 13: 10 - 15
But all of this is going astray. If
we keep in mind that it’s a parable – and not an allegory – and that in the story the
bridegroom is coming with his bride we can read it as an occasion of joy and festivities
with shouts of rejoicing and mirth and the voices of the bridegroom and the
bride proceeding through the city. (Jeremiah 7:34). It is an elaborate
procession with the bridegroom and bride decked out as the King and Queen,
carried on a palanquin of wood from Lebanon, with posts of silver and a canopy
of gold. They are surrounded by their friends and families dressed as champions
and swordsmen (Song of Solomon 3: 7-11)
Ten wedding attendants went out to
wait for the procession, but the wedding party was delayed and the attendants
fell asleep. But at midnight, the cry went up. “Look! The bridegroom! Go and
meet him!”
The attendants snapped awake and
readied themselves to go join the festivities. But five of them had come
unprepared, with no extra oil. Their smoking, sputtering, smoldering wicks
would not light. “Share some of your oil with us,” the foolish ones said to the
others who’d wisely brought extra oil. But they replied, “There might not be
enough for all of us. Run quickly to the oil merchant (the oil merchant is open
at midnight?!) and buy some.
And while they were off buying more
oil, the wedding party arrived and everyone went into the house for the feast. When
the foolish attendants returned, with their lamps burning brightly now, they begged
for the door to be opened so that they could join the party. But the bridegroom
said to them. “I don’t know you,” and the door stayed closed.
There’s no need for fearful apocalyptic,
eschatological expectations here. And definitely no need to slur and vilify people of
the Jewish faith. The Kingdom of God is like this: those who are ready and prepared
will enter and be welcomed to the party. Those who are not ready and prepared
will remain unknown and outside the door.
Some might have difficulty with the
seeming finality of that that “I do not know you.” But another teaching of
Jesus recorded in the gospel of Matthew ends the same way. In chapter 7
Jesus told his disciples, “It is not anyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ who
will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father
in heaven. When the day comes many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not
prophecy in your name, drive out demons in your name, work many miracles in
your name?’ Then I shall tell them to their faces: I have never known you.”
(Matthew 7: 21 – 23)
Many who think they belong, who are
prophesying in his name, who are driving out demons, who are preaching sermons,
who are waiting for the coming of Christ will find that they have missed the
boat because they haven't been doing the will of the father.
A few days ago – November 7th-
would have been the birthday of the French existentialist philosopher,
journalist, and author, Albert Camus. In a quote that is attributed to him (but
for which I cannot find the source) he said, “You will never be happy if you
continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you
are looking for the meaning of life.”We
won’t know the kingdom of God if we’re sitting around waiting for the kingdom
of God. To know (and be known in) the kingdom of God is to hear the message of Christ
and act on it. Do the will of God. Do the work of the Kingdom. Feed the hungry.
Give drink to the thirsty. Welcome the stranger. Clothe the naked. Visit the
sick and the imprisoned. (Matthew 25: 31 – 46)
The Kingdom of Heaven is like this:
Some of those who are waiting to see it will miss it because they are not ready
to see it. Listening and listening, they will not hear it. Looking and looking
they will not see it. And when the cry goes up, they won’t get in the door
because they haven’t understood. So watch and be ready. Do the will of the father.
Jeremias, Joachim. The Parables of Jesus. New York,
NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1972. Print.
Johnson, Sherman E. “The Gospel According to St. Matthew: Exegesis.”
The Interpreter’s Bible Volume VII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. 1951.
Print.
I came home from a long day of work; I had been busy all
day, moving materials, finding equipment, unloading, loading – but I felt as if
I had accomplished very little. I left work with too many things unfinished.
But it was good to be home. Home again, home again, fly away home. Once I
stepped through that door I could relax in the comfortable and the familiar.
But as soon as I opened the door and stepped through into my apartment I was
greeted by her voice. “Good. You’re home,” she said. “I’ve got something
wonderful to show you.”
She led me back to the bedroom past the couch, which seemed longer than I
remembered it being, and it was covered with several new throw pillows that I
didn’t recognize. “Oh.” I said in the bedroom, “A new comforter. Nice.”
“No,” she pouted. “Not the comforter. The cat.”
And sure enough, my cat, Camus, was curled up in an orange furry ball in
the center of the bed. She leaned over and whispered something to Camus and he
woke up. He stretched a long cat-stretch, then flicked his tail twice before beginning
to sing:
Standing tall, on the wings of my
dream.
Rise and fall, on the wings of my dream.
The rain and thunder
The wind and haze
I'm bound for better days.
