Monte Canfield's Blog

Memoir: The Earliest Years, Part One: Those who came before

2011-01-08T16:11:00.000-05:00

First published on Open Salon, JANUARY 6, 2011 1:00PM

Why now?

I just celebrated my 72nd birthday, and have decided that it is none too soon to begin fleshing out my personal memoir, bits and pieces of which are already written, but with huge gaps remaining. As the old saw says, "I am not getting any younger."

As a child I was usually called "Little Monte" since I was a "Junior," or "Monte Gene," because my middle name is "Eugene." A brief glimpse of my early childhood was first introduced to my Open Salon readers in the final installment of the series "A WWII Romance." There we saw a melodramatic, but all too true, tale of "Monte Gene," then 6, being secretly lowered through a window by his uncle into the arms of his mother, Wilma, followed by a quick automobile run for the county line.

This "kidnapping" was the culmination of a bitter argument between his mother and his maternal grandmother, Lola, with whom he had lived most of his life up to that time. Wilma had remarried, over the vehement objections of her mother, to a young man named Alva Galemore. Al was to Lola nothing more than "poor white trash" and she had vowed to never give Monte up to go live with the newlyweds, even if it meant a court fight.

My life up to that time had been relatively uneventful from my point of view, but, from the perspective of the other parties involved, a center of controversy from the start. And it is there that my story really begins, long before I could have any actual memories of the history or the events.

However, all of the parties to my earliest years were eager, through the years that followed, to convince me of the truth of their versions of my earliest years. And, out of that cacophony of biased opinion, as I grew older, I pieced together my own version of my earliest years. That my version may be wrong in this or that detail is likely the case. But that the quilt that I pieced together from these multiple memories molded my understanding of human nature, family dynamics, my identity, and of life itself cannot be denied. That, of course, is a mixed blessing.

None of the key parties to this earliest story are alive, save me. And there is little that can be remotely called "evidence." There are, of course, a few photos, some crude information, what I have been told, and my personal memories which go back to about the age of three.

I am told there are those folk who remember their first birthdays, but I claim no such extraordinary abilities. And I only know that my memories go back to about three because there are pictures of me inscribed as taken at "age three" at events about which I remember details not in the pictures. Before that there are pictures, but I remember nothing about them other than what I have been told.

Before the Memories

But we must start even before my memories, because earlier events shaped those who shaped me, and I have distilled from them some background of those people who were vital to my formative years.

My father, of whom I have only the vaguest memories prior to age 12, was Monte Eugene Canfield. The version of my birth certificate filled in by the doctor, gives me that same name, but another certificate, the official state version, lists me as Monte Eugene Canfield, Jr.

In any case, there is some undocumented genealogical information on the Canfield side so we will start there. There is no genealogical information on my mother's side.

According to family records, my particular branch of the Canfield family emigrated from England to New England in 1639. My direct ancestor, Matthew Canfield, was born in 1604 and died in 1673. Later generations emigrated From New England, first to eastern Ohio when Ohio was a territory, part of the Western Reserve, and, later, to Kansas territory.

[Ironically, by shear accident, I have retired into the same eastern Ohio area of the early Canfield emigrants, some 60 miles southwest of the city of Canfield here in NE Ohio. I had no clue that there were Canfields in Ohio until after we moved here in 1997.]

Some 9 generations following Matthew Canfield, my paternal grandfather, Leo See Canfield, was born in June, 1892. He married my grandmother, Ola G. Montgomery, in 1915, and died in Dec, 1918 at Scranton in eastern Kansas where he owned a small town newspaper. While the records do not say why he died, that was the year of the great flu pandemic that originated in the US in Kansas, at Ft. Riley, and killed over 1/2 million people here in the US, and 50 to 100 million world wide.

My father, Monte Eugene Canfield, the first of two sons, was born in 1916.

My father's mother's maiden name was, as noted above, Ola Montgomery. I know nothing of her background other than that she was born in eastern Kansas. After my grandfather died she gave birth to her second son some three months later, my uncle, Leo. My father was then about 2 1/4 years old. In spite of those dire circumstances, rather than give up the family newspaper, and knowing nothing of the newspaper business herself, she determined to learn the trade and run the paper and print shop. This she did. She later went on to become a highly respected member of the press establishment in Kansas.

My mother was born Wilma Lee Elaine Allensworth in eastern Kansas, in 1923. In those days her friends called her "Willie." She hardly knew her father as he deserted the family when she was a very small girl and she was raised by her mother and her second husband, William Isaiah Isaacs. Bill Isaacs owned three small coal mines in Osage County, Kansas and they lived in Burlingame, Kansas, some 30 miles south of Topeka, and 6 miles from Scranton.

From the time Wilma's mother, Lola, and her stepfather, Bill, combined their two very large families, Bill Isaacs was known to Wilma as "Daddy," as he was to all of Lola's children. Wilma was given the name Isaacs as her family name, but Lola's older children were offered the choice and all chose to be known by the name of Isaacs. I did not even know that Bill Isaacs was not my grandfather by blood until I was a much older child and by then could not care less. I idolized him.

My maternal grandmother was born Lola May Barnes. I know nothing of her family background other than that there was an alleged ancestral relationship to Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, one which my grandmother was not interested in discussing. She told me, in no uncertain terms, that her family was part of the "free state" pioneers in the days of "Bloody Kansas." I judiciously never pursued that line of thought with her.
The Importance of Ancestry
The truth is that within my own family our ancestral pedigree was not very important, except for a small interest shown on the Canfield side. The general conviction on both sides of my family was that people earned their place in society by dint of hard study and/or hard work, preferably both.

As for myself the only thing I think is interesting about this little foray into my family background is that all the associated names are English in origin. I make no more of it than that.
And, I have little interest in the importance of "blood" beyond a sense of love and obligation to my immediate family, and, even then, "blood" cannot not define my immediate family.

The fact is that the man who had the most influence in my earliest years was my "step" grandfather, Bill Isaacs; the one who raised me throughout my public school years was my "step" father, Al Galemore, and the one who helped me most through my college years was my biological father's "step" father, Sam Shade.
All of those men treated me with unequivocal love as one of their own.

I have a sense of unconditional love and devotion to their memories today. They were my heroes, my mentors and my role models; and I loved them shamelessly and passionately. And I think of and miss them to this day; especially my ("step") Dad, Al Galemore.

Next: Wilma and Monte Sr. marry. And I am born, not in Kansas, but in the Oklahoma panhandle, a harbinger to an itinerant childhood.

Backing Up Your Posts/Comments to New Site is Easy

2010-12-06T14:29:00.000-05:00

Originally published, Open Salon, DECEMBER 4, 2010 4:26PM

I haven't spent much, hardly any, time here lately, but there seems to be a bit of panic going on, again, on OS. This time its what happens if Salon.com sells out, folds, etc. It could happen, but does not look very imminent.
I wondered about what would happen to my stuff when a similar panic hit shortly after I came on OS. (To my recollection this is the third such panic since I came here in October, 2008). So, in addition to keeping back up files on my computer of everything I post, I decided to set up a "mirror blog" on Google's Blogspot. (Used to be known as Blogger.)
I was more concerned with keeping the formating, the pics, vids, links, etc. than just the content since it is time consuming to set up a post anywhere.
I chose Google's Blogspot over the many other available free spots to start a blog simply because I am lazy and Blogspot does almost all the work for you. They have templates you can choose from to set up the blog in any style you want, and step by step instructions about adding content.

In any case, once you have set up your account, chosen a format, and set up your blog name, etc. here is all you have to do to move content to Blogspot.

Open your Blogspot blog in one tab. In the Blogger "Dashboard" click on "New Post." That will open a window to allow you to add content.

Now, Open your Open Salon Blog in another tab and go to a given post on OS that you want to copy to Blogspot.

Right click and hold down the mouse key to highlight the post, including title, comments, etc. that you want. (You can edit out any ads, and miscellaneous stuff you don't want.) Left click the mouse and select "copy."

Then dump the copied material, pics, videos, etc. and all into the Blogspot window. (Left click the mouse and select "Paste."
Move the Title up to the title box in Blogspot. Move the "tags" into the "labels" box on Blogspot. And clean up any miscellaneous stuff that you don't want moved into Blogspot.

Click "Preview" and take a look at what you have. Edit that if necessary.

When you are satisfied it looks OK, Click on "Publish Post." You are done.
(You can edit the post further at any time, or delete it entirely.)

That's it. Several of our OS friends have started doing this and many of them have Blogger accounts. You can follow their blogs there just the way you can here, and you can send notices of your posts, etc.

Take a look at my Blogger "Mirror Site" to get an idea what it could look like, although there are MANY options how to set up your own blog using the templates.
http://montecanfield.blogspot.com/

If you have any questions let me know in the comments and I will try to walk you through any issues with doing this.
Blessings,

Monte

Links to my Advent, Christmas and Epiphany Essays

2010-12-06T14:26:00.000-05:00

Originally published on Open Salon, DECEMBER 1, 2010 8:55PM

Traditional Lighted Moravian Star

These essays are part of my ongoing, and developing, Christian Calendar Series. The links are posted here for those who like to reflect on the truths, beliefs and faith associated with those who celebrate these holy days in the life of believers. It is also hoped that those who do not share the Christian faith will come to better understand the importance of this tri-part season of love, hope, peace and joy.
--- Monte

Links to Open Salon Articles in this blog:

The Rich Man and Lazarus: Approaching the Coming Holidays

An Advent Reflection - Leaning toward God

Advent Reflection: God Does Not View Us From a Distance

My Christmas Gift - -Blessings & Peace

The Epiphany -- A Reflection on The Word of God

A Story of Thanksgiving: Where Are The Other Nine?

2010-09-08T14:25:00.001-04:00

Note: While this is written from my Christian perspective, I believe this essay raises issues for people of all faiths or of no faith at all.

Luke 17:11-19

Jesus was passing along the border of Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, ten men who were lepers stood far off and lifted their voices to him, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." When he heard them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were healed. One of them, a Samaritan, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorifying God he fell upon his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Jesus answered, saying "Were not ten healed? Where are the other nine? 18 Are there none who return to give glory to God, except this foreigner?" 19 And Jesus said to him, "Arise, and go on your way: your faith hath made you whole."

This little story about Jesus and the lepers is about a time of great personal crisis brought on by a horrible, incurable disease. And there is no "big deal" in life quite like being really ill, whether it is a sudden onset sickness or a chronic and incurable disease.

Serious illness is one of the worst things life can throw at us. It is not only the pain and physical misery that has to be endured; it is also the mental anguish, first of not knowing what is wrong, and then of knowing and wondering if anything actually can be done about it. All of that mental anguish is a function of being confronted with the truth of our own mortality, or of a painful morbidity that we might have to face for the rest of our life. Death is no longer an abstraction, something that happens to someone else. It is something that is happening to us. It is a time of our greatest vulnerability to the one thing we can't avoid: our own decay and death.

Serious illness is an all too graphic reminder that this life is fragile, finite and short. Even though we know that to be true on an intellectual level it is often only on our sickbed that we finally figure out that our personal earthly life is terminal. At its worst, serious illness is a foretaste of what it is like to have the world go on without you.

Perhaps that is why, when we are well, we often avoid those who are seriously ill. We may send a card or call, but we find it hard to visit. And the more seriously ill a person is the more reluctant we are. I remember that when I was a hospital chaplain back in the early 90s I would watch visitors stream in to see someone who had hernia or gall bladder surgery, or a broken leg. But I would walk down the hall to the AIDS ward and sit quietly talking to those folks and never see them get a visitor for days on end. In those days when science was just confirming how AIDS and HIV were transmitted the general public was afraid that they would catch their death from someone who had that affliction. Literally.

The many stories of Jesus and his dealings with those who had grave illnesses tell us that he understood this fear of death that we try so hard to cover over. This story of Jesus and the lepers takes place as Jesus is on the way to his own death, a death which he has foretold, in Jerusalem. Yet, on that journey he took the time to heal others. In this case, he was dealing with lepers. Ten of them to be exact.

It is hard for us to understand just how awful leprosy was in those days. Leprosy was a sentence of death, a slow, disfiguring, incurable death. But long before lepers died physically, they were essentially dead to anything approaching what we would call living. They were cast out of their homes, separated from their families, forbidden, literally, to come anywhere close to healthy people. In fact, they often lived in caves along the main caravan routes in colonies of other lepers, bound together in their dance with death, calling out for whatever alms they could get for essentials like food. They lived off the scraps of society because to society they were nothing but scraps.

When they moved about they were required to shout "Unclean! Unclean!" so that healthy people could avoid being in close proximity. Meanwhile, the relentless disease ate away at their bodies, distorting their features, even as it ate away at their pride and whatever dignity they had before they contracted the disease. Long before these unfortunates were physically dead, they were dead to their families and their community, even forbidden to practice their religion with those who were deemed "clean".

And so, into this setting comes Jesus, walking along the border between Galilee and Samaria. One of the ten lepers was even more of an outcast to a Jew than were the nine others, for he was a Samaritan. Samaritans were hated as a half-breed, syncretist race who held to a corrupt, compromised religion. That this hatred was ill founded did not really cross the minds of the Jewish leadership. And so, in the eyes of a Jewish rabbi like Jesus it should have been hard to imagine anyone lower than a Samaritan leper.

And thus the scene is set. We see Jesus walking along and, standing far off, the lepers beg Jesus for mercy. What did they want? What could they expect? Did they hope for a few coins, some bread or dried meat? Did they hope for a blessing or perhaps a kind word. Could these lowest of the low actually hope for a miracle? And why would a Jewish rabbi help them at all, knowing that the priests had condemned them to this life. How could he afford to do anything contrary to custom and law?

Well, Jesus does not break the law nor does he do anything that indicates that there is a miracle afoot. He makes no gestures of healing, does not touch them or come near to them, does not say anything to them that would indicate that he is doing anything for them at all. He simply treats them as if they are healed. And so he commands them to go and show themselves to their priests.

But, why would they? They are a mess, covered with sores, their features distorted, some beyond recognition. Why go to the priests only to be rejected yet again? Had they not suffered enough rejection for ten lifetimes? After all, the priests held their lives in their hands. They decided who was clean and who was unclean. They decided how severe the uncleanliness was and how the affected person was to deal with it.

Yet Jesus, a rabbi, told them to go to the priests as if they were clean. And here is the first miracle: they obeyed. As I have said many times before, trusting obedience is the most rudimentary form of faith: to trust and obey may not seem attractive to us individualists, but it is the first step in faith. Belief "in" something or someone comes later. We do not know why they trusted Jesus and obeyed him. Luke does not say. But many of the graces of God are not explained. I believe that their trusting obedience had to come from some place beyond themselves. It could not have come out of any grace filled experience they had up to that point in their wretched lives. It was a gift of faith.

And so, uncured, they go as they are told to do. And, as they go, the second miracle occurs: they are healed. They trusted and obeyed before they were healed, and having done so they find that they are, in fact, healed. And nine of them just keep right on going. Apparently they make no connection between their healing and the strange instruction of Jesus. Like us when we are healed, sometimes we are so happy just to be well that we forget why it happened or who brought it about.

But one leper, the Samaritan, makes the connection between the healing and the healer. He comes back, praising God at the top of his lungs, throwing himself on the ground in front of Jesus and thanking him profusely: "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"

And Jesus doesn't pick him up, dust him off and tell him some little comforting parable or saying to remind him of what just happened. Instead, Jesus asks two not quite rhetorical questions. "Hey, what happened to the other nine?" and "Did only you, a foreigner, see fit to come back and praise God?" Then Jesus tells him to go on his way because his faith has "made him whole" (or, "has healed" him).

Now, I know most modern Bible translations say that the man's faith "healed" him. But that is far too obvious a conclusion, and robs the story of its extraordinary power. I believe that phrase should read "your faith has saved you." Luke is trying to tell us something vitally important here and most modern translations are missing the point. The Greek word we see here translated as "healed," "made well," and "made whole" is precisely the word used throughout the New Testament for "saved."

And here is the point I believe Luke is making: we know that all ten were "healed," or "made whole." That is obvious. But only one came back. And that one was "saved" by having done so. Only one, the Samaritan, turned back to the source of his healing and expressed thanksgiving: joyous, outrageous gratitude; thanksgiving directed at God through the instrument of his healing: Jesus. Only one felt and understood the source of his salvation.

So, what is the difference between the thankful one and the nine who do not come back to say thank you? The ten lepers were all dead people. Spiritually and socially, and, increasingly, physically, they were considered dead. And every one of them would have given just about anything to be made well again, to simply be "normal" and to live a normal life. And Jesus gave all ten of them that. So, what is the only real difference?

Just this. What Luke is really talking about here is the possibility of a spiritual resurrection: a resurrection that gives them a chance to restore relationship with God and not to be just "normal" like other people. And if they did not know that Jesus is about the task resurrecting people to more than just physical life but to be in right relationship to God, then Luke knew exactly that. Story after story in his Gospel portray this role that Jesus plays throughout his ministry.

Luke knew that all of the healed lepers were once "outside" of normal society, and he knew that all are made "insiders" once again by Jesus. But only one, the Samaritan, realizes a spiritual resurrection. This one is not only healed, he is "saved," delivered, made whole, not only in body but in spirit. He alone comes back to say "thanks." He alone realizes that Jesus has now established a relationship with him, and has renewed his relationship with God. Most importantly, he alone recognizes that he is saved and was accepted by Jesus while he was yet a leper, while he was still sick, untouchable -- before he got well.

That is the true message Luke brings to us in this little story.

Personally I believe that Jesus is saying to the Samaritan, "Your acceptance of my embracing, life giving love, your faith in me even before you knew you were healed, and your recognition that the source of your healing is God; that faith has saved you."

As for the others they too got a wonderful gift for they were healed. The healing of the leprosy came with no strings attached. There was no requirement that they turn back and thank the one who healed them. And, like us, there is little likelihood that they will. You see they are all back to being "normal." And give it a year and they will forget all about who healed them. After all, their skin is clear, their sores are healed, there is a mortgage to pay, children to raise, shopping to be done, and work to do to make all of that possible.

But for me there remains a certain pathos in that outcome for the nine. What a shame it is to have met the Lord and giver of life and to come away from that encounter only "normal."

What happened to the other nine should remind the Christian believer that we really cannot ignore the One who blesses us, and in so doing not recognize the source of life and the offer of life in Christ's name.

And for my all of my readers, Christian or not, I would hope that you come away from this essay remembering that we really do not get by in this life without the help of others. And when someone comes into our lives and comes bearing life giving, life sparing or life changing gifts, be that person divine or human, we need to ask ourselves: do we both recognize and give thanks for the gifts we are given; or do we take them for granted and believe that no thanksgivings are in order?

The choice, of course, is always ours.

Monte

God's Blessing

2010-08-09T14:24:00.000-04:00

I haven’t written a post specifically on faith since May 11. However, it is important to me to write only when I think I have something useful to say. My short series on alcoholism certainly was driven by my faith and I shared with you its central role in my recovery.
I have spent a great deal time during this period praying, reading, and thinking about what I could write on faith issues that might be helpful and relevant to you in your daily lives. I hope that this essay will strengthen you on your own spiritual journey.
Blessings and peace to you all.
Monte

The Bible speaks many times about the blessing of God and the blessings that God bestows on us. It speaks of God blessing particular individuals, even groups and entire nations. Israel, for example, is blessed, not just for itself, but so it could be a blessing to all nations.

But it also is clear that God bestows blessings on everyone, not just on the religious, and not even only upon on the good, but also upon the evil. Sunshine and rain, two essential ingredients of life, Mathew tells us, fall upon both the good and the evil.

The Bible also speaks about the blessings we should bestow on others. And, of course, it often tells us that we should bless God, both in gratitude for the blessings God gives to us, but also simply because God is God, and worthy of praise, blessing and worship.

But I want to move beyond these theological generalities, because, while they set general parameters for understanding blessing, I would like to bring the discussion down to a much more personal level, one with which we all, hopefully, can identify.

I believe that most people today would say that most of the thanks for the blessings they receive goes to themselves. If we are blessed, mostly we figure we have earned it. We believe that we deserve to be blessed.
A few of us will acknowledge those who came before us and laid the groundwork for our successes, whatever they are. But, still, we believe that we are the ones who built upon that foundation and made it into something. They gave us a leg up, but we did the real work. So, still, we think that we deserve the blessings we get.

The interesting thing about these notions is that they are, of course, partly correct. But only partly. There is something missing in that kind of thinking, something that we have not necessarily consciously forgotten, but that was forgotten long before we came along. Unless we are taught what that is, we will inevitably place our trust in the one we think is the source of our blessings: our own self.

And in doing so we still miss something we have lost, perhaps never really known that we had. That is because we, as a species, lost that something long before there was a church, or a temple, synagogue, or mosque. It was lost before there was anything like a formal “religion.”

And that is an awareness of God as the source of all blessing.

Long ago we lost the understanding that we wholly belong to God, that we are so dependent upon God that our very existence is in God’s hands. We forgot that our lives are nothing more than pure gifts, gifts of God’s steadfast love.

We have forgotten who we are and to whom we belong.

Now, if you are a believer and even, perhaps, a regularly worshiping believer, you may think that what I am saying does not apply to you. And if it really does not I am very happy for you. Unfortunately, I cannot say that it does not apply to me.

The truth is that day in, day out, I hear myself complain, or I get anxious, about things that are not going my way, or I try to control my life and the lives of those around me, seldom doing a very good job of that. And in the process I inevitably forget whose I am and how I am daily blessed by God. And I, of all people, should not do that. Allegedly, I know better. Alas, what I know does not always translate into how I live my faith.

For me, there is a simple word for such forgetfulness: sin. And, unfortunately for many of us, when we feel a bit too self-righteous, the Bible is there to remind us that we are all sinners. Not some, ALL.

The Bible stories in Genesis that tell us about the time just before Noah and about Noah illustrate the importance of God’s blessing. I will paraphrase the essence of these stories as I go along. [I won’t bore you with lots of scripture quotes, but, if you wish, you can read Chapters 6 through 9 of Genesis for the details. They are short and won’t take long.]
After the great flood, the story says that God tells Noah that God will establish a covenant with him, his descendants, and with every living creature. I doubt that Noah had much trouble understanding the importance of that covenant given that God had just wiped out every living thing on the earth, except for the animals and Noah’s family that were saved on the ark that God had told Noah to build.

God had wiped out all the rest of the land borne creation because the people had already forgotten the source of their blessings. By chapter 6 of Genesis they already had forgotten. To give you an idea how early that is in the Bible, look at it this way. A typical Bible is 1000 plus pages. Chapter 6 of Genesis will be found within the first 5-7 pages of that Bible, right after the stories of the expulsion from the Garden and of Cain and Able. Soon. Really soon.

According to the story, the people were already so evil that God was, literally, “sick to his guts” with their sin. And the Bible tells us that this “grieved him to his heart,” and concludes with a quote from the maker of heaven and earth saying, “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created; people, together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But……

But, after the flood, God decided to make a covenant with Noah which would guarantee the salvation of not only humankind but of all of the creatures of the earth. God did this because God saw in Noah a righteous man. And Noah found favor in God’s sight.

In this tiny remnant family God saw enough goodness, enough understanding of to whom we creatures belong, to decide to keep our story going. So, as the story goes, without God remembering Noah, I would not be writing this and you would not be reading it.

And here is an amazing thing. Something that we inevitably overlook in this story. The story of the Noahic covenant starts with Verse One of Chapter Nine. And it starts out with a phrase we always skip over, perhaps because it seems so natural, so simple, so expected that we don’t even notice it. It starts, “Then God blessed Noah….”
Ah. That simple phrase. It just isn’t very dramatic, is it? I mean, we remember the big things that God does in the Bible, don’t we? We remember all the mighty acts of God in history. Those are the ones they teach in Bible School. Almost every child of a practicing religious family can tell you about Noah and the Ark.

Yet the blessing is by far God’s greatest act in that story, for without God’s blessing Noah would have failed even after the flood. It was the blessing that allowed the world to go on to become the world we know today.

Go back and look at the story of the creation in Chapter One. What does God do for humankind after God makes us on the sixth day? God blesses us. We are nothing without that blessing.

When people forget the blessing of their creator no good results. That is the moral of the story and of almost every other significant story in the Bible. Forget the blessing. Forget God. And God will not take that lightly. Fortunately, Noah did not forget that he was blessed by God.

It is easy for us to lose sight of the simple rhythms of God’s blessings in our lives. But we must not forget that there is a continuous, constant, steadfast presence of God in our lives, and it comes from those countless blessings. It is God’s blessing that brings to us fertility, family, nourishment, growth, nurture, love, and well-being. And these are the things that sustain our lives and that give quality to living. These are the “Simple Gifts” of life itself.
Noah knew that. Noah knew that he could endure the hardships of life, could endure the endless days on the ark as he rode out the flood, could endure the pain and loss of so many friends and relatives who chose not to believe, who chose to forget the blessing, who would not listen to God. He could endure because he knew that he belonged to God. He knew who he was, where he fit in the scheme of things, and, most of all to whom he belonged.

And, he knew that even before the flood. Before anyone, even God, spoke the words of blessing over him Noah knew who he was and to whom he belonged. He knew. And because he knew God considered him righteous.

Can we know as much? Or must we see amazing signs and mighty wonders to believe? Do we need to see some miraculous and overwhelming act of God before we remember to whom we owe our lives? It is not likely that in this lifetime we will see one of those mighty acts of God.
But if we just look around we can see God’s blessings everyday. The beauty those blessings bring is all around us. The world itself is a beautiful, wondrous, improbable place. It is a blessing that you can laugh, or work, or play, or think, or feel pain, or cry, or love and be loved. God provides life to us every day. Why do we take that for granted?

If we remember nothing else can we remember just this one thing? Can we remember that we are not necessary?! Surely that thought has crossed your mind at one time or another. Our lives do not have to be. There is no necessity that we exist. One egg. One sperm. One particular egg. One particular sperm. That makes you. Any other sperm, any other egg, and you don’t exist.

Do you realize that in countless ways every day of your life you are exposed, vulnerable, to things that could eliminate your life in a single heartbeat? But here we are. And that is a blessing.

The life we have been given; the air we breathe; the people we know and love, and who love us, all these and countless more things we take for granted, all are blessings. They are gifts. Gifts from the one who created us and sustains us and loves us. Not “us Christians.” Not “us Jews.” Not “us Muslims.” Not “us atheists.” ALL of us. All of us are blessed: by the God who gives us life.

For me it comes down to some choices. First, I choose to believe that this world and my life as part of it are not simply random acts of indifferent chance. Others do not share that belief. They are entitled to their beliefs, or lack thereof. Each must decide for him or her self what they believe about that fundamental choice.
Second, I have to constantly ask myself two questions lest I fall into the fallacy of self sufficiency: “Am I my own man, or am I God’s? And, if I am God’s, do I owe my life to my hard work or to God’s blessing?”

Too often we think that we are too busy to think about questions like these. Yet at times of stress, of grief, of illness, or great loss, times when there is no time to think, we often think that we are not blessed. Those are times when our self reliance and our self confidence in our ability to control our lives fail us. Those are the times when we feel most lost, most alone.

We feel alone because we have put our faith in ourselves, and when we fail ourselves we all too often blame that on God. It is very hard, indeed, to look in a mirror at times like those. But we must. We must be honest about who really failed. And we must, at our lowest times, remember God’s blessings.

We must, because it is when the god we have made out of ourselves, or our success, or our science, or our technology has let us down, and we finally realize that we cannot bless ourselves in ways that really count – that is when we must remember what it means to be blessed by God.

But we do not have to wait for some personal tragedy to start thinking about God’s blessing. We can take a chapter out of Noah’s book. Noah knew he was blessed long before the crisis came. He had thought about it and pondered it in the quiet recesses of his heart. He knew.

We too can know in our hearts that we are blessed; that we belong to God and that God takes care of God’s own. We can know that we are blessed because God has given us our very lives. We can know that we are blessed because God loves us. All of us.

It may sound trite, but it does make sense to count our blessings. Add them up. Get a sense of how totally pervasive they are in our lives. Get a sense of how totally indebted to God we are for our well being.

And then go out and pass on some of those blessings that you have been given to someone else. There is much to be thankful for, and one way to show your gratitude is by paying it forward to someone who needs to feel a blessing at a difficult point in his or her life. You are blessed, and, you can be a blessing to someone. It is a wonderful feeling.

The Weavers: A Musical Tribute

2010-08-03T13:53:00.000-04:00

My latest in the Musical Tribute post series. A tribute to the group that started the popularity of folk music in post WWII America. Videos included. At my mirror Open Salon blog.

http://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2010/08/02/the_weavers_a_musical_tribute

Obama: Will He, Can He, Be the One We Thought We Elected?

2010-07-26T19:11:00.000-04:00

I don't write about politics much anymore, but this nation is at a cusp in its direction and we ought to think about and discuss something that can determine the direction of the nation for the next decade.

Try as one might, it is not possible even for a President to be all things to all people. Nor is it possible to be the President of all of the people, if one insists that “all the people” includes giving to the rich, the spoiled, the pathological, the amoral and the immoral what they believe they deserve.

But President Obama is trying to do precisely that. And in the process, the nation, which lost its moral compass under the Bush Administration and has since been wandering in the wilderness, is in the process of reclaiming the dubious title of the “United States of ME,” forgetting that America is about “WE the people,” not “ME the greedy.”

But the President seems to have forgotten this. Rather, he is content to be the one who tries hard not to offend, or to be offended, regardless that he should find some things disgustingly offensive and should be mightily offended by others. He seems more content to be the professor who calmly discusses the subtle nuances of the many shades of gray as a black cloud descends over his Presidency.

Yes, this is the same man who showed us one side of himself during the campaign, the side of the progressive, center-left liberal who championed the rights of the poor, the disenfranchised, the working folk, and, yes, the middle class who, we were constantly told, were the 97% plus of us who made less than a quarter of a million dollars a year.

This is the man those of us who cared about America as a nation of all the people could get behind; a man who offered a clear alternative to everything Bush and his tools stood for. [With the shameful exception of continuing the war in Afghanistan.]

