Jesus | Michael Valliant

What does love look like?

It’s hard to know what to say, so I can only speak from my life and experiences. And my life is one of privilege. I haven’t earned the life I live based on my own sweat and effort–I was given a gift of an upbringing and a social and economic status that I had nothing to do with. I try to live up to and into that gift, and I am grateful for it daily. I try to dream and picture what my daughters’ lives might look like, and I know they are only limited by themselves.

When I run through town, I am the maybe overly friendly guy who says good morning or hello to everyone I pass. And I have never gotten weird looks–usually a wave or smile back. People aren’t generally intimidated by or suspect of me at first encounter. Again, none of this has much of anything to do with anything I have done. If my skin were a different color, I’m not sure reactions would be the same.

In my teens and early 20’s, we were troublemakers often enough and had run-ins with police, but I never feared for my life. We live in a small community and over the years, I have come to know more and more police officers as friends, and I know them all to be amazing human beings who help people at an instant. Theirs are friendships I am blessed to have–getting to know the people and not just their jobs. And they have seen me for who I am.

Over the years my heart has hurt and my mind has been jarred by so many events on the news, or listening to others’ experiences of the world. And these stories rise up, make their rounds, and then life goes on. For those not directly affected. But each time, it is only a glimpse; only a flicker. Too many people can change the channel and not have to face something directly.

When people speak up and speak out, they are quickly silenced. Yes, you can protest, but not like that. And no, not like that. Yes, we believe in your right to be heard, but we are watching football right now. How about some other time, some other place, where I can still watch what I want and think how I want and not have to pay attention?

Right now, there is attention. We are not promised tomorrow, so right now is what we have. I can’t know or understand what it is to be black, but I can listen and I can stand.

I am a part of a faith community where I know that people of any race, culture, or religion are welcome, and I consider that a blessing. I have watched our rector befriend a Hindu man who was working in Easton and loved coming to our 5:00pm service. He was happy in his faith, he just loved the music and energy of the service, and it was a beautiful thing.

After the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing protests and riots, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, an African-American man, on Sunday published an op-ed in The Washington Post about choosing love over hate. He also talked about what the path of love might look like in these times:

“Love looks like all of us — people of every race and religion and national origin and political affiliation — standing up and saying “Enough! We can do better than this. We can be better than this.”

“What does love look like? I believe that is what Jesus of Nazareth taught us. It looks like the biblical Good Samaritan, an outsider who spends his time and money healing somebody he doesn’t know or even like.”

There is a way forward through this that looks like love. That looks like the self-sacrificial love that Jesus showed us, taught us, and modeled with his life. And it looks like coming together, in love.

In Bible studies over the past months, we have been studying Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, in which Paul is emphatic about the unity of the church. In his commentary on Chapter 2, scholar and former bishop N.T. Wright says:

“If our churches are still divided in any way along racial or cultural lines, (Paul) would say that our gospel, our very grasp of the meaning of Jesus’ death is called into question. How long will it be before those who claim to follow Jesus, not least those who claim also to love Paul’s thinking, come to terms with the demands he actually makes?”

The way forward in love right now is not about doctrine. If we look at Jesus, when he dealt with the hurting, the sick, the lonely, the disenfranchised–he saw them, he healed them, he loved them, he brought them into the fold. Where Jesus is love, Paul also calls that love into unity.

I don’t know exactly what that looks like yet. But I know I can’t really think or write about anything else with it so large on my heart and mind right now.

In talking about love and faith, Krista Tippett, author and the host of “On Being,” writes:

“Every time I let myself go deeper into the mess and mystery of human loving, I am hit over the head again by theology–an insistence that the love of God is so much fuller than we can usually imagine or take in… I keep pursuing faith, if for no other reason than because it is the place in our common life that keeps reminding me of the necessity of love–not the romantic love of poets, but the practical love of sacred texts–however fraught and imperfect our practice of it may ever and always be… love is not the starting point, but the goal. It is not something we are born knowing how to do, not something we fall into. It is something we spend our whole lives learning.”

That is a love I want to learn to do better. I want to spend my life learning and practicing it. Right now it feels like it starts with listening and with standing.