Once finished, Camus, flicked his tail again, curled back up into a ball and
began purring as he drifted off to sleep.
“That’s amazing,” I said turning to the face the woman in my bedroom, “but who
the hell are you, and how did you get into my apartment?”
“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to
ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would
fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no
more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.” – Albert Camus “The
Myth of Sisyphus”
My first exposure to existential philosophy came not in the classroom, not in
the library, but on a movie screen; my teachers were not learned professors,
but the lovable oafs: Arthur Stanley Jefferson and Norvell Hardy – better known
to the world as Laurel and Hardy. I may have been only 10 years old, but even
then I was beginning to understand that life is tragic and absurd, and that
that is beautiful.
Their 1932 film “The Music Box” (for which they won an Oscar) perfectly
captures the story the existential hero, Sisyphus - condemned to an eternity of
absurdity. It’s a simple story, one nearly as old as human history: the hero
must move a heavy object to the top of the hill, whereupon it immediately rolls
back down. Repeat ad infinitum, ad
absurdum.
We may laugh at the slapstick antics of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, but it
should be a reverent laugh. Somewhere inside ourselves, we know that their struggle
is ours as well.
“The
struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must
imagine Sisyphus happy.” – Albert Camus “The Myth of Sisyphus”
It was in the not-so-summer of Eighteen Hundred and Froze to
Death that I first met Marcel and when he loaned me his copy of Albert Camus’ The Plague. I’ve read through that book several times
over the years and it has occurred to me that there were several things about
that first encounter that should have registered as more than slightly odd. They didn’t. Not then. But I’ve had a long time to think about it now and I’ve begun to wonder.
The first thing that I should have noticed is that that year without a summer,
when Mary Shelly was writing about her modern Prometheus and volcano affected
weather patterns were frightening and perplexing people around the globe, was almost
one hundred years before that great existentialist was born and one hundred and
thirty one years before he wrote that particular novel.
How was it that Marcel could have been carrying around a tattered
paperback edition over a century before its possible existence?
The second thing that didn’t immediately occur to me, though
you will think that it should have been obvious , was that Marcel was, in fact,
a monkey. He wore a bright red tarboosh
and vest with gold trim and tassels and spoke with an outrageous French accent,
but still, he was a monkey. Specifically
he was a Red-Eared Guenon.
I am, by nature and temperament, an introvert. When I tell people this they very often react
with surprise, or by saying, “no you’re not.”
But it’s true.
I am not one that enjoys being with crowds of people. After a few hours of interaction with
others I’m ready to spend some time by myself.
I’ll go into my “man-cave” and close the door. Don’t let me see you or hear you for a while
and I’ll be okay. Some are charged up by
interaction with people. After a couple of hours of chatting with people about
the weather and their grandkids and what happened last night on
that-show-that-everybody’s-watching they are full of energy and ready to go
right on talking for another several hours.
Not me. I am energized in my thoughts and in my thinking. I like to be alone sometimes. Sometimes I need to be alone.
And, based on reading the first chapter of Mark’s gospel, I’d be willing to be
that Jesus was a bit of an introvert.
Look at how often he’s trying to get away by himself, trying to leave
the crowds. He sneaks out of the house
in the still dark hours of the morning; he leaves the metropolis of Capernaum for the smaller
backwater villages. He’s trying to get
away from the crowds. He’s trying to
limit his interaction to small, manageable sized groups.
But it isn’t that introverts want to be alone all the time. As God said, “it’s not good for the man to be
alone.” Introverts need alone, quiet
time to recharge and to think and to be whole – but we introverts need people
too. There’s a challenge in finding the
balance. Too much interaction and
activity and noise ruins the introvert’s creativity and joy and ability to
function. Too little interaction and he
becomes a recluse, a hermit.
Jesus went to the smaller towns because he needed to speak to the people there
as well. It seems to me that he was
balancing his personal needs with those of his mission.
After leaving the crowds of Capernaum for the outlaying villages, Jesus
encountered a man with leprosy who came to him, pleading on his knees, “if you
are willing you can make me clean.”
Leprosy, we should point out, was a diagnostic catch all for
various skin diseases – and not what we commonly understand as leprosy
today. The disease that causes body
parts to rot and fall off (not really) is more accurately Hanson’s Disease and
is actually a disease that affects the human nervous system. Biblical “leprosy” is an affliction of the
skin (and sometimes clothing and the walls of houses). It could include excessive dry and scaly skin or fungal growth or other ailment of the skin.[i]
People with leprosy were to be separated from the rest of
the community. They were to be
quarantined. And this was to limit the
spread of the infection. If you limit
the exposure you can control the outbreak.
