Faith Venture

“Be patient and understanding,” he said, “and you will overcome all evil deeds and will accomplish all righteousness.” —The Shepherd of Hermas, a first-century document used by Christian teachers of the time.

He continues, “For the Lord lives in patience, but the devil lives in an angry temper.”

“But an angry temper is first of all foolish, fickle, and senseless. Then from foolishness comes bitterness, and from bitterness wrath, and from wrath anger, and from anger vengefulness. Then vengefulness, being composed of all these evil elements, becomes a great and incurable sin.”

Why do I spend no more than about 15-20 minutes a day on Facebook and Twitter? Did you ever go back in a quiet moment and read the things you post and pass along?

It amazes me that we can look at teaching that is close to 2,000 years old seeing that it perfectly captures the status of the human heart today.

When I entered a life of contemplation more than 50 years ago, I thought all the teaching would be about “enlightenment”. Instead, it’s all about conquering all the evil in the heart and trying to live the right way.

It’s like the ancient Zen Buddhist master said, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

We have to go on living minute-by-minute. How shall we choose to do that?

Staying the course to achieve physical and spiritual health is one of the hardest disciplines.

Mary Poppins may have suggested just a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. We seem to need spoonfuls.

Starting and ending a “diet” to lose weight is so prevalent as to be mythic. The discipline to daily follow a healthful routine that reduces weight as a by-product of healthy living is difficult.

You become infected and the doctor prescribes an antibiotic. Be sure, they warn you, to take the entire dose. Every last pill. But you feel so good after the first two doses that you stop taking the medicine. And you are not cured.

“I need to start praying,” you tell yourself. And you begin…today.

And tomorrow? Well, you never established a special chair for breathing, meditating, praying every day. Soon, it’s all forgotten.

Doing the necessary work of perseverance is not easy. However, it is essential for physical and spiritual well-being.

Either way, begin with a breath. Now…slowly inhale until you cannot hold any more air. Pause. Now…slowly exhale through the mouth for twice the time it took to inhale. Feel better already?

Contagion—the communication of a disease by passing viruses or germs from one to another.

Sometimes the “bugs” spread easily. Sometimes not so much. One can “catch” a cold every winter—maybe more than once. The symptoms are annoying, but seldom life threatening.

It is possible to get the flu every winter, also. But we have vaccinations to reduce the number of infections. Flu is quite life threatening if the victim also has other problems—obesity, sedentary lifestyle, existing illnesses.

Our current illness spreads even easier and faster. It’s effects are stronger. It lasts a little longer.

Ideas spread and movements grow through the same process.

A group of people around Jerusalem 2,000 years ago experienced a resurrected Jesus. They were infected. The “sneezed”, so to speak, and the movement rapidly spread. In just 40 years without any modern communication or transportation, the word had travelled throughout the Roman Empire.

So, I wondered what we are spreading.

• Peace
• Love
• Joy
• Wisdom
• Patience
• Service

Or

• Fear
• Worry
• Untruths
• Ignorance
• Frustration
• Concern only for ourselves

Choose wisely.

Early Christians did not have the luxury of sitting in libraries and engaging in incestuous theological debates with others sitting in libraries idly thinking.

Theology and philosophy (think the Stoics) were formed in the hot crucible of living and figuring out things as they went.

Even the Apostle Paul’s letters were written to address problems in the first gatherings of Christ-followers.

Discipleship and theology are not separate disciplines. They cannot be separated.

Our charter is to both think and do.

For my friend Emily, and perhaps Jon. Oh, and the rest of us. A story from the 4th Century Desert Fathers.

A certain brother came to Abbot Silvanus at Mount Sinai, and seeing the hermits at work, he exclaimed, “Why do you work for the bread that perishes? We read that Mary chose the better part – namely, to sit at the feet of her Lord.”

Then the abbot said to his disciple Zachary, “Give the brother a book, and put him in an empty cell, and let him read.” At the ninth hour the brother who was reading began to wonder why the abbot had not called him to eat. Sometime later he went directly to the abbot and said, “Did the brethren not eat today, father?”

“Oh yes,” said the abbot. “They have just finished their meal.” “Well,” said the brother, “Why did you not call me?” “Because you are a spiritual man,” answered the abbot. “You do not need the food that perishes. The rest of us have to work. But you have chosen the better part; you have read all day and can surely get along without food.”

I don’t know why. Perhaps it was an attack of acesis—the noonday demon. I sinned and browsed Twitter yesterday afternoon. Almost every post was some sort of opinion based on, well, nothing. The only thing I learned were the prejudices of a large number of people.

It is so easy to criticize. It is so hard to do.

There are actually two better ways. One is to study, learn, contemplate. But that must be balanced by going and doing. These are our spiritual practices.

Nowhere at no time did someone teach that the goal of life is to sit on our ever-expanding, er, posteriors and voice unfounded opinions about other people.

I grew up calling this day Good Friday. Always being a lad who thought too much, I’ve pondered the meaning of “Good” for much of my life. True to my Enneagram number—5, The Investigator—I blew a half-hour on Wikipedia this morning.

Good carried over from the archaic use of the word somewhat synonymous to holy.

Now that that is out of the way, I see how easy it is to be distracted. To miss the point.

For Christians, this is the crucial weekend of the faith. Christmas may get all the hype, but without Good Friday leading to Easter Sunday—the death leading to the resurrection—Christianity is nothing.

There used to be a strain of “liberal” Protestantism that doubted the actual historical death and resurrection. To me that always begged the question, “Why bother?”