Don’t bury your talents

We all bring something to the table. And what each person brings is necessarily different from what anyone else brings. And if you subscribe to the notion of life taking a village, a community, part of what makes everything work is each of us adding our own gifts.

This week in our Lent small group, we read Matthew 25 in N.T. Wright’s “Lent for Everyone,” which includes the parable of the talents. In the story Jesus tells, the master goes on a journey and leaves a sum of money (talents) with three different slaves. He gives the first slave five talents, the slave turns it into 10; he gives the second two talents, he turns it into four. The master is pleased and rewards them. The last slave is given one talent, is scared, buries the talent, and just gives it back to the master when he gets back. The master is not happy and wants him thrown out into the dark where bad stuff goes down.

The things about parables, about stories, if they aren’t memorable, they aren’t worth much. Some of them are harsh, and each of the stories Jesus tells are meant to get a message across. Whereas a talent in the story is currency or money, it is a word that works for us in our time as well: talking about our own talents.

Wright breaks it down for us in his commentary after the reading:

“…each of us has been put here with a particular purpose and calling, which only we can do. Our task is to find out what that is and to do it. That remains true whether the purpose is playing the trumpet, cooking meals, planting trees, performing heart transplants, or even preaching sermons. Sometimes, of course, it’s a struggle to discover what our calling is.”
N.T. Wright

We could stand to listen to Jesus, and to Wright, during this time of pandemic with COVID-19 calling for so many different responses from all of us. Some of the shining talents that have come to light at Christ Church Easton during this time, are the musical and video editing skills of members of the church’s music ministers, bands, and choirs. “Hold Us Together,” “Stand in Your Love / Chain Breaker,” and “Be Still My Soul,” have each become Facebook phenomena going far beyond anything the church has recorded or media that it has created. The comments about the hope and connection people are feeling from them have had hearts overflowing all over. I still have a hard time getting through any one of the videos without breaking down.

None of this happens if contemporary music minister Ray Remesch doesn’t step up and say he can direct, record, and edit videos; if Alive @ 5 music minister Bruce Strazza isn’t using his technical expertise, above and beyond his musical talent, to make sure the staff and the band have the systems and equipment they need to work remotely; if the musicians and singers don’t make the time to bring their skills to the table; and Tracy Kollinger doesn’t research and figure out the best ways to upload and stream live videos. We’ve had different staff and volunteers who have stepped up and into different hats in both subtle and profound ways.

Obviously these aren’t front-line jobs. The talents of doctors, first responders, school systems and community volunteers working to make sure kids and families are fed; grocery store and restaurant workers coming up with new ways to stay open and feed people; there are so many people offering and stretching their talents in so many ways, that it is nothing short of remarkable. People are stepping up with the gifts they have been given and are increasing their talents, not burying them.

There are also those of us that are waiting, maybe unsure what gifts we bring to the table, and unsure about the timing and way we might use them. In his commentary on the parable of the talents, Wright has some thoughts:

“…each of us is called to exercise the primary, underlying gifts of living as a wise, loving human being, celebrating God’s love, forgiving, praying, seeking justice, acting prudently and courageously, waiting patiently for God’s will to be done.”
Wright

In this case, God’s will has nothing to do with the pandemic virus sweeping the world, but everything to do with how God’s people are called to respond. It’s up to us, to use the talents God has given us to give back to the community, our neighbors, and thereby the world.

It could be praying; it could be reaching out to a friend or family member; it could be supporting local businesses who are going through an unprecedented time; it could be feeding people; it could be staying home and being available when ready; it could be giving hope and humor and peace to someone who needs it.

What’s asked of us is not to bury our talents, but to be open, to increase them, and to share them. There is hope there.

A few small stones

Most of us won’t get to everything on our bucket lists. There’s a good chance we won’t accomplish everything we hope to do in life. And some of that could be on us, but there are plenty of factors beyond our control. Does it make our lives less than?

Mary Oliver’s poem, “Praying” found me this week:

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest, but the doorway
Into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Maybe we spend too much time waiting for the blue iris–the extraordinary to show up, when we could make more out of a few small stones.

Don’t get me wrong–I want to savor the blue iris moments when I have them, if I have them, but not at the cost of the stones all around me. Those moments, the ones we have right now, are all we know we will get.