And what was his first act of consequence? To pass a Stimulus Act skewed almost entirely to bailing out Wall Street, a bill that offered but a trickle of funds to those who needed it most, the working people of America. Rather than complain about bailing out institution after institution that was “too big to fail” the Administration threw itself at the feet of the rich and invited them to take what they needed, after first inviting the financial foxes to run the chicken coop.

Then he said nothing in response to Republican complaint about bailing out the auto industry, an industry where real people were employed and where the government exposed a few tens of billions, a subsidy which is working and will be paid back, kept people employed, saved an industry that actually adds jobs and value to the GDP, rather than a Wall Street house of cards that adds phantom value through the trading of paper and the goosing up the “value” of worthless derivatives.

But he was not done. While urging passage of the most comprehensive overhaul of health care in the history of the nation he turned around and did not fight for a public option and did not insist on coverage of the now 45 million uninsured, settling for 36 million and then offering them only “high risk” pools run by, of course, the very insurance companies that ran our health care into the ground in the first place. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Now we are down to a basic political issue: will the Presidentt quit thinking about whether he personally can win in 2012 and start now calling out the Republicans for their obstructionism, their incessant “just say no to everything” campaign? Or will he be left with a Congress that cannot actually get anything done in the remaining two years of his first term? Will he, convinced that he can compromise with Republicans, in spite of the clear and unequivocal fact of perpetual Republican negativism, try to reason with the unreasonable for the next two or six years?

In the next couple of weeks he will have a chance to prove which Obama we will see: the moral leader of the nation, or the weak, deal cutter who negotiates from timidity.
The tax cuts expire soon. A Democratic bill has been introduced in each house to extend them to all but the top 2-3% of earners in this country, those making over $250,000 a year. That windfall to the rich would be allowed to expire and the income from their paying a few percentage points more taxes could be used to fund the programs that we desperately need: including feeding the poor and helping the states avoid going bankrupt.

The Republicans already have told us that they will vote against any extension that does not include all of the original tax cuts, including those to the rich. They will argue, using the usual smoke and mirrors, that the economy demands that we treat everyone “equally.”

The counter argument is simple: The top 3% don’t need the tax break. The lower 97% does. The top 3% will hardly feel the increase. Large numbers of the bottom 20% are literally starving, and/or out of work, without health care, without hope, and hurting beyond comprehension.

There is only, literally, one man in American who can effectively and convincingly make the only argument that is ethically correct, sway the voting public, and expose the Republicans in Congress for the morally corrupt puppets of big business that they are. That man is the one who ran for President two years ago. The one we have watched in the White House these past 18 months cannot and will not take aggressive action.

Time is surely running out, not just on this Congress, and not particularly on this President. But it is running out on the chance for this country to honor its moral obligations to its people. Who really wants even two more years of what we have now? Its time for our President to remember where he came from, who put him in office and why.

This country is hurling toward yet another decade of moral bankruptcy. We have lost our way. Have we forgotten all that America means? Have we forgotten what “and justice for all” means?

Which President will emerge now?

Monte

Favorite Country Music Vocal Duets, Tribute Series

2010-07-24T15:44:00.000-04:00

Link Here to Listen to Great Country Music Duets on my Open Salon Blog:

http://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2010/07/22/favorite_country_music_vocal_duets_tribute_series
Enjoy!

Monte

I am an Alcoholic, Part Three, Final, "To the Bottom"

2010-07-19T13:58:00.001-04:00

I have struggled with how to wrap up this brief series. I do not want to go into detail because most of the people who were friends, some of whom were also alcoholics, are still living and I have no right to expose them, even disguised, in this series.

So rather than discuss details that involve particular individuals beyond my immediate family, I would like to reinforce a couple of the truths and to dispel a myth about alcoholism by using myself as the example. Challenging the myth requires a bit of “tooting my own horn,” which makes me uncomfortable. But I also cannot expect you to take my word for the myth's lack of validity.

The simple fact is that the essence of my addictive behavior was set within the first years of my drinking. I drank for the feeling that alcohol gave me: it lightened my burdens, reduced my anxieties, and made me feel mellow, while usually making me happy and extroverted. At times, though, it would unleash my fear, anger or self pity; and that was when I could hurt others the most. Under the influence of alcohol your cognitive ability to control emotions is greatly reduced while your emotions are heightened. And there is no question that alcohol fed my already rather large ego, which made me during those times hardly the epitome of the well adjusted person.

I did not drink periodically, nor did I drink in moderation. I drank daily and to excess. But I did not feel or appear “drunk” until I had many drinks. I had a “high tolerance” for the drug. I can only remember twice when I was “fall down” drunk, and alcohol never stopped me from remembering what I did and did not do. Rather, I was a highly productive “functional alcoholic.”

People who did not know me well did not know how heavy a drinker I was. This pattern never changed until the last year of my drinking when I gave up trying to have a life beyond drinking. Toward the end I was drinking literally from the time I got up until I went to bed, and I really didn’t care who knew it. I was at my bottom. But for the first 34 years I was nowhere near that bottom. The final fall was off a cliff, not down a sloping hill.

One of the truths of alcoholism that I want to reinforce is that I hurt mostly those who most cared about me, my loved ones. I was not an awful husband and father, but I was surely not a good one, even by my standards in those days. I was too often indifferent, unloving, overly strict, suspicious, jealous, tired, short fused, angry, and self absorbed. Those whom I loved did not come first. I did. Or perhaps I should say alcohol and my career came first.

Another truth of my alcoholism is that deep down I knew the damage that I was doing to those who loved me and yet I did nothing about it. If there was a choice between booze and them, and there was, I chose booze, all the while telling myself it was a “false choice,” and that they did not really understand me and the important things I was accomplishing. Yet I knew that was a lie when I left my family after 12 years and sought a divorce, but, even then, I told myself they were better off without me. Perhaps that was literally true, considering that I had no intention of stopping drinking. I will never know. But I know that the wounds from that divorce have never healed in my children.

The myth I would like to dispel is that alcoholics are not as productive, creative, smart, inventive, imaginative, and morally driven as are nonalcoholic members of society. While we all can easily identify alcoholics in history who disprove that myth, social propriety insists that alcoholics are wastrels and worthless.

I fervently believed that when I finally got sober. I believed it because for many years after I quit drinking I came to two conclusions about myself that supported the myth because I was afraid that if they were not true then I would go back to drinking.

The first conclusion about my self was that I had stepped all over others in my career in order to get to the top as quickly as I did; that I was egomaniacal and ruthless and let nothing stand in the way of my personal success.

And the second conclusion was that I would have gotten much further and been more successful than I was had I never been a drinker.

I no longer think that either of those conclusions is true.

It is true that I may have stayed longer in the government part of my career and may have, given time, advanced to higher positions, which would have involved accepting political appointments. But I was a career civil servant and proud of my nonpartisan role in government, and it is highly likely that I still would have tired of working for the government and would have moved on in any case.

And I can not remember one time when I was given a promotion that I had not earned. I believed fervently in meritocracy. Nor did I ever do anything that would have otherwise stood in the way of someone else getting the same job as I got, or a better one.

To help put the lie to the myth, let me give a sketch of my life as a practicing alcoholic.

After the first three semesters of college at Washburn U. in Topeka, I got married on my 19th birthday. I dropped out of school for a semester to earn enough money to go back, and I went to Wichita U the following Fall. I had decided to study and completed my course work with a 4.0 average, taking extra courses, while working full time. I graduated in 1960, BA, cum laude, in Political Science.

I then accepted a post graduate teaching assistantship at Colorado U. at Boulder. I completed the MA course work, 30 hours, in two semesters, 4.0 average, while teaching two American Government undergraduate courses and a senior seminar in Constitutional Law.

I left Colorado for Cornell U. on a post-graduate fellowship at the end of that year to work on a doctorate. However, I was deeply in debt from school loans, had by then three children to care for, and decided to quit after one year.

I went to work for Gov. Nelson Rockefeller at Albany in the NY state Executive Development program. During that year I wrote my Master’s thesis (political theory) for Colorado U. I took the Federal Management Internship Exam the following Spring, scoring in the top 1% nationwide. I received offers from many federal agencies and chose to go to the Bureau of the Budget, Executive Office of the President. I was 23.

I moved up annually from GS 9, to 11, 12, 13 and 14. I wrote and reviewed proposed legislation, and was responsible for reviewing the budgets of the Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Land Management, US Geological Survey, and Federal water resources management programs.

When President Nixon came into office I moved to the Bureau of Land Management, as Director of the Division of Energy and Minerals, GS 15, responsible for management of the Government’s programs under the Mining Law and the Minerals Leasing Act, including Outer Continental Shelf Oil Leasing programs. I was 29.

Three years later McGeorge Bundy, then at the Ford Foundation, asked former TVA Chairman, David Freeman, to launch a high profile study of US energy policy. I knew Dave from working with him when he was on the White House staff under LBJ. He asked me to come to the Ford Foundation with him. Dave became Director of the Energy Policy Project and I was Deputy Director. We published a library of 23 books on US energy policy. I co-authored three of those and edited others. I also designed a new methodology for the Project into which all of the research flowed: “Alternative Scenarios Analysis.”

During this time I gave speeches throughout the US and in Europe, appeared on numerous panels and wrote and co-authored several professional papers and journal articles. I also taught at George Washington U., the Aspen Institute, the Federal Executive Institute at Williamsburg, and appeared on TV and radio in support of the recommendations of the Project.

After the completion of the Project, Elmer Staats, Comptroller General of the US, asked me to come to the General Accounting Office as Director of a new Office of Special Projects where I would implement policy analysis within the GAO using the scenarios analysis methodology. I went to the GAO at GS 17 and the next year, they created the Division of Energy and Materials and appointed me head of that Division at GS 18, the highest level civil service appointment. I was 35.

During the time at GAO we wrote between 30 and 50 reports to Congress a year, and I testified many times before congressional committees, was interviewed often by newspapers, magazines, TV and radio, particularly National Public Radio.

By age 38, I was burned out and tired of offering the same solutions to the energy crisis over and over and seeing essentially nothing happen. So I moved on to NYC as VP of a chemical company, ending up in St. Louis as CEO of a subsidiary of the company. After turning it into a profitable operation, I was out of a job, but with enough of a parachute that I was able to buy a small retail energy conservation company in St. Louis, which I owned for the next ten years.

All of this time I was drinking continuously and heavily. I was smoking 3 plus packs a day and getting about 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night. I was working 60 to 80 hours a week, usually 6 or 7 days a week. I was a successful, productive “workaholic alcoholic.” That I might have gone higher, further, faster is to me, looking back on it today, highly doubtful. At every turn I was the youngest ever to hold the positions I held, or positions were created for me to fill.

In terms of my public service career, I was an effective, competent, and innovative thinker in my areas of expertize, and was recognized as such by my peers, and by the academic and political communities that counted. And I was an alcoholic.

But, I was not a success as a husband and father, and there is no one but me to blame for that. That I could have been a much better father is, without a doubt, true.
In the end after my life all crashed down on me, I was saved, and not by my own doing. I do not know “why me?” But I know how and by whom.

Most of all I was blessed, after being alone for over 10 years, to have met Sue, who saw enough in me to love me in spite of my drinking and then to make me face a choice when I hit bottom: her or the bottle. And for the first time in 35 years I chose correctly. It was the best decision I ever made, and all of my academic and career successes pale into insignificance in the light of that decision.

And there is one thing I am sure of about that decision. When Sue forced that decision on me I was in no condition to make it on my own. I owe that to God. God gave me her and then God put Jim White into my life to show me the path to sobriety at exactly the time I hit bottom. Jim took me to my first AA meeting and stood by my side for three years until he was too frail to continue as my sponsor.

That is why I know that my 20 years of sobriety is a miracle. All we have left are miracles when we have no capacity to create for ourselves a future, when we are beaten down, consumed by something that we have no strength to resist, nor the will to try. Some higher power has to reach into us from the outside and lift us up out of the pit of despair.

God did that for me. While I had been a religious person all of my life, even when I was drinking, I know now that God was not then my higher power. Alcohol was. But when I got sober I dedicated the rest of my life to God, and to the service of others in God’s name. I have never once come close to regretting that.
It has been my intention with this series to show how this one alcoholic has, by the grace of God, achieved the reprieve of sobriety. I am not cured; but I am in remission, one day at a time.

I do not think of myself as unique. Rather, just the opposite. While the details differ there are common things that bind all the addicted. We have many more things in common that we have differences.

I also know this: If I can make it, so can others who share my addiction. And I will continue to reach my hand out to any who will take it. I will help them to walk the path I have been blessed to walk these past 20 years. We can walk it together.

God bless you all.

Monte

Author tags:
health, 20100719, addiction, my story, habits off alcoholism, alcoholics anonymous, alcoholic, alcoholism

I am an Alcoholic, Part Two

2010-07-12T15:47:00.000-04:00

I have long felt that a key sign of maturation is the willingness to appreciate and live with delayed gratification. A practicing alcoholic has no concept of that. The alcoholic understands only that booze solves the immediate, felt problem. If it hurts the booze anesthetizes the pain; if there is sadness, the booze can, for a while, make you feel, if not happy, at least indifferent and mellow.

I started drinking because I was hurt and angry. I felt trapped in a life I could not control. I was 15. But it was not my age that drove me to drink; it was my feelings, and my inability to “control” my life. Control is a big issue for the alcoholic, practicing or otherwise. And, while booze actually takes away your control, and releases your inhibitions, when drinking you feel like you are “in control”, right up to the point where you start the slide toward hitting bottom.

One of my strongest memories of my early drinking was leaving the house after my mother had beaten me with whatever she could get her hands on. It happened so often that I don’t even remember what she was screaming about, or beating me with.

I vividly remember sneaking out of the house after she went to bed, and going over to my friend’s house, which was on the property of a cemetery where his father was the caretaker. My friend and I went out to the maintenance shed, got a couple of six packs from an old refrigerator, and walked out into the cemetery to drink. He had several older brothers and his Dad let them keep beer in that fridge so it was easy to slip our beer into it and no one was the wiser.

We sat, leaning up against a couple of tombstones and drank, talking about everything we hated about our lives and what we were going to do when we were free to do what we wanted. We had big plans and ideas about how everything would be different, how we would make our marks on the world and show our parents that we were not losers.

After high school I went on to college, but he ended up working for his Dad in the cemetery. Some years later, I learned that he he had joined the Army and gone to Viet Nam. He came back dead. Some plans don’t work out.

But I remember thinking many times when I was climbing the success ladder in DC and NYC that, “This one’s for [him]” as I lifted my scotch in a silent toast. I was determined to prove that we were both right all those years before when we laughed and dreamed big dreams under the stars in that cemetery.

By the time I was in college I was a full blown alcoholic, but it never crossed my mind. That is not unusual in any way. Most alcoholics not only don’t know they are alcoholics in the early years of their drinking, but they look around and see others who drink too much and think that they are glad that they are not like this one or that one. The ability to lie to oneself is limitless.

I was 17 when I was kicked out of my house the month before my high school graduation. I went to live with my uncle for a while and then got a basement room I shared with another student near the college campus. I lived there for three semesters.

During that time I drank every day, went to school, and worked long hours first in a gas station and then a grocery store. Since my mother had taken, literally, all of the money I had saved for college by working construction the summer before my senior high school year, I had no choice but to work to have enough for tuition. Work was not new to me and I didn’t mind working since I had been working 30 to 40 hours a week since I was 12, turning most of my earnings over to my mother. That may seem harsh but I never noticed that part of it. To me it was pretty normal for a large poor family.

The summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college I joined the laborer’s union, and worked as a hod carrier for an brick mason who was a heavy drinker. We were helping build a Frito Lay plant on the edge of town. He always drank his lunch at a nearby bar and I went with him and did the same. I got into his habit of drinking beer with tomato juice in it for lunch along with eating a couple of boiled eggs. He called the drink a "working man’s bloody mary."

Carrying bricks up a ladder in sweltering heat was hard, dirty work but I actually enjoyed it. By then I was 6’2” and a wiry 160 pounds and was developing muscles I had no idea existed. The booze helped me feel adult, self sufficient, strong, resourceful, and able to conquer the world. And, at that point, I was still not feeling any really bad effects of my drinking. I had become a pro and knew both how much booze I needed to feel mellow and how much would make me feel bad the next day. I had begun my booze balancing act, at the age of 18.

College was something I had intended to do from the time I was a small boy. I always knew I would have to do it on my own because it was all my Dad could do to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads. But college course work took second to trying out my wings in the world. I was on my own.

And I really didn’t study much during that first year and a half of college. It was easy to slack off because learning has always come easy to me. I managed As and Bs in all my courses just by attending and listening, taking notes, and crashing the books the week before finals. At that point in my life, to me and my buddies booze and hanging out together were more important than good grades. I later changed my mind about that.

Looking back on those earliest drinking years some things seem clear to me when I think now about young drinkers.

First, Young drinkers always offer a “reason” (excuse?) for their drinking. The need to justify seems almost universal. Yet, in spite of what they may tell you, they seldom if ever start drinking for the “taste.” The fact is that I know few who actually thought that the first taste of beer was really wonderful. Beer is basically a bitter drink and taste for it, and most other forms of alcohol, is acquired. Yet I soon did come to like the taste of beer and quickly learned what brands I liked and did not like. But, even from the beginning, I think that if a Pepsi had the same alcohol in it as a beer I would have never popped the top on a can of beer. Beer was the drink that was easily available to an underage drinker. And it was cheap.

And, in spite of what they deeply believe is true, chances are about a million to one that no one “made them start drinking,” or “caused” them to drink. Yet there is a strong desire to blame their drinking on someone else, especially if it is excessive from the beginning. As you know, I blamed my drinking on my home life, and particularly on my mother who was abusive and had serious psychological issues.

But there is a truth that lies under all of these self delusions, and the attempt to delude others. The bottom line is that we start drinking for the effect that alcohol has.

So if someone tells you that they started drinking because wine tasted so good, or the bourbon was so smooth, or the scotch was so smokey on the tongue, well, I am sure that they believe that. But the truth is that if there were no buzz, they would not drink it. Likewise, if they tell you that someone or something “drove” them to drink, you know that most people deal with similar issues to theirs without pouring themselves into a bottle.

Second, whether they know it or not, they drink to escape, to change their “now.” They cannot see gratification coming soon, if ever, and they have no concept that delayed gratification can be worth the effort to wait. The pain is now. The hurt is now. The anger is now. The hatred is now. And alcohol offers a “now” solution.

Third, once they start drinking, pressure to continue drinking from drinking friends is enormous. It is not by accident that those who actually stop drinking must, to have continued success, not only give up the booze, they must give up their playmates and their playpens. It may work for a while to go back to the same old haunts and run around with the same old drinking friends, drinking Coke or Pepsi while your friends drink beer, wine and liquor, but, if you make a habit of that, you are playing with fire and you will get burned.

Fourth, as important as control of one’s life is to an alcoholic, once alcohol takes hold there is no “control” left when it comes to drinking. An alcoholic can no more control his drinking than he can control the amount of air he decides to breathe. Having one or two drinks is a foreign concept, not because the alcoholic does not want to only drink one or two in a social setting, but because s/he can’t drink only one or two.

The great desire for control can happen in other aspects of the life of a drinker. And that can go on successfully for decades. I could “control” how well I did in school, how well I did later in my career, how and where I worked, and most all other aspects of my life. But, from the first drink, while I was sure I was controlling my drinking, while I was balancing on that tightrope, the truth was I was slowly losing my balance and would eventually fall. Alcohol is patient and cunning and willing to wait for the fall.

To be continued.

Note: a number of readers who are not members of Open Salon have asked how to contact me. You can send an email to montecanfield@gmail.com.

I’m an Alcoholic. Part One

2010-07-07T02:06:00.003-04:00

“Hello, I’m Monte, and I’m an alcoholic. It has been 20 years since my last drink.”

On June 28, 2010 I celebrated 20 years of sobriety, one day at a time. I had forgotten the date until Sue came to me and put her arms around me and said, “Congratulations. Its your anniversary.” I dug into my billfold, and pulled out a faded old wallet card from Alcoholics Anonymous of St. Louis, signed by my beloved sponsor, Jim White. Sue was right. It has been 20 years.

Jim has since passed on and I have gotten old. Old and sober. Had I not gotten sober I have no doubt alcohol would have killed me long before now. I believe in miracles and my sobriety is a miracle.

Jim White was 70 years old and 26 years sober when he took me under his wing. So I figure that after 20 years of sobriety and at the age of 71 maybe it is time to tell my story to someone other than the friends gathered around the table at the AA meetings I have attended, and the many dear friends I have sponsored, mentored, counseled and loved who also share my addiction. It is time to share it with you.

And, with the grace of God, perhaps I might reach one or more drinkers who will find something in my story that will resonate with them, something that will tell them that their kind of drinking is far more than just an occasional social indulgence, and that will encourage them to find the strength to walk away from the closest friend they have ever known: alcohol.

I would like to set the stage for my story by talking about some of the fundamental habits of my alcoholism. There is nothing particularly unique about my alcoholism. These habits, along with a string of others I could mention, are generic and are exhibited by most alcoholics. They are the habits of addiction.

Without understanding some of the basic habits of the addictive personality it is not easy to see the "logic" that we who suffer from addiction see in our actions. That those actions are not "normal" does not occur to us until after we are "clean and sober."

I started drinking when I was 15. My home life was a mess. My mother had serious mental problems and was abusive. I was nine years older than the oldest of my four brothers and I was expected to help care for them, keep the house clean, go to school, and work a full time job, turning most of the money over to my mother. Beer took me away from all of that, if only for a few stolen hours late at night. Soon it was every night.

I never met a beer I didn’t like, and I never could have only one. In beginning I never drank anything but beer. My friends who were 18 could buy beer for me, but not liquor so it was the natural choice. In those early years I seldom had hangovers, even if I drank a couple of six packs.

Later, that would change. When I turned 21 and could buy liquor, beer stopped being the drink of choice and then came headaches, hangovers, and, toward the end, severe panic attacks and the fear of spending any time in public. It was stock up on booze, stay home and drink. Alcohol was closing in for the kill and I was an active party to my own destruction.

I didn’t notice it but very early on there were habits developing that I would carry with me for the entire time I would drink.

– Lying.

Lying is essential to the alcoholic. First you lie to yourself and tell yourself that you are not drinking too much, that you deserve to drink, and that you can stop any time you want to. Then you lie to everybody else. You say that you only had two drinks when the two drinks were six ounces of scotch each with a spritz of club soda, that you have not had a drink at all when you have been drinking vodka to cover the smell, that you are sick or tired or busy or sleepy or whatever other thing you can think of to cover your drinking.

The more and longer you drink the more you tell yourself that your lies are working, and the less they actually are. In the end you are the only one who thinks that nobody knows you are a drunk.

– Protecting the supply.

From the beginning you are hooked. It is my firm belief that no one slides into alcoholism. You are born with it. What can change is that you increase your drinking to the point where you finally realize that you have a problem, thus convincing yourself that you are “becoming” an alcoholic.

And one sure sign is that you notice how you protect the supply. If you are underage that comes naturally. It did for me because my mother would physically abuse me if she knew I drank. So I hid the supply with other boys who were older and allowed to drink. It was worth sharing a few beers with them to stash my booze with them. But mostly I needed them to buy the booze for me.

Later, as an adult I would squirrel away bottles of scotch, gin and vodka around the house, in the car, and, toward the end even at work. And if it looked like I would run out and could not get any more quickly I would literally have a panic attack. The solution to that was never to wonder whether it was normal to have a panic attack over not being able to buy liquor on Sunday. Rather it was to buy my scotch by the half gallon and stock several half gallons away from sight in the basement – my liquid savings account.

– Choosing the right friends

This is seldom at first a conscious thing. But the alcoholic will soon gravitate toward other drinkers. As time goes on you become aware how uncomfortable you are if you have to spend, say, an entire afternoon or evening with people who do not drink. You are nervous and feel trapped and you know that a couple of drinks would take the edge off. So you make excuses not to go back to their place or to functions where drinks are not served.

And, if you have to go to a place where there are no drinks served, you have three or four stiff drinks before you leave, preferably vodka, brush your teeth, use mouthwash, carry a breath spray and go. And be sure to leave early.

When I was in Washington, DC I made sure that I went to lunch with friends who had two or three drinks before eating, usually martinis, and I went to happy hour with those who had a few before going home. Those turned out to be the same people, and naturally became the ones that I spent time with on weekends, going to sporting events, parties, etc.

This, in turn, led to a justification for my own drinking: “Everybody in DC drinks. I don’t drink any more than they do.” Of course not. They were mirrors of me. So you choose the friends who share the same best friend you do: alcohol.

– Blaming your problem on something and/or someone else

When you come home at night you need a strong drink because your boss or your partner or someone with whom you interact with was a real jerk, had a stupid idea that involved you, did not like your brilliant idea, did not agree with your ideas or, in your mind, otherwise disrespected you.

And you needed a second one because your wife did not understand, or agree, or wanted you to do something you did not want to do. And two drinks were not enough to take off that edge so a third made sense, then a fourth.

When you went to a party or a reception you made sure you chose a party with an open bar. If you just went to a bar to drink with your buddies everybody was drinking and they kept telling you to have “just one more” before you leave.So how could you leave? You can’t disappoint them; after all they are your friends.

– Proving to yourself that you are not what you know you are

You don’t have to drink and you can prove it. You can stop any time you want to. And you can and you do – for a few days or a week. You can’t be an alcoholic because you have proven the old saying, “Sure, I can stop drinking. I’ve done it a hundred times.” To others it’s a joke. To you it’s proof.

If, through the fog that you don’t know you are in, you realize you are drinking too much you go through elaborate ruses to prove to yourself you don’t drink too much. “I won’t drink before I get off work.” Later, “I won’t drink before noon.” Or, I will only have three drinks.” But, you don’t say how much scotch you put in each drink. So you say, “I will only have 4 jiggers tonight”, and then you choose the biggest jigger you own. Or you say, “I will only drink beer, “ or “I will only drink wine.”

These tactics will work for a few days and you will “prove” you don’t drink too much. That lasts until some major stress comes along and you decide to have as much as you need to take the edge off, to avoid the stress, the pain, the disappointment. Then, when you finally mellow out you are drunk, and you are the last person on the planet to know that. The truth is there is always a good reason to have the next drink.

Most active alcoholics have never heard the old Japanese saying, “First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.” And if they do hear it they won’t believe it has anything to do with them. They won’t understand that until they hit bottom. And that can take 35 years. I know.

To be continued.

Larry Gatlin (& the Gatlin Brothers).: Tribute Post

2010-07-02T21:42:00.001-04:00

First posted on Open Salon, JULY 1, 2010 3:35PM

Larry Gatlin has been one of my favorites for almost 40 years. He was one of the so-called “countrypolitian” singers of the 70s and 80s who helped bridge the gap between country and pop. He has 33 Top 40 hit singles on the Billboard Country Charts.

What many people ignore is that he was one of the great song writers of that generation, in any genre. He wrote songs for himself and for many other country stars, particularly for his mentor and friend, Dotty West.

His pure tenor has a bell-like quality and his inflections carry a deep sincerity that few can duplicate. Most popular male country music are baritones. There are a few tenors who are exceptions, particularly Marty Robbins in the 50s, David Houston in the 60s, and Gatlin in the 70s and 80s.

While he no longer tours much, spending most of his time with family and with his shows at his Myrtle Beach theater, he can sometimes be seen on the Gaither gospel show, singing the old Southern gospel songs that he loved as a child when he and his brothers sung in the Texas church the family attended.

He also does another type of "touring": visiting schools and churches, being interviewed on TV and radio, and using other venues to tell his story about his alcohol and drug addiction, something which he personally went through with devastating effects on his own career.

As with my other tribute posts, this one shares a few representative You Tube videos. As usual, I urge you to use good earphones, earbuds, or quality external speakers to have any real idea about the talent of the artists in this Tribute Series.

Links to my other music tributes and music posts are gathered together in the left column of this blog.

So, sit back, put the headphones on, and enjoy one of the great swing, ballad and pop oriented country singers on the last 50 years.

Monte

Ten Videos:

First, a recent interview on a Christian talk show which gives you an idea of his backgound and his thoughts on writing songs, ending with a live renditon of his hit, “All the Gold in California.”

Early recording of “Broken Lady”

An upbeat swinging “crossover” hit: “Somebody’s Baby.”

A favorite of mine that never made it big, but just listen to the truth of the words. “Midnight Choir”

A Crossover hit that features great harmony. “Sure Feels Like Love”

“Sweet Becky Walker” was an early hit. This is a later re-recording. Their voices have matured and deepened on this track.

A big hit in ’80 or ’81 right before Larry’s downward spiral with alcohol and drugs. "What Are We Doin' Lonesome?”

Upbeat Texas Swing hit: “Houston.”

Larry is a lifelong Pentacostal Christian and loves to sing gospel. Here he is singing a modern gospel tune. He is often invited to sing with the with the Gaither Gospel Choir by his old friends, Bill and Gloria Gaither. "Healing Stream”

Final Video: A huge hit that features Larry at his best. “Bitter They Are, Harder They Fall”

Research Resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Gatlin

http://gatlinbrothers.musiccitynetworks.com/

http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/gatlin_larry/bio.jhtml

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0309705/bio

http://delafont.com/music_acts/larry-gatlin.htm

Memorial Day: Take Time to Remember

2010-05-28T17:05:00.001-04:00

Bath, NY, National Cemetery

Note: This is an edited version of a post about Memorial Day that I posted here last year. It is based on a Memorial Day address I gave in 2005 at the Dover, Ohio Memorial Day observance in 2004.

Not enough people will read this or the other Memorial Day tribute posts. Most will be out enjoying a "three day holiday weekend." And I intend to do the same. But my prayer is that at some point in this weekend we will all stop, find a quiet place, and lift a prayer of gratitude for those who made the supreme sacrifice so that we can have three day weekends knowing that we still hold our liberty as one of the highest values of this nation.

