The Path of Discipleship - The Love of Self

In his teaching on the most important commandment, Jesus lists (and equates) two:  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:28-34)  Through much of Christian history, the love of self has been frowned upon, often being bundled with pride and self-indulgent ways.  Yet we cannot fulfill the commandment to love the neighbor if we do not love ourselves.

 

                Our basic understanding of humanity says that there is a lot to love about you.  You are a precious child of God.  You have been made in the image of God.  You are unique, holy and every hair on your head is counted and known to the divine.  In Psalm 139 the author praises God saying:

“For it was you who formed my inward parts;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

Moreover, the story of Jesus is a story that teaches how God is deeply in love with you, choosing to experience humanity for you; choosing to experience death for you.  If God is deeply in love with you, then  you can be deeply in love with you.   You can acknowledge your gifts and quirks and all the things that make you uniquely you.  You can take the time to care for your body.  You can get enough sleep without calling it laziness.  You can get enough food without calling it gluttony.  You can experience pleasure without calling it hedonism.

Much of Christian history has been shaped by the denial of the self, especially the physical self.  It seems problematic that somehow the denial of pleasure and joy has been seen as way of honoring God; that the God who created us a sexual beings wants us to deny sexuality; that the God who created the varieties of fruits and vegetables that were part of the Garden of Eden story is honored when we eat only bread and water.  There are too many stories (including that of Martin Luther) where great Christians have suffered long term illness or early death because of their efforts to control and discipline their physical needs.

To be clear, there need to be limits, which I will write about more when talking about the virtues of Contentment and Self-control.  Part of the reason that Christians have a history of calls to self-discipline is that it very easy to cross the line from self-love to self-idolization.  It is also very easy to turn our needs and pleasures into idols themselves.  Food is a gift from God, but an obsession with food can turn into gluttony on the one hand and anorexia on the other.  Sex is a gift from God, but an idolization of sex can turn abusive and controlling (as we are hearing through the current #MeToo movement).  Sexual idolatry can turn into an obsession with having sex on the one hand and an obsession with preventing sex on the other. 

Most importantly, an idolization of the self makes it impossible to truly love God or love others, because Christian love involves the giving of one’s self.  An idolization of the self blurs our vision so that we forget that while we are important and precious, loved by God, so is our neighbor; so is the stranger far away; so is the immigrant; so is the family experiencing homeless; so is the drug addict. 

It is good to celebrate who you are and how God has made you.  It is good care for yourself.  We are the stewards of our minds and bodies, given the joyful but challenging task of caring for them.  It is good to learn about yourself, how your mind works, how you learn, how you react to situations.   It is good to experience joy and pleasure, not turning them into obsessions, but participating in them as part of God’s good creation. 

And finally, it is good to give ourselves away in love.   The Christian vision of love is that a full life is found in giving ourselves away.  As the Apostle John wrote to church, “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:11-12)  Loving the self is part of participating in the gift of divine love, but love find completeness when it moves beyond the self and into the world.

The Path of Discipleship - The Gift and Task of Love

As I have mentioned in a previous post, I am not a biblical literalist.  I think that many of our stories are mythic or are mythic remembering of events.  Trying to convince people that there was an ark with  two of every creature is both an exercise in futility (this written as the son of an entomologist, whose father studied wasps that were too small to be easily seen without a microscope) and a stumbling block to the life of faith to which Jesus has called us.

                There is, of course, a danger in not being a literalist, which is that the line between myth and history becomes quite blurry.  If one doesn’t think the Garden of Eden represents a real location or the Noah story an historical account, what about the miracle stories of Jesus or the resurrection itself?  Part of the reason that literalism breeds apologists, folks writing in an attempt to prove the historical accuracy of the text, is the fear that if one part is questionable, the whole package is suspect.