Lepers were to separate themselves until they could prove to an
inspector (one of the priests) that the infection had fully and completely gone
away.
But while Beauty may only be skin deep, Leperous contamination went all the way
to the core. People diagnosed with
leprosy were generally thought to have been cursed or punished by God. Moses’ sister, Miriam, was afflicted with
leprosy after she challenged her brother.
King Hezikiah was given leprosy when he overstepped his privileges as
king and tried to act as a priest in the temple. The military general Namaan was only cured of
his leprosy after he humbled himself.
The scheming servant Gehazi cused with it when he tried to set aside a
little something extra for himself…
Leprosy showed itself on the surface – in red patches and
inflammation and dry, scaly skin and white lesions – but the uncleanliness was
thought to go all the way to the soul.
Lepers were kept apart, not only because they might spread the skin disease,
but because they might also spread God’s disfavor and God’s curse. The Leper, with his dry ashy skin not only
looked like death, he was thought to have been afflicted with a sort of “living
death” and was in all ways unclean.
They were to rend their clothes, and to leave their hair unkempt. They were to cover the lower half of their
face and if approached by others were to shout out “Unclean! Unclean!” They would remain unclean as long as they had
the disease and were forced to remain alone outside the camp.[i]
This enforced isolation is very different than the
introvert’s need for alone time. This was a complete removal from human contact
and interaction. It was, as the rabbis
of that time called it, a “living death.”
It was lonely.
In his novel, The Plague, Albert Camus described the
emotional state of those forced to endure a lengthy quarantine from the rest of
the world. They came to know the
“incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company
with a memory that serves no purpose.”
They could remember the good and pleasant things that had happened, but
they could no longer enjoy them and so they became “hostile to the past,
impatient of the present, and cheated of the future.” Each one had to be content to “live only for
the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky.”[ii]
We don’t know how long this man with leprosy had endured
this enforced isolation, but we can certainly sense his desperation. How long had it been since he had sat with
his family for a meal, or hugged his wife, wrestled with his children? How long had it been since he’d joined his
brothers at the synagogue for prayer?
How long had it been since he had walked through the streets of town,
waving hello to those that he met? How
long had he been forced to endure that vast indifference? He fell on his knees at Jesus’ feet and
begged him, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” [iii]
And Jesus, moved with compassion[iv] stretched
out his hand and touched the man and said, “I am willing. Be clean.”
He actually touched the man.
Rabbinic law demanded that no less than six feet be kept from a
leper. “Rabbi Meir would not eat an egg
purchased in a street where had been a leper. Another rabbi boasted that he
always threw stones at them to keep them far off.”[v]
But Jesus reaches out his hand and touches the man. Purposefully.
He touched him.
The contamination of the leper was such that if he even
stood at the door of your house you were defiled by his uncleanliness. But Jesus touched the man. Jesus broke through that vast indifference
under the sky and touched the man who had been isolated by disease.
And what was communicated in this exchange wasn’t the
disease but the purity. Jesus wasn’t
contaminated by the man’s disease. Jesus
wasn’t cursed with the man’s defilement. The man was made clean. Jesus sent the man away[vi]
and warned him to keep quiet about it.
The man was to show himself to the priest for inspection, and to make
the necessary sacrifices to reenter society, but he was not to tell anyone what
Jesus had done.
But the man went away and began to spread the news freely,
telling everyone what Jesus had done – and how can we blame him? After being
released from his exile, after being restored to his community – after being
brought back to life, as it were, how could he not share this great story?
But look what happens as the result. Jesus could no longer openly enter a town but
was forced, by the crowds and their fervor and their crazed excitement, to
remain out in the countryside and lonely places. Jesus, as the result of curing the leper,
becomes almost a leper – unable to enter into public places -though not quite
for the same reasons.
This introverted Jesus, who has been seeking a bit of quite
alone time and an escape from the crowds, cures a man who has been forcibly
isolated from community the crowds, and as a result the crowds are even more
drawn to him. They came to him from
every quarter with their clamor and their noise, and their questions, and their
demands and needs.
And Jesus moved with compassion[vii]
reached out to them.
[v] Some of the earliest copies of Mark’s gospel
say Jesus was moved with “Indignation.”
This is strange and difficult to understand. But it might fit. After healing the man, Jesus gives him a “stern”
warning to keep silent about it. And
throughout Mark’s gospel we find a Jesus who is tired and angry. Perhaps Jesus was moved with “indignation” as
well as “compassion.”
[vi]
Edersheim, Alfred The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol 1, page
495
[vii] More
accurately, he “cast” the man away – perhaps another indicator that he was
moved with “indignation”