Men and women have fought and died believing that they were serving a cause far greater than themselves. Some have died in wars where the enemy was clear and they knew exactly who they were fighting and why. They knew that the people of this nation declared them to be "good" wars, wars against evil. Others have fought in wars that were not worth their sacrifice.

But we must distinguish between the morality of a war, or the lack of it, and the men and women who fight believing they are doing it for us, and for our children and our children's children. And so we should honor all who gave of themselves, their blood, and, too often, their very lives. All those we honor this day.

When I was a child we called this time Decoration Day. And we used to pick flowers and carry them to the cemetery in town and lay them on the graves of soldiers from the town who were honored on that day. But the custom of honoring those who have fallen in war began long before I was a child. It began in the Southern states immediately after the Civil War when people decorated the graves of fallen Confederate soldiers.

In 1868, General John Logan, who was then commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, named May 30, the date of discharge of the last Union soldier following the Civil War, as a day to decorate the graves of Union soldiers as well. Later the graves of all soldiers, sailors, and marines were so honored regardless of what war they fought in, or whether or not they died in combat. The date was moved from May 30 to the last Monday in May several years ago.

What we need to remember now is that, for almost a century and a half, throughout this nation, we have dedicated this time to the memory of all those who have fallen in the defense of this nation, regardless of the branch of military in which they served.

And, in more recent years, we have also taken this time to remember not only those lost in battle, but also those of our own loved ones and friends who have gone from us by accident, through tragedy, or in the normal course of life.

I am sure that many of us, and others throughout this great nation, are this day are remembering the great loss of life that we suffered on September 11, 2001, and the 5000 plus American service personnel who have since lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan these last long eight years.

For longer than anyone alive can remember, we have honored our dead by celebrating this special time. Remembering is the key to Memorial Day. Memorial Day is about is remembering. We all know too well how easy it is to forget, to take for granted, or to deliberately close our minds to the hardships and sacrifices which are sometimes difficult and painful to recall.

But there are some things we must remember. For without memory, without the history and tradition of remembrance, we cannot know the price which has been paid for our freedom. Without remembrance, we cannot know the debt that we shall always owe to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for us, sacrifices made when many of us were yet unborn.

REMEMBERING. The word is so common that we sometimes forget what it means. "RE -membering" literally means to put the members back together, to gather together what has otherwise been torn apart. We can’t do that physically in this life, for we must wait for God to provide that miracle for us and for our lost loved ones and comrades who have gone before us. But, until then we can RE-member them in our minds, and most of all, in our hearts.

Remembering is what separates us from those who don’t care, from those who are so caught up in their own importance that they have no time to think of others. Remembering is what separates us from those who are sure that what they have is what they alone have earned, and who believe that they owe no debts to anyone, past or present.

We who will bow our heads in a silent prayer or simply in remembrance on Memorial Day know better. We know that we owe our liberty, our freedom, to all those who died for the right for us to live as free people in a free land.

On this day I put away my arguments about the evil done in the last Administration and the lack of seeming purpose by the present Administration to do something to set that right. There will be many future days for me to continue that fight. Today is not one of them. Today we should be more unified than we ever are, a day when there is no right or left, no Democrat or Republican, no insiders or outsiders, but only Americans. Americans remembering.

Remembering separates us from the cold and unthinking, from those who would pay no allegiance to anyone but themselves, and who would give no honor to those who died believing that the values of this nation were worth fighting for, and, if necessary, dying for.

Patriotism is a battered concept today. For too long it was defined as those who supported the regime in power. That is changing but it will take time to replace allegiance to party with allegiance to country. In too many places in this nation we argue over even what basic human values and virtues are.

This should not really surprise us. It should not surprise us -- even though it should dismay us -- that our dead are not honored as they should be.

Community Memorial Day services are not widely attended these days. We have other things to do, or, as in my case, my health will not allow me to spend that kind of time in the heat.

But that is no justification for me not to remember. I can still think about the sacrifices made. I can still say a prayer in thanksgiving for that long line of those who put their lives on the line for me and my family, even though I know not their names, no did they know mine. But I know that many of them paid the ultimate sacrifice for the ideal that we all might be free.

For the last several days, families across America have been preparing for their Memorial Day weekend. And that is fine. I have too. I doubt that any of the honored dead for whom Memorial Day was established would begrudge American families the opportunity to have some quality time together, for people to relax and enjoy themselves.

But we must not forget what this time is really about. This is a time in which we, as a community, as a nation, gather together in groups as small as a family, or a couple newly in love looking for some time to just be together. We can gather in groups small and large, and while gathered, or even while alone, remember.

On this day we pause to remember that there are essential lessons to be learned, and re-learned; lessons for young and old alike: to remember and appreciate the blessings of freedom; to recognize the enormity of the sacrifice that has been made for us, and to pay honor and respect to those who gave everything on behalf of our common good. This day reminds us of what we can achieve when we pull together as one nation, respecting each other in spite of our differences.

And this day reminds us as well of our duty to honor not only those we lost in freedom's cause, but also, through our thoughts and our actions, to remember the service men and women who came back home from our wars, and are now our veterans. It is a day to remember, as well, the families of those who lost loved ones, and the families of those lost for whom there has never been a final accounting.

We must remember as well those who are putting their lives on the line for us in far off wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, wars that we may not individually support, wars that I do not personally support. But our service men and women are there. They are in harms way. And we, you and I, are not. That too is worth remembering.

There really are answers for those who think that this time is just like any other- except that we get a "long weekend"; to those who pause not an instant in their pursuit of their personal pleasures. We say “No. You are wrong.” to those who say that there is nothing worth remembering, no one worth honoring, no country worth saving.

This is not the time to lift my grievances, or for me to complain about how so much of what this nation does in the political and economic sphere makes little sense, about all the things we write about so passionately, about all that is "wrong" with America.

This is a time when I have something more important to do; a time when we look back and remember the shoulders upon which we stand as we look forward to what we hope will be a new and brighter day for this nation. There are those who will say, "Why bother?" Its past history, isn't it?" "Its time to move on, to look to the future, isn't it?"

To them we say, perhaps we will do what you suggest tomorrow. But, for today, we say that we remember. We remember. And we are thankful. And we will never forget the sacrifices made for us. Never. We shall remember.

And we shall teach our children, and our children’s children, of the great privilege and honor of being Americans, and of the great sacrifices that have been made for us.

On this Memorial Day we will pledge to carry a simple message into the future. Our message is that there were, and that there still are, those who loved this country enough to fight and to die, if necessary, to preserve the American way of life. That, my friends, we shall never forget.

May God bless each of us and our families, and may we always remember and give thanks for sacrifices made.

Monte

Don Williams Tribute: Happy 71st Birthday!

2010-05-27T11:36:00.003-04:00

First published, Open Salon, MAY 27, 2010 12:15AM

Don Williams has a birthday today, May 27, 2010. For 7 months he and I will be the same age, 71. For not quite a half century now he has been singing professionally and I have been listening. It has been an easy relationship that never grows old - although I can't say the same thing for us.

Don is sometimes called "Mr. Mellow" or "The Gentle Giant" by country fans. Yet many modern country fans have never heard of him, don't know that he still performs and that he routinely sells out venues in the UK, Europe and S. Africa. Now. Today. In fact, he has always been more popular overseas than here. His US heyday was from about 1970 through 1989. But during that time he built a following that has been loyal and appreciative of his art.

Don is a Texas country boy, and was one of the founders of the Pozo-Seco Singers, a favorite but short lived folk group that I enjoyed in the 60s.

Altogether 17 of his songs have been #1 Singles on the Billboard Country charts.

Wikipedia notes "His first hit, in 1973, was "The Shelter of Your Eyes." His 1974 hit, "I Wouldn't Want to Live if You Didn't Love Me," was the first of 17 No. 1 hits on Billboard's country chart. His best two known No. 1 hits were "I Believe in You" (1980) and "Lord I Hope This Day is Good" (1982).

Some of his other big No. 1 country hits included "You're My Best Friend" and "Turn Out the Light and Love Me Tonight" (1975); "Til the Rivers all Run Dry" and "Say it Again" (1976); "Some Broken Hearts Never Mend" and "I'm Just a Country Boy" (1977); "Tulsa Time" and "It Must Be Love" (1979); "Love Me Over Again" (1980); "If Hollywood Don't Need You" (1983); "Stay Young" and "That's the Thing About Love" (1984); and "Heartbeat in the Darkness" (1986). Some big No. 2 hits of his were "She Never Knew Me" (1976); "Good Ole Boys Like Me" (1980); "Walking a Broken Heart" (1985) and "Back in My Younger Days" (1990). His No. 3 hits were "Rake and Ramblin' Man" (1978); "Lay Down Beside Me" (1979); "If I Needed You" (1981, duet with Emmylou Harris); "Listen to the Radio" and "Mistakes" (1982); and "We've Got a Good Fire Goin'" (1986)."

Married to the same woman for 50 years, the laid back country balladeer made no ripples in the "bad boy" pond that so many young male country singers who came to fame in the 60s and 70s seemed compelled to jump into. His music is as mellow as the man, and the beauty of his baritone voice has always been a joy to listen to.

Here are some of his biggest hits, and a few others that I have thrown in just because I like them. In addition to the YouTube videos I have included a Playlist that has a few songs on it that are not available on YouTube. While he has never sought to sing duets with other country artists he did have one hit with Emmylou Harris that I have included on the Playlist.

Don Williams was finally recognized for what he has always been, a giant of country music, when he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame this year.

Happy Birthday, Don. Thanks for all of your wonderful music that I have been listening to since the late 60s.

You're My Best Friend

Good Ole Boys Like Me

Some Broken Hearts Never Mend

Amanda

Lord, I Hope This Day is Good

I Believe in You

Lay Down Beside Me

Gypsy Woman

Love Me Tonight

The Rose

'Til The Rivers All Run Dry

Shelter of Your Eyes

We Should Be Together

Love Me Over Against

Playlist

Relax, enjoy the smoothest male vocalist to ever hit the country scene.

Monte

When the world presses in, to whom do we turn?

2010-05-23T14:20:00.001-04:00

First published, Open Salon,Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Anne Cutri produced one of her best psalms today. You can read it here:

http://open.salon.com/blog/anne_cutri/2010/05/11/hold_fast_the_words_of_saint_clare_of_assisi

I commented, "Indeed, Anne. Indeed. This is one of your best. I have read it a dozen times and each time I find more meaning hidden in it. I am not sure, but I believe because it has happened to me, that at times when we are pressed the most we do our best work. We have to dig down for our best thoughts and intentions, if for no other reason than to avoid spiraling into the darkness and out of His light -- and ultimately in so doing we come close to the core that holds us together; to the values that anchor our reality. You are doing that. I am proud of you."

I have been spending a bit more time here lately, reading, not doing any original writing. And I have watched more than a few of you dear friends struggle with the burdens of life as they bear down on your shoulders. Many of you have shared those burdens, and I hope that in so doing you have found some succor in the kind comments of those of us who care enough to say that we care.

What I have noticed is that in the midst of the pain, whatever the source, most of the writers have reached down into a place in themselves where their basic values lie. The pain is a great enemy, and great enemies cannot be fought with commonplace platitudes, or shrugged off as just another headache. When it threatens to force is into a fetal position in bed, bereft of any relief, then we must fight it with our core beliefs.

Those who succeed are those who have those values in the first place, no matter how far they may have strayed from them since they learned them. They are those who have already answered the question "To whom can I turn now?" And the answer is that we turn to someone beyond the pain, someone who has mastered it and who understands it.

We turn to God, or Allah, or a higher power, the life force, the universe, the One, or, in Otto's wonderful phrase, the "Other." It matters not what we call that force, that power, that One in whom we move and have our being. What matters is that we HAVE the Other to whom we turn.

And in that turning, it seems clear to me, we do two important things.

First, we realize that the answers are not to be found in consulting ourselves. We are out of answers. If we were not, we would not make that turn. We do not do it casually. We do it because there is no where else to turn.

Second, we realize that we cannot create our own future. Like Sarah, we are now barren, beaten down, our dreams shattered. And we cannot even imagine a future for ourselves worth living. Without answers we do a wondrous thing: we admit our powerlessness. We surrender.

And, ironically, it is in the surrender that we find strength and peace. In the surrender we find the One who cares, the One who offers love and hope where we before had none.

I do not know why that works. But I know that it does. I also know that when we finally crawl out from the darkness we have pulled over our heads we may quickly forget how we got out. We may even think that "we did it ourselves."

We are vain creatures, we humans, and love to take credit for our own lives. Like Abraham and Sarah we are quick to prove that we are really in control and we forget the Promise, forget who got us out of the darkness, who gave us those values that allowed us to survive our toughest tests.

The wonder of it all is that the One will be there for us over and over as we stumble our way through life. The One will never say, "Well, I helped you before and you gave me no credit, so the next time you are on your own."

No. The One will say, "You are my beloved, my child, the love of my being, and I will always be with you, ready to hold you to my breast and stroke your hair, to let you know in your darkest nights that nothing you do can separate you from my love for you."

There is pain all around us. The imperfect world bears in on us and brings us troubles we believe are beyond the bearing. But as I watch and read and pray for you I see brighter days ahead for those who look beyond yourselves for the answers that we do not have within us.

St. Augustine wrote:

"Great art thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is thy power, and infinite is thy wisdom." And man desires to praise thee, for he is a part of thy creation; he bears his mortality about with him and carries the evidence of his sin and the proof that thou dost resist the proud. Still he desires to praise thee, this man who is only a small part of thy creation. Thou hast prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee."

Monte

Appearances of the Risen Christ (5 of 5); Luke; 2010

2010-05-11T01:23:00.001-04:00

Introduction to this Final Post in this Series

When we complete this look at Luke's account we will have studied is some detail all three of the accounts of the resurrection appearances in the synoptic Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke. Synoptic means that they can be "viewed together." This is because both Matthew and Luke use Mark's earlier written Gospel as the foundation of their Gospels.

An Overview of Luke's Gospel Account

Like Matthew, Luke relies partly on Mark's account, but not as much as does Matthew. While Matthew basically expanded upon Mark's resurrection story, Luke shortens some of Mark's details, probably to make room for more of his own. Luke has stories that appear only in his Gospel and stories that appear in his Gospel and in Matthew's, but not in Mark..

Luke includes the story of the empty tomb, but modifies it substantially. He also adds an appearance by Jesus to the assembled disciples, along with some very tangible testimony that Jesus is indeed alive. But, unlike Matthew, he includes no appearance to the women near the tomb. Like Matthew, Luke includes a commissioning of the disciples for mission, but not so specific a one as in Matthew; and he completes his story with the ascension of Jesus into heaven, something we find only in Luke.

We also find, only in Luke, an enchanting and theologically significant encounter between the Lord and two dejected disciples on the road to Emmaus. This beautiful little novella is full of insight and heavily freighted with meaning, adding a dimension to the meaning of the "breaking of the bread" that has profound implications for the meaning of the Eucharist (Holy Communion).

Luke also does something else that is unique to his Gospel. All of the appearances, and even the Ascension, take place in and around Jerusalem, and nothing happens in Galilee. For Luke, Galilee was where Jesus began His work, but Jerusalem is where he finished it.

Since for Luke everything significant in the story of Jesus centers in Jerusalem, it is not surprising that, in the end, we find the disciples together, in Jerusalem, praying in the Temple continually and awaiting the coming of the Holy Spirit whom Jesus has promised to send to them.

One final note on what you are going to read from now on. Luke is the most Christocentric (centered on Jesus) and theologically demanding of the three synoptic Gospels. Therefore there will be more discussion about how Luke's Gospel speaks to Christians. I will be talking about what Christians need to know and do once they understand what Luke is saying. In sum, I will be speaking more as a Christian theologian in this essay.

Luke's Account in Some Detail

With that background, let's look at Luke's account in a little more detail. Like the others, Luke begins at the empty tomb. Christian hope always begins at the empty tomb. Not that it "proves" anything of and by itself. After all, Matthew sought mightily to prove that there was no hoax and that the body was not stolen.

But the empty tomb was what the first witnesses saw. And what they saw they would later realize was the result of the resurrection. They saw that the tomb was empty, and they did not know why. The angels told them why, and Christian hope began right there, at the empty tomb; began as a simple hope that said, "Could it be true? O God, let it be true!"

And so, in Luke we see the women hurrying to the tomb on the third day, a larger group of women than reported in Mark and Matthew, but with the same principal woman, Mary Magdalene. And it is here, at the very beginning of Luke's account, that we see that the details among the Gospels continue to differ.

Luke says that the stone was already rolled away and that they actually go into the tomb, but do not find the body. It is only then, after they make this discovery for themselves, that the angels - yes, two angels, not one - appear and explain to them what happened.

And their explanation is different as well. The angels ask the women why they are looking for the living among the dead, and then state bluntly, "He is not here, He is risen." Then, rather than telling them to tell the disciples to go to Galilee as do the other Gospels, the angels say that they are to remember what Jesus told them while in Galilee: That he was to be handed over, be crucified, and on the third day to rise again.

Although they were terrified, this instruction to "remember" is followed, and they do remember. And, while unstated in the text, it is in the remembering of Jesus' promise that they gain self control and return to tell the disciples, and "all the rest."

The Reaction of the Other Followers to

the Report of the Women

Luke reports a larger group of followers; followers who are gathered, not scattered, after the crucifixion. These are followers who have remained in Jerusalem, and who will remain in Jerusalem throughout the initial post-resurrection period, well beyond the Ascension. This is markedly different than in either Mark or Matthew.

Also of interest is that the gathered followers did not believe the women. They thought the women's testimony to be "an idle tale." But Peter must have heard some truth in their witness, for Luke tells us that Peter, alone, ran back to the tomb, stooped and looked in, seeing only the clothes.

It does not lead Peter to immediate faith, but it does lead him to amazement. Later we hear that the Lord appeared personally to Peter; no doubt dispelling any doubt he had; and still later we have to assume that Peter was once again with the large assembled group to which the Lord appeared, but only after Christ appeared to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Thus Peter likely saw the Risen Lord on at least two separate occasions.

Think about Peter for a moment. He goes from faithful disciple to denial, to guilt and sorrow, to doubt, to hope, to believing witness, all in a matter of days. His faith journey is a microcosm of that of many of us.

The Story of the Two Disciples on the Road to Emmaus

Luke then moves from the empty tomb to the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Most of you already know this story. It is one of the most beloved Christian Bible stories.

You will notice first that the two dejected disciples do not recognize Jesus right away. We are often like that. Jesus comes to us in many guises, but we do not often recognize him. We don't expect him and so we don't see him. I encourage Christians to open your eyes to the possibility that he is actually among you in your daily lives.

Second, Jesus tells them that they are foolish; not because they grieve his loss, or because they are slow to believe that he is risen, for they have little evidence of that at this point in the story. But he says that they are foolish for not believing what the prophets have already declared. In other words there was already all the information they needed in the Bible to understand Jesus' fate, had they only chosen to believe it.

Later, after Jesus removed himself from their midst, the Emmaus disciples realized the importance of what he had done in revealing the Scriptures to them. They said to one another, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us."

Do we Christians burn with passion when we hear the Scriptures revealed? Or do we need signs and wonders? Perhaps we would do better by getting back to basics and learning what has lain in front of us for thousands of years: the word of God, his promises to us as laid out in the Bible. That issue is implicit in what Jesus says to these two dejected disciples. If a Christian would quench his or her thirst for faith, then each must spend time at the well. Yet most of us don't bother; and then we wonder why our faith fails us in times of trial.

So, what exactly did Jesus do with these two of small faith? He took them back to the basics, back to the source of truth. Listen: "Then, beginning with Moses and the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures." So too with Christians today. We need to hear the truth about Christ in the Scriptures if we have any hope of really understanding God's message to us.

How the story of Emmaus ties directly into

the liturgy of Holy Communion

Luke tells us that the identity of Jesus was finally realized by them in the breaking of the bread. "When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him."

While this scene is not as dramatic as the Last Supper in the Upper Room, it clearly has deep Eucharistic overtones and speaks directly to what can happen to Christians when we take Holy Communion together.

What Luke does with this story is to build a bridge between the command to "remember" Jesus in the bread and the wine of the Last Supper, and the possibility for us to "see" the Risen Christ in the breaking of the bread.

In other words, when Christians participate with open hearts in Holy Communion we have the opportunity to witness the Risen Christ in our midst; to be witnesses to him as the Son of the Living God without our having been one of the original witnesses to his appearances.

After Jesus leaves them, they return in excitement to Jerusalem and tell the others their extraordinary story, only to learn that the Lord had also appeared to Peter. And this beautiful little novella of faith ends on the note: "Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread."

The Risen Christ Appears to a Much Larger Group of Disciples

As the larger group is discussing these things, Jesus appears among them, saying "Peace be with you." Not surprisingly, they are startled and terrified, thinking he is a ghost. He asks them bluntly why are they frightened and why are they doubting! And then, with compassion on their doubting hearts, he tells them to look at his wounds, and even to touch him. And he reminds them that it is he himself and not a ghost.

Their reaction is one of joy and yet still of doubt; of disbelief and yet of wonder. Jesus recognizes their befuddlement and does yet another remarkable thing: He asks for something to eat! They give him a piece of fish and he eats it while they watch.

All of this detail is only in Luke's Gospel. These things are intended as Luke's testimony to both the witness of those original followers and to us, that Jesus was real, alive and resurrected. Apparently it worked for those original followers, because he now has their attention. And, as with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus goes back to the basics, reminding them of what he told them before he died: that the Biblical prophecies about him had to be fulfilled.

Then, like on the road to Emmaus, He "opened their minds" and taught them, saying: "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem."

And then he gave them the commission to do exactly that, telling them that they are witnesses to these things. In other words, their job is to testify to the truth that he is the Messiah, and to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins. The mandate here in Luke is slightly different than the Great Commission in Matthew. Yet it covers much of the same ground. The point of both scenes is that Jesus appears to His followers and gives them a purpose, commissioning them to proclaim the Good News to the world!

He then instructs them to remain in Jerusalem and await the anointing of the Holy Spirit which He will send to them. Then, having completed His instructions to them, He leads them out to Bethany and blesses them. And, while He is blessing them, He is ascends into heaven. Luke is the only Gospel writer to describe the Ascension.

Concluding Thoughts on the Resurrection Appearances

And so we complete our look at the resurrection appearances in Mark, Matthew and Luke. While there are details that are different, there are more important similarities.

In all of the narratives someone is present who is described in very personal language as the Risen Christ, and that person is clearly the same Jesus of Nazareth who died on the Cross.

Further, that person is never described as a vision or as a dream, as something happening internal to the witness. Rather, the Risen Christ is always described as a being external to the witness; as an objective external reality, never as a subjective internal feeling.

In some cases the Risen Christ is not immediately identifiable to the witnesses. The Risen Christ is more than merely human, and clearly has powers far beyond those of mere mortals. Yet, the Risen Christ is always correctly identified as Jesus; is called "Lord;" and is worshiped.

And finally, the Risen Christ always issues a commission to discipleship and mission. And that mission is always universal in scope and clear in mission: to call people to faith.

The Abuse of the Christian Mission

The abuse of the commission to call people to faith in his name has caused much trouble through the centuries, when zealots have used that call to bludgeon those who did not answer that call. Christianity has much to account for and to ask forgiveness for, when the name of Christ has been used as an excuse for evil.

But there is nothing in the words of Christ or in the Bible describing a Christ that tells his followers to use his name to commit evil upon others. That his name has been used as an excuse for inflicting pain and death on others cannot and should not be denied. But that Jesus always spoke first of peace, brotherhood, hope, love, charity and sacrifice as the correct call for his disciples cannot be denied either.

Nor should we deny that throughout history there have been Christians who have spoken the truth to those who have abused Christ's name and his commandments, both within and without the Church. Many of those good Christians paid the highest price for that speaking of the truth to assembled Christian power.

And those of us who believe that Christ abhors the abuse of his name and speak out against such abuse now and in the future may well have to pay for speaking out. But the Gospel flame will forever burn in the hearts of those who know that Jesus intended his followers to witness to his love.

For, most of all, in all of the Gospels the Risen Lord always offers a promise of hope and love to others far removed from the original disciples and witnesses. That is the very essence of the witness that his followers are to share with others, even to the ends of the earth and to the end of the age.

May God bless you all.

Monte

_{Original post: 1145 page views 2010 01 18}

Appearances of the Risen Christ (4 of 5); Matthew; 2010

2010-05-05T17:37:00.001-04:00

Originally published on Open Salon, MAY 3, 2010 2:31PM

This essay originally appeared here in May, 2009 and has been extensively edited for 2010.

A Review of Mark's Handling of the Resurrection Appearances

Mark says nothing about specific resurrection appearances. Instead, he essentially repeats the kerygma, the proclamation, of the earliest Church, as first recorded by St. Paul in First Corinthians 15: 1-11.

In Mark a proclamation of resurrection faith is stated within the empty tomb. There, an angel says that Jesus is not in the tomb; that he has been raised, and is going ahead of Peter and the disciples to Galilee where they will see him.

This speech by the angel is a divine explanation of the meaning of the empty tomb. But angels aren't humans and and human reaction is not necessarily one of casual acceptance. Rather, Mark records that the women to whom the angel speaks are simply terrified and flee from the tomb in amazement, and tell no one!

There, on that strange note, Mark ends his Gospel!

I believe that Mark intentionally ends his Gospel this way. Mark wants each individual reader to make his or her own decision about who Jesus is. Mark would have us look at the evidence He provides in his Gospel and decide without the comfort of human testimony. Mark demands that we have faith based on the word of Jesus, and that of an angel after he had risen.

But not many are blessed with such trusting faith. And so, without realizing it, Mark lays the groundwork, via the statement of the angel in the empty tomb, for the later Gospel writers, who do include specific descriptions by eye-witnesses to the appearances of the Risen Lord. The three later Gospel writers tell us "what happened" after Mark's gospel ends.

Matthew's Account Differs Greatly from Mark's

Matthew, who wrote decades after Mark, is the Gospel writer who adheres closest to Mark's story, building his entire narrative on Mark's Gospel, but expanding it greatly and adding a lot of other material as well.

Mark wrote primarily for a gentile audience. Matthew, on the other hand, is the most "Jewish" of the Gospel writers and his small church was a Jewish sect within a Jewish world. As such, Matthew knew first hand the harsh accusations of the Jewish leadership and the condemnations of orthodox Jews against the upstart Christian sect within Judaism.

The hardest accusation of all was that the resurrection was faked by the disciples. Thus Matthew is interested in telling details of the story that Mark chose not to tell; or, perhaps, did not even know.

In any case, Matthew reports two separate appearances by the Risen Lord, the first immediately outside of the tomb in Jerusalem and the second later appearance on the mountain in Galilee, where the disciples worship him, yet some doubt.

It is there on that mountain in Galilee where the Risen Christ gives them what we know as "The Great Commission." We'll come back to these two scenes in a moment, but first, let's look at something else that Matthew reports of which that Mark says nothing.

Matthew tells the story of what happened at the tomb quite differently than does Mark. Matthew weaves into the story of the death of Jesus the undoubtedly true idea that the Jewish leaders were afraid that Jesus' followers would fake his resurrection.

Thus in Matthew we learn that the Chief Priests and the Pharisees go to Pilot and tell of an alleged plot by the Christians to steal the body and to claim that Jesus was raised. Pilate, in turn, tells them to place guards at the tomb to keep that from happening and to "secure" the tomb.

They do; and we are told that the guards "seal" the tomb. This extra caution is to no avail, and Matthew describes a far more dramatic scene at the time of the resurrection than Mark reported. Matthew tells us that the two Marys go to the tomb at dawn on Sunday - and everything goes crazy!

There is an earthquake; an angel descends from heaven and rolls away the stone and sits on it! The guards shake in fear and then go catatonic. And, in typical angelic fashion the angel tells the women not to be afraid!

Then the angel proceeds to tell them exactly what the angel in Mark told them. And, the women do not run away in terror, although this scene is far more terrifying than that depicted by Mark, but leave in both fear and "great joy", running to tell the disciples!

To say the least, that is different than Mark's report. But then it gets even more different, for Jesus suddenly appears before them, saying simply, "Greetings!" Matthew tells us that they are not afraid of him, or of him having appeared to them; but rather, that they come to him; fall at his feet, worshiping him.

He, like the angel, tells them not to be afraid, but to go tell the brothers to meet him in Galilee. Thus, in Matthew, we see not only that Jesus will meet the disciples in Galilee, as he promised, but that he first meets the women in Jerusalem, reassuring them of the truth of what the angel had spoken.

Why does Matthew Expand on Mark and add new material?

In the first place Matthew's community has entirely different stories that have been handed down within it than the stories told in Mark's community. In addition, Matthew is determined to undermine any idea that the followers of Jesus had stolen the body. Matthew highlights God's heavenly power: the earthquake, the angel, the angelic rolling away of the sealed stone from the tomb, and the trance placed on the guards. All of these actions are to indicate that Jesus being gone from the tomb has nothing whatsoever to do with human mischief, and everything to do with God's divine intervention.

And, to top it off, in case there are any who still think that the dead Jesus has been carried off; we see a very alive Jesus who is actually called "Jesus" not "Lord." In other words Matthew makes it clear that this is the same Jesus who was dead that we now see speaking calmly to the women.

Whatever lapses Matthew found in Mark's account which he thought would allow the claim of the Jewish leadership that the body was stolen, are completely covered here by Matthew's detailed defense of what happened.

What Matthew is doing here is trying to turn the tables on the accusers: arguing, in effect, that the hoax is not the resurrection, but rather the real hoax is the attempt by the Jewish leadership to cover up the resurrection!

So Matthew reports that the guards awakened from their catatonic state and went to the chief priests and told them what happened. Not content to let the truth prevail, the priests then bribed the guards with a large sum of money and told them to lie about what really happened! Listen: "You must say, 'His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.'"

Matthew says that the guards agreed, and took the money; and that "to this day" -- meaning when Matthew was writing his Gospel some 30 years later -- this lie still was circulating among the Jewish leadership.