                I don’t have a simple answer to the issue.  It is one with which I wrestle regularly.  Thankfully Jesus never requires us to believe in a text.  He never makes salvation dependent on our belief in crossing the Red Sea on dry land or walking on water.  The church is not called to prove the stories nor can it prove the stories.  We have no photographs of aqueous strolls or empty tombs.  Instead we are called to live in the light of the stories.  We do not have to prove the resurrection.  Instead we are called to live in the light of that resurrection.  We are called to live in love.

                Fundamentally, this is where our scriptural stories point us.  Now you may argue that stories of Israel conquering the promised land, divinely instructed to wipe out the Canaanites are not stories of love.  You may argue that the story in Acts of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5) who are struck dead for failing an apostolic financial audit does not foster a community centered on love.  In fact it is a fairly simple exercise to cherry-pick the scriptures and create a vision that celebrates intolerance, obsessive purity, separation or personal growth and success as the fundamental value and goal of faith.

                I would argue that, for Christianity, the primary voice we need to hear is that of Jesus.  It is Jesus, who when confronted with questions of the law declared that the greatest commandment is the love of God and the love of neighbor (Mark 12:28-31).  It is Jesus who, when given the choice between ritual purity and compassion, chose compassion (Mark 3:1-6).  It is Jesus who, when given the choice between judgement and acceptance chose acceptance. (Luke 7:36-50)  It is Jesus who, on the cross, given the choice between condemnation and forgiveness chose forgiveness (Luke 23:34).  It is Jesus who shows that love is the direction of the path of discipleship.

                What the church has discovered and continues to struggle with is that the path is not as simple as it sounds.  As mainline traditions struggle with issues of sexuality, we are questioning the limits of love.  Can the direction of love move us beyond the bounds of scripture and tradition and how far?  As Christians in the United States consider illegal immigration, we are really continuing the discussion of what it means to love our neighbor.   As Christians deal with issues around addiction, we may struggle with the question of just how far love should lead us.  When does love become enabling?  When does enabling stop being love?

                Thank God that we are dependent not on our getting it right, but on God’s love for us.  God sets us in a universe formed in love.  God shows us in Jesus as example of life shaped by love.  God invites us to be loving, knowing well that we will fail despite our best efforts.  The good news is that our failures do not permanently break the relationship.  God who is love invites to love again, knowing that we will not be perfect, but hoping that we will grow.  May gift of God’s love shape our faith, our community and our conversation.  May the task of loving help us grow in love for God and one another.

The Path of Discipleship - Awe and Wonder in Practice

I will end the series on awe and wonder with some thoughts on practice.  Often awe and wonder can sneak up on us like coming upon an unexpected vista.  Awe and wonder can also be manipulated from within us.  Rock concerts with light shows or Fourth of July fireworks with patriotic music are examples.  I am an advocate for seeking awe and wonder as a purposeful state, that we intentionally find ways to get outside of ourselves and be taken up into that divine something that is so much larger than we are.         

                In our Sunday worship, we have played with curiosity as a means for developing awe.  Explore the world around you.  Find the life that thrives in unexpected places.  Discover an animal species you have never encountered.  We live in an age where there is excellent access to pictures and videos of creatures you will never encounter where you live.  Somehow seeing creation work in ways that are completely different from us, whether the graceful underwater flight of the blanket octopus or the wide-eyed glare of the tarsier, can be enough to elicit a sense of wonder.

                Another practice of awe and wonder is getting lost in the scope of the universe.  This can be as simple as contemplating a rock, especially one that can fit in your hand.  Feel its contours and solidity.  Pay attention to the many colors and variations, the glint of quartz particles in granite.  Consider how it got in your hand, the millions of years of pressure underground, the powerful geological forces that brought it to the surface.  The rocks I handed out in worship had also been smoothed by thousands of years of contact with Atlantic Ocean sand. 

                Then look upward to the heavens, consider the night sky, the light years between you and the nearest star, the age of the light you can see, the massiveness of the objects in the solar system.  Think of the things we don’t know or have yet to understand: black holes, comets and dark matter.