Two friends have died in the past few weeks, unrelated to each other. Their deaths were unexpected and tragic and they left behind kids and families. I’m sure each had more they wanted to do, to say, decisions they’d love a do-over for. But when I think of each of them, I smile for how they made me feel; for each of their smiles; their stories; the way they approached each day during the time that I knew them.

We remember how people made us feel. I know I need to be more conscious of that. We remember the time we shared with someone, the stories we told. What I know of Chris and Mike is a small section of their lives, but an intersection I am grateful for. Each of them gave me a gift in knowing them and I am glad Christ Church Easton’s Alive @ 5 service connected and/or reconnected us.

As I think about friends dying, we are reading Chapter 11 in our study of John’s Gospel, which is where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. There is a scene where Mary, Lazarus’s sister comes out to see Jesus as he has arrived.

“When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus began to weep.” (John 11:32-35)

It’s a profound thing that Jesus weeps with us in our grief. Jesus knows that he is about to raise Lazarus, that things will be okay in the long run, but he cries with his friends in their shared grief. As we are reading John, we are using N.T. Wright’s commentary in “John for Everyone.” Wright talks about this moment of grief like this:

“It’s one of the most remarkable moments in the whole gospel story… Throughout the gospel, John is telling us… that when we look at Jesus, not least when we look at Jesus in tears, we are seeing not just a flesh-and-blood human being, but the Word made flesh. The Word, through whom the worlds were made, weeps like a baby at the grave of his friend. Only when we stop and ponder this will we understand the full mystery of John’s gospel. Only when we put away our high and dry pictures of who God is and replace them with pictures in which the Word who is God can cry with the world’s crying will we discover what the word ‘God’ really means.”

God is the creator of the Universe. He’s larger than life, the spinner of the cosmos, author of the Mystery, beyond comprehension. And at the same time, He becomes human and cries with his friends. And that is a part of who God is. And it is a way we can get to know Him and draw closer to Him.

In the raising of Lazarus–John doesn’t tell us it was because Lazarus had so much more to do with his life, he doesn’t tell us what he had done up to that point or what he goes and does after–that’s not the point. God just does it. As with so many stories in the Gospels, it’s a story of hope. And hope comes in so many ways at so many different, and unexpected times.

We don’t all get Lazarus moments that we can see in this life. Not all our outcomes are how we want them, nor are we on our time. But we can find hope.

And we aren’t guaranteed blue iris moments. But we are given this moment and a few small stones. And we can build something with them, in this life, with those around us, right now. If we are lucky, those moments, those few small stones we share with those we meet, maybe, as Mary Oliver says, they can be “the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.”

Walk this Way

Jesus walked. A lot. Walking, praying, eating with friends, hanging with the unruly–these are some of the things he spent the most time doing. The pace and intentionality of Jesus’ life are among his key examples for us.

Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book “An Altar in the World,” talks about Jesus’ walking practice:

“Sometimes he had a destination and sometimes he didn’t. For many who followed him around, he was the destination. Whether he was going somewhere or nowhere at all, going with him was the point. Food tasted better at the pace he set. Stories lasted longer. Talk went deeper. While many of his present-day admirers pay close attention to what he said and did, they pay less attention to the pace at which he did it. Jesus was a walker, not a rider. He took his sweet time.”

[Aside: it makes it really hard to stomach when some bonehead says if Jesus lived today, he’d have a private jet to go around the world. You might want to go back and review the Sermon on the Mount, or say, anything he said in the Gospels…]

When I think about my best days, there is some part of each of them that have been spent walking, exploring, hiking, doing something at a slower, intentional pace, even if it’s around the yard. We’re in a hurry often enough, taking time to walk, to slow down, seems essential.

I like any chance I can get to drop some wisdom from Gary Snyder. In “Practice of the Wild,” he links walking with adventure and humility:

“Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility.”

I think that’s part of it, the slow pace of walking and the vastness of the planet, it is humbling and beautiful at the same time. It puts us in our bodies and lets our souls breathe.