Thus we see Matthew taking head-on the argument against the truth of the resurrection. Matthew becomes then the first great Gospel apologist (defender) for the Good News of Christ.

Why Matthew Admits that "Some Doubted"

Matthew ends his Gospel on a much more positive note. The eleven remaining disciples, less Judas, go to the mountain in Galilee to which Jesus directed them. Matthew is unclear here as he never says when or how Jesus told them to go to a mountain, rather than just to go to Galilee. In any case they go there and see him and they worship him.

Interestingly, Matthew admits that "some doubted." This is undoubtedly reported correctly because Matthew would be very reluctant to put that in had it not been a key part of the testimony that was passed forward to him. Our text implies that some of Jesus' own disciples doubted, even after seeing him, since there is no indication that anyone other than the disciples was on the mountain top, although "disciples" can include many followers other than the original twelve, and we know that Jesus had a large group of followers when he entered Jerusalem.

This idea was so repugnant to later redactors that some translations say that "others" doubted, implying that there were others on the mountain who saw Jesus, and those who doubted were not followers. Which may be true, but the text does not support it. The harder translation to swallow, that even after seeing him some of his own disciples doubted, is more likely correct.

Both Mark's and Matthew's Gospels are full of times when the disciples did not understand, and often doubted, both what Jesus was doing and what he said, including that he must die and be raised.

While we might wish that all of us were of one convinced mind on all important matters of the faith, the truth is that we are not. We are all individuals and are at different places in our own faith journeys. And each of us go through personal periods of doubt. I am comfortable with that as you know. I believe that doubt is a normal experience of faith development.

But many people are not comfortable with any doubt, including their own. You will have to make up your own minds, however, because there is no way to confirm the text.

What is clear is that when you read differing accounts of things that happened long ago, the logical thing to do is to accept the account that would be the hardest for the writer to accept, but could not leave out since it was part of the story as handed down.

Matthew's Account of the Giving of the "Great Commission"

What is far more important, however, than the question of who doubted that the Risen Lord was indeed risen was the instruction he gave them. We now call that instruction "The Great Commission."

The Great Commission is the basis for the mission of the Church, and is literally Christ's own instruction about what his disciples are to be doing with our lives. The fact that lay Christians most often do not do what he instructs us can be disheartening to those of us who like to think that we all should be trying to live as Christ would have us live. Regardless of how we respond to it, his message is clear and unequivocal.

Jesus' last words before his ascension are:

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Christ is clear. And it is equally clear that his resurrection was for the purpose of reestablishing relationship with us, and, through Christian ministry, with all humankind.

After he was risen Jesus said very little to us that is recorded in the Bible. This is by far the clearest message that the Risen Christ sends to those who call themselves Christians.

Sadly, very few lay people in the Church pay much attention to me when I tell them that the Great Commission is what we should be doing with our lives. It is, they tell me, what we hire pastors and missionaries to do. But that is only partly true.

When I was a pastor I hated to be the one to tell them, they were wrong to think that the commandment of Great Commission could be foisted off on paid staff. The truth is that there is nothing a Christian can do in his or her day to day life that is more important than trying to fulfill the Great Commission.

The Abuse of the Great Commission

and What Christians Should be Doing Instead

I am painfully aware of the fact that the Great Commission has been abused countless times when Christians have tried to cram their faith down people's throats. But the mission is to create disciples, then to teach those disciples to obey the teachings of Christ. It is not to force, coerce, intimidate or insist upon making disciples of people who have no interest in the Christian message.

Christians are to offer the message of Jesus by teaching; offering what Jesus said and did during his ministry on earth as an example for all humanity. That is a far cry from the fervent proselytizing and "in your face" demanding of faith that has gone on over the centuries, and continues to this day.

Yet, ironically, that Christ wants lay people to do anything at all about sharing the faith is not a comfortable idea to most modern Christians. But at the very least Christians can show the way to Christ by the examples of how they live their lives. The best evangelism is living a godly life.

They can invite people to "come and see" what Christians do, how they worship, what they get out of being followers of the Way, which is what Jesus did at the beginning of his ministry. They can be warm, open, friendly and loving to those who do come and see. Perhaps those seekers will decide that they want some of that love, compassion, caring and learning that they see when they visit our churches.

Next, in the final post in this series, we'll look at Luke's story of the resurrection appearances.

God bless you.

Monte

^{Original post: 1312 page views as of 2010 05 02}

Contrarian Thoughts about Mother's Day

2010-05-05T17:35:00.000-04:00

I first posted a version of this essay on May 9, 2009. The response was large and quite a bit of previously layered over feeling was shared by the commenters. I think that is all to the good. Sometimes we stuff in things that we do not want to deal with, and while not always so, bringing them to the light can be an important, if difficult, way of finally sorting out some issues that have haunted us.

For many of us Mother's day, and Father's Day for that matter, are difficult times. And, far too often, they are times when the society, our families, and, yes, our churches, are blissfully unaware of the problems our "celebration" of these days cause for people we otherwise love and would never think of hurting.

This post has been extensively edited for this year to take into account the comments on it posted last year. If you have not yet read it I urge you to do so. If you read it last year I urge you to read it again to remind yourself of the need to be aware of and sensitive to the feelings of those who do not fit the stereotype of those who see Mother's Day as a time of great joy.

Your feedback and comments are welcomed, and can be an important part of the discussion I think that we owe ourselves as we seek to sort out the issues these "holidays" raise.

As is her habit, on Friday Sue will fly out to St. Louis to see her Mom and siblings on Mother's Day. I will be a bachelor with three "cat kids" for three long days and nights, which will seen like an eternity after a few hours. I can't figure out who will be happier when she returns, me or the cats.

Since Sue is the glue that holds things together around here she is missed as soon as I can't find something that "goes missing." It really isn't missing, of course. It is just filed away in some code that I can't break. Its a man thing.

She loves to see her Mom and her sisters and she has a good time every time she goes. And I am very glad that she does it.

Sue and I don't have any children together. She can't, and I already had three grown children when we married. So the cats are our "kids." That works out well for us, but is not everybody's cup of tea. I always figure that Sue deserves some special attention at Mother's Day and so I am really happy that she spends it with her mother.

In the past, before she started the ritual of going to visit her mother in St. Louis on Mother's Day, I was also happy when she has picked an older friend to be her companion at the "Mother-Daughter" or "Mother's Day" banquets at the churches we served. She always picked someone who did not have any children, or whose children could not visit their mother.

Not many women are as courageous as my wife and would not feel comfortable "crashing" the banquet. I am not so sure how comfortable Sue was doing so, but I know she was trying to make a point about the day, without saying a word.

As a pastor I always insisted that the Mother's Day recognition in church be about all the women in the church, not just the ones who were actually mothers. That made sense to me. Why should the women without children be left out of the recognition and the small gifts that the children hand out to the "mothers" in the congregation?

Many of the single women or married childless women would come and thank me for including them. But you would be surprised, at least I was, at how many people would come to me and tell me that they resented extending the Mother's Day recognition to those who were not mothers.

I was always miffed at their insensitivity. I often looked them straight in the eye and said something like, "You know, don't you, Harriet, that Mother's Day is not a church related event? In some churches they ignore it."

And there are always small children and teenagers at such communal celebrations who have no mothers, whose mothers have died, or have left the home, and will not visit them, who want nothing to do with their children. And there are children there whose mothers treat them terribly. What about the feelings of those children?

So if we are going to celebrate Mother's Day we should recognize all women and not be so insensitive that we exclude women who have not had children. Ditto with Father's Day. And we should be sensitive to the feelings of the children who are not having a joyous childhood. It is easy to see who we honor and why, all the while forgetting who we ignore and hurt unintentionally.

The truth is that there will be a lot of people reading this post, and the many Mother's Day tribute posts which will show up here in the coming days, who have very bad memories of the way they were treated by their mothers and/or fathers. I happen to be one who has very mixed memories of my mother, and they are mostly negative.

I would be lying if I said that I loved her in the way that I know many of you love your moms. For decades I tried to pretend that I loved her like that, wondered what was wrong with me when I didn't, and kept trying to rewrite history to make her fit into the idealized mother that we are supposed to have.

The truth is that my mother, on occasion, could and did smother me with love. But many more times she beat me, hit me with any weapon that was close, pulled my hair, washed my mouth out with soap, grounded me for weeks on end for the slightest reason, knocked me down, and locked me in my bedroom.

More times than I can count she grabbed me by the hair, pulled me into my bedroom, slammed the door and made me suffer by saying "Wait 'til your Dad gets home and he will show you that I mean what I say!" And in terror I would wait until Dad came home, be called into the living room and she would scream at him about all the evil things I had done that day. Dad would try to talk her out of the spanking but she would insist that he take off his belt and spank me with it.

So I would have to lean over a chair and he would hit me with his belt until she said to stop. And if he didn't hit hard enough or long enough to satisfy her she would scream at him to hit me harder. If that didn't work she would rip the belt out of his hands and do it herself. I have always loved my step Dad. But, as a child growing up, I hated that he always gave in to her.

And there were many, many more ways that she manipulated the family and kept us all in fear. But as the oldest son by nine years I was the one she hurt the most.

I did not defend myself until the day she hit me in the face with a wooden coat hanger, cracked it, and went to hit me again. I grabbed her wrist and said, "never again." I was 17, and was thrown out the next day, but the damage was done during the time between my 6th year when she took me from my grandmother and my 17th year when I left.

It was not until just before my mother died, when she was 59, that I came to grips with my relationship with her. I finally recognized that she had her own demons to wrestle with and that she did the best she could given who she was.

Her best was not good enough, but I could not change that and finally accepted that fact and forgave her in my heart. So my personal devils were finally exorcized, at the age of 43. I wish I could have done it sooner, but at least I did it.

So, and this is important, this post is not about my continuing issues. It is about what I had to learn the hard way about closure and forgiveness. And it is in recognition that many people that we care about have not come to resolution and still have to deal with the pain they still feel on Mother's Day.

How do people who have little love for their mothers deal with this day, people who desperately want to remember shreds of the good times, because they are elusive in their memories, overwhelmed by the bad memories which are vivid to this day?

One thing I know is that for those who have few good memories of our mothers, or of our fathers, those who struggle to find some small remembrances of love and good times as we read all the really wonderful tribute pieces that are posted here about our mothers; well, for them it is hard to do.

They are happy that so many of their friends had good childhoods. They rejoice in that happiness. And, yes, they know that there were good things about their mothers. There really were. But when they are honest with themselves they would have to say that, on balance, the scales tip clearly toward the negative.

Most of these people are not jealous. Most are no longer wounded. Most are not frightened. We were all of those things during our childhood. And, yes, some are still. But even those of us who have made peace with our past, have come accept the reality of our childhood, and have moved on, are keenly aware that many have not yet been able to do that.

And that means that we are simply not part of the Mother's Day outpouring of love, and we will never be. The truth is that to say that we cherish our mothers would be lying.

So when some of your friends don't post tributes to their mothers this week, please try not to wonder why, or judge them. Be patient with them because none of us can get inside another person's mind. And the truth may be that they simply may have had a very different childhood that you had.

God bless the child, regardless of the memories.

Monte

^{Original posting: 1556 page views 2010 05 05}

Appearances of the Risen Christ (3 of 5); Mark; for 2010

2010-04-26T18:44:00.005-04:00

Related posts in this series on Resurrection Faith may be found in the column to the left of this page under The Christian Calendar Series. This essay originally appeared here in May, 2009 and has been extensively edited for 2010.

I have told you that I believe that the appearances of the Risen Lord after the resurrection are the easiest way to understand the truth of the resurrection of Jesus.

Yet, we are told in the Bible, in Matthew, that even Jesus' personal appearance before his followers after his resurrection was not enough "proof" for some. Matthew says that, even as the Risen Lord appeared to them on the mountain before he gave them the Great Commission, "some doubted." For some, then, even personally seeing the Risen Lord was not enough to allow them to believe the truth of the resurrection.

Today, these appearances do not provide proof that would satisfy a scientist or a skeptic, but they do provide the testimony of trustworthy eye witnesses, which is proof enough for some, but certainly not all.

Not counting the much later appearance to Paul on the road to Damascus, the stories of the appearances are in the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John.

These Gospel narratives containing stories of the Resurrection Appearances are explanations of the truth of the faith proclaimed by Paul and accepted by the earliest Christian communities. They provide for us, and for all later generations of Christians, testimony that we use to help support our own belief in the truth of the resurrection.

We should be clear, however, that no testimony by any witness from 2000 years ago is likely going to be considered "true" unless we first have taken a "leap of faith" and are willing to believe that the stories in the Bible are true.

Biblical truth may in many cases be seen as metaphorical or even as mythical. Some Biblical truth is clearly meant only for the community for which it was written and not intended to be universal dogma for all time. But in other cases, such as the basic proclamation in First Corinthians 15 1-11, the clear intention of St. Paul is that the resurrection be taken as literal truth.

There are not all that many "essentials" of the faith but that passage certainly is, as are two non-Biblical statements, or creeds, of the Church, the Apostle's and Nicene Creeds, both of which rely heavily on St. Paul's testimony in First Corinthians.

So, for the purposes of these discussions, I assume that the resurrection is true through faith. That assumption comes from first having faith and then studying this event in depth within the Biblical and extra-Biblical witness of the Church.

This way of study, my way of study, is orthodox and traditional and follows in the footsteps of Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Kempis, Hus, Luther, Arminius, Kierkegaard, Schleiermacher, Barth, Lewis, and both Niebuhrs and hundreds of other theologians throughout the centuries. And, as such, it begins with faith, and then seeks an understanding of that faith.

Interestingly, there are no resurrection appearances in the original manuscript of Mark, the first Gospel written.

The Gospel as written by the original "Mark" who wrote the rest of Mark's Gospel ends with chapter 16, verse 8, as follows:

Mark 16: 1 When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 They had been saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?" 4 When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6 But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." 8 So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Later writers added first a shorter ending and then a later longer ending which does have resurrection appearances. Both added endings appear in most modern Bibles, with appropriate footnotes indicating that they were not part of the original manuscript of Mark.

These later redactors likely did this because not only does verse 8 end on a preposition which was not common in Greek writing, but also because it is obvious that eventually the women had to have told someone or else Mark would have not been able to write about what they heard and did. Some scholars argue that the original ending of Mark was lost. Most others, including me, argue that Mark's Gospel ended at verse 8.

If Mark does end at verse 8, and therefore has no resurrection appearances, bothering with this Gospel in this series may seem strange. But it is one of those cases where the "null curriculum" can tell us much about Mark's intention. In other words, what can we learn from what Mark chose NOT to write? We shall see that NOT writing about the appearances of the Risen Christ is wholly consistent with what Mark has insisted that we understand about faith in Jesus from the beginning of his Gospel.

Mark's Gospel dealing with the resurrection is little more than a repetition of the earliest kerygma, proclamation, that Jesus was raised. Mark's story ends with the empty tomb.

The proclamation of the angel, that Jesus is not in the tomb, that he has been raised, and is going ahead of Peter and the disciples to Galilee, where they will see him, is, of course, a divine explanation of the meaning of the empty tomb. And, for many, that is "proof" enough. Many church leaders to this day rely on the empty tomb as sufficient "evidence" that Jesus was raised. Others, like myself, find that to be less that compelling. And that was true from the beginning.

Obviously, for the women to whom the angel spoke it was only enough to terrify them, for Mark tells us that they did not obey the angel, but rather fled from the tomb in terror and amazement, and told no one! And, interestingly, on that strange note, Mark ends his Gospel!

But the empty tomb "proves" nothing, other than that the body was missing. And that is why the later Gospel writers recognized the weakness of the empty tomb argument, and sought to strengthen it by including "guards" at the tomb, and, of course, by supplying evidence of the appearances, as did the writer of the longer ending of Mark.

But Mark's original ending is not so strange when we think about it. We need to focus on what the purpose of Mark's entire Gospel was, and how he repeatedly, urgently and consistently pushed this one purpose throughout the entire book.

Mark, much more than any of the other Gospel writers, from the very beginning of his Gospel, insisted on the need for each individual person to make his or her own decision about who Jesus is. And that decision is to be a decision of faith, not of empirical knowledge.

The very heart of the Gospel of Mark is found in the question Jesus asks, exactly in the middle of his Gospel, in the eighth chapter, "But you, who do you say that I am?" If you recall, Peter gets it right for a brief moment, only to immediately misunderstand Jesus' statement that he must suffer and die, and, after three days, rise again.

And, recalling Mark's Gospel as a whole, we must remember that all of the disciples desert him in his darkest hour. The key question for us from Mark is, "Who do you say that I am?" In other words, Mark asks us, "Will you have faith without evidence?" Or will we, as constantly pointed out by Mark, be like the Pharisees and Jesus' own disciples, demanding signs and wonders which might lead us to believe? Will we believe through faith, or will we insist on "proof"?

Mark's Gospel, then, is not for the reader who demands proof of anything in order to have faith. He would have us look at the information that he provides in his Gospel and decide without even the comfort of human testimony about seeing the Risen Christ.

No testimony is allowed by Mark other than the words of Jesus himself. Even at the end, Mark demands that we have faith based on no more than the word of Jesus before he was crucified and that of an angel after he was risen.

If you think about it even for a moment, perhaps that should be enough, provided we already believe that Jesus is who he has said he is all along.

Mark, then, lays the groundwork, via the statement of the angel in the empty tomb, for the later narratives of the other three writers, which will include specific descriptions of and by eye witnesses to the appearances of the Risen Lord.

Those writers knew that while faith without proof would satisfy some, others, many others, would be more likely to believe if they included the stories of the appearances of the Risen Christ in their Gospel accounts. Those Gospels, written much later than Mark's Gospel, were already dealing with attacks on the faith by those who questioned the reason why the tomb was empty.

And so the angel's declaration in Mark that the Risen Christ is "going ahead of you to Galilee" sets the stage for the later Gospel writers, who will tell us "what happened" after Mark's gospel ends, with the intention to quell the arguments against the meaning of the empty tomb and to share the stories of the eye witnesses to the Risen Christ which had been told in their communities from the beginning.

I have always found it fascinating to speculate about what might have happened to Christianity if all the Church had to offer to people was Paul's proclamation at the beginning of Chapter 15 of First Corinthians and Mark's original gospel that ends with Chapter 16, Verse 8.

We would not have the details of the Resurrection Appearances that Mathew, Luke or John gave. What we would have would be the simple proclamations of Jesus himself and of Paul and Mark.

I think that people may well have had a much harder time coming to belief, to making that "leap of faith" necessary to then study and learn about God's redemptive love in Jesus, the Christ.

We know that Christianity would have arisen because Paul had planted many churches with only the proclamation of faith which he lays out in First Corinthians, which includes no details at all. But we know that even within the church in Corinth there were believers who were having second thoughts, which is why Paul wrote what is now Chapter 15 of is first letter.

This is why I always come back to my original contention, that "the appearances of the Risen Lord after the resurrection are the easiest way to understand the truth of the resurrection of Jesus." Strange as some of the appearance narratives may be to our modern eyes and ears, they provide solid testimony that Christ did appear to many, and do not require what Mark insists on: what we would today call "blind faith."

For many blind faith is enough; but for many others it is not. This is true today, just as we know that for some even were Jesus to appear to us today they would not believe it. And that brings us full circle back to the essence of faith: trust in things unseen, which is precisely the point Mark makes in his Gospel by what he does NOT say, rather than what he does say.

Mark's test of faith is not for the faint at heart.

Nor was Jesus' test. His most troubling question for the believer today remains "But you; who do you say that I am?" Ultimately, with or without the aid of the stories of the Resurrection Appearances, that question lies at the heart of Christian faith and hope.

Next week we will look at the resurrection appearances in the Gospel according to St. Matthew.

In the meantime, I encourage Christians to contemplate the essence of your own faith. If you, for instance, were living in Mark's community and had available to you only the statements of Jesus while he was ministering among us on this earth, the proclamation of St. Paul in First Corinthians, and the brief statement of the angel in the empty tomb, what would you believe about the resurrection?

Mark felt that we should believe based upon only that indirect evidence and the statements of Jesus that he provides in his short Gospel. Could you?

May God bless each of you.

Appearances of the Risen Christ (2 of 5) for 2010

2010-04-21T07:21:00.001-04:00

This essay has been edited for 2010. It was first published on May 6, 2009. It is a summary of the message of the resurrection appearances and lays the groundwork for looking at the accounts in the three synoptic Gospel accounts of those appearances.

For a Christian, the appearances of the Risen Christ after the resurrection are the best way to understand the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

When Thomas was confronted by the Risen Lord, who showed Thomas his wounds, Thomas finally believed that Jesus was raised, calling Jesus, "My Lord and my God!". Many think that Thomas actually put his hand into Christ's side, but that is not true. It was actually seeing the Risen Christ and the offer to allow Thomas to reach out and prove it really was Jesus that convinced Thomas that the one standing before him was Jesus.

But Jesus' reaction to Thomas is telling. While He clearly wanted Thomas to believe, and is glad that Thomas now believes, Jesus states, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

Jesus is not scolding Thomas here; but he is saying that there is something blessed about those who believe that He was raised without having such direct proof. And that can be a word of comfort to those who have not had to struggle with their faith. Nevertheless, there is still a large majority of people who struggle with their faith. And the testimony of the eyewitnesses can be the greatest comfort to them.

So, however you come to belief: through doubting and difficulty, or by trusting from the beginning, content with the simple proclamation that the resurrection is true, Jesus is also both demonstrating and saying that he will provide a way for us to believe.

Each of us must walk our own spiritual path. For some, like me, that path will be difficult. And there will be inevitable stumbles along the way. For others it will be smooth and mostly downhill. And yet, as in the time of Jesus, many will not believe and will take a path away from Christ.

We are told of at least one in the Bible who believed before any appearance by the Risen Lord, and before the eye witness testimony of others who had seen Him. According to St. John, when the "beloved disciple", who outraced Peter to the tomb, went into the empty tomb, and saw the linen wrappings that the body had been in, he believed.

And, at the other extreme, we are told by St. Matthew that, even after the appearances, and even as the Risen Lord was being seen and worshiped by many on the mountain before he gave them the Great Commission, "some doubted." For some, then, even personally seeing the Risen Lord was not enough to convince them to believe the truth of the resurrection.

Times have not changed all that much. I think that would be true today, were he to appear right now. Some already believe that he is here, with us; and yet others neither feel his presence nor would they believe it if he were to manifest himself to us precisely as he did to those disciples on that mountaintop.

Today there are, in fact, some who can believe simply because, for example, the angel in the tomb said he was raised; or who believe simply because the tomb was empty and the linens discarded. But it is likely that more of us are like Thomas than are like the beloved disciple. It is clear that God knew that about us, and therefore there were numerous appearances by the Risen Lord to many people between the time he was raised and the time he ascended into heaven. These eyewitnesses provide evidence for those who struggle.

Jesus appeared to them for many reasons, three of which are clear in the Bible. In addition to providing eyewitness acounts, he also appeared to them to re-establish relationships with them, relationships that had been severed at his death; to prove that, after death, relationships can and will be reestablished between God and man. And he appeared to them to put them to work: that is what the Great Commission in Mathew 28 is all about: establishing the Church and giving it a mission, a job to do.

But regardless of the motives of Jesus when he appeared to many, those appearances provide a foundation on which most people anchor their belief. They do not provide scientific proof, but they do provide the testimony of trustworthy eye witnesses, which is proof enough for those who see through the eyes of faith.

If you read all of the stories of the resurrection appearances carefully you will very soon discover that, just like the stories of Jesus' crucifixion and death, these accounts differ one from the other. There are differences in such things as to whom he appeared, how often, when, in what order, where, what he said, what he did, and so forth.

But if he appeared to many different people in many different places and at many different times it is not strange that there would be many different stories about his appearances.

We will be better served if we focus less on what is different about these stories and more on what their similarities tell us. While there are differences in the details, there are far more important and overriding similarities. And it is these similarities that provide the clues to us of the importance of these events in how we Christians live our lives.

So the remainder of this essay will focus on what the appearances as a whole tell us about the Risen Lord and His intentions for Christians. We will focus on their similarities and on their overall importance.

We do not begin with the Gospels, but with St. Paul. We may not realize it, but we first learn that there were appearances by the Risen Lord from Paul. Writing before the Gospel accounts were recorded, Paul, in First Corinthians 15, tells us the basic kerygma, or proclamation, of the faith.

15:1 Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, 2 through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you--unless you have come to believe in vain. 3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me....11b.... so we proclaim and so you have come to believe. (NRSV)

Although no specifics of the resurrection appearances are given here, this proclamation is significant. It was written in Christ's own generation and shows clearly that the belief in the resurrection was based on oral tradition, that is on verbal stories, not yet written down, but authenticated by still living eye-witnesses to the events of the appearances. For the earliest church then, what was accepted as true was the eye-witness testimony to the appearances after the resurrection, which was passed on verbally, from one local church to another.

Notice how Paul summarizes this witness: "[This] we proclaim, and so you have come to believe." Paul is telling them that they have heard the proclamation, and that their belief is based not upon their personal knowledge, but on their trust that the proclamation is true. It is based first on testimony and then on proclamation. In the church those two ways of communication are called witnessing and preaching.

Later in the life of the early church, as claims and counter-claims about the truth of the resurrection continued to spring up, and as the eye witnesses began to age and die, these oral testimonies were written down, along with all of the other stories and parables that we have come to know as the Gospels. As each gospel was written, and as more time passed, we see the trend moving from the simple narrative of Mark to the more complex and sometimes defensive (apologetic) gospel of Matthew, then to the attempt to clarify the stories of Jesus by Luke, and finally, to the unabashedly apologetic gospel according to John.

[Note: Apologetic here means "defending the faith" not "apologizing" for it. Apologetics is a form of Christian writing or speech that seeks to defend the claims of the church against any who attack those claims.]

The gospels are much more than the simple statement of the faith that Paul gave to the Corinthians, although the Gospels do contain clear statements of the faith. But they also seek to defend the truths upon which the faith is built against attacks from both within the church and from outside of it.

Even the first and shortest gospel, the gospel according to Mark, has far more explanation in it than does the proclamation in First Corinthians. By the time we reach the gospel of John, the explanations that defend the proclamation of faith, including God's raising of Jesus by resurrection, are much, much longer than the proclamation itself, and serve both apologetic and theological purposes far more complex than simply believing that the appearances happened.

Not counting the much later appearance to Paul on the road to Damascus, the stories of the appearances are in the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John.

Note: Mark does not include resurrection appearances in the original manuscript. In fact, the Gospel of Mark, which is the earliest Gospel written, has no neat ending; but two were supplied much later, a shorter ending and a longer ending. If you look at your Bible you'll note that the "longer ending" of Mark does include appearances. But that second ending was written much later by a different author.

We will discuss the Gospel according to Mark in the next essay in this series so we can understand why he did not include the appearances.

We also will look in the last two essays in this series at the Gospels according to Matthew and Luke. With Mark they form what are called the "synoptic" gospels, that is they can be read together and come from similar original sources
.
We will not look at John's Gospel because while there are very detailed discussions of resurrection appearances in John, the entirety of those writings are to serve apologetic and theological purposes that go far beyond understanding whether or not the appearances happened. John simply had a different agenda than did the other Gospel writers, one that is too complex to discuss in this series.

Next time we shall explore together the resurrection narrative of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, and seek to determine why the original manuscript of the writer did not contain any mention of resurrection appearances. Many have found that to be a strange and mysterious thing, but there is actually an elegant and simple explanation.

God bless you all.

Monte

Original post: 3381 page views 2010 04 15

Appearances of the Risen Christ (1 of 5) for 2010

2010-04-12T19:29:00.002-04:00

I am a Christian theologian. A form of this essay was first published in April, 2009. It is part of my Christian Calendar Series; and I have redacted it substantially for 2010.

This series of five essays focuses on one of the key elements of Christianity: the Resurrection of Jesus, the Christ.

These essays are not short. Understanding faith is not a series of sound bites. I write them so that my readers can use them as an aid in their own spiritual reflection. Each person must make his or her own decisions about the meaning of faith, including Christianity. Hopefully, by reading these essays the fundamental claim of Christianity, the Resurrection, can be better understood.

In this essay we will explore three things.

First, the importance to a Christian of belief that the Resurrection is true.

Second, conclusions which I have come to after years of study of the Resurrection.

And, third, the importance of the appearances of the Risen Lord after his Resurrection.

We begin with the importance of the Resurrection to Christian faith.

If, at some point in a Christian's life he or she cannot believe that the Resurrection of Jesus is true, then that person's faith is incomplete. What distinguishes Christianity from all other religions is the belief in the truth of this event: the raising by God of Jesus of Nazareth from the grave.

I know something about trying to skirt around, to rationalize, this issue. I did it for years; telling myself I really was a good Christian, going through all of the right motions. But I doubted that a Resurrection happened. And I desperately tried to study my way to that belief; but I couldn't get there that way. Finally, after much anguish and prayer, literally for years, God gave me the faith to believe.

Having finally, after years of struggle, come to believe in the truth of the Resurrection I was able then, after God gave me the faith, to study and to better understand some of the basis of that belief. I want to share that understanding with you in this series.

I do this with two goals in mind.

Foremost, I wish to share it with those Christians who may still be struggling with the truth of the Resurrection. I know the struggle you are going through, because I have been there. Yet, it seems to me wholly possible that the Holy Spirit can convict you of the truth of this most important event in history, even as I was eventually convicted.

Second, I would like to share with those who believe the truth of the Resurrection some of the conclusions I have come to that shore up my own faith. I do this in the hope that your faith might also be further strengthened.

Now we look at conclusions I have come to regarding the truth of the Resurrection. And I believe that the appearances of the Risen Lord after the Resurrection provide the key to my understanding it.

I have stated many times before what I firmly believe: that belief in the Resurrection of Jesus is a primary necessity of Christianity. With St. Paul I believe that If Christ be not raised, then we Christians are fools.

Here are my conclusions, based on decades of study.