                In Zen Buddhism, there is a concept called, “single-minded focus.”  It has achieved some notoriety in these days of many distractions, as people recognize how social media and other technologies can tug on our focus.  It is the practice of learning how to concentrate on one single moment, allowing distractions to flow by.  In the Christian contemplative tradition, there  is the practice of turning ones focus fully on the divine.  The 13^th century anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing describes a God hidden behind the titular cloud.  His advice on prayer was, “Keep your focus by staring at this cloud with a sharp arrow of love and longing, and never turn back from this work, no matter what happens.” 

                In many ways, what I suggest as practices for awe and wonder are about relearning to pay attention.  Rather than going to the zoo and saying, “I saw a giraffe,” take the time to watch and learn about what makes a giraffe beyond its long neck.  Rather than seeing a full moon, labeling it as full and turning away, take the time to notice its patterns of light and shadow, simply marveling at its, for lack of a better word, God-given moonness.

                Giving single-minded attention will take us many steps on the path of discipleship.  Such attention given to scripture leads to wisdom.  Such attention given to ourselves might lead to repentance and self-control.  Such attention given to our lives might lead toward contentment and gratitude.  Such attention given to our neighbor leads to compassion, justice and love.  It is no wonder that several times in the gospels Jesus calls us to attention with the simple words, “Keep awake!”  Wake up!  Keep awake!  Pay attention to the awe and wonder that is happening all around you.

The Path of Discipleship - Wonder, Wisdom and Scripture

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7 NRSV).  As mentioned previously, I see the fear of the Lord as a matter of awe and reverence as opposed to quaking in your boots fright.  It is the wonder and awe at understanding that the God we worship is beyond understanding.  God is bigger than our comprehension which implies that God’s grace and God’s love are beyond our comprehension.  In this Christmas season, we celebrate that in Jesus the incomprehensible God chose to walk among us in a comprehensible way, which is itself a source of awe and wonder.

                Within Christianity we have a resource to grow in understanding and wisdom, one that is under-used in some traditions and ill-used in others: scripture.  In every congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America you will find this phrase.  “This congregation accepts the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the inspired Word of God and the authoritative source and norm of its proclamation, faith, and life.”  Our pastors are expected to have a passion for the Bible and its study, including learning biblical Hebrew and Greek to encounter the texts in their original languages.

                In other words, the Bible is a critical book for the church, central to our self-understanding.  We call it inspired.  We call it holy.  Our worship is centered on it and informed by it.

                The Bible is an essential book for Christians and the church, but it is not a magic book.  I see the Bible as a source of divine wisdom, but we also have to approach it with the God-given wisdom to see and understand its limitations and its problems.  In our modern society, the most glaring issue is that the authors of our biblical texts, while divinely inspired, were also shaped by their time and culture.  There are a host of traditions that our current culture would call into question which the authors seem to accept as a divinely-ordained order of things:  slavery as part of the social order, women as essentially inferior to men, disease and illness as divine retribution, for example.  If we want the message to be relevant, we need to acknowledge that there are parts of Bible that get it wrong.  Even though Exodus 21 allows for a servant to declare, “I love my master” and be permanently bound to him, we should be able to declare that slavery has always been wrong.  Even though that same chapter invites a master to give his slave a wife as a gift, we should be able to declare that seeing women as property to be traded, gifted or used has always been wrong.  We can acknowledge that such ideas were socially acceptable thousands of years ago, but we should not let such passages allow us to continue to objectify people.

                The Bible was also never intended as a science textbook.  I wonder if ancient creation myths were an attempt at pre-science, trying to explain the way things are based on what was observed.  However, Genesis 1 describes life in a snow globe universe, with water outside the dome of the sky (Why is the sky blue?).  In Genesis 7:11, “the windows of the heavens were opened” as part of the great flood story (the snow globe fills with water).  These stories may well have been based on even more ancient tales, but they are metaphors, meant to express something about who God is, who we are and our relationship to one another.  Even though I don’t believe they are historical, I don’t think they should be dismissed as unimportant.  Rather, like a beautiful work of art, we should meditate on them, look at them from many angles and look for the divine spark within them.