The actual chain of events would go Good Friday—>Easter Sunday—>Pentecost. God met humans at the Tabernacle in the desert. Then Solomon built a Temple, the place where God met humans through a priest. Then God met humans in the person of Jesus. Then at Pentecost God through the Holy Spirit came to dwell directly with each human. As the Apostle Paul said, our bodies became a Temple.

Why follow our spiritual practices (disciplines) then? It is our way of meeting God and renewing the relationship daily. These are ancient practices, proven over millennia. And today we remember the reason why Christians practice them.

This weekend and the following 40 days changed the world.

Said no one, anywhere.

We, at least in America, are familiar hearing, “I know my rights.”

I recently heard a former Surgeon General of the US state, “We are a nation founded on individual responsibilities.”

I thought, what an interesting take on the founding. Read John Adams (especially) but also Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and the others. They tell us that rights not accompanied by responsibilities are worthless.

But we tend to emphasize rights. Take, for example, local leaders of organizations and churches who defy the orders and suggestions to keep people separated in order to stop the spread of a deadly virus and gather their people together in close quarters. Is it ego at work? Delusion trumping facts and knowledge? “Rights” winning over “Responsibilities”?

Jesus almost always gave a responsibility after a healing or other act. “Go, show yourself to a priest.” “Go and sin no more.” “Go into the world and make disciples.”

When Jesus said to “love one another as I have loved you”, he was not talking about an emotion. It’s an action verb. It means “go-ing” and “do-ing”. It’s a responsibility, not a right.

Christians are celebrating Easter this Sunday (except for the Orthodox when it is the following week). We will not be gathering together. We will be gathering around a computer streaming services live or on demand together and separated. Choosing for our own safety as well as the safety of our friends to stay separated.

It’ll be weird. It’ll be something we talk about for the rest of our lives. But we observe our responsibilities—together, yet separate. Yes, in America we have the right of assembly. But what is our responsibility?

To self-identify as a Christian, there is essentially only one foundational requirement. Jesus lived as a human being, was killed by the political/religious forces of his day, and then he returned to earth alive where he taught and talked with his disciples (tradition says for 40 days).

The resurrection is the foundation of the church. We call that day Easter.

Different traditions have different ways to celebrate this week and the day. No problem. That adds spice and variety to life.

But no matter what tradition you find yourself in—Catholic, Orthodox, one of the hundreds of varieties of protestantism—you will be celebrating Easter and the resurrection.

Wright and Bird in their immense New Testament survey, The New Testament in its World (yes, I’m still studying it, up to page 670 with another 200 pages to go), talked often of the plea of the early church leaders for unity of the church.

Those early followers had to puzzle out a lot of ideas as they strove to understand what happened. The authors while describing this struggle also talk about how disapproving those early leaders would be of the trends we have where a pastor or church leader wants to break away and start their own thing.

Especially at this time with Easter week so strange as we are all (pretty much globally) isolated to prevent the spread of disease, Christians could be celebrating two things.

The unity of belief in the resurrection. (Does anything else really matter?)

The cultural variety in the ways we celebrate—accepting the various strands of traditions rather than arguing over who is right and who is not.

“Don’t pray for patience,” advised an elderly friend, “God will keep putting you in experiences where you need to be patient.”

One of those 1980s self-help gurus taught that life keeps throwing a lesson at you until you master it. Then it sends another challenge your way.

Patience is hard. People say it’s because of the (formerly) fast-paced lives we lead. But I think ancient people felt the same thing. It’s not a problem of the times; it’s a people problem.

People get an infection and are prescribed an antibiotic. They take two and feel great. They stop taking the medicine with five days to go. The infection symptoms return even worse. They lost patience and thought wrongly that they were cured.

Patience requires a day at a time, an hour at a time, even a minute at a time of just plodding along. Not pushing. Not picturing the end and developing a longing to get there. Just live in this minute.

Sometimes (all the time?) patience is frustrating. While we’re outwardly patient, inside we can allow frustrations to break out in physical symptoms of inflammation or even bursts of anger.

Perhaps the problem is we’re not getting our way. We’re not in control. But we are taught that we must be in control. The tension can become overwhelming.

The miracle of breathing comes to the rescue. The deep inhalation. The pause. Always the pause. So much of life comes to light in the pause. And then the long slow exhalation. It is in the exhale that we feel the peace, the calm, perhaps even the presence of God.

Charles Dickens wrote perhaps the most memorable opening words to a story ever.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…

Even the title of the book, A Tale of Two Cities.

Like all great writers, Dickens captured eternal thoughts. Don’t these couple of months seem we’ve experienced both wisdom and foolishness? Both hope and despair?

Several people I have had great respect for through listening to their podcasts and reading their blogs and books have written about the despair they have these past few weeks.

On the other hand, I read Peter Diamandis who recently talked about all the reasons for optimism. People around the entire globe are facing the same crisis. Despite political posturing, even Presidents Xi and Trump are overseeing administrations helping each other. The global scientific community is sharing data and ideas like never before. There is a season of hope amongst the season of despair.

Even as the global Christian community is gathering virtually to celebrate the high point of the Holy Calendar, there is hope in the midst of worry and cynicism. (The cynics would say that the reason fundamentalist pastors are posturing to rebel against social distancing has more to do with the large Easter offering anticipated—but I digress.)

As our emotions swing between the poles described by Dickens, we need more than ever to turn to our spiritual practices:

• Seek quiet time
• Use the time for reflection to become aware of our emotions and temper them with reality
• Seek infusion of the spirit of God to make us strong
• Focus on some aspect of serving others

We can choose our responses. As the Last Crusader told Indiana Jones as he was selecting the Chalice, “Choose wisely.”