If you’ve been around Oxford for any period of time, you’ve likely come across Bruce Mills. When I was growing up, Bruce lived down the street from us, and spent a lot of time in the park, playing electric guitar, spreading out black and white photographs he had taken and developed, laughing and philosophizing, later on doing Tai Chi. For the better part of a few decades, Bruce rides his bike from Trappe to Oxford to paint houses. The times that he’s had a car, he felt like he missed out.

“When I get into a car, I turn the key and I’m there,” he once said. “When I ride my bike, I can breathe, I can smell the earth, I can get my thoughts together, I take my time.”

I like so much about that. I think Jesus might have a bike if he lived bodily in today’s world. But it wouldn’t be a fancy, upscale bike, and I can’t see him decked out in spandex with a GPS and figuring out his pace and heart rate. Personally, I think Jesus would have a beach cruiser, letting go of the hurry, and smiling in the breeze.

Matthew and the Rock Face

If you’d told me 15 years ago that I would find laughter, joy, friendships, tears, questions, answers, life, sorrow, challenges, confusion, exhaustion, and exhilaration, all in a Bible study, I am sure I would have dismissed it.

At the beginning of October 2017, two groups at Christ Church Easton started a journey through Matthew’s gospel, using N.T. Wright’s “Matthew for Everyone” as a touchstone. We weren’t sure whether to end at Christmas, part-way down the path, but both groups wanted to see it through. With three weeks left to go, Jesus has been arrested, and we know what’s coming.

Wright looks at where we are in the story and compares it to standing at the bottom of a huge rock face.

“That is how we should feel as we stand at the foot of the final ascent of St. Matthew’s gospel. We have walked at a steady pace through the hills and the valleys of the story. We have sat down to hear Jesus deliver another parable or discourse. We have marched with him along the road, enjoying the sunshine of the early days in Galilee, and the remarkable views as the disciples gradually realized more of what the kingdom was about. We have arrived in Jerusalem at watched dramatic events unfold. But we are now standing in front of a sheer wall of rock, and if we don’t find it both compelling and terrifying, we haven’t got the right spectacles on.”

I feel that. I feel it in my life and I feel it as we read and work through Matthew. I feel it as we approach both spring and Easter. With all the beauty and questions, there is death ahead. There is rebirth and renewal after, but it only comes after and because of a death. I think that is also true of our lives. It is of mine–some of the most beautiful and meaningful times come after loss, come after the low, come after the crap. And sometimes they only happen because of the painful experience that preceded it.

Wright goes on:

“The theories about why Jesus died–theories of the ‘atonement,’ as they are called–are like maps or old photographs, taken from a distance. They may be accurate in their way, and the’re helpful particularly when it’s cloudy and you can’t see too much for the moment. But they’re not the same thing as climbing to the top yourself, and perhaps, if you’re lucky, getting there on a clear day when you can see the view. When that happens, you will find you quickly run out of words to describe what you are looking at.”

It’s not the same thing as climbing to the top yourself. What we find in Scripture is a lot like what we find in life–we get out of it what we invest in it, what we live into it. And if we are going to understand Scripture, or life, it is going to help to have guides, and friends to share the journey with, and the views. We are going to stumble and we are going to need help.

We’ve got three classes left, finishing this ascent during Holy Week as we head into Easter. Our two groups of pilgrims are at the rock face. A journey that started together five months ago. When I look back, when I look around, and when I look forward, I “quickly run out of words to describe” it.

Delusions of Knowledge

When I look up at the stars, my response is wonder. When I watch a hummingbird hovering in the yard, I am fascinated. In neither case is my first instinct to analyze, label, figure things out.

Likewise, when I think about God, it isn’t to solve the Mystery, but to dwell in the Mystery, sit with it, let it wash over me. Not to try to pull it apart.

The mystery of creation is like the darkness of night–it is great. Delusions of knowledge are like the fog of the morning. – Rabindranath Tagore

Tagore is a writer who I have recently been drawn to more and more. He was the first non-European writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1913. His “Stray Birds” are several, rapid fire blasts of sunlight, glimpses of illumination that cut through the shadows of unchecked rational thought. The painting at the top of the page is Tagore’s as well.