                I understand that for some, what I am describing is a slippery slope.  If you doubt the history of one narrative, what does that say about the historicity of the story of the Exodus or the gospel stories?  First, we need to have the humility to acknowledge that we cannot prove much about the accuracy of any story in the Bible.  While later generations of believers developed traditions and commented on the stories and characters, there are very few contemporary resources that confirm the stories or characters.  One of issues with Jesus choosing common people to be his disciples is that no one was paying attention to common people.  We can confirm the existence of a Herod, Pontius Pilate or Caiaphus the high priest, all leaders at the time, but it is much harder to find records of Simon and Andrew who enter the story as common fishermen.

                We don’t need to be able to prove the history in order for the stories to be important.  We don’t need our stories to be without doubt in order to learn from them.  In fact, a modern desire for proof can keep us from embracing the meaning and importance of the stories themselves.  Jesus chooses common people not because he was trying to make the history difficult but as a way of showing that God is concerned with those whom history forgets.  The author of Genesis 1 was not trying to write a scientific paper, but rather to point to a God through whom all things have come into being, a universe created with intention and declared, “Good!”

                The path of discipleship is not a path of proof but a path of trust.  The scriptures are part of the walk.  Through them the path is given shape and direction.  There is awe and wonder in our scriptural stories.  I hope every Christian takes the time to explore them with wisdom and humility.

The Path of Discipleship - Awe is not Faith

Christian mystics such as Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena warned of something they called, “the consolations of prayer.”  Especially as you begin the practice of contemplative prayer, you might find intense feelings of calm, joy and well-being.  The novice practitioner assumes that these feelings are a regular part of the practice and so begins to pray with the expectation of experiencing those feelings, or consolations.  As you continue to practice, you will find that such feelings don’t happen every time or may have been the early by-product of allowing yourself to slow down and breathe deeply.  The mystics advise that to truly seek God in prayer, one must look for God beyond the consolations of prayer, enduring times where God seems distant and prayer is difficult.

                I see a similar issue in current forms of worship.  In my last post I wrote about worship that manufactures feeling, using music, lighting and other techniques to make one feel a certain way.  In many Lutheran circles, the desired feeling is often one of comfort.  We choose music and worship styles that soothe and do not challenge.  In other traditions, the goal is to inspire a sense of awe, wonder and mystery.  In both cases I have spoken with worshipers who don’t think that worship is authentic if the feeling is absent.

                There is confusion around feeling and faith.  As I wrote early on, I see a sense of awe and wonder as a virtue to be cultivated, a feeling that pulls us from naval-gazing to a connection with the glory of God, the immensity of creation, the vastness that is outside of us.  Awe is a feeling that can orient us toward God, but awe is not a relational faith in God.   As United Church of Christ pastor Lillian Daniels writes, “Any idiot can find God in a sunset.”  That is, most people have moments where they feel awe and wonder, standing at the edge of Grand Canyon, stargazing on a clear night, watching the sunset over the ocean.  These are moments that cause us to breathe deeply and forget everything else, moments that pull us beyond ourselves and the concerns of the day.  Awe is a powerful feeling, but it is also fleeting.  The sun sets and the ocean becomes dark.  The sun rises and the starlight fades.  We step away from the edge of the canyon.

Awe can push us towards faith.  Awe can strengthen and deepen existing faith.  But awe itself is not faith but a feeling.  I suspect that when someone says that she finds God in a sunset what she really means is that she experiences awe at the sunset.  Likewise, when someone tells me he finds God in nature, he really means he has a feeling of awe in nature.  It is a good feeling.  I have it too and enjoy it, but it isn’t faith.  The nature of faith is too large to cover in this post, but suffice it to say that enjoying the scent of a delicious meal is very different from sitting down and eating it.