One: that the Risen Lord attested to in the Bible is the same Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified, dead and buried. In other words, that the Risen Lord is not some abstraction, some hope, some ghost, some result of group hysteria, or a vision or a dream; but is, in fact, the person, Jesus of Nazareth.

Two: that there can be no Resurrection without death. That is, that Jesus of Nazareth really died, that nothing was faked, that this was not some resuscitation of a person who was in a coma or deep sleep, or other such nonsense.

Three: that death is the total, complete and irreversible sundering of human relationships. That is, that Jesus' death was not different than our own, and that it was a complete, absolute, final ending to Jesus' earthly life.

Four: that Resurrection is a pure gift from God, a pure grace, which overcomes the finality of death. And nothing, absolutely nothing, that anyone does, beyond having faith, modifies that grace in any way.

Five: that death has absolutely nothing to do with the freeing of an immortal soul from a finite and evil body; the concept that the soul is immortal is a Greek idea and is foreign to the Biblical idea of Resurrection.

Six: that Resurrection has to do with the raising of the entire being who has died. That is, body and spirit, or "soul," are integrally united in what we call today, the "self" or the "person." In other words, that an individual, identifiable, discreet, conscious person is raised, not an abstract, ethereal wisp, a mere shade or shadow of the whole person.

Seven: that the Resurrection of Jesus cannot be understood apart from the Cross. That is, that the Resurrection apart from the death of Jesus and his sacrificial (agape) love for us is at best a meaningless anomaly, a one-time-only curiosity which holds no useful insight for us.

Eight: the resurrected body is not "human" as we know it, but rather is, as St. Paul attests, in a way we cannot perceive, "glorified," all the while maintaining the same personal identity it had before death.

Nine: Resurrection in the abstract is meaningless to us. It is meaningful only as it relates to the specific purposes of God. Just so, Christ's Resurrection would be meaningless to us without the purposes of witnessing to the glory of God and instructing the faithful, through the statements of the resurrected Lord, on the intentions of God for the lives of the faithful.

Ten: the primary effect of Resurrection is to reestablish relationships: between God and humankind and between humans whose relationships were severed by death. If God had no interest in reestablishing relationships with us there would have been no need for any Resurrection at all.

Eleven: that relationship with God is meaningful for Christians primarily in the context of the faith community which the Risen Lord established, the Church, and within the context of His instruction to that community to share the Word of God to the entire world.

Twelve: - and this is the most important of all, and also the most difficult to understand - that the Resurrection occurred at the intersection of time, or history, as we know it and eternity.

As an event occurring at the cusp of time, space and eternity the Resurrection falls within a group of events that the Church calls an "eschatological event;" meaning that it is an event signaling the "last days."

We are living in a period between the beginning of the last days, signified by the coming of God in Christ, and the culmination of the last days at the second coming of Christ.

We live in what is known in the Church as the "in-between" time; the time of "already" - meaning the breaking in of the Kingdom of God with the coming of Jesus - and "not yet" - meaning the final triumph of the Kingdom of God when Christ comes again.

Just as Jesus left eternity and entered the time and space of creation at his conception, so too, after his Resurrection and the appearances he left time and space as we know it and returned to eternity.

That is the main reason we can't "prove" the Resurrection. It was an event that moved beyond history. Certain aspects surrounding the Resurrection have been made available to our consciousness by God, in particular the appearances of the Risen Lord. Those we will look at carefully.

But, by definition, the very act of Resurrection itself lies beyond human understanding. It simply does not fit what we know about how things work.

I conclude this first essay with a brief introduction to the importance of the appearances of the Risen Lord to understanding the Resurrection. We will discuss the appearances in detail in the following essays.

In my Easter Reflection I told you that there were three basic reasons why people for the first 1800 years or so of Christianity believed the truth of the Resurrection.

First, they believed it because the Bible said it was true. But, since the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution that position has been challenged constantly by those who think that we either have to prove the Bible scientifically or explain a lot of it away.

You already know that I believe that we cannot "prove" almost any important aspects of the Bible scientifically and that there is no reason to try to rationalize away key aspects of the faith.

Second, they believed it because witnesses that they trusted said that they saw the Risen Lord, after his crucifixion and burial. That is, they testified that the Risen Lord, the same Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified, appeared to them after he had died.

And, third, those same disciples and many others, even to this day, testified, and still testify, that the Risen Lord is alive and active in their own lives, even as I testify to the activity of Christ in my own life.

The Christians who make up the Church are living witnesses to the truth of the Resurrection. As the body of Christ, Christians within the Church witness today to the truth of the living Christ working in our daily lives.

In fact, it is our witness that keeps Christianity alive, and provides the hope for generations of Christians as yet unborn. Without the witness of his body, the Church, Resurrection faith would die within a few generations.

I will focus the rest of this series on the appearances after Jesus death by the Risen Christ to the disciples and others. The four gospels, Acts and First Corinthians all attest to these appearances, and they form the basic fabric from which the belief that the Resurrection is true is constructed.

It is these eye witness accounts recorded in the Bible that most clearly explain the basis of the faith of the original Christian communities.

It is the trust that the communities of faith placed in these witnesses that allows us to believe the stories of these eye witnesses. In other words, for example, when the Gospel writers write what they do about the appearances, I trust that they, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are writing truth, not lies or fabrications.

And, likewise, when Paul tells me that the Risen Lord appeared to Him on the road to Damascus, and when Luke, in Acts, confirms that event, I trust both Paul and Luke to tell me the truth, and not to lie about it.

And that trust is part of another trust: that the Bible is the inspired witness to the Word of God, Jesus Christ. In other words, Christians believe that the Bible is the primary revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

The revelation of God in Christ in the Bible is the normative revelation of God to Christians. Upon its words Christians make decisions about the nature of God and of God's relationship to us.

When Christians believe that the Bible offers such a revelation of God to us, then Christians not only trust what the witnesses to the Risen Christ say, but also trust that what they said is truthfully recorded by the biblical writers.

Rushing through complicated theological issues will likely result in little light, so we will instead walk, not run, together in this series through an overview of the appearances of the Risen Lord, and see if we can discern some fundamental aspects of these appearances. I will publish only one of the following four essays each week to give you time to read and contemplate each essay.

God bless you all.

Monte

Why Ignore Comments on Your Posts? -- OS Meta Issue

2010-04-06T11:09:00.002-04:00

First published, Open Salon, APRIL 5, 2010 9:22PM

Note to Blogspot readers: this is a meta post relative to an Open Salon issue.

I wrote on this subject back in January, 2009 and it drew quite a large number of comments, and has had over 2000 page reads, so it is a subject that others here on Open Salon think about.

I have been trying to read OS posts more lately, at least most of the posts that people notify me they have posted, and I find, once again, a large number of people are neglecting comments, raising for me the same question I raised over 14 months ago.

I would like some feedback. I don't expect agreement. But I would really like to know WHY, if we choose to keep comments open, we would take the time to write and then have people take the time to read and comment, but then the writer chooses to not reply to those comments, or choose to reply to a select few and ignore the others, or never bother to come back to the comments on their posts that come after the day it was posted.

This is not an issue if the post really isn't seeking comments but is just seeking approval, where you can comment "I agree. Good post." or something like that.

But when a commenter spends time actually reading and pondering what seems to be a serious post that deserves comment, and writes a sincere comment then for the poster to never reply, or to reply to some comments and totally ignore others seems both strange and impolite to me. Yes, I have done that and so has everyone. But I have never intentionally done it and if someone calls me on it I immediately apologize. I'm not concerned with a mistake. I am concerned with what seems to be a pattern.

At any one time I may have ten bookmarked posts that I go back to see if the poster replied to my comment or any others. I leave those bookmarks up for 3 days. If the poster doesn't comment in that time I delete the bookmark and move on. In recent weeks, about half of the bookmarked posts have had no reply at all from the poster to any comments by anyone, not even a generic "thank you" reply. Others have chosen to respond to a few comments, ignoring other equally serious and thoughtful comments.

What I just don't understand is that if the subject of the post was important enough to take the time to write it wouldn't you think that you wanted to get some comments on it?; and if you didn't want comments or were going to ignore them then why not just close comments immediately when you post?

I am well aware that comments are left open by professional writers on Salon, HuffPo, Newsweek, etc. and those authors seldom reply. But OS is really not filled with paid authors, and, interestingly, those I know here, and there are a few professional writers who write here as a member of this community, and they DO respond to comments. So it is NOT that the professionals don't reply. The vast majority who have blogs here do. They understand that there is a community aspect to OS that implies courtesy and civility when interacting with their readers.

Let's discuss this again now that some time has passed and many new members are posting. Maybe it doesn't happen to you, or you don't care. Whatever your take on this, your serious and considered comment is welcomed.

My hope is that community, courtesy, and civility on OS can remain the standard, and not become the exception.

Monte

_{716 page views 2010 04 06}

Resurrection Faith: An Easter Reflection (redacted for 2010)

2010-04-03T19:03:00.003-04:00

APRIL 3, 2010

"Christ Triumphant"

This essay, first posted on April 10, 2009, has been extensively revised for 2010. I am posting this Reflection now so there will be time for folks to read it before, on, or after Easter. Let me make the usual disclaimer that this Reflection is written by a Christian for Christians, for those who are on a spiritual quest and are inquiring about the tenets of Christianity, and for all others who may find value in it if it helps them understand Christian belief a bit better.

I would like to focus on a theme that irritated more than a few of my pastor friends when I was still a pastor. Irritation of the clergy, however, considering the lethargy in the Church these days, can only be a good thing.

The point of this Easter essay is simple: Today the Resurrection is the greatest stumbling bloc for many who otherwise would believe in Christ. Christians, and in particular, Christian pastors, are not supposed to admit such a thing, especially on Easter when pastors have a shot at saying easy, comforting things to a lot of people they may not see in church again for months.

I happen to believe that one of the problems with the faith these days, a main problem, is that pastors spend far too much time trying to tell people what they think the people want to hear, what they'll tolerate; and too little time telling them the Gospel truth that they need to hear. But we still need to let God speak to us through the Bible; and we need to listen to what God has to say, comforting or not, even on Easter.

The Resurrection is central to Christian faith. If you are a Christian and you can't at some time in your life before you die, believe that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is true, then your faith as a Christian is incomplete.

Read the 15th Chapter of Paul's letter to the church at Corinth. It's all laid out there in black and white. And it's very clear. Even if you haven't picked up a Bible in years, you'll get it.

I need to say right here that there are places in the Bible that imply that God will eventually gather to himself all people who ever lived. That idea is called "universal salvation." A surprising number of Christians believe in it. I am never willing to say that I know the limits of God's mercy and grace. Our God is a God of mercy and love, and of second chances, so perhaps everyone will eventually get to share the good side of eternal life. I simply do not know if that is true or not.

But it is very clear that to be a Christian is to believe that Christ was raised. That being so, Christians need to understand that they achieve salvation through believing in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, along with a few other basics. There aren't all that many basics, but belief in the resurrection is fundamental.

So, for the Christian, if Jesus be not raised, then he died a fool on the Cross, for nothing. And we are fools as well, for we have put our faith in a fool. But if, as I believe to be true, God raised him from the grave; if he ascended into heaven, there to reign at the right hand of God, there to intercede for us, then we too, through faith in him, shall be raised to live in glory with him, at the Last Day.

It's really as simple, and as difficult, as that. That is our proclamation as Christians. That is our faith. It is what we believe. It is by that faith that we live. And it is in that faith that we die, knowing that we shall be raised to be with him.

Many in St. Paul's time did not think it impossible for God to raise someone from the grave. Most Jews had begun to believe that it was possible; and the gentiles had already heard numerous stories of Greek and Roman gods raising people from death. It was already part of Persian religious culture as well.

So while many still questioned the idea, including some in the church in Corinth, the idea of resurrection was not entirely foreign to people in Paul's day.

Today it is different. And many modern Christians doubt the resurrection of Jesus. Why is that? I think that, in our rush to judge the Bible and its claims by the standards of modern science, many have found those claims wanting.

And, having been attacked by the skepticism of science, both from within the Church and from outside it, we Christians have too often tried very unsuccessful ways to defend the faith. The two main unsuccessful ways of defending the faith have been by (1) rationalization and (2) believing we were defending it according to scientific methods.

In the mainline churches, like those I have belonged to, pastors have mostly tried to rationalize their way around the more controversial aspects of the faith. Many pastors say that there are perfectly logical explanations for the miracles; they choose which miracles to preach on, preferring the ones that we can attribute to psychological illness, or that we can explain by some quirky natural phenomena.

Many pastors also argue, in this case correctly, that many things in the Bible are actually metaphors rather than "fact." I have no trouble with that. Many things written in the Bible are metaphoric, not to be interpreted literally. But many are not metaphoric, and the resurrection of Jesus is one that is not.

This timidity which results in running for cover through rationalization and metaphor is caused by one thing: The challenge of the modern scientific mind. If our beliefs can't stand the rigors of scientific testing, then many Christians, including Christian leaders, think they have to be rationalized, or seen as not literal but metaphoric.

But in each case we have succumbed to the temptation to justify our faith because we are afraid of a challenge from those who insist on viewing the faith through the eyes of science. And in so doing we have forgotten what faith means in the first place. (We'll come back to what faith means in a moment. But, for now, let's relate our problem to the Resurrection of Jesus.)

But the Resurrection is one miracle that Christians can't effectively rationalize away. And the metaphors for resurrection, while often beautiful: butterflies emerging, the sunrise, new growth in spring, a rebirth after a long and cold winter, are hardly a satisfactory explanation of what is written clearly in all four Gospels.

Opponents can and do deny it, debunk it, ridicule it and ignore it. But even the best Christian can't rationalize it, short of agreeing that it never happened. And when that happens we have just given the faith away.

So, oddly, sadly, Christians who should know better also try to justify the Resurrection scientifically. That well traveled road is particularly popular with evangelicals, which has always struck me as odd since they are the ones most likely to have a literal interpretation of the Bible. Having that, they are far more vulnerable to scientific type scrutiny than are mainline or liberal Christians.

On Easter Sunday there are foolish claims being made from pulpits all over the world that the empty tomb "proves" the Resurrection; and other "proofs" will be alleged as well. Thousands of books have been written on the "proofs" of the Resurrection.

And arguments will be made that these proofs are just as exacting a proof of a literal fact as any scientific experiment might yield. Actually, some of them are very excellent arguments that the Resurrection makes sense. But to argue that their case is the same as scientific proof is only to show an abysmal lack of understanding of the scientific method.

So, ultimately, this is a exercise in futility. It may make us feel good. I've read many of those books, heard those sermons. But those arguments will not, can not, sway the rational mind bent on seeing "proof of the Resurrection" in a scientific sense.

The truth is that no one can "prove" the Resurrection in a scientific, empirical sense. No one. After all, nobody saw the Resurrection. And, to the scientific mind that will always be the final stumbling block to "proving" the Resurrection. The very foundation of science is built on repeatable empirical events. Not only has the Resurrection never yet been repeated by anyone, but the first event was witnessed by no human.

The early church, in many ways much smarter than today's church, made no attempt to "prove" it by worldly tests. Instead they proclaimed it to be true. They knew it was true! Why? Because they believed it. They believed the eye witness testimony of those who saw the Risen Christ.

Their key to faith was to accept the kerygma, the proclamation, of the Gospels when it was proclaimed by believers like Peter, Paul, Timothy, James, John and the others. It is still the key to Christian faith today.

Knowing this, we can come back now to the issue of "faith." The test the early Christians applied to the Resurrection was not a test of science, but the test of faith. But many Christians today cannot actually tell you what faith is. The Bible tells us; but we tend not to look there for a definition even though that is where the best definitions are found.

Traditionally, Christians have believed the Resurrection is true because the Bible says it is true. They didn't look for definitions in the Bible because if the Bible said it, then they believed it.

We still believe that the Bible is the inspired witness to the Word, Jesus Christ. Some Christians even call the Bible the Word of God. That is a title I reserve for Jesus, but either way the Bible is seen as a Holy Book, not just another best seller.

Today Christians believe the Resurrection is true because witnesses they trust said that they saw the Risen Lord. And, most of all, they believe it is true because, believing it, they see the living Lord operating in their own lives and in the lives of their fellow Christians. In other words, they have faith.

What is faith? In Hebrews 11 we are told that faith "is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." That sentence is worth reading over and over until we understand it.

Paul tells us in Romans 1 that "the righteousness of God is revealed through faith"; and in Romans 3 he says that we are justified, made holy, by grace, through faith. In Romans 10 he tells us that faith comes from what is "heard," and that what is heard comes to us through "the word of Christ." In 1st Timothy Paul speaks of "the faith," our faith, as a "mystery," and John, in Revelation, calls for us to endure and to hold fast to faith in Jesus.

Faith is one of the most common words in the New Testament, and nowhere is it described as something that comes from empirical knowledge. Faith comes from the grace of God. It is a gift. It is not, and cannot be, earned, or found through study, or demanded because we have gone through all the right motions.

It is intuitive. It is felt. It is a product of the Holy Spirit acting on our hearts. It rises above mere words. It is, repeating Hebrews once more, "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." And it is not, and can not be, subject to scientific "proof."

The bottom line for me is simple. I believe that the Resurrection is true. It is a truth I know by faith. A wise saint, Anselm, said that theology (the study of God) is "fides quaerens intellectum," "faith seeking understanding."

As one who spent much of my life as a Christian, yet one trying to find the truth the other way around (If I can just understand, I'll have faith!) I can tell you that it won't work that way. First, have faith. Then study and learn, seeking understanding. And understanding will flood in once the faith is yours.

Because of my faith, the Resurrection of Jesus is not a stumbling block in my life today. For many years it was; for I was a Christian lay person lead by well-meaning pastors and teachers down the path of rationalization. But I couldn't get there from here.

And I also felt indicted by other well meaning pastors and teachers when I could not see what they said was so obvious: that they had proven some event in the Bible scientifically. Yet it was so clear to me that they failed, in spite of their fervor.

And the effect of being whiplashed between those two positions was that I felt terribly inadequate. I felt that since these were learned leaders in the church something must be fundamentally wrong with me, and I feared that I could never be a proper Christian.

Today, I know the Resurrection is true by faith. And the Bible tells me that God's grace, through my faith, is sufficient for me to feel firm in my knowledge of Christianity and of my salvation.

Perhaps some of you Christians have gone down a path similar to mine. And perhaps you are still struggling with others who try to "prove" the Resurrection to you by "scientific" explanations, or to rationalize it away. If so, I know the sense of feeling that you are somehow considered less of a Christian than those who seem so cocksure about their faith.

But, if you feel that way, I need to tell you that there is nothing wrong with you. And there is a better way for you to go than either of those well-traveled roads which only lead us away from faith.

The better way is simply to ask Christ for faith. I know it sounds too simple. But I did it and kept doing it for years and then one day it dawned on me that I believed the things I had doubts about before.

There was no lightening bolt, no obvious time when I felt I was different. It was more like I just woke up one morning and everything fell into place. I didn't dance or run down the street screaming about the change in me. Rather I felt a peace and a certainty that I cannot describe. A peace that told me that my faith was real.

My prayer for Christians or seekers who struggle with the truths of the faith is that they will invite Jesus into their hearts and ask him to give them faith. If the Resurrection is a stumbling block for you, tell him that. He will listen and he can give you faith. You can't create it in yourself. You can't study or read your way to it. But Jesus can create it in your heart if you ask for it.

Do you remember the story in Mark of the man who brought his child to Jesus for healing, a child with an evil spirit in him? And he asked Jesus that, if Jesus were able to do anything, would he have pity on his boy and help him? And Jesus said "All things can be done for the one who believes."

And the man, overcome with love for his son and at his wits end, said what so many of us need to say to Jesus, yet we are afraid to mouth the words: "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!" We have all been at that place at some point in our lives. If the Resurrection is a stumbling block, the prayer of that man is the prayer we need to say.

I hope that this Easter Reflection has resonated with you and has opened up new avenues to how you might approach the Resurrection of Jesus, the Christ. The key to feeling the wonder and grace of the Resurrection is to have Resurrection Faith.

To my Christian friends I say: May this Easter be for each of you a day of wonder, of mystery, of love and of joy, a day of faith in the one who rose from the dead, who ascended to heaven and even now sits at the right hand of God and mediates and advocates for us, who promises to each who believe in him everlasting life: our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

To those are searching for faith of any kind, I say do not be discouraged, but allow yourself the peace of knowing that faith cannot be gained through study but by opening ourselves, our hearts, our minds, our spirit, allowing them to become vessels of truth. Most often I have found that it is in the calm center of the storm that rages around us that the truth comes to us.

To those who have chosen no spiritual path I say that I hope that this reflection gives you a better understanding of how Christians think about the Resurrection, and of how I believe that the only way that Christians can see the Resurrection and believe its truth is through the eyes of faith. I hope that each of you have found a peace and understanding that you find nourishes your own well being and allows you to reach out to others in love.

To all I pray that your lives will be full of love for yourselves and for others so that we may reach out in love to all who need a touch, a word, an act of kindness, or simply the ministry of our presence in their lives.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Monte

^{Original post: 2412 page views 2010 04 03}

"I Crucified You," A Good Friday Reflection, Edited for 2010

2010-03-29T07:03:00.000-04:00

Originally published, Open Salon, MARCH 29, 2010

"I Crucified You," A Good Friday Reflection, Edited for 2010

Note to Readers: This essay was first posted on April 8, 2009. I am posting this edited version now so there will be plenty of time for folks to read it before Good Friday, the 2nd of April. Let me make the usual disclaimer that this is written by a Christian for Christians, for those who are on a spiritual quest and are inquiring about the tenets of Christianity, and for all others who may find value in it if it helps them understand Christian belief a bit better.

Faith is a given in this Reflection. Therefore, there is no intention here to carry on dialogues about the validity of faith, the "reality" of events depicted, or a general discussion of the merits of faith, or the lack thereof. Such discussions abound on other blogs.

It is my belief that Christians belong at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday. But it isn't the place where most people want to spend much time, and so Good Friday is also a time when most modern Protestant Churches do not even have services.

This phenomena of mass avoidance of Good Friday and spending time at the Cross is not all that new. In fact, the Bible tells us that most of the disciples were nowhere near the Cross when Jesus died.

Only His mother and the beloved disciple appear to have been close enough to actually hear him from the Cross, and that is told to us in only one of the four Gospels. There were some women who were his followers watching from a distance, and in one of the Gospels some of the disciples were said to be with them.

As for the inner core of believers, the ones who would become known as the apostles, most had gone into hiding, fearing that they would be subject to the same fate if they ventured out.

Peter had already denied three times that he even knew Jesus, let alone that he was Jesus' disciple. Peter did that even before he knew that Jesus would be sentenced to death.

The foot of the Cross may not be a comfortable place for a believer. But a believer should be there, comfortable or not. And that is the rub. We do not like discomfort.

But, if we view it, as many Christians today do, as simply "history," as something that happened long ago, an evil deed perpetrated by others, then while we would not want to waste our time at the Cross, it would not bother us much if we did.

Most Christians are not so callous, and believe that this was a legal murder, this crucifixion, an evil deed perpetrated long, long ago by others. But along with that belief is the unstated idea the his crucifixion has little to nothing to do with us who were born 2000 years later.

They see us as benefiting from his sacrifice on the Cross. But they do not see us as having any role in his death.

After all, didn't Jesus say, quite clearly, from the Cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?" Yes, he did. Even the most Biblically illiterate Christian knows that much. "Father, forgive them" is exactly what he said.

Hearing that, what should we think? Well, one of the things many Christians have been thinking about for 2000 years is trying to identify just who "them" is. The irony in that, of course, is that Christianity has spent 2000 years concentrating so hard on trying to decide who "them" is, that the true point of his forgiveness is lost on many of us.

Many of us cannot understand the implications of the prayer of forgiveness made by Jesus from the Cross because it never occurs to us that it might be directed at us. After all, Jesus says it is directed at "them," the ones who were killing Him. And that was 2000 years ago!

In our subconscious obsession with distancing ourselves from the Cross even faithful Christians have sought to define "them" as almost anyone other than "us." It takes a courageous Christian to hold a mirror to his face and admit, "Them is me!"

Through the centuries many Christians have never actually come to grips with the truth that it is our sin for which he died. Not just for the sin of those who lived back then, but for the sins of the entire world, past, present and future.

The Bible is crystal clear that Jesus came to save not just some people at some particular time and place but to save all people at all times and in all places. And Jesus' prayer from the Cross confirms that when we understand that we are included in those for whom Jesus asked forgiveness.

But, as a result of our failure to see our own sin, we have, over the centuries, looked for and found scapegoats: the Romans, Pilate, the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees, the Saducees, the Chief Priests. But, mostly, Christianity has thrown a blanket indictment over one entire people, "The Jews!"

This tragic failure at introspection lead, in the middle of the last century, to the greatest holocaust that the world has ever known. And even today it leads to ungodly prejudice and anti-Semitism, spewing bile-filled hatred at the people God called "chosen."

The Jews were chosen by God not for themselves alone, but because they believed in the one God who blessed them so that they could be a blessing to all people. They were clearly chosen not for themselves alone but to bless the nations of the world in God's name. Most anti-Semites conveniently overlook that fact.

Our Jewish Messiah, the one we call the Christ, this Jesus of Nazareth, a simple Jewish rabbi, this Savior we Christians worship, did not blame the Jews. Nor did he condemn Pilate, or the Romans, or the Chief Priests, or any single individual or group.

He could have condemned them all. In his place I imagine that we would condemn lots of people. But he said, plainly and clearly, "Father, forgive them."

Yet, to the shame of the Church, we have too often indulged ourselves in our fear of facing the Cross. We have feared looking into the mirror and having to say, "Oh My Lord Jesus, I crucified you!"

Thankfully, a few Christians have thought it through, have figured out that Jesus died for the sins of all of us, have understood that we, in every generation, crucify Jesus by our sin.

Listen to the words of the great 17th century hymnist, Johann Heermann, in his anthem of confession, "Ah, Holy Jesus" written at a time of great tribulation, during the Thirty Years War.

Ah, holy Jesus, how hast Thou offended,
That man to judge Thee hath in hate pretended?
By foes derided, by Thine own rejected,
O most afflicted.

Who was the guilty- Who brought this upon Thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone Thee.
'Twas I, Lord, Jesus, I it was denied Thee!
I crucified Thee.

For me, kind Jesus, was Thine incarnation,
Thy mortal sorrow, and Thy life's oblation;
Thy death of anguish and Thy bitter passion,
For my salvation.

Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered;
The slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered;
For our atonement, while he nothing heedeth,
God intercedeth.

Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay Thee,
I do adore Thee, and will ever pray Thee,
Think on Thy pity and Thy love unswerving,
Not my deserving.

We don't sing that song very much in most Churches any more. And in the churches that do, the words are often translated quite differently, intentionally softened, taking the sting of our guilt out of the song.

Why do you suppose that is? Does it hit too close to home? I can come up with no other answer than, "Yes. It hits too close to home. And there is no need to make us uncomfortable right before the hope and beauty of Easter Sunday."

But, unless we Christians can gather at the foot of the Cross of Jesus, and say with the hymnist, "I Crucified You," then we will never be able to feel the power of the Cross. We will not be able to feel the pain Jesus felt on that cross, nor, more importantly, the love he offered to us.

Guilt is not something modern folk like to talk about. Nor is pain. Nor is forgiveness that comes to us through pain. And so, increasingly, much of the Protestant Church today flies through Palm Sunday and skips to Easter Sunday with only a small bow in the direction of the Cross.

One thing I am pleased with in the Moravian Church that I served for the during the last five years of my ministry is the Moravians still hold with the old idea that Holy Week means something.

And so Holy Week Readings are held each evening, up to and including Good Friday, consisting of readings from the Gospels and singing hymns that pull us into an understanding of our participation in the events leading to and ending in the crucifixion. When we, as was that local congregation's practice, ended the Holy Week Readings on Maundy Thursday, I added a Good Friday evening Prayer Vigil. But that was sparcely attended.

The United Church of Christ, in which I was ordained, took a different tack in order to recognize the avoidance of the Cross by calling Palm Sunday "Palm/Passion Sunday." And I always included a Chancel Drama at the end of the Palm Sunday service that included the congregation having a part in the reenactment of the Passion according to St. Matthew.

I continued this at the Moravian church which I served. It helped, but it was not a true substitute for an actual service of prayer and introspection on Good Friday evening.

On that Cross of pain, Jesus, the one we call the Christ, the Messiah, offered us forgiveness of our sin. If we could begin, this Good Friday, to feel the guilt, to comprehend the pain, to sense the love of Christ for us, then we may be privileged to understand the real meaning of his offer of grace.

"Father, forgive them" is a singular act of grace offered to us, once, for all, by one who hung on a Cross and loved us enough to forgive us.

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" is a prayer. Never forget that. It was Jesus' prayer to the One who could grant forgiveness for the sake of His Son. And God heard Jesus' prayer.

Christians believe that, by the resurrection of Jesus, the one who loves us enough to forgive us, God, does, in fact, forgive us. By raising Jesus, God reconciles us to Himself.

I have always thought the name "Good" Friday is such an bittersweet name to attach to the day of crucifixion. Bitter in the pain and ultimate sacrifice of the Son of God. But sweet in the fruit of that sacrifice.

Through his Cross, Jesus offers a special grace to those who believe in him. That grace is that they shall not perish but shall have everlasting life.

My Good Friday prayer for myself and for all who call themselves Christians is "Father, forgive us, for we know now what we did."

May all of you, my dear friends, find peace and love, hope and joy, not only in this Christian Holy Week and at Easter, but always -- whatever your belief may be, or whether you do not believe at all.

Monte

_{Original posting: 2161 page views as of 2010 03 29
This posting for 2010:}

Death of the Messiah, Part 4, Luke's Gospel, for 2010

2010-03-26T14:49:00.002-04:00

NOTE TO READERS: This Lenten essay was originally published on Open Salon, March 16, 2009. It is part of my Christian Calendar Series. I have edited it for 2010, clarifying certain points and improving the flow of the text.

