Just Say It, Jesus!

Detail from "Sermon on the Mount" by Carl Heinrich Bloch

Jesus was action-oriented. He avoided questions about his identity. He spoke in parables rather than in theological explanations. He spent time with all sorts of folks and performed a lot of healings (both of body and of the fractures in society), and he ultimately suffered, died and rose from the dead.

Christian theological debate, by contrast, has been obsessed with beliefs more than actions. These include pinpointing the specifics of Jesus' identity and the nature of God. There are many preachers today who will tell us that our very eternal fate depends on getting certain theological concepts right.

But ask yourself this:

If those beliefs are so important--if our very destiny for all eternity depends on adhering to the right set of beliefs--then the puzzling question is: 

Why didn't Jesus just tell us? 

Jesus could have simply said, Hey you know, I'm fully human and fully divine, I'm part of the three persons of the Trinity, and you need to do precisely A, B and C to be in good standing with this Christianity program I'm rolling out. Oh, by the way, I want to see churches, cathedrals and Mass on Sundays, yadda yadda.

There are lines in the New Testament that are instructional. But let's be honest--they are wide open to all sorts of interpretations. All interpretations are not equally valid, but there is plenty of room for significant disagreement.

Jesus had every opportunity to tell us that we had to have certain beliefs. There are hundreds of pages in the New Testament and a handful of authors. Any of them could have spelled it out in black and white. They could have made a list. Why in the world did Jesus tell stories with unclear meanings if having clear, succinct theological answers was so important?  It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

If razor-sharp doctrinal understandings are so important, then the New Testament actually comes across as a cruel trick. It is like the most sinister scavenger hunt where the stakes couldn't be any higher.

Are we to buy the argument that God speaks to us in puzzling metaphor, allegory and code, and it's up to us to decipher nuanced theological interpretations in order to stay in communion with the Body of Christ?

I think it is much more likely that Jesus wants us to be engaged in the process of figuring things out. He wants us to wrestle with the deep issues. He wants us to struggle over paradoxes and parables. It's more about the questions than the answers. It's more about the process than the conclusions--"The medium is the message," as Marshall McLuhan said. 

Like a Zen master, Jesus confuses us on purpose. His stories seem to turn reality upside down. The parable put issues side-by-side that normally do not exist side-by-side. As a mentor of mine used to say, "out of confusion comes clarity." Jesus scrambles our brains so that we jar ourselves lose from the false reality around us so that we can get a glimpse of the Kingdom.

 

"What if changing our perception of God

 has the potential to change everything?"

-- Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance

The process of doing theology does matter--but maybe not in the way we think. Maybe it's more like going to the gym. You pick up weights and then you put them back down. The world has not changed at all, but you have changed in the process. Theology is important--I am writing, after all, a blog on theology at this very moment--it just needs to be put in its proper place in the hierarchy of importance.

Are our beliefs a pathway toward God or a way to build imaginary divisions between people?

Most Christians believe that God is a Trinity of three persons. But some Pentecostals are not Trinitarian. Muslims affirm the same God that Abraham affirmed, but Islam has some significant differences from Christianity. Are some of these folks outside of the reach of God's love and mercy as a result? That seems enormously difficult to believe. It took western Christianity about 300 years to formulate the precise language for the Trinity and the dual natures of Christ. Those debates have been recorded in the writings of early Christians. What became of the people who didn't understand the Trinity before the larger Church accepted it? What about the people who grow up immersed in one faith tradition and not another?

It is not the New Testament that is playing a cruel trick on us--it is the longstanding malady of obsessing over theological beliefs that gets us off track. It leads us on a wild goose chase, demanding that we find answers that Scripture itself probably may not even give to questions it is not even asking.

I totally understand that church communities will want to take the paradoxes and parables and try to extract from them some guidelines for living life on earth. However, we cross a line when a church community is married to its own conclusions. If those conclusions were so important, Jesus could have simply given them to us. He didn't. It has taken the churches hundreds--and in some cases thousands--of years to come to certain doctrinal conclusions. It's got to be more about the struggle. Rules and laws have their place, but they only make sense if we are compassionately involved with our whole being in the questions.