To be clear, it is my hope that people feel awe and wonder.  I think it is a very good thing if only for the fact that it puts things into perspective.  I am an advocate for finding wonder in the everyday and the ordinary.  Yet the feeling of awe is not the endpoint but a starting place for faith.  If we can experience awe in the present moment, marveling at the miracle of each second, the complicated cycles that happen with every breath and heartbeat, we are put in a much better place to marvel at the good news that the God who is beyond our understanding wants to be in relationship with us, wants to extend the wonder of life into eternity, joins us in our humanity not as a blazing superhero (Transfiguration aside) but as one of us. 

We are also put in a much better place to marvel at the miracle that is our neighbor.  Even the neighbor you may not enjoy is a wonder to behold, a wonder of breath and heartbeat and life.  Jesus drew attention to those who were forgotten.  Jesus could have begun his ministry with the Roman leadership, the imperial court, wealth and power.  Instead he invited fisherfolk to walk with him.  He could have focused on the religious elite.  Instead he drew attention to the unclean and unworthy.  He saw each person as precious, marvelous and wonderful.  When we find wonder in the present moment, the simple miracles that happen all around us, we are walking the path with Jesus.

The Path of Discipleship - Awe and Wonder Continued

Take three deep breaths and remember that you are alive.   It’s a simple practice, variations of which can be found in several religious traditions.  That breath, that second, the infinitesimal moment of life is a gift of a gracious God.  And yet how often those moments pass without notice, our eyes fixed on screens, our minds transfixed by shiny objects while life, real life is happening all around us.

                One of my concerns about the church in the modern era is that our experiences of awe are often artificial.  The feeling of wonder may be real, but it has been manipulated into being from the outside.  I suspect this began a few centuries ago when Christians stepped into large cathedral sanctuaries filled with the overwhelming sounds of choirs and pipe organs.  The stained glass windows separated holy space from common space as the liturgy filled the room.  The spaces were designed to evoke wonder.  For a couple of hours, worshipers were transported from the common life of toil into an image of the Reign of God. 

                While this pattern certainly was inspiring it strengthened the understanding that divine awe and wonder should be found inside the building, not in the common spaces of life.  Meanwhile the church was learning how to manufacture wonder, a tradition that continues to this day.  I regularly receive worship supply catalogs and have noticed how in the past decades they have more and more supplies that I normally have associated with theatrical productions:  stage lights and spotlights, sound systems and headset microphones just like the motivational speakers use.  I’m not against adopting modern technology.  The stained glass window was the original PowerPoint slide.  The whole Reformation movement was founded on the innovation of the printing press.  Although the embrace has often been tentative, the church has eventually accepted new types of instrumentation and presentation.  Yet the purpose of the theater is to manipulate, to make you feel empathy for pretend characters, to make you feel excited by false battles, to make you weep at pretend death.  The more we embrace the theatrical; the more we embrace the manipulative and the more difficult we make it to find wonder outside of the stage lights and spotlights.

                My goal in writing this is not to declare some worship practices as right and some wrong, nor do I think we need to abandon grand displays of worship.  My goal is to encourage wonder as a daily virtue rather than a special occasion only found in places designed to create wonder.  The awesome aspect of the Christian story is that our God of wonders, who formed the universe with a word and knows the whereabouts of every subatomic particle, has been made known to us in ordinary humanity.  The incarnation of Jesus points to a God who makes the ordinary extraordinary and makes the common wonderful.