Christian liturgy, ritual and most of Christian theology change little from year to year. The reason for the Christian Calendar is to encourage Christians to rehearse, ponder and reflect on, year after year, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ, so that His life becomes part and parcel of our family history.

The story of Christ changes little, but we, His disciple, change and grow, become ill, or face death, our own or a loved one's, and in so doing we come each year to view the events of Christ and the traditions of His Church through different eyes.

Hopefully, what I write in this series will have a certain timelessness, updated slightly each year to improve clarity and thereby open more deeply our understanding of aspects of the events celebrated during the Christian Year.

This Lenten essay for 2010 lays out some basic parameters of orthodox Christian belief. What is written here are my own beliefs, which are widely shared by Christians in most mainline Protestant denominations and in the Roman and Orthodox Catholic denominations in the United States as being fundamental to Christian faith.

Note: Links to the first three posts in this Lenten series can be found in the left column of this page under the MY LINKS, The Christian Calendar Series.

The Death of the Messiah, Part 4: Luke's Gospel:
Jesus: "Caring, Compassionate and Concerned"

Overview:

In Part One I introduced this series on The Death of the Messiah. I pointed out that, while we may think there is only one story of the death of the Messiah, repeated four times, in fact there are four different renditions of the story of Jesus' death, both in the details and in the portrait of Jesus presented. I also said that there is also a fifth rendition: the one that we create from the other four.

I explained that I believe that these Gospel stories were divinely inspired and God was therefore both mindful of the inconsistencies in the stories, and intentional in his/her inspiration, in that God wants us to be able to see Jesus' death from four unique vantage points.

Therefore, we do not improve on the Gospel accounts by trying to harmonize them, regardless how tempting it is to try to do so. Ultimately, all attempts at harmonizing the Gospels fail and never give a true picture of what God is saying to us in those sacred texts.

This fact, however, gives ulcers to many who believe that the stories of Jesus must all be clear, concise, neat and without factual disagreement.

Part of the problem for such people is that they insist on viewing the Gospels as history, which they are not. They are theology told in narratives, stories, and are kerygma, proclamation of the Good News of Jesus the Christ.

In Part Two, using two major examples of the differences in three of the Gospel accounts of the Death of the Messiah, we explored my contention that it is good to have four differing Gospel accounts.

Having four different depictions of both the narratives of the stories and then seeing how Jesus reacts to essentially the same events allows us to see that Jesus is a far more complex character than the portrait we often hold of him.

In Part Three we looked in some detail at Mark's Gospel portrayal of Jesus and of the events leading up to his Crucifixion.

Mark, the earliest Gospel written, portrays a very human, very vulnerable Jesus. His portrayal of Jesus, the disciples, and all of the actors in this drama of death, shows people in all of their human frailty, in their evil plotting and their despicable actions. In the end, Mark shows that we all, even Jesus, have no choice but to depend on God.

Today, with Part Four, we finish this series of Lenten Reflections looking at the very different portrayal of Jesus and the events leading to his crucifixion in the Gospel according to Luke.

Luke's Portrayal

Luke wants us to see a Jesus who is at once aware of his approaching death, but also who clearly worries about others far more than he worries about his own fate. Luke's Jesus is "Caring, Compassionate and Concerned" about others.

Just as we have not looked at Matthew because its basic portrayal of Jesus is similar to Mark's, so too we will not look at John because it is so very different than the three "synoptic" Gospel accounts (Mark, Luke and Matthew), that it would take a whole new series to explain it.

Thus, as we now come to the end of this series, we have learned that each of the four Gospel accounts paint a part of Jesus that appeals to different people, and even to the same person at different stages in his or her life.

The genius of the Gospel accounts of the Death of the Messiah is not that they agree in the details but rather in that they give four different, yet surprisingly clear, portraits of the Messiah that help to broaden our understanding of him.

Luke clearly relies heavily on Mark, but many of the details are different. While Luke shares another common written source with Matthew, called simply "Q," Luke also clearly has his own sources of information which have been handed down by eyewitnesses and others over the decades since the crucifixion. These sources were unknown to Mark.

Molding at least three sources into a coherent Gospel is clearly a task of great importance to Luke. He tells us in the opening of his Gospel that he desires to "write an orderly account" of the events of Jesus' life, that we might know the truth concerning the good news of Jesus Christ. Luke makes it clear right at the beginning that he is writing theology, not history.

And it is clear when reading Luke and comparing his account of the Death of the Messiah with the other gospels that Luke has a different theological agenda than any of the other three.

Luke wants us to see a Christ who is at once aware of his approaching death, but also a Christ who clearly worries about others far more than he worries about his own fate.

In order to really understand Luke's portrait of Jesus' death it is necessary for us to remember that Luke is a consistent writer. He wrote not only his Gospel account of Jesus but also the only deliberate account of the very early church, which we know as the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. The Book of Acts flows seamlessly from the final scenes of the Resurrection at the end of his Gospel.

Nothing about Luke's reporting of the Death of the Messiah is inconsistent with what he has told us about Jesus, his disciples, and the Christian community as reported in both his Gospel and in his Acts of the Apostles.

Thus, in Luke, the Jesus who is accused by the Jewish leaders of "perverting our nation" is the same Jesus whose infancy and upbringing was in total fidelity to the Law of Moses. The Jesus who is accused of "forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar" is the Jesus who has declared the opposite, to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's".

These, and other incidents in his life prior to his arrest, highlight a major theme in Luke's description of the Passion: that Jesus is totally misunderstood by all authorities, is innocent and is unjustly accused and killed.

Likewise, the Jesus who shows such great concern and compassion for others during his Passion is the same Jesus who is already compassionate; showing concern for the widow of Nain and praising in parables the mercy shown by the father to the prodigal son and to the man beset by thieves on the way to Jericho, in the story we call the "Good Samaritan."

Thus, we should not be surprised by the Jesus who shows forgiveness toward those who crucified him.

When we are told by Luke that, after the Temptation, Satan leaves Jesus, "until an opportune time," we should not be surprised that Luke writes that Satan returns to inhabit Judas, his betrayer at the end of Jesus' life.

In Luke it is much more than personal greed and sin that motivates Judas, it is the work of the Devil himself. Luke is so clear about this that one could argue that Judas was innocent of any sin, because, literally, "the devil made him do it."

Unlike Mark, who emphasizes the dullness and failures of the disciples, Luke finds them attentive and trying to learn, if stumbling from time to time. Luke, for example, never mentions that the disciples fled at the time of trial. In fact, while not at the cross itself, Luke places them, with the women, waiting and watching in the distance.

Nor will they flee after his death and head for home in Galilee as in the other Gospels, but they will await his return in Jerusalem, where Jesus will appear as the Risen Christ. And later, apostles who are derided in Mark and Matthew will appear as major Christian leaders in the Book of Acts.

Even the way Jesus behaves during his passion will set the example for how others will behave in the future, as first Stephen, and later Paul, endure the same cast of adversaries and will respond in the same way when their time comes to bear their crosses. Luke clearly shows this in the Book of Acts.

Therefore, there is a smooth consistency in doing the will of God throughout Jesus' life, death and resurrection, and, ultimately, even by the early Church after Jesus has ascended to God. This consistency in showing the achieving of God's purposes, first through Jesus and then through the Church, is a major theme in Luke's work.

Looking at the Passion itself we see that the scene of prayer and arrest at Gesthemene as described in Luke is far less dramatic and suspenseful when it comes to the actions of the disciples. No words of rebuke are spoken to them.

In fact, just the opposite, for at the Last Supper Jesus has already told them, "You are those who continued with me in my trials." And Jesus has already assured them of a leadership place in Heaven, including responsibilities for judgment of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Therefore, we can not imagine that the disciples will fall away at this late date; and they do not. Even at Gesthemene he does not separate Himself far from them, going only "a stone's throw away" to pray.

Luke describes them as sleeping while Jesus prays, but not falling asleep three times after being admonished to stay awake. Rather they sleep but once, and then only "out of sorrow."

And, when Jesus finds them sleeping he does not harshly rebuke them but shows his concern for them, telling them to get up and pray that they may not come into their own time of trial.

Thus, the drama of the scene focuses not on disloyal or cowardly disciples but on the actions of Jesus, which are caring and compassionate, and thus quite different than those described in Mark.

Unlike in Mark, this Jesus is not one whose soul is sorrowful unto death. Rather, on his knees he prays in subordination to the will of the Father. And, in Luke, that prayer does not go unanswered, for the Father sends an angel to give him strength.

This brings what has been translated into English as "agony" or "anguish" and great drops of sweat like blood fall from him. But for centuries Christians have greatly misinterpreted this dramatic scene because of poorly translating the Greek word, "agonia."

It means the great preparatory tension of an athlete warming up for a great contest. It does not mean fear or pain, as it is often misinterpreted. The angel has given him strength, not weakness.

And, at the arrest, Jesus is very calm; a calmness that bespeaks a foreknowledge on the part of Jesus of what is going to happen. He addresses Judas by name and is in no way surprised to find him here betraying him.

When the slave's ear is cut off by one of the disciples, Jesus, again showing compassion, heals him, and tells the disciples, "No more of this!" As he has shown compassion to his enemies throughout his ministry, so he shows compassion here.

Jesus knows exactly what is happening and, having been strengthened by the angel, is intent on carrying out what he knows to be the will of the Father.

The struggle is great but Jesus is up to the task. The Devil himself occupies Judas, and no underlings come alone to arrest him as in Mark, but rather the chief priests and elders themselves lead the Temple police.

Jesus knows the evil in this, telling them that this is "their" hour, a time of the power of darkness. Yet he also knows that he will overcome it.

As in Mark they arrest Jesus at night. But they take him not to the Chambers of the Sanhedrin but to the High Priest's house, or perhaps the courtyard of that house. (The Greek wording is ambiguous.)

In any case, Luke does not identify to which High Priest the house belonged. Nor is there any Sanhedrin trial that night as in Mark, but rather they hold him there, beating him and mocking him, but not asking him any significant questions.

For Luke the highlight of the evening focuses on Peter who has followed him and, as in Mark, denies him three times. Unlike Mark, however, Luke adds a poignant note: "The Lord turned and looked at Peter." Thus Jesus here makes eye contact with Peter, and it was then that Peter remembered Jesus' prediction and felt the shame of his betrayal.

This dramatic look is found only in Luke, and is symbolic of Jesus' continuing care for Peter, as he promised the disciples at the Last Supper. They may deny him but he will always be there for them.

When it is day they lead him to the Sanhedrin Council Chambers and question him. Unlike in Mark, Jesus answers ambiguously, but they read enough into his replies to decide to bring him before Pilate.

Unlike in Mark and Matthew, there is no formal Sanhedrin trial; it is simply an interrogation. There are no witnesses called, false or otherwise, and there are no condemnations issued by the Sanhedrin. All they say is that they have heard enough to take him to Pilate.

Here the Sanhedrin acts as prosecutor and inquisitor, not as judge. In Luke there is but one trial and that is before Pilate.

Through it all Jesus is calm and self-composed. He is not like the majestically supreme Jesus portrayed in John's gospel, but rather he exhibits the serenity of one secure in the knowledge that God is in charge, and he is content in the knowledge that he is wholly innocent.

He is prepared to go to his death, if necessary, knowing that he has an unbreakable union with the Father.

Luke gives us many more details of the trial before Pilate than do Mark and Matthew. The chief priests and scribes make more numerous accusations against Jesus than in the other synoptic Gospels, including both religious and political claims.

And, as Luke describes in Acts, Paul will later encounter an almost identical sequence of actors, issues and events in his trials. Thus, an important point is made in Luke: the tone for the bearing of later Christian crosses by faithful disciples is set by Jesus here.

Pilate comes off well in Luke, even if he is ultimately weak, finally giving in to the demands of the crowd, led here by the chief priests and other Jewish leaders. Initially, having heard their complaints, Pilate tells them that he has examined the charges against Jesus and that he finds Jesus guilty of none of them.

Then, hearing that Jesus is a Galilean, he sends Jesus off to Herod, Tetrarch of Galilee, who is in town for the Passover. This sidebar is only present in Luke.

Herod, oddly, is glad to see Jesus because he has heard of him and wants to see some "sign" from him. Jesus does not oblige; and while the chief priests continue to accuse him before Herod, just as they had before Pilate, Herod finds, as did Pilate, nothing against Jesus.

But Herod is miffed at Jesus' silence, so he mocks Jesus by placing an elegant robe on him, and then returns him to Pilate.

Luke tells us that, ironically, from that day forward Pilate and Herod, heretofore enemies, became friends. Thus, even while under such great duress Jesus is seen to be able to influence the healing of relationships, simply by his presence, even between those who mistreat him.

It is in this final series of scenes of the Death of the Messiah where Luke's account is even more radically different than any of the other three Gospel accounts.

Once again Pilate examines the charges against Jesus, and, once again, tells the Jewish leaders that neither he nor Herod find Jesus guilty of any of the charges. And Pilate boldly tells them that "Indeed, he has done nothing to deserve death." Pilate then proposes to have Jesus flogged and released.

All of the accusers, not just the crowd as in Mark, but the chief priests, other Jewish leaders and the people, shout to do away with Jesus and to release Barabbas.

Luke tells us that Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addresses them a second and third time, telling them Jesus is not guilty. However, Luke then tells us that Pilate caves in to the accusers, and "their voices prevailed."

Because Luke contains no scene in Pilate's courtyard of Roman soldiers beating and mocking Jesus, the implication in Luke is that Pilate handed over Jesus to the Jewish leaders who take him to Calvary and crucify him.

Later, however, we hear that soldiers along with the leaders also mocked him while he was on the Cross. So, regardless who led Jesus to Golgatha, Roman soldiers were present at his death.

What is far more clear, and clearly different than Mark and Matthew, is that the people who followed Jesus to his crucifixion included a great many who were not hostile to him, particularly women, who were lamenting what was happening to him by beating their breasts and wailing over his fate.

To these Jesus shows great compassion, warning these "daughters of Jerusalem" of the coming trials, telling them not to weep for him, but for themselves.

[Note: This scene is likely influenced by Luke's anachronistic knowledge that Jerusalem was destroyed in the period 68-70 AD when the Romans quelled a Jewish rebellion. At that time many innocents, women and children, were killed, and many Christians fled the persecution in the city. Luke already knew of that event when wrote his Gospel.]

Regardless, Jesus remains calm and concerned for others. Unlike in Mark, the first words uttered by Jesus from the cross are not of his feared abandonment, but rather, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

There is a strong implication here that the Jewish leaders acted out of ignorance, not with deliberate evil and viciousness, as in the other New Testament traditions. Clearly, as Luke describes them, they were ignorant of who Jesus was and this shows how far Jesus is willing to go to find forgiveness of his enemies.

This is a far more humane treatment of the Jewish leaders than in the other Gospels, and is a clear directive to later Christians to be gracious toward, and forgiving of, our worst enemies; something that most find nearly impossible to imagine let alone to do.

In Acts, Stephen will find strength and hope in repeating Jesus' thoughts, praying as he died under their stones, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them."

And still later, thousands of Christian martyrs will go to their death finding courage in these words from the Cross.

In another major departure from Mark and Matthew, both criminals do not mock him from their crosses. Rather, one of the two thieves acknowledges his own guilt and confesses the innocence of Jesus.

This "good thief" as we often call him, asks to be remembered by Jesus when he comes into his kingdom. And, still filled with compassion, Jesus does him far better than that, promising him that he will be with Jesus in Paradise yet that day.

Many have said that, because of the compassion of Luke's Christ, the "good thief," who offered no confession of his sin nor made any profession of faith, literally stole the keys to the Kingdom. That old saw is not far from the truth.

In the last, dark, hours of Jesus life he does not lose confidence. He does not, as in Mark and Matthew, feel abandoned by the Father. Rather he is calm and at peace, secure in his knowledge of the goodness and justice of the Father.

There is no agony recorded, only the confident giving of his life over to the Father, even as he has given his life to others throughout his ministry. Jesus dies saying, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."

Just as the words of forgiveness have given many a martyr courage in their own deaths, so to have these words of confident trust in God given hope not only to martyrs but also to many ordinary Christians at the time of their death.

Luke, unlike the other writers, places the tearing of the curtain of the Temple in two before the death of Jesus. After his death Luke will record only acts of heavenly grace, not justice or retribution.

And, if the innocence of Jesus has not been clear enough for all who read Luke, at the foot of the cross the Roman Centurion says not that Jesus was the Son of God, but that he was "innocent."

Even the crowds who watched share the feeling of Jesus' innocence , returning to their homes in great distress, beating their breasts.

It is not necessary for the Centurian to say the Jesus is the Son of God. By this point in Luke's Gospel we are well aware that Jesus is the Son of God.

Standing at a distance are not only the women, but all of Jesus friends who had followed him from Galilee, including, of course, the disciples, who have not had the courage to go to the foot of the cross, but who clearly have not totally abandoned him as they do in Mark's rendition.

Likewise, Luke clarifies the role of Joseph of Aramathea, saying that he had not agreed to the Sanhedrin's plans. Joseph takes the body and lays it in a fresh tomb. And Luke tells us that the women went home to prepare spices and ointments for his body.

After the Sabbath Luke tells us that they came to the tomb with their preparations, only to find the tomb empty. Later, Peter, who has not gone to ground in Galilee, but who has stayed in Jerusalem, will run to the empty tomb and be amazed by what he sees.

Still later, Luke tells us that the Risen Lord appeared to Peter, thus confirming the truth of Luke's message: Jesus will be with and watch over all of his disciples and followers, even those, who, like Peter, deny him in periods of weakness.

There should be much consolation in that fact for us Christians, because most of us falter in periods of weakness and doubt. But Christ is here for us and will watch over us. He will never abandon us regardless of the strength of our faith at any given moment.

Summary of this Series of Lenten Reflections

And so ends this exploration of The Death of the Messiah. Throughout the world Christians now are in the midst of the Lenten Season.

It continues to be my hope that this brief series has been a help to those who want to understand the Christ and his Passion at a depth that they may not have known before.

I particularly hope that this series has put to rest some of the nonsense about harmonizing and homogenizing the Passion which is so appealing to many but which totally misses the point of having four different Gospels in the first place.

Just as "God don't make no junk," so too God did not send his Spirit to guide the writers of the four very different Gospel accounts of Jesus by accident. God did this so we may see the at least four different sides of the one we now call The Christ.

And finally, please remember that the Gospels do not pretend to be history books. Writing history as we know it today was not even a known practice at the time the Gospels were written. To apply today's historical research methods to the Gospels is at best a silly exercise.

Those who continue to search for the "Historical Jesus" will forever get their doctorates, their accolades, and sell their books to those who insist that one and only one portrait of Jesus must be "the right one."

But this is the same mind set that stunts our understanding of the four Gospel accounts by insisting on harmonizing the Gospels as if they were simply data sources for creating the "one" "real" story of Jesus.

But the Gospels cannot yield anything approaching an "true" history of Jesus simply because they were never written to be what we think of as history.

They were always theology, theology told in story, in narrative, form. They are now, and always have been, kerygma, proclamation, of the Gospel, the Good News, of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, the Christ. This theology forms the foundation of the Christian faith.

To my Christian readers I offer this hope: that the rest of your Lenten journey may be one of both discovery and peace, secure in your belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and our Redeemer and Lord.

Monte

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Death of the Messiah, 3 of 4: Mark: Jesus Denied, for 2010

2010-03-22T17:31:00.002-04:00

First published, Open Salon, MARCH 19, 2010 5:03PM

NOTE TO READERS: This Lenten essay was originally published on Open Salon, March 11, 2009. It is part of my Christian Calendar Series. I have edited it for 2010, clarifying certain points and improving the flow of the text.

Christian liturgy, ritual and most of Christian theology change little from year to year. The reason for the Christian Calendar is to encourage Christians to rehearse, ponder and reflect on, year after year, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ, so that His life becomes part and parcel of our family history.

The story of Christ changes little, but we, His disciple, change and grow, become ill, or face death, our own or a loved one's, and in so doing we come each year to view the events of Christ and the traditions of His Church through different eyes.

Hopefully, what I write in this series will have a certain timelessness, updated slightly each year to improve clarity and thereby open more deeply our understanding of aspects of the events celebrated during the Christian Year.

This Lenten essay for 2010 lays out some basic parameters of orthodox Christian belief. What is written here are my own beliefs, which are widely shared by Christians in most mainline Protestant denominations and in the Roman and Orthodox Catholic denominations in the United States as being fundamental to Christian faith

Overview: Where we are in this four part series.

In Part One I introduced this series on The Death of the Messiah. I pointed out that, while we may think there is only one story of the death of the Messiah, repeated four times, in fact there are four different renditions of the story of Jesus' death, both in the details and in the portrait of Jesus presented. I also said that there is also a fifth rendition: the one that we create from the other four, adding our own ideas of what happened during the Passion.

I pointed out that I believe that these Gospel stories were divinely inspired and that God was therefore, both mindful of the inconsistencies in the stories, and intentional in his/her inspiration, in that God wants us to be able to see Jesus' death from four unique vantage points.

We do not improve on the Gospel accounts by trying to harmonize them, regardless how tempting it is to try to do so. Ultimately, all attempts at harmonizing the Gospels fail and never give a true picture of what God is saying to us in those sacred texts.

This fact, however, gives ulcers to many who believe that the stories of Jesus must all be clear, concise, neat and without factual disagreement. Part of the problem for such people is that they insist on viewing the Gospels as history, which they are not. They are theology told in narratives, stories, and are kerygma, proclamation of the Good News of Jesus the Christ.

In Part Two we explored my contention that it is good to have four differing Gospel accounts. Having four different depictions of both the narratives of the stories and then seeing how Jesus reacts to essentially the same events allows us to see that Jesus is a far more complex character than the portrait we often hold of him.

And each of the four Gospel accounts paint a part of Jesus that appeals to different people, and even to the same person at different stages in his or her life.

We finished Part Two looking at a short but profound conclusion by Dr. Raymond Brown: "To choose one portrayal of the crucified Jesus in a manner that would exclude the other portrayals or to harmonize all the Gospel portrayals into one would deprive the cross of much of its meaning. It is important that some be able to see the head bowed in dejection, while others observe the arms outstretched in forgiveness, and still others perceive in the title on the cross the proclamation of a reigning king."

Part Three: The Death of the Messiah in The Gospel according to Mark: Jesus: Denied, Defiled, Derided, Despised"

In this essay we are going to look at Mark's account of the Death of the Messiah in some detail. As we saw before, Mark, the earliest Gospel written, portrays a scene of stark human abandonment of Jesus.

And, of all the Gospels, Mark portrays a very human, very vulnerable Jesus. His portrayal of Jesus, the disciples, and all of the actors in this drama of death, shows people in all of their human frailty, in their evil plotting and their despicable actions. In the end, Mark shows that we all, even Jesus, have no choice but to depend on God.

In my opinion, Mark gives us deep insights into the hearts and minds of men and woman, and explores the depths of the human condition like no other Gospel.

So here we are now looking together at a very human and very vulnerable Jesus surrounded by disciples who are ordinary and, usually, not very bright disciples. One professor of mine called the disciples as portrayed in Mark, DUH-ciples.

Some may feel uncomfortable with the intellectually dense disciples portrayed in Mark, and even with the very vulnerable, very human Jesus who feels and acts much like we might in similar circumstances.

Mark's Jesus is very aware of what he must do, but he agonizes over it, and, at one point, begs God to let it pass him by. Mark's Jesus shows great courage in the face of personal fear and doubt and commits himself to God even knowing it will mean his death. In the end he is, in fact, abandoned by all who followed him, and Jesus even despairs that he has been abandoned by God.

Of course, the narrative tells us later that he was not permanently abandoned by God; but Mark gives absolutely no indication that Jesus knew that. Still, he remained faithful to God even to his last breath.

Jesus is aware from the beginning of Mark's Gospel that his preaching of the coming Kingdom of God is going to get him killed. As early as the third chapter, Mark tells us that the Pharisees and Herodians were plotting to destroy him.

Jesus himself predicts His own violent death three times, long before the actual event. Yet the disciples did not understand, failed to understand, refused to understand, and did not want to understand.

Then Jesus arrives in Jerusalem intent on purifying the Temple, and it all comes to a head as the priests and scribes plot to destroy him, exactly as the Pharisees and Herodians had been doing from the beginning.

There are other hints. A woman admirer anoints His body with oil, a sign of preparing him for His death. Judas plots to betray him, and Jesus, aware of the plot, at the Last Supper indicates His willingness to pour out his blood as a sign of the New Covenant that God is offering to the people.

Thus, as he leaves the Upper Room and goes to pray on the Mount of Olives, Jesus understands the necessity of his suffering and death. But the disciples do not understand and he knows it, just as he knows that they will all abandon him, telling them that they all will be scattered.

They deny any such possibility, especially Peter. But Jesus tells Peter he will be particularly unfaithful and will deny Jesus three times. On this gloomy note the Passion in Mark begins, and it will only get darker, until, on the following day, Jesus will die with no support at all from those who followed him. He will die alone.

This tragic scenario is almost too much even for Jesus. In Gethsemene Jesus confesses to the disciples, "My soul is very sorrowful, even unto death," and he asks them to stay near him while he goes to pray, admonishing them to stay awake.

Then, he goes and prays, asking God that the cup of death might pass him by; yet saying that he will do the will of the Father regardless. There is no response from God, but Jesus accepts the will of God implied by the silence from heaven, and prepares to meet his enemies, knowing he will die.

He is resigned to his fate, even as he is disturbed that the disciples can not even stay awake while he is in this agony. They are physically present, but already have symbolically abandoned him while they sleep.

His resignation to his fate is clear. Only in Mark does Jesus fail to respond to Judas' kiss, or to the striking of the slave of the High Priest on the ear by a bystander. He does nothing to save himself, saying simply, "Let the Scriptures be fulfilled." The disciples and all the followers flee.

One, a young man, once intent on following him, flees so quickly and in such fear that he leaves his captors clinging to his clothes, running away naked, saving his skin, symbolic of the total abandonment of Jesus by all who intended to follow him.

Jesus will face death, the ultimate evil, alone. That is the clear message of Mark.

The pace now quickens and Mark takes us immediately to the trial by the Sanhedrin, the governing Jewish body in Jerusalem. What goes on in the trial is juxtaposed sharply against what is happening in the courtyard outside the trial chamber.

In the chamber the chief priests, elders and scribes hear testimony against Jesus, which Mark calls "false" testimony, testimony which does not agree on any factual details. We are not told the nature of the false testimony. But the high priest is annoyed by both the ineptitude of the witnesses and the silence of Jesus.

Trying to force an answer from Jesus he asks, "Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One." And, startlingly, Jesus answers for the first time in this Gospel, "I am." Until now Jesus had made no such claim, although we who have read Mark already know it from what God had said to him at his baptism and to the three disciples at the Transfiguration.

But far more damning to Jesus is that he does not stop there but says that he, the Son of Man, will be seated at God's right hand and will come again on the clouds of heaven. This is too much for the high priest, who declares that statement blasphemy, whereupon all of the members of the Sanhedrin condemn him as deserving of death.

Some then spit on him and blindfold him, beating him and screaming at him to prophesy. All of which is ironic for that is precisely what he has just done, and none of them believed it!

Thus, the themes which have already emerged earlier in the Gospel here coalesce: destroying the Temple, acknowledging Jesus as Messiah and Son of God. Yet, in Mark, still, nobody believes it.

In stark contrast to Jesus' faithful willingness to go the last mile for God is the scene outside the chamber of the Sanhedrin, in the court yard, where Peter has hesitantly followed Jesus at a distance. In the chamber, Jesus confesses who he is; while outside his prime disciple denies him.

As predicted by Jesus, Peter denies him not once, but three times, finally swearing an oath that he does not even know Jesus. When the cock crows, Peter realizes his sin, and weeps.

The irony is complete: Jesus is beaten and ordered to prophesy which he has already done but none believed him, and, meanwhile, other of his prophesies are coming true in the court yard.

Rather than kill Jesus themselves by stoning, which was allowed under Jewish law, the Sanhedrin instead bind him and hand him over to Pilate, the Roman Governor. Mark gives us no indication why.

But the effect is dramatic and interesting, if usually unnoticed. Up to now the condemnations against Jesus have been theological: "Are you the Messiah, the Son of God?" "Do you intend to destroy the Temple?" These are religious questions.

Pilate knows about and cares nothing about such questions. His concerns are strictly political, reflecting the concern of the Roman occupying force for stability in this conquered land: "Are you the King of the Jews?"

Now, neither Jesus nor anyone else has ever before made such a claim. Jesus refuses to take the bait, answering only "You say so;" which really isn't an answer because Pilate has actually not said that he thought that to be true. Pilate pushes him to say something, to answer the many charges the Jewish leaders have brought against him. But Jesus says nothing.

At this point there is no indication that the Sanhedrin has convinced Pilate to do anything with Jesus; but it is here that the crowd comes into play. It was the custom to release one prisoner to the crowd at Passover and Pilate asked did they wish to have the "King of the Jews," Jesus, released, or Barabbas, a rebel, part of an insurrection against Roman rule. The crowd demanded Barabbas.

Pilate, wishing perhaps to remove the decision from himself, asks them what to do with Jesus and they all shout "Crucify him!" And Pilate, apparently surprised at the harshness of their verdict says, "Why? What evil has he done?" They gave no answer; shouting again, "Crucify him?"

Mark tells us nothing of Pilate's thoughts but only that, to satisfy the crowd, he released Jesus to be flogged and then crucified.

Once again, in this scene as in the others, no one looks good except Jesus. Pilate appears weak, almost threatened by the crowd. He makes no attempt to get to the bottom of the issue; certainly makes no attempt to achieve any kind of justice: he simply wants to pacify the crowd.

First the disciple, Judas, betrays him, then the disciples all run away; Peter denies him; witnesses accuse him falsely; the high priest condemns him, as does the whole Sanhedrin to a man; the crowd turns against him, Pilate sentences him to flogging and crucifixion; the soldiers beat him, mock him, spit on him (as had the Sanhedrin) and lead him to his death.