I’ve been sitting with the idea of paradox a lot lately–the notion that two things taken together are seemingly impossible, but actually true. Like when physicists say that light is made up of (behaves like) waves and particles at the same time.

Science and scripture are full of paradoxes. How can Jesus be both a Lamb and a Lion; how are the worldly poor the spiritually rich? Why do you have to let go in order to have everything? Why is surrendering the only way to victory? Jesus loved paradoxes and deep thinkers like Einstein saw them everywhere.

Why is that? One reason might be that our intellect by itself is not the right faculty to get us to the deeper truths. It would be like trying to use smell or taste to figure out the tip when you get the check from dinner–could be interesting, but ultimately not helpful.

I am never more frustrated than when I try to have all the answers; when I want to have things figured out before I move forward. I am never more at peace than when I allow myself to be in the moment, to be happy with/by/from the things and people that make me happy. And it is still hard not to want to know that I am moving in the right direction, doing the right thing, moving further up the mountain rather than backpedaling.

“One of the great constants in life is change.” That was the doctrine of Heraclitus, a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. A paradox and a truth. And not new information.

How we deal with change, how we deal with the mind coming up just short of what it is we want to know, those responses to life are what our lives become. There are all kinds of options: we can doubt, fear, bury our head in the sand and not give it thought, we can lose ourselves in work, we can party like it’s 1999.

I go back to a favorite Thomas Merton thought:

You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.

That feels right. So when I walk outside after the storm and through the boat yard to catch the last bit of sunset and see this…

And I walk back to the house and hear an owl in the top of a tree and then watch he or she take off and fly with outspread wings, I smile and sit with Tagore’s words that have been in my head on a Sunday:

That I exist is a perpetual surprise which is life.

Wonder and Wildness

Jesus was not a city slicker. Sure, he hung out and preached in towns, but when it all got to be too much, or he had stuff to work out, or just needed a break, he went for wilderness. Wilderness, both literal and figurative, was his place of transformation, of discernment, of revelation.

Over the course of my reading life, anytime I have found my peeps, ancestors to whatever aesthetic, experiential, existential tribe I belong to, it’s been the folks who hit the wilderness. Whitman, Thoreau, and the American Transcendentalists; John Muir, Edward Abbey, Gary Snyder; and the British Romanticism crew. When I read Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron and company, it almost felt like Superman ditching his tie and collared shirt. Wordsworth in particular, had come to grips and written about his soul’s need to go to nature and finding his way:

The earth is all before me: with a heart
Joyous, nor scared of its own liberty,
I look about, and should the guide I choose
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud
I cannot miss my way. I breathe again:
Trances of thought and mountings of the mind
Come fast upon me.

Wordsworth’s “Prelude” is getting back to nature. The importance and role of nature in the unfolding of our souls and minds, as individuals, was a spark for the Romantics.

One of the things about wilderness, is that it can inspire us, and reconnect us to our own wildness. I could feel that the first times I went trail running. Nothing felt so freeing as running through the woods, the mountains, in tune, in touch, heart pounding and smiling from the soul.

The times I feel most lost, most disconnected, are when I realize I have lost touch with that part of myself. Going outside, way outside, helps. But it’s not the only way. I have to remember to bring something from those times back with me; to ignite that spark; turn it to flame; and keep it burning through the work week; through daily life. Not to lose touch with it.

It often seems like we live in a world where we get points for being tamed. From schools, to cubicles, the better you sit still, assimilate, regurgitate, and fill out your TPS reports, the further along you are.

Yeah… no. That’s never been my path. And anytime I’ve seemed to start down it, God has seemed to redirect and remind me… wake up, look around, is this what you want? There is so much more.

There are daily reminders in town. There is a fox who lives in our neighborhood, whose gait and speed, and coat make me smile and wake me up a bit. Paddleboarding or kayaking. The sublimity of a sunrise. The power of a storm rolling in on the water. The vastness of the stars on a clear night.

At the same time we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. – Henry David Thoreau

We lose our wildness at our own risk. We lose it in as much as we are happy to be tamed. That doesn’t make me happy.

Sparking our sense of wonder. Rekindling our wildness. Every time I do those things, God seems to show me more–about life, the world, myself.

* Featured image from Space Attraction.