  

              If you truly pay attention to the world around us you will see that the universe itself is a constant source of wonder.  If you consider the vastness of space, the simple fact that we are something and not nothing is a source of wonder;  that we are not just dust carried along the flows of an expanding universe.   If you look through a microscope and see how a drop of pond water is filled with life; if you pick up a beach rock and consider how you are holding millions of years of history, these are opportunities for wonder.  You are discovering the wonder about which the psalmist wrote:

                “The heavens are telling the glory of God;

and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.”  (Psalm 19:1)

                In my next article, I will write about the intersection of wonder and faith.  For now, I encourage you to gaze up at the night sky and watch the transition from night to day as the sun rises.  Pay attention to the variety of life around you, life that flies and crawls and swims all around you.  There is awe and wonder right where you are, all of it praising the living God.

The Path of Discipleship - An Introduction to Awe and Wonder

In my first post, I described how I would talk about discipleship in terms of a collection of virtues.  The traditional (and not-so-traditional) practices of discipleship encourage and grow those virtues, helping us grow as people of faith.  When I was considering where to begin, I thought about awe/wisdom/wonder as a starting point. 

The author of Proverbs writes, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  Many people bristle at the first noun, “fear.”  One of the most common questions I receive about Luther’s Small Catechism is his use of that word in talking about the 10 commandments.  His definitions all begin with, “We are to fear and love God…”  Why should we have to fear God?

This question comes from the church’s more recent emphasis on the love of God in Christ.  We are always talking about love; God’s love; God loves you; for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.  I frequently talk about the love of God from the pulpit because I believe that this love is a constant, a constant first made known to us in baptism; the constant that makes the life of discipleship possible.  Because we are sustained by the love of God in Christ, we are set free to live as disciples, to risk, to try, to fail and try again.

So why talk about fear?  The confusing thing about a focus on love is that it tends to put God on equal terms with us.  We act familiar with God as a constant friend and companion.  This is a valid way to talk about God, but it limits our understanding of who God is as well as the amazing nature of that love.  When I hear the word, “fear” in a theological sense, I tend to think about it in terms of reverence or awe.  I have sat at many campfires, amazed at the beauty of light in the darkness, warmth on a cool autumn evening, transfixed by the flit and flicker.  Yet as welcoming as that fire may seem, I also know how important it is to treat it with respect, how easy it is for fire to burn out of control, how dangerous it is to get too close.

The ancient Hebrews had the understanding that “you cannot look upon the face of God and live.”  You would be consumed by the glory of God.  It wasn’t that God was waiting to strike people down, but that God was simply too awesome for simple humanity to handle.  This glory was the reason that ritual became such an essential part of worship.  Any chemist in a lab can tell you that it is best to handle dangerous materials by having protocols in place, rules that walk the fine line between risk and safety.  Rituals are the repeated actions that allow for safe approach toward the glory of God.  It’s not that I think that the church will literally be struck by lightning if we sing the Hymn of Praise before the Kyrie.  Rather, I believe that our rituals of worship continue the tradition of approaching God with a sense of respect and awe.   I also believe that we can change our rituals so long as we preserve the sense of awe out of which they grew.

A healthy sense of awe makes the love of God an amazing proposition.  The God who formed the universe, the God who embraces infinity and yet knows the spin of every quark, the God of hurricane and subtle breeze is deeply in love of with you.  The God who is boundless chooses to be bounded in relationship to you.  The God who is formless chooses to be formed in the person of Jesus so that you can be drawn into a deeper relationship with God, so that you might see an example of what it means to love, the depth of that love, and the truth in that love.

                The next couple of posts will look more deeply at developing a sense of awe, wonder and respect for God.  A fundamental  place to develop the virtue of awe and wonder is in the universe that God has made.  We look at the scriptural stories of miracles as moments of wonder, and yet we are constantly surrounded by a creation that is wonderful.  As the theologian Richard Rohr puts it, “The first Bible is the Bible of nature. It was written at least 13.8 billion years ago, at the moment that we call the Big Bang, long before the Bible of words.”  You are not wrong to feel close to God in a sunset.  You are not wrong to feel close to God in walk in the woods.  Pay attention to all the wonder that happens around you and know that God is at work.