Thus, both trials end in betrayal and mockery. And all: disciple, Jewish leaders, crowd, Roman Governor, and Roman soldiers share in the shame and guilt of desertion, betrayal, accusation, and condemnation of the Son of God. Mark wants to drive that point home and does so with dramatic clarity.

The soldiers enlist Simon of Cyrene to carry the cross, implying that the beating had made it impossible for Jesus to carry it himself. On reaching Golgotha they offer him a bitter drink, which he refuses, and then they crucify him.

Mark, who often aligns things in threes, divides the time on the cross into three periods. They crucify him at 9 in the morning, darkness overcomes the land at noon, and at 3 in the afternoon Jesus dies.

The title, "King of the Jews" is mockingly nailed to the Cross; but Mark does not see it as an ironic symbol, but rather calls it "a charge against him." For the first three hours no human being shows Jesus the slightest sympathy, not the soldiers, nor the crowd, nor the passers-by, nor the chief priests and scribes who came to watch the spectacle.

All mocked him, telling him to save himself and come down from the cross, if he be the Messiah. Even the two bandits crucified with him taunted him. Not one of his disciples came to the cross to be with him in his last hours.

Even nature itself seemed to abandon him, as the sun was overcome and darkness fell over the whole of the land for the next three hours. And in the darkness Jesus hung there alone, abandoned by all who ever claimed to love him.

And finally, mercifully, it is over, as, at 3 o'clock, Jesus cries out with a loud voice the only words Mark reports: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" These words are not new to Jesus. They are the opening words to Psalm 22.

We should not try to soften these words, as hard as it might be for us to believe that Jesus could possibly feel abandoned by his own Father. But the words are there; God wants us to hear them.

Shortly thereafter Jesus lets out a loud cry, not of words, just of agony, and dies. Jesus dies, alone, abandoned by his friends, seemingly abandoned by God. Mark is quite clear that Jesus thought God had forsaken him.

This made the other Gospel writers very nervous, even as it might make some of us nervous even now. And so they changed the final scene considerably from what Mark reports.

Our job now is to hear these words as written by Mark, and to ponder them; not to try to rewrite the Bible or to try to justify them, saying that he didn't mean them or coming up with some other nonsense to correct Mark. Our job is to try to understand the depths of despair that Jesus felt; this very brave, very faithful, very human Jesus we see here hanging on that tree.

God's reply to Jesus' death is immediate, abrupt: the moment Jesus dies the curtain of the temple is split in two, from top to bottom, a violent rending, symbolic of Jesus' claim that he would tear down this Temple "made with hands."

This huge, dense curtain was actually a mammoth drapery, over a foot thick, and was to keep everyone except the High Priest from going into the inner sanctum said to be where God dwelt.

Here Mark, not with words, but with the mental picture of the Temple Curtain, had created a significant theological picture. Rending that Curtain in two symbolizes that no more will access to God be restricted to a chosen few allowed to enter the "Holy of Holies."

From that time forward people will come to a new temple, one "not made with hands," but rather one build upon the sacrifice of Jesus. Jesus is the new Temple, built to receive those who show faith in the One who died to save us from ourselves, and from the sin within us.

Mark seldom speaks of directly in theological terms, rather he lets the theology be found in the mental pictures his writing portrays. Thus he moves quickly to another great theological truth that he lets someone else speak.

Startlingly, an outsider comes immediately into the picture of the Crucifixion, not a disciple, not even a Jew, in no way an "insider," but a Gentile, a Roman centurion, who stands at the foot of the cross and says what no man, disciple or priest, had ever before figured out in the entire telling of Mark's Gospel: "Truly, this man was the Son of God."

In a single moment God has vindicated Jesus; replacing the Temple as the center of worship and offering in its place Gods' own Son, who will be confessed as Lord.

And, as irony piles on irony, we are told that while the disciples, who were all men, fled in cowardly retreat, standing in the distance are three women, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James and Joses, and Salome; three who had followed him in Galilee and had provided for him when he was going about his ministry.

Unlike the core group of male disciples, these three female disciples, and some other women, while not coming to the Cross to share his agony with Jesus, at least looked on, waited and watched. They did not flee and totally abandon him as did the others.

And there was one other, Joseph of Arimathea, who showed some courage, which only Mark sees that way. Indeed, it must have been courage and perhaps some remorse, because Mark has told us that all of the Sanhedrin, of which Joseph was a member, had found Jesus deserving of death.

But Mark tells us now that Joseph went "boldly" to Pilate to ask for Jesus' body. Only in Mark does Pilate question whether Jesus is really dead; and, assured by the centurion that he is dead, he granted the body to Joseph for burial.

Joseph took the body down, wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a rock hewn tomb. Then he rolled a stone in front of the tomb entrance. Preparing us for the resurrection, Mark tells us that the two Marys followed and saw where the body was laid.

On Sunday morning they will return to the tomb and find it empty. For Mark, the story of Jesus' death can not end with his burial, but with his resurrection.

Mark, more than any of the other Gospel writers, emphasizes the importance of the Passion. The Roman centurion's words dramatize the very Marcan idea that people cannot truly know who Jesus is until the death of the Messiah. As reported by Mark, People may think they know; and they can guess, but, until the death of Jesus, no one really knows who he is.

Mark clearly implies that one can become a true disciple, a faithful and brave disciple, only through understanding the suffering symbolized by a Cross which strips away all human support systems and makes one totally dependent upon God. To Mark, keeping the faith means our recognition of our total dependence on God.

For Mark salvation comes not from "coming down from the cross" as Jesus was taunted to do; but from acceptance of the cross and all that entails.

Mark's community was one suffering from great persecution. As Dr. Brown says, "the gospel or 'Good News' for them was that this trial and suffering was not a defeat but a salvific example of taking up the cross and following Jesus."

Most of us do not live in suffering and persecuted communities. So perhaps an additional question for us is whether Christians can, accustomed as we are to great material pleasure, and not being used to suffering for the sake of Christ, find in Mark's description of the Passion a passion of our own for taking up our cross and carrying it in his name.

While we may not know such suffering ourselves, we do not have to look far to find millions who do suffer from the burdens of their own unjust crosses. Doing something about that can be a way we can begin to know what it means to others who, though innocent, to this day bear crosses not of their own making.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer said that Jesus calls us to "come die with me." Bonhoerffer never wished to die, but was willing to reenter Nazi Germany to carry on the work of Christ knowing that he was marked for death if caught. And he was. The Nazis executed him three days before the Allies captured the prison camp where he was confined.

We are far removed from such drastic decisions in our every day lives. But there are many who do die without help or hope because otherwise good men and women are unwilling to risk much of themselves to give to them either help or hope. And so the call remains. "Take up you cross and follow me" is still the word to Christians from the one we know as the Christ.

Part Four, the final part, on Luke, will be posted Friday, March 26, 2010.

God bless you all.

Monte

Conway Twitty: Too Sexy for Country?

2010-03-15T16:55:00.000-04:00

MARCH 15, 2010

Note: The quality of the music reproduction on the Playlist is much better than the quality of the YouTube videos. And if you don't listen to the Playlist with earphones or earbuds I doubt you will be able to tell what is so very unique about his voice and music.

YouTube videos follow this introduction

Harold Jenkins didn't sound to him like much of a name for a singer who intended to distinguish himself from the crowd so he became Conway Twitty, which was nothing if not unique. No one really knows if he, as rumor has it, conjured the name by glancing at a map and noticing Conway, Ark. and Twitty, Tx. but the name is certainly hard to forget.

Before Sue and I got married we decided to take a drive from St. Louis down to Branson and I was introducing her to country music. I asked her to fumble around in the glove box for a Conway Twitty tape.

She looked at me and said, "What's that?"

I said, "That's the name of the top country singer."

"You're kidding, right?"

"Nope."

Well, she found it, got a good laugh out of his name, played the tape -- and became another Conway Twitty fan.

Conway Twitty was a singer/song writer who had early success in rock and roll, R&B and pop. But it was in the singing of country ballads, many of which were sensuous, with thinly veiled sexual innuendos, that pushed him to the very top of the country charts for over 30 years. Much of his music was indeed suggestive and sensuous, but it never crossed the line into anything remotely vulgar.

On the contrary, it would be considered tame by today's much looser standards. Nevertheless he encountered substantial opposition to it throughout his career from the traditionalists in the genre.

Yet, until 2007 he held the record of 55 number one country singles. And, in addition to his solo career, in the early '70s he and Loretta Lynn won award after award as their duets topped the country charts time and again. His cross over covers of such songs as "The Rose" won appreciation far beyond the country genre.

His initial success was in rock and roll. Writing and singing "Its Only Make Believe" he finally had his first #1 hit, on the pop charts, not only on Billboard but in 21 other countries. That was the beginning of a strong international fan base that was to remain with him even after he crossed from rock to country and which bolstered his record sales and made him an international singing star.

After modest success in rock, some R&B and pop, by the mid-60s Conway Twitty had his heart set on moving into country music. However, many country DJs did not want to play his music because he was a "rock and roll" singer.

But by 1968 with his first country #1 song he was firmly entrenched on the country scene, without much help from either the DJs or the country establishment. Nobody liked his music except the people. They loved it.

Nevertheless, he continued to have trouble getting some of his songs played by prudish disk jockeys. Today we would find it hard the believe that the sexual innuendo of the lyrics of his songs, coupled with the way he sang them, could possibly bother a disk jockey. But Conway Twitty was not one to change what made his music stand apart from the then current country scene.

Twitty knew exactly what he was doing and became a country heart throb and sensation in the 70s and 80s, selling out every venue he played, complete with a following of swooning women, not unlike what happened to Sinatra and Elvis. County music had never seen anything like it, and hasn't again since.

While performing in Branson, Mo, in 1993 he became ill and died from an abdominal aortic aneurysm. He was only 59 years old.

Ironically, in country music circles Conway Twitty is not talked about much these days and his songs are seldom played, even on the Country Golden Oldies stations. If I had to guess why I would say that he is a victim of his own success.

His voice was unique, gravelly, ranging from a deep baritone to tenor, and he sometimes whispered the words as much as sang them. He sounded, well, the only word is "sexy." And when that voice was combined with suggestive lyrics he created an image that was just a bit too "bad boy" for some of the country music crowd.

I also think that artists that start out in rock and roll and end up in country music never are quite considered to be "really" country by the powers that be in country music. This is in spite of the fact that he was a member of the Grand Ole Opry and inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, posthumously, in 1999.

I liked Conway Twitty from the first time I heard him singing early rock and R&B and I still like his music today. All of it. And that is why I have posted this tribute.

More on Conway Twitty can be found here:

http://conwaytwitty.com/
http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/twitty_conway/artist.jhtml
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:diftxql5ldfe

Lay You Down

Don't Take It Away

Hello, Darlin'

Slow Hand

Easy Lovin' w/ Loretta Lynn

I'm Not Through Loving You Yet

Almost Persuaded

Don't Call Him a Cowboy

A Bridge That Just Won't Burn

The Death of the Messiah: Part Two of Four; for Lent, 2010

2010-03-12T12:51:00.000-05:00

First published Open Salon, MARCH 12, 2010 12:29PM

NOTE TO READERS: This Lenten essay was originally published on Open Salon, March 5, 2009. It is part of my Christian Calendar Series. I have edited it for 2010, clarifying certain points and improving the flow of the text.

Christian liturgy, ritual and most of Christian theology change little from year to year. The reason for the Christian Calendar is to encourage Christians to rehearse, ponder and reflect on, year after year, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ, so that His life becomes part and parcel of our family history.

The story of Christ changes little, but we, His disciple, change and grow, become ill, or face death, our own or a loved one's, and in so doing we come each year to view the events of Christ and the traditions of His Church through different eyes.

Hopefully, what I write in this series will have a certain timelessness, updated slightly each year to improve clarity and thereby open more deeply our understanding of aspects of the events celebrated during the Christian Year.

This Lenten essay for 2010 lays out some basic parameters of orthodox Christian belief. What is written here are my own beliefs, which are widely shared by Christians in most mainline Protestant denominations and in the Roman and Orthodox Catholic denominations in the United States as being fundamental to Christian faith.

Note: Part One of The Death of the Messiah, 2010 Edition can be found here: ttp://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2010/03/05/the_death_of_the_messiah_introduction_for_lent_2010

Why it is Good to have Four Different Views

of The Death of The Messiah

Overview:

Last Friday in Part One I introduced this series, edited for 2010, on The Death of the Messiah. I pointed out that, while we may think there is only one story of the death of the Messiah, repeated four times, in fact there are four different renditions of the story of Jesus' death, both in the details and in the portrait of Jesus presented. I also said that there is also a fifth rendition: the one that we create from the other four.

I noted that from the perspective of the Christian believer these Gospel stories were divinely inspired and that God was therefore, both mindful of the inconsistencies in the stories, and intentional in his inspiration, in that he wants us to be able to see Jesus' death from four unique vantage points.

We do not improve on the Gospel accounts by trying to harmonize them, regardless how tempting it is to try to do so. Ultimately, all attempts at harmonizing the Gospels never give a true picture of what God is saying to us in those sacred texts.

Therefore, I ended Part One telling you that having four differing stories was a good thing, in spite of the ulcers that it must give to those who want all of the stories of Jesus to be clear, concise, neat and without factual disagreement.

Part of the problem for such people is that they insist on viewing the Gospels as history, which they are not. They are theology told in narratives, stories, and are kerygma, proclamation. Mostly they are proclamations of the Good News (Gospel) of Jesus the Christ.

Part Two:

While our vanity makes this hard to comprehend, Christians should understand that the stories in the Bible are not written to meet any human standard. They only meet the standard that God wanted them to meet when s/he inspired the writers of the Gospels to write them, a standard which God has not felt it necessary to justify to us. I'm comfortable with that, since s/he is God and I am not.

But many are not comfortable with that at all, and have, unsuccessfully, tried to "harmonize" the Gospels, doing away with troublesome inconsistencies. We are not going to do that. In fact, we're going to look at a couple of those inconsistencies today, and then use them to make the point that it is a good thing that we have four differing accounts of the Death of the Messiah.

First, let's look at the Gospel narratives in general. If you think about it logically, the first thing you will notice is that all the Gospels do hold to a common, basic outline of the events leading to the crucifixion. And that makes perfect sense. After all, there was a basic order of events that took place, indeed, had to take place, and each of the Gospel writers had to take this into account.

Thus, Jesus' arrest had to precede his trial, and the trial had to precede the sentence, and the sentence had to precede His execution. And all the Gospels contain these elements. In other words, all share a common plot. And that is just what it is: a plot of a drama, one we call "The Death of the Messiah."

And, in this narrative, this drama, there are not only the actions and reactions of Jesus, but also of supporting characters, like Peter and Judas and Pilate. And the drama is heightened by the contrasts between these characters: innocent Jesus and guilty Barabbas, faithful Jesus and betraying Peter, and in one of the Gospels, wise and troubled Pilate versus vile and remorseless "Jews". Even the scoffing Jewish leaders have their antitheses in the Roman soldier who, in two accounts, declares Jesus to be, in fact, the Son of God.

All of these elements, while often used quite differently in the differing Gospels, heighten our awareness of the struggle going on here, between Jesus and the world that, as John puts it, "knew him not."

The personification of the characters that surround him, the descriptions of their personalities and their desires encourages us, the readers, to participate in the drama by constantly asking ourselves the question: "Where would I have stood had I been one of these players in this drama of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus?"

Perhaps we can see ourselves as being among those who welcomed him into Jerusalem as a hero. But would we be able to see ourselves as Peter, denying him? As Judas, betraying Him? Or as Pilate, either wishing to avoid the issue altogether, as in John's account, or washing his hands of the whole thing, so he might appear blameless, as in Matthew's?

Or could we see ourselves abandoning him, as all the disciples did in three accounts, or staying at the foot of his cross until the end, as did the beloved disciple and Mary in the Fourth Gospel? Or, most telling of all, would we see ourselves, could we see ourselves, as being like the religious leaders who condemned him?

Perhaps not; but we certainly don't want anyone coming around to us individually, say, here on OS, telling us we've got our religion all wrong; haven't got a clue what God expects of us; have no compassion for the poor and have indulged our own personal gluttony in the face of God's commandment to love others! I would think our feathers would get just a bit ruffled if someone accused us of that. But that is exactly what Jesus did, isn't it?

Just so, there were many real life factors that colored the writing of the Gospels, which, as we learned last week, were all written about 30 to 70 years after the death of Jesus. The memory of what happened at Jesus' death was deeply affected by the life situations of the local Christian communities in which the Gospel writers lived; and each was a little different. Each Gospel, for example, reflects how the writers perceived the Romans and the Jews.

Take the Romans, for instance. How do you get a balanced portrayal of Jesus when writing in a nation occupied by Romans? How do you offset the negative attitude toward Jesus exhibited by Tacitus, the great Roman writer, who treats Jesus as a despicable criminal; worthy of no more than a few lines in his writing?

How would you overcome Tacitus' portrayal? What if, say, you were to portray Pilate as being a spokesman for Jesus, or at least, not against him? Two of the Gospel writers did just that. If you carefully move through the Gospels according to when they were written: Mark first, then Luke, then Matthew, and finally, John.

Yyou'll see that Pilate is increasingly portrayed as a fair judge who recognized Jesus as innocent of political ambition. This viewpoint not only rehabilitates Pilate in the eyes of Christian readers, but also rehabilitates Jesus in the eyes of Romans: if a Roman Governor of Pilate's stature saw nothing wrong in Jesus, Tacitus must have been mistaken about Jesus being nothing more than a common criminal.

Lets look at just one more example: "How would you characterize Jewish involvement in Jesus' death? Who was involved, responsible, for the death of Jesus? Was it "the Jews?" If so, was it all of the Jews? Or just the Pharisees? The Priests? All the Priests? The Sanhedrin?

What about Joseph of Aramethea, a Jew? Wasn't he in the Sanhedrin? Weren't, in fact, all of Jesus' named followers and the vast majority of all the other followers of Jesus also Jews? Wasn't, after all, Jesus a Jewish Rabbi? So just who are these "Jews" who "killed Jesus?"

Well, it depends on which Gospel you read. If you wish to go easy on the Jewish involvement, or want to limit it to a handful of leaders, read Luke. In Luke there is no calling for witnesses against Jesus and there is no Jewish death sentence against Him. In fact, there is no formal night time trial, complete with the high priest Ciaphas in charge, as in Mark and Matthew. There is only a simple questioning in the morning by the Sanhedrin.

John, who is hard on the Jews elsewhere in his Gospel, also does not write that any Jews were heavily involved in deciding Jesus' fate. John records no Sanhedrin session at all after Jesus' arrest, but only a police interrogation conducted by a different high priest, Annas.

Confused? Add further confusion: John includes Roman soldiers and their Tribune at the arrest, the others do not. This is important, because no Roman Tribune could have been dispatched without the knowledge of Pilate, which would mean that Pilate was involved far earlier and more deeply than any of the other Gospels report.

On the other hand, if you suspect that it was "all of the Jews" who accused Jesus then Matthew's Gospel leads you that way; while Mark and Luke limit their accusations to the Jewish leadership, specifically the priests and the Sanhedrin. John goes easy on the Jewish leaders during the trial period because John believes that the "world" rejected Jesus and so places blame implicitly on everybody, and does not go easy on either the Romans or the Jews as groups. Both are guilty in John's eyes.

We could spend several weeks looking at, and comparing, the Gospel accounts of such things as those above, and things like: How did Jesus view His own death? How did the disciples react at Gesthemene? What did they do at the arrest? Could the Jewish trial even have happened according to Jewish law? What happened at the actual time of death? Did the curtain in the Temple split? Were graves opened? And, later, were there guards at the tomb? And on and on.

But we really don't have time for all that. And, more importantly, if we took the time, would we find out anything that would help us better understand Jesus? Well, I have done that for decades, and can tell you that studying and arguing about such questions does almost nothing to help us learn about Jesus.

What will help us know more about Jesus is to know that each individual portrayal of Jesus' death gives us an insight into who he is such as none of the others give us.

And the reason is simple enough. Each divinely inspired evangelist knows a different facet of Jesus and his Passion, and he portrays, therefore, a different picture.

What I'm going to do now is give you a brief summary of what careful study of three of the portrayals of Jesus and the events leading to his death can tell us. We will look at Mark, Luke and John. Matthew's portrayal of Jesus is closely based on Mark's, and while Matthew adds many details about events, a discussion of Matthew's portrayal of Jesus would be covering essentially the same ground as the discussion of Mark's portrayal.

Mark:

Both Mark and Matthew portray a very human, very vulnerable Jesus. Mark portrays a scene of stark human abandonment of Jesus at the time of his Passion. Yet, in the end God turns it all around, and neither the abandonment of the disciples nor Jesus' own questioning of God affects God's moment of supreme grace in raising Jesus from the grave.

Mark's gospel intends to shock. And it does. In Mark, long before the Passion the disciples were almost universally clueless as to whom Jesus really was, and, even when they came close to the truth they could not accept the idea of a dying Messiah. And it only gets worse as the tension mounts toward betrayal and death.

In the garden at Gethsemene they fall asleep, not once, but three times. Judas betrays him, but Peter is hardly better, denying that he ever knew him. All flee, one in such haste that he leaves his clothes behind, literally saving his own skin - the very opposite of leaving all things to follow Jesus.

The Roman and Jewish judges are seen by Mark as great cynics. Jesus hangs from the cross for six hours, and three of those hours are filled with mockery and three with utter darkness. And Jesus deeply feels abandonment, even by his heavenly Father. Mark's very human Jesus cries but one thing from the cross, quoting the 22nd Psalm, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"

Yet, in the end, God vindicates his Son. If the trial before the Sanhedrin was to assess his threat to tear down the Temple, God in an act of judgment and vindication, tears the veil of the Temple in two. And an outsider, a hated Roman, is heard to say what no Jew, disciple or priest, could ever figure out: "Truly this was the Son of God." In Mark, only after his death on the Cross is it possible to see that Jesus was no false prophet, but was, indeed, the Son of God.

Luke:

Luke portrays a very different Jesus. And the disciples are shown in a far more sympathetic light. They remain faithful to Him in his trials. And, while they fall asleep while Jesus prays, once, not three times, it is only out of their "sorrow." Even the enemies of Jesus look better in Luke. There are no false witnesses produced at the Jewish trial, and even Pilate acknowledges three times that Jesus is not guilty.

The people are not rabble calling for his death, but rather are grieved over what has been done to him. And, just as they show great concern for him, so too is he less anguished by what will happen to him than by what happens to them. At the arrest he heals the slave's ear and on the road to Calvary he worries about the fate of the women in the coming trials. Further, he forgives those who crucified him and even promises paradise to a thief who merely asks to be remembered, a scene only in Luke's Gospel.

Thus, in Luke, the crucifixion becomes a time of divine forgiveness and care. Jesus dies in tranquility, unlike in Mark, saying simply. "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."

John:

In stark contrast to either Mark or Luke, John portrays a triumphal Jesus, even in death, a Jesus who long before the passion defiantly announced, "I lay down my life and I take it up again; no one takes it from me!" This Jesus knows, in advance, exactly what is going to happen to him and when, and it will happen as and when he says.

When the Roman soldiers and the Jewish police come to arrest him they fall to the ground powerless. In the garden he does not pray for the cup to pass him; for it was for this moment he was born. He is so self assured that he offends the high priest; and even Pilate feels his power. Jesus has no fear of Pilate. saying, bluntly, "You have no power over me." Nor does anyone carry his cross; this is something he is perfectly able to do for himself. Even his royalty is proclaimed in three languages on the cross and is, in fact, confirmed by Pilate.

Totally unlike the three other Gospels, Jesus does not die on the cross abandoned, but with his mother and the beloved disciple with him. And speaking to them from the Cross he gives the beloved disciple and his mother to one another, creating, as it were, a family of loving disciples to carry forward the message.

This Jesus can not cry out "Why have you forsaken me?" because the Father has always been with him, literally "in" him, and will be so through death to resurrection and glorious ascension. His last words bear no anxiety or pain, but the simple statement that he has done what he came to do: "It is finished." And only then, when he declared that he has done what was needed, does he hand over his spirit to the Father.

Even in death he continues to dispense life as living water and blood flow from his pierced side. And his burial is not something hurried and unprepared as in the other Gospels, but he lies in state amidst 100 pounds of spices - as befits a king.

In the final two posts in this series we will go into this in more detail. But let me ask you: do you despair because these portraits are so starkly different? Do you think that one is, must be, more correct? Remember, all three descriptions are given to us by one Holy Spirit, the one Spirit that inspired the writers of each Gospel.

And, understand this well, no one Gospel, or all four Gospels combined, exhaust the meaning of Jesus! In fact, a true picture of Jesus can only just begin to emerge because we have at least four differing depictions.

Why, then, is this Good News? Because by having these differing descriptions people with different spiritual needs can find meaning in the cross. And even the same person, at different points in his or her life, can find meaning there.

As Jesus did in Mark's Gospel, have you never needed desperately to cry out "My God, My God Why Have You Forsaken Me?" Have you never felt that? Do you not need to know that when you feel that way, just as Jesus did, God has not abandoned you and that he can reverse tragedy in your life?

As in Luke's Gospel, have you never been hurt by others, deeply hurt, and have finally found some relief from your anger in forgiveness? Is "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" not something that we need to hear, knowing that our Savior had far more reason to hate than we shall ever have?

Don't we, with Luke's Jesus, need from time to time to turn ourselves over fully to God, having been unable to fix things for ourselves? Can we not find hope and comfort in saying, "Into your hands, O God, I place myself."?

Yet, as in John's Gospel, are there not times in your life when you desperately need to know that evil and sin and all the perfidy of this life cannot prevail against God and those who have faith in him?

With John don't we often need to believe that we worship an all knowing, fully in control, always in command, Jesus who will guide and protect, defend and defeat every foe and evil, be it the prevailing powers, or the principalities or the purveyors of lies?

Jesus is all of these and more, far more than can ever be captured by putting pen to paper. These descriptions do not exhaust the portrayal of Jesus, they begin the task. Each Christian will ultimately find a portrayal of Jesus the Christ that fits his or her personal needs. And that portrayal will not be complete for everybody else, and may change over time as we learn more about the One in whom we place out trust.

Hopefully this brief Lenten series has begun to outline for you some of the major characteristics of Christ that will give you a basis for a better understanding of the One whom Christians call "Our Lord and Savior."

Listen to Fr. Raymond Brown. "To choose one portrayal of the crucified Jesus in a manner that would exclude the other portrayals or to harmonize all the Gospel portrayals into one would deprive the cross of much of its meaning. It is important that some be able to see the head bowed in dejection, while others observe the arms outstretched in forgiveness, and still others perceive in the title on the cross the proclamation of a reigning king."

That, my friends, is Good News.

Monte

_{Original posting, 1400 page views before counter was removed
This posting for 2010:}

The Death of the Messiah: Introduction; for Lent, 2010

2010-03-09T13:50:00.001-05:00

First Published in Open Salon, MARCH 5, 2010 2:36PM

NOTE TO READERS: This Lenten essay was originally published on Open Salon, February 25, 2009. It is part of my Christian Calendar Series. It is intended to set a tone for thinking about the season of Lent. I have edited it for 2010, clarifying certain points and improving the flow of the text.

Christian liturgy, ritual and most of Christian theology change little from year to year. The reason for the Christian Calendar is to encourage Christians to rehearse, ponder and reflect on, year after year, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ, so that His life becomes part and parcel of our family history.

The story of Christ changes little, but we, His disciple, change and grow, become ill, or face death, our own or a loved one's, and in so doing we come each year to view the events of Christ and the traditions of His Church through different eyes.

Hopefully, what I write in this series will have a certain timelessness, updated slightly each year to improve clarity and thereby open more deeply our understanding of aspects of the events celebrated during the Christian Year.

This Lenten essay for 2010 lays out some basic parameters of orthodox Christian belief. What is written here are my own beliefs, which are widely shared by Christians in most mainline Protestant denominations and in the Roman and Orthodox Catholic denominations in the United States as being fundamental to Christian faith.

The Death of the Messiah: Introduction

This is a Christian Reflection, written for other Christians, other people of faith who may wish to better understand this aspect of Christianity, and for others, seekers and the curious, who may wish to know about the Christian understanding of the events leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus, the Christ. The Reflection is a statement of belief. It is kerygma, proclamation. If you come here with an open heart and an intention to be tolerant of the beliefs of others, all beliefs, all religions, or none at all, you are in the right place. If not, this post is not for you.

"How Do You See the Death of the Messiah?"

This is the first of a series of four Lenten Reflections on the Death of the Messiah, in other words, on the Passion of Jesus, the Christ. The series is the result of research I did to help ordinary Christians better understand the meaning of the Death of Jesus.

It is my conviction that our understanding of Christ's Passion has been warped badly by well meaning scholars and pastors who have sought to simplify the reality of His death. Simplification is often a good thing. But when simplification leads to confusion and false understandings of what the Bible says, then it ceases to be useful.

I feel strongly that we need to understand the Cross of Christ as God has taught it, not as we might like to hear it. Therefore, four times during Lent, with our focus clearly on the death of Jesus on Good Friday, we will look at the events immediately preceding Jesus' death and at his crucifixion. This Reflection and the next constitute an overview of all four Gospel accounts of the death of Jesus.

The final two Reflections will be a more detailed look at two of the four accounts, those of Mark and Luke. We will not look at Matthew and John in that detail; but the contrasts between Mark and Luke are clear enough that you will be able to understand that, like these two Gospel accounts, Matthew and John are also different in their understanding of the Passion.

Teachng Reflections like these demand more of you than a little skim of the text. You will need to read rather carefully so that you can form your own opinions as to what is meant. In fact, contrary to many well meaning, but misled people, there are seldom simple answers, including in the Bible.

Jesus’ death was not simple. But his death, when viewed in the light of his subsequent resurrection, is the most important event in Christian faith. Christian salvation literally depends on it. And so Christians certainly need to understand it. Most importantly, Christians need to understand what the Bible says about it, not what we might have heard that it says, or what we might wish that it says.