If black-and-white answers to questions of belief were of such paramount importance, why did Jesus seem to do everything EXCEPT give them to us?

I think there is great freedom in this. I'm sure it ruffles the feathers of people who are devoted to a particular set of doctrinal beliefs. But for the rest of us, it's bread for the journey and par for the course.

Pope Francis -- More than a Change in Tone

It is almost impossible to read a commentary about Pope Francis without someone describing his approach as a "change in tone."

This is a big debate in Catholic circles about the leadership of Pope Francis.  He seems to be changing a lot of things.  Is he changing basic beliefs?  Some say he is just bringing a new style.  Some say he is focusing on our pastoral practices but not changing doctrine.

There is reason to celebrate the expression "change in tone"--those who fear change are reassured of continuity and those who want radical change are also affirmed that their view has a long history of Church support. The phrase is politically ingenious.

However, the phrase lacks bite in an important way:  All of these suggestions are inadequate, because belief and practice are not isolated from each other.

I will go on record in saying that "a change in tone" is one of the worst ways of understanding Francis.

Gridiron Christianity or Locker Room Analysis?

Before a football game, the teams meet in the locker rooms and strategize with mock plays on the chalkboard.  They study the rules and rehearse drills.  They review the mishaps and celebrations from the previous week.

Later, they show up on the gridiron and attempt to turn those plays into reality--all the while experiencing the elements, shouting crowds and on-the-field improvisations.  The lessons from the past and the hopes for the future all intersect in the present moment in the snap of the football. The arrows and symbols on a chalkboard are simplistic representations of a much bigger process that unfolds in the lived reality of the game.  While the playbook matters, no one would ever confuse the playbook with the game itself.

Going from the locker room playbook to the lived reality of the field is far more than simply a "change in tone"--it is the game itself.

How silly it would be for people to debate the correct sequence of plays in the locker room and never step foot on the football field, yet that is exactly how many Christians live their Christian life.  We act like the theory is more important than the practice.  We choose the life of a sports commentator rather than the grunts, tackles and gasps of a first-person encounter.  It makes no sense for football.  Why do we settle for this in our spiritual walk?

We play football on the field but many of us live Christianity in the locker room. 

I know a lot of folks who approach Catholic Social Teaching as a mental exercise.  They spend hours pouring over books and locked in discussions.  They struggle to understand what Jesus meant when he called on people to "feed the hungry," for example.

From the perspective of the hungry person, it matters little if people have the best theology if that theology does not somehow manifest in the form of potatoes, corn and beans in front of them.

Likewise, it matters little if someone can poorly articulate a cohesive theology if they come in love bearing sacks of grain.  On some level of their being, they "get it" even if their explanation would not hold up to an academic critique.

Some say that love by itself is not the Gospel.  I am not sure about that.  What I would argue is that doctrine without love is not the Gospel.

The Good News for the hungry is not the reassurance that well intentioned people are studying the Gospels--the Good News is knowing that the food delivery truck is on its way.

It's All About Love

Scripture reminds us of the Mystery of love--without it, our actions are just a senseless banging of gongs and cymbals (1 Cor 13:1). It is as if what we do does not even matter without love--those actions do not participate in eternity.

God turns chaos into order in Genesis, and without love our actions deteriorate back into chaos. Love, therefore, is the creative expression of God!  Scripture speaks to this in saying, "everyone who loves is born of God" (1 John 4:7). 

Going from noise to music is, literally speaking, a change in tone.  But to stop there in the description is to miss something big: It is also what separates order from chaos.  It separates what endures from that which fades, the eternal from the temporal.  It separates death from life, as James reminds us that "faith without works is dead" (James 2:26)--it is not because we "earn" salvation through our own efforts, as the great Reformers worried, but rather it is because knowing Jesus is whole-person endeavor that is much more than just intellectual knowledge.

To the extent that Pope Francis is turning belief into practice marks a change not just in tone but of essence.  He calls on us to practice mercy.  He calls on us to live simply and tend to the poor.  This is not just icing on an otherwise fine piece of cake.  The practice of mercy is not just a softer delivery of the same ole, same ole--it is the difference between the playbook and game itself.  This is Good News.