So I am inviting you to a true Lenten “discipline,” in the best sense of that word. And I promise you that if you will pay attention the reward will be great, for you will have a far better grasp on this event that Christians believe is the pivotal event in human history.

I chose the series title, The Death of the Messiah, in honor of the magnificent, unparalleled, work of the same name be Fr. Raymond Brown. His book, The Death of the Messiah is universally recognized as the most significant contribution to understanding the death of Jesus in the history of the church. That monumental work is over 1800 pages long. Obviously, we can only glean the highlights in a short series of reflections, but I need to acknowledge that Raymond Brown has greatly influenced my own thinking on this issue.

We will be looking at a very small segment of the Bible: the passion and crucifixion of Jesus, through four very different sets of eyes: those of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. What we probably don't realize, however, is that most of us have created yet a fifth set of eyes. This fifth set of eyes is the one by which we have filtered what we know from those four very different accounts into one homogenous account that we believe fits what happened to Jesus in the brief time from Gethesemane to the grave.

We may even think that all four Gospel accounts of the death of the Messiah are essentially the same, and that our understanding of what happened to Jesus and how he approached his death is based on one uniform account. But that is not true.

The accounts of his death are not the same in key ways; and the Jesus depicted in each of those accounts is quite different from the others. The four gospels vary substantially, both as to what the Gospel writers say happened, and as to the theological implications and conclusions that each individual writer gives to the story.

For some that may be jarring, disquieting, and they may not even want to hear it. Christians naturally want to "harmonize" the four Gospel accounts, make them into a homogenous unit, with no loose ends. Attempts at "harmonizing the Gospels" have been made from the beginning of Christianity. None have been successful.

When we seek to harmonize the gospel accounts then we fall victim to believing what we want to believe rather than what the Bible clearly tells us. We, quite naturally, I think, would prefer one set of so-called "facts" to the rather differing narratives we read in the Bible.

We are like a good detective called to take the statements of four witnesses to an accident at an intersection, each standing at very different places, and while all saw the same thing, none of the four eye witnesses agree on what they saw.

The early church struggled with this problem for many years. But, and this is very important, the church, from the beginning, believed that the divinely revealed scriptures, even while often differing in detail, were the work of God, processed through the minds and hands of man, yes, but nevertheless divinely inspired by God.

And, for over 1600 years, the church has said that, regardless of their lack of harmony, the four Gospel accounts of Jesus were intended to give us different pictures of Jesus; and that, therefore, all were true in the eyes of faith. The church has consistently held that no one account of his life, death and resurrection could capture all the facets of his life and death.

Therefore, while many individuals have tried to harmonize the Gospels through the centuries, the church has seldom encouraged these attempts, which is precisely why we have four Gospels and not one. The church has been far more content than most individuals to allow the Gospels to stand as they are, seeing them as four different, divinely inspired ways of viewing the same events.

And that is the tack we shall take in this series. The truth is that the Gospels, and the death of Jesus as reported in them, cannot be harmonized. They are different, both in substance and in theological outlook. For instance, the Jesus described in Matthew and Mark is a far different Jesus than the one described in John, in almost every way imaginable.

Now, if you are a believer in Christ you have two choices. You can say that they all cannot be true and insist on harmonizing them, force fitting them into your own pre-conceived ideas of what you think went on, or at least what you think should have gone on.

Or, you can look at the Gospels as they stand and see what God is trying to tell us about the death of Jesus through the divinely inspired work of these four stories. Fr. Raymond Brown decided to do the latter: to look at each Gospel separately and to then attempt to discern God's message from the differing texts. That is what I shall be doing in this series, using Dr. Brown as our guide.

What we shall find when we are finished is that Jesus was and is a far more complicated being than we previously thought; and that the writers of the Gospels had to struggle with that fact. And they also had to struggle with the fact that they wrote long after the event took place.

Jesus died about 30 AD. The earliest Gospel, Mark, was written at least some 20 to 30 years later but, most likely, about 40 years later, around 70 AD. Luke was likely written about the mid-80s AD, over 50 years after the death of Christ. Matthew was probably written sometime between 80 and 100 AD, 50 to 70 years after the death of Jesus.

The date of the writing of the Gospel according to John is harder to pin down, but, in any case was not before 75 AD or much later than 100 AD, that is, 45 to 70 years after the death of the Messiah. In other words, if they were writing today, they would be writing about something that happened somewhere between 1910 and 1980!

There was no intention to write the Gospels immediately after Jesus died. The whole point of writing the Gospels at all was that Jesus did not return as quickly as expected and the stories were starting to get confused, sometimes deliberately, as they were verbally passed down year after year.

The original eye-witnesses were dying off, or already dead. Many false oral gospels were springing up in the widely dispersed church. Luke makes this most clear in the preface to his Gospel where he tells us that he is writing it to set the record straight.

Each of the four gospels in the Bible was intended for the Christian community in which the writer resided. There is no evidence that the writer thought that he was writing to the church universal.

Each writer's resources were slightly different. Mark, the earliest written, wrote primarily from the oral tradition, that is, from the verbal stories of Jesus told in his community by its leaders. There is no evidence that he had any written materials to edit, although that is possible.

Matthew, writing quite a bit later, relied heavily on Mark's gospel, often word for word. It is clear that Matthew edited and adapted from Mark. But he wrote a much longer Gospel, adding items from his own tradition, the oral tradition in his community and from other sources.

Matthew also added early Christian "apologetics", in other words, defenses of the faith made by early church leaders against accusations and threats from the Jewish leaders and the Romans. He adds, for instance, scenes about the death of Judas, about Pilate washing his hands of the whole affair, about the dream of Pilate's wife, and he places guards at the tomb.

Both Matthew and Luke seem to have shared ideas from a written source that we no longer have any record of. That source is simply called "Q" for the German word, "quelle" which means "source" in English. We know this because both Matthew and Luke have identical word for word accounts in their Gospels that are unknown to Mark or John. In addition, both Matthew and Luke drew from their own oral, and perhaps partially written, traditions.

John's Gospel is radically different than the others, so different that while the other three are called "synoptic," that is, they can be "viewed together," John's is called simply "the fourth Gospel." There is no evidence that John relied on any of the other three Gospels in the composition of his Gospel, although it is likely that he had access to Mark's and, perhaps, the other two as well.

But John, even more than the other three Gospel writers, was consciously and very intentionally writing a theology of the Christ, and his emphasis is on discerning who Jesus was, what Jesus' relationship to the Father was, and on what Jesus said and tried to teach us as that relates to God's intention for Jesus here on earth.

Jesus' ministry in John is three years long, not one or one and a half as in the other Gospels; three Passover feasts are celebrated during his ministry, not one, and he makes three trips between Galilee and Jerusalem, not one. In fact, in John most of Jesus' ministry is said to be concentrated in Judea and Jerusalem, not in Galilee as in the other Gospels.

The chronology of the trial and crucifixion is quite different as well, including saying that the Friday of the crucifixion was not the Passover, but the day of Preparation for Passover, thus John has no Passover meal in the upper room (which becomes the first Eucharist in the other Gospels), but rather an ordinary supper after which he washes the feet of the disciples and proceeds to make several lengthy speeches to the disciples, speeches the other Gospels know nothing about. And there are many other differences about the last days of Jesus in John's Gospel.

But, as different as these Gospel narratives are, we must be clear about one vitally important truth that people, particularly critics of the Gospels, do not seem to understand. None of the Gospel writers was trying to write history. All were writing documents of faith, kerygma, proclamation, filtered through the eyes of faith. They were writing theology, not history.

History as we know it today, based on careful gathering of the physical facts, was not on the agenda of these writers. History writing as we know it was simply unknown to the writers of the Gospels. They wrote to tell us the Good News of Jesus, not to nail down the precise facts of his life.

Theirs was a labor of love, of revelation, of faith. They were not trying to write a nice text book that could be adopted for use in a college history course. Please try to get that fact into your understanding. It will save you enormous heartburn in the future.

So, where does this leave us? Well, if you believe as I do, that the Bible is not just another book; that it is something more than, say, the writings of Shakespeare, or Plato, or Martin Luther; if you believe that the writers of the Bible were divinely inspired, anointed by the Holy Spirit, as I do, to write what they wrote, then, with me, you must conclude that the differences in the four Gospel accounts of the death of the Messiah were intentional. And the differences will, I believe, never be reconciled by us, or by anyone else.

I believe that God gave us four Gospels, not one, on purpose. And I believe s/he expects us to read all four of them and to learn from them, content to let them be for us what they are: divinely inspired books for educating us about the great mystery that is our God, and about his/her Son, Jesus Christ.

We will, later in this series, explore two of these Gospel accounts in some detail. We will note some of the places where the Gospels do not agree on the details. Where that is the case we will try to see if we can determine why that is, or if it makes any difference at all.

But that will not be, and should not be, the primary focus of this Lenten series. The primary focus will be to allow us to see the Jesus that each writer saw, the Jesus that the Holy Spirit inspired them to write about, the Jesus that we need to know, but, in Philip Yancey's term, who, in fact, may be "the Jesus we never knew".

The next Reflection will spend some time looking at why it is good that we have four different portrayals of the death of the Messiah.

God bless you all.

Monte

The Fear of Death Paralyzes Us

2010-03-09T13:40:00.001-05:00

First published on Open Salon, MARCH 8, 2010 9:04PM

As a retired pastor one of the fears I have seen in the faithful that at first surprised me was the fear of death.

I think that the fear of death is more prevalent in church going people than they admit, but I do not believe it is a major issue in the lives of the majority of Christians. At the same time I also think that it would be impossible to find out how many practicing Christians fear death as a significant issue in their lives because they assume that if they believe that there is a "heaven" they think that they should never admit any fear of death. Further, people, myself included, change how we feel about death over time.

I wrote about this issue in a post entitled "Bound by Death" on September 24, 2009. If you have not read that essay I urge you to do so because it lays out the fear of death in terms of its theological and psychological hold upon us. It explores Ernest Becker's masterful discussion of this issue in his book, "The Denial of Death," from his non-believing point of view. And it also explores the Christian answer to the issue of death. This post is an extension of those ideas, as applied to my own life.

What that essay does not explore is how a believer can have a strong and hope filled faith and still have doubts, still think about death now and then, and still have those fears invade his thinking in weaker moments. I know that feeling is possible because believers are only human, and believers have doubts about the unknown, just like everyone else. Besides, I have had those feelings.

I am 71 now, with lots of debilitating medical issues that make each day very hard and painful. I am at that point where some days it could be very easy to let doubt ruin my life. So that is where I am in my life journey. But doubt does not hurt my faith like it did when I was younger, and even if I start to feel the chill that comes with thinking about my death I now can turn away from that obsession to something living and hopeful. Let me tell you a little about how I got to this place.

When I was young everybody told me that when I was 40 years old it would be the big slap in the face, but I ran right through 40 without a thought about it. But 50 became my big brick wall. I ran into that wall at full speed, and it knocked me silly. It left me doubting and fearful of death, not death in the abstract, but my own death.

Suddenly at 50 I realized how very mortal I was.. I spent time thinking about how there was no way I could any longer see my life as only half over. It was all downhill from there. And I obsessed about my death. It used to make me shudder and cringe.

This went on even when I was in seminary, and I would lie in bed thinking about it. But it got less and less as time went on. I still think about it from time to time but I am able now to turn my thoughts to other things. And that works now. At 50 it did not.

It would have worked sooner if I knew that I was the one God was expecting to change. I had to learn that for myself because I did not turn to anyone who had been through it. I did not even turn to God about it. It was my big, hidden, shameful secret. How could I really believe my faith was true and yet have those fears?

At 50 I did not really accept the way God made the world. I did not want to accept that death is part of the way God made it. I did not want to believe that I was going to die. Yet dying is part of life. We all do it. I could just not get my head wrapped around that.

Nor could I get my heart wrapped around the idea that God would love me if I had such doubts. Keep in mind that this was during full time seminary for three years. I kept asking myself: "Was I a hypocrite? Was I just one of those Christians who are not planted in solid soil but planted in the stones who would wither away at the first dry spell?" I worried that I was.

Yet if any faithful person is honest with him or her self they will admit that at some point in their lives they all go through fear and doubt. Doubt is part of the human condition. It is built into us. To be human is to doubt. Not just about the hereafter, but about almost every important thing in our lives.

We do not have to be faith based people to doubt. We all doubt ourselves and others, and faith minded people often doubt God. That is the truth that most faith based people fail to tell us, and often even refuse to admit to themselves. But that is the first thing we have to accept. We have to understand that to doubt is to be normal.

We also have to accept that we all will die. It is inevitable, built into the fabric of the cosmos. It will happen. We will die.

So the question is not that people of faith have the doubts that often include the fear of death. The questions are what will we do with those doubts and who will we turn to when we have them?

For a long time the questions I asked myself about my own death paralyzed me. I did not turn to God and ask that they be relieved. I was too embarrassed. Rather, I turned into my fears, wrapped myself in them and suffered. And they just got worse. I thought about death all the time.

I found that my obsession with death was stealing first nights, then whole days, then weeks and months from my life. The very life that I yearned to keep was being stolen from me, and I would lose to death days that could have been filled with life. And I would never get those days back. They were gone.

I was killing myself emotionally, submitting myself to death while my body was still alive. This was not conscious. I was too busy worrying to think about the why of what I was doing, let alone think about what I was doing. I just wanted the emotional pain and the bad thoughts to go away.

But I finally realized that we can't "make" bad thoughts go away. In fact, when we try we make it worse. We can't think about not thinking about something and do anything more than reinforce the very thoughts we want to get rid of.

The only way to make bad thoughts go away is to fill our heads with good thoughts, allowing the good to absorb and overwhelm the bad so there is simply no room in our lives for the bad thoughts. It works. It does not work instantly. But I found out that if we focus on God instead of focusing on ourselves, and if we focus on serving others it can happen.

When we obsess about death we are allowing death to win. I think that is why St. Paul called death the "last enemy" because death can steal our lives from us while we are still alive. I believe that Paul was not just talking about physical death.

He was also talking about the death we bring into our lives by not living them fully. Keep in mind that there was no reason for Paul to bring it up if it were not something that the people in the church he was addressing were concerned about. They were concerned with whether the promises of the resurrection of Christ were true.

So, in addition to asking God to help us push those thoughts of death away with good thoughts, we need to also be asking God to show us the things in our lives that we can do and feel that makes us happy, that give us pleasure. That pleasure can come in loving him and others.

But there is nothing wrong with seeking out things to do and think about that give us pleasure for their own sake. Some people think that if we do that God will think us selfish. And if that is all we do, I would agree. But doing things for our own enjoyment does not take from God. Actually, those things please God, because one of God's great hopes for us is that we will choose to be happy.

I have things that fill my life and still give me pleasure that are not directly connected to what I consciously think of as "pleasing God." Motorcycling has been my great passion all of my life and while I can do far less of it now I still can do some of it. And I look forward to the next ride no matter how short it might be.

When I got this illness and the loss of mobility that confines me to a Lazy Boy most of the time, with guaranteed pain for several hours every day I wake up, and often more than that, I had a crisis again. I was 69. I could not work. Forced retirement for medical reasons is no fun.

And I started thinking that my life was dirt. It happened so suddenly I had no idea what to do with my life. The medical issue consumed me for a while, and I was very worried that it was caused, as it can be, by life threatening diseases. That is still possible but I no longer dwell on that.

So, once again, I had to find things that I could do to help myself and help others. I had to believe that God was not done with me yet. I had to believe that I could still enjoy life and still make a difference in the lives of others.

So, after a few months, I found OS and started writing, researching and learning again. We are never too old to learn. The world is full of things we don't know, wonderful things. And a computer gives us access to so much of that world we never had before.

I became a political junkie as the election kicked into high gear and wrote about politics almost exclusively when I first came to OS. It was immediate and timely and fit my mind set at that point because I could not concentrate on any one thing very long.

And I love to read novels and learned to fill a lot of the winter with that. I upgraded my internet access to cable high speed and joined Netflix so I could watch on the computer movies or TV series that I missed. The streaming of movies is something I enjoy.

And I have learned to throw myself into whatever I am doing. I let them involve my consciousness so there is no room for bad thoughts. And if the bad thoughts try to take over, I concentrate on the good.

Now that it is over a year since my replacement has come to the last church I served I want to begin to reconnect with my friends from the church by phone, listening to their joys and troubles, and when I can, let them know that they are loved.

My medical issues won't let me go to church anymore but I can still care about them and pray for them. I missed doing that and now that our new pastor is firmly established in the position I look forward to doing that again.

All these things seem trivial. But they are not. I am determined to believe my faith and to practice it. It has gotten me through many rough years and through much pain and sadness. It is literally my salvation day to day. And it drives thoughts of death away.

But I have to be an active participant in that. I can't sit back and let my idle brain just fill up with all the fears and self pity I could so easily dwell on. I have to exercise my will power and focus on the good, on living this day the best I can. One day at a time; one hour at a time if necessary. That is how our lives come to us and we need to recognize that fact.

The older I get, and now with this illness, I am finally coming to realize why so many old people that I visited did not feel that panic I felt when I was 50, even as I sat by their bedsides when they were terminally ill and said prayers for them even as they died. They had come to terms with their lives, and, yes, with their death long before I did in my own life. They were looking forward to going home to be in the closer presence of God.

They were still human, still had some doubts. But their faith held and they were willing and ready to take the risk of faith: that what they believed was true. And I am increasingly willing to do that as well. Had anyone asked me 20 years ago if that would ever be possible I would have said "no."

But I know now that our doubts do not in any way affect God's ability to bring us to a beautiful home beyond the bounds of this mortal life, a home so beautiful we cannot even comprehend it. God's promises to us are not changed or even shaken by what we think or what we feel about death. It is what God thinks that counts. And he loves us in spite of our doubts. Paul says that "Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus...." I believe that. I did not always.

In the end, each one of us has to decide: are we willing to give these wonderful days we have now over to death? Is that what life should be about? Are we willing, as I was for a time, to let fear and death steal these days that God has given to us?

Few things in life are easy. Many are incredibly hard. Some, like fear, are literally paralyzing. We have to fight the fear. Fight it by doing things we enjoy. We need to spend time with others. even when we would rather just curl up in bed with our fears. We need to involve ourselves in helping others. Have we forgotten that there are dozens of things we have never done, places we have never seen, people we have neglected who would love to spend time with us?

We need to recognize that no matter how bad it seems, there are millions who have it far, far worse than we do.

The vast majority of old people who have faith fear death very infrequently. They are too busy living to dwell on something that they know is coming and can't do anything about. And those who are completely worn out physically have no desire to stick around in a failing, often pain wracked body when they know that God has something far better awaiting them beyond that portal to our eternal home.

Doubt and fear with always be with us. The key is not that we feel those things, but that we have the faith and hope to overcome them.

Fear of death can lead to paralysis, ruining us, killing us hour by hour, bringing death into our lives, stealing our life long before this physical life is over. I pray we shall resist that temptation with all that is in us. And with God's help we can.

Blessings and Peace,

Monte

Motorcycling Memories: Oh Deer!, Eight; The Accident, IV

2010-03-03T17:41:00.001-05:00

First published, Open Salon, MARCH 3, 2010 5:29PM

[The University of Virginia Medical Center at Charlottesville. A teaching hospital with schools of Medicine and Nursing and Level One Trauma Center. Stock photo.]

This series is for Mishima666, who has waited longer than I promised he would.

The tease: June 24, 2005 Day Planner entry, after the fact: "Hit deer - totaled bike - ended at Trauma Unit, UVA Hosp, Charlottesville, 2 1/2 days - bad scene all around.

What you may have missed:

Part One: http://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2010/02/19/motorcycling_memories_oh_deer_part_one

Part Two: http://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2010/02/20/motorcycle_memories_oh_deer_part_two

Part Three: http://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2010/02/21/motorcycle_memories_oh_deer_part_three

Part Four: http://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2010/02/22/motorcycling_memories_oh_deer_part_four

Part Five: http://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2010/02/23/motorcycling_memories_oh_deer_part_five_the_accident

Part Six: http://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2010/02/25/motorcycling_memories_oh_deer_six_the_accident_ii

Part Seven: http://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2010/03/01/motorcycling_memories_oh_deer_seven_the_accident_iii

This is the final post in this series.

While I was not aware of it, the doctors must have been weaning the pain meds because I was beginning to feel a lot more pain once I was moved to the step down monitoring room, and I never again got to be watch the docs work on me while I was on the ceiling and they were on the floor. I kind of missed that.

I fell into a troubled sleep after they laid me on the bed, still on the board. I had the beginning of what would be with me for several weeks: weird, troubling dreams that caused me to wake in a sweat but which I could not remember other than they were dark and frightening.

A few hours later I woke and desperately had to pee. The nurse came in and said the catheter was working. But she took a look at the setup and said that the catheter was too small for the amount of fluids they were pumping through me. So I had a choice: pull this one and put in a larger one for some relief or live with the feeling of a constantly full bladder.

What a choice. Like most choices in the hospital it was no real choice at all. But she was pretty gentle when she pulled the smaller one and put in a much larger one. That hurt like hell for an instant but in minutes I felt relief.

I then insisted that they take me off of the spine board and the neck brace but the night doctor refused, saying that 'your spines are not cleared," meaning that radiology had not signed off.

I gave up arguing for then, had them elevate the head of the bed and fell back into a troubled sleep. Sue slept on the floor, exhausted. The next day we got them to bring in a roll away bed for her to sleep in.

In the morning, Saturday, I raised hell again about the board and brace and they went into the same song and dance. Finally, after they left I had Sue loosen the neck brace and the board straps without telling them and that helped some.

The Chief Resident of the step down unit came in around noon and I started my complaint all over again. The same answer came back: they were waiting for the Chief Radiologist to "clear my spines."

I blew up: "Don't tell me that in a 600 bed hospital with a Level One Trauma Center only one person in the entire staff has the authority to make that decision, and he isn't even in the building and may not be back until Monday! That is insane and can't be right! I want to speak to the Trauma Chief now!"

About an hour later, after I had told Sue to take off the neck brace, the Chief Resident came back in and said that 'your spines are cleared." If he noticed I was not wearing the neck brace he didn't say so. He and a nurse undid the straps, laid me on the side and removed the board. What a relief.

However, it was at that point that I realized that the outsides of both thighs, but mostly on the right side, were totally numb. I told Sue but did not tell the docs or I would have been right back on the board and sent back for more scans. I was and am convinced that it was laying immobilized on the board for 24 hours that caused the numbness. It took almost a year to get complete feeling in those areas, but they did recover.

By now the hematoma was really starting to hurt all the time and was beginning to harden on the edges. Within three days it would be hard as a rock. I was told that the rock hard feeling was "normal" and that it would soften in two or three weeks and be absorbed back into my body.

They gave me a dispenser button to push on my pain meds that afternoon and I quickly learned that it only dispensed what it wanted to dispense regardless of how many times you pushed it. So the pain in my shoulder, right big toe (which had a compression fracture of the joint and would forever be frozen immobile), and the hematoma just continued to mount.

Meanwhile I started the game of picking out the road rash gravel in my chest as it worked its way to the surface. This would go on for months.

Late Saturday afternoon they told me that I could go home the next afternoon if all continued to go well, and they saw no reason it would not. But how would we get home? We decided to ask my best friend back home, Jeff Stocker, to come and get us with my car and motorcycle trailer so we could get Sue's bike home and do it all in one long trip.

We called and as only a friend would do, he said "Glad to do it." Another angel, but this time not in disguise. We knew that about Jeff all along. I told him where to find the key to get into the house and garage, where to find the extra car key in the house, and how to hook up the trailer and its lights.

We expected him to arrive late Sunday afternoon, but he surprised us, left later that Saturday and stayed overnight in WVA, arriving just a bit after noon on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Saturday night I had to "go number two" and they gave me a bed pan. It was impossible and I gave up. I told them I wanted to be able to walk to the bathroom. They said "no" so when they left I had Sue lift my IV pole out of the socket on the bed and walk with me to the bathroom in the room. That worked. I was very unsteady on my feet, my broken toe hurt like hell, but it was worth it.

After Jeff arrived on Sunday and went with Sue to get Sue's bike loaded on the trailer I started putting pressure on the docs to release me immediately so we could get home that evening. Well, the same drill happened. The Chief Resident of the step down was off duty and they needed his approval to let me go. I went ballistic again. And the result was the same. Within an hour I was asked to sign the release.

I was getting the feeling that they were just as happy to see me go as I was to get out of there. I have always wondered how long someone would have to stay in a place like that if they were the quiet, mousy type.

When we started to get me dressed Sue noticed that I had blotchy rash areas pretty much all over and blushing areas that came and went. That would go on for weeks and we blamed it on the morphine getting out of my system.

But we learned when we got the bill from the hospital that when I arrived at the Trauma Center they had switched me from morphine to fentanyl, an opioid that is 75-100 times more powerful than morphine. And they gave me another opioid to take for the pain when I got home.

So for about a month I was still reacting to the opioids. Interestingly, I have taken opioids since and have had no adverse reactions to them. It must have been the strength of the dose that passed a threshold for me.

We got home Sunday night, Sue and Jeff taking turns driving, and nothing felt so good as sleeping in my own bed.

The next few weeks were painful. I continued to run a low grade fever for about a month; continued to have the blushing of my face, chest, buttocks, and legs; and, about ten days out started having my feet swell up and turn red in the evenings. Because they quit doing that after a couple of weeks I associated it with the opioids and perhaps it was. But it also could have been unrelated.

In any case we will never know but it could also have been the beginning of my erythromelalgia because I continued, off and on, to have the same phenomena happen after a few of the long, all day, rides we took when touring. The erythromelalgia began in earnest almost three years later in the Spring of 2008 resulting in my forced retirement for medical reasons. It continues today, with at least daily flares every night.

After about three weeks the hematoma was still the same size, still hard as a rock, and had turned to a fluorescent rainbow of colors. We decided to go to a local surgeon I like and have him take a look at it. He too had never seen a hematoma that large, agreed that it would soften at some point, and told me to come in when it started to do that.

At about the five week mark it started softening rapidly and I went in. He said it would take years to get that much blood absorbed so he drew off two huge 6" by 1 1/2" vials of the blood and told me to come back in a week. I told him we were going out of town for a week, so make it two.

When I went back in two weeks he drew off another vial of blood. At the next visit he said that the rest would eventually absorb, but that there would always be clusters of necrotized tissue in the area that would never soften. After almost five years you can still feel those lumps and there is still a tattoo of darker skin where the hematoma was.

Meanwhile, I was told that I should not ride a motorcycle for at least three months. After three weeks I saw an ad in the paper for a 1984 Honda Nighthawk 550 and insisted that we go look at is as a possible interim bike until I decided what kind of more permanent replacement bike to get.

Sue drove me to see it and it was a well kept bike at a good price, but my foot was still in a walking strap on cast and I could not shift. So I talked her into taking it for a test ride.

She could barely get her feet down because of the seat height, but, good trooper that she is, she rode it and said it was fine. We bought it, came back the next day with the trailer, and hauled it to a repair shop for new tires and brake pads, and a complete checkup, carb clean and synchronization, etc.

We got the bike back in a week. So, one month from the accident I was riding locally again, taking my foot out of the walking boot and gingerly putting on my boots. I stuck to the wide four lane roads.

Six weeks from the date of the accident I put a new wind screen on it, and added some old saddlebags. We packed up our seat bags and tank bags, filled the saddlebags with rain gear, tools and sweatshirts and took off for a 1500 mile tour of the western Lake Michigan towns in Michigan, above Holland.

We had a great time. Both bikes ran great. The little 550 cc Honda ran like a top, cruised easily at 70-75 on the interstates, and was an all around good bike. I was in considerable pain the whole trip but covered that as much as possible with Ibuprophen and decided that the joy of riding was far greater than the pain.

But I had nagging fears about deer for a long time. Going to Michigan was not bad because there were many fewer deer than around here. But our hilly, timbered, home county, Tuscarawas, is the deer capital of this part of the country. Every year more deer are harvested here than in any other county in Ohio.

Our deer are known to be some of the largest white tail deer in the country. Mountain deer like the one that ran into my bike are much smaller than our deer and crashes here, even with cars and pickups, can be deadly, and are.

So I was a bit paranoid that entire remaining season, even though I rode almost every day. The paranoia was particularly bad when I rode the narrow back roads in these hills that I love. But every time I rode I insisted that I challenge myself to ride those kinds of roads at least for part of the ride.

Little by little I got over my fears and started enjoying the freedom and sense of oneness that I have had all of my life with my bike, God's beautiful world, and the joy that is riding.

It took a season but by the next Spring I had arrived at a "new normal." Nothing would ever be the same, physically or emotionally. I had been through a lot and come out with far less damage than I could have.

I had endured a lot of pain that I thought would be the worst I would experience. I did not know then that the pain I felt would be small compared to the pain I feel every day now from my erythromelalgia and the related neuropathies and vasculitis associated with it.

My shoulder still aches now and then and gets easily strained when I am lifting something, the toe is still frozen and is larger than the other toe, and the hematoma has left its necrotic lumps, scars and discolorations. And I still am especially alert for deer when I ride.

But at age 71 I have learned a lot too. I have learned that as you age "new normals" are part of the way things work. I have learned that we have a choice: we can whine about it or we can get on with life and do the best we can with what we have to work with.

I have learned that there are angels in disguise everywhere in all situations of our lives and that if we don't see them it is because we are not looking. I have learned that there are competent people who care and who dedicate their lives to professions that allow that caring to be expressed.

I have learned that the reason God gave me my wife was so that I would learn that we are never whole until we can wholly give ourselves to another. And, I have learned that God sends guardian angels to take care of fools and Englishmen, just like the saying says. And I am glad that I qualify for that service.

Most of all, I have learned that life is precious, not to be taken as something owed to us or as a random act of chance, but as a sacred gift to be cherished and to be lived to the fullest.

Thank all of you for reading this series.

Monte