Heroes

On a family road trip once I asked our children who their heroes were.  Being good Sunday School students they answered, "Jesus" - the safest answer to most Sunday School questions.  I pushed them beyond that and asked, "who, beside Jesus?"  There were a number of answers ranging from family friends to a favored babysitter.  I think it a good question to ask both children and adults.  I think that we need heroes.

Heroes are people we admire and respect, whom we would like to emulate.  I think that I have historically been a bit afraid of having heroes.  Perhaps it is because I have felt the pressure to "be my own person" or some narcissistic need to unique.  Perhaps also I have been hero-adverse because I think it is envy.

A few thoughts.  First, I am not my own person.  This is true both biblically and practically.  Biblically I am physically shaped by God (knit together in my mother's womb - Psalm 139).  My life, my personhood is also under his sovereignty.  I am not my own, I was bought with a price (I Corinthians 6).  Practically I am influenced by those around me - parents, teachers, coaches, friends.  I am who I am because of the others who have influenced and shaped, both positively and negatively.  The advantage of having conscious heroes is that I am making choices on whom I want to influence me.

Second,  I am unique but also like everyone else.  I have physical, intellectual and character traits that are in combination unique, but at the same time individually very much like mobs of other people.  My strengths and weaknesses I share with many others in the human race.  Temptation with which I struggle is as St. Paul says, "common to all men." (I Corinthians 10)  While there is a grandiose desire to be one of a kind, there is greater comfort in knowing that I am part of a large common family who laughs, hurts, hopes, sins and triumphs just like me.

Third, there is a difference between admiration and envy.  Envy, as I have written about before, is about emptiness, a craving of the characteristics or possessions of another.  It does not produce love but division and hatred.  Admiration, rather, impels me to be like that other - not that I resent his or her having those characteristics, but because I think them good and worth emulating.  Admiration encourages me to become more.  Envy does not.

I have heroes.  Some are authors I have read, among them Dorothy Sayers, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.  Some are people whom I have met and who have profoundly influenced my life.  These are people I have tried to emulate.   It is interesting to note that most whom I would name as heroes would be appalled at being called out and named as such.  They are people who are not inclined to have attention focused on them, but rather on Jesus.  That's one of the things I admire about them.  Humility. Something I would like to emulate.

Meeting the metaphor

Some twenty years ago now I was meeting with a couple who were interested in baptism for their two young children.  She was an Anglican and he was vaguely agnostic but with a Unitarian background.  I spent some time talking to them about the nature of a sacrament (an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace) and of baptism in particular as a cleansing from sin, a death and rising to new life and a grafting into the family of God in Jesus.  They listened attentively but asked very few questions.  At the end the husband said, and I can still quote, "Wow.  I've never heard that before with the God metaphor."  I thought to myself, "I really want to be there when this guy meets the Metaphor."

We have thoughts and ideas, concepts and images, and obviously even metaphors through which we envisage God.  For many of us we have good and sound theology that helps us understand and conceptualize God.  We necessarily emphasize sound theology because it is important.  But what is its purpose?  The metaphor or theology is not an end in itself.  What happens when we meet the metaphor or when our theology encounters the Theos.

This happens to one Martha of Bethany.  The story is told in John chapter 11.  I will refresh your memory.  Jesus is a good friend of this family - three siblings; Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  He hears that Lazarus is ill and, for the purpose of God's glory, takes his time making his way.  Sadly, by the time he arrives Lazarus has already gone to his greater reward.  Martha meets Jesus outside the village.  All the details of their conversation may not be recorded.  Perhaps there was a nice greeting, "lovely to see you, how was the trip."  But I somehow doubt it.  Martha has something to say which she says directly, indeed admonishingly, "Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died."

Jesus' response is simple, "Your brother will rise again."

And here Martha whips out her sound and comforting theology, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."  A+ for getting it theologically correct.  But the last day is only partial comfort this day.

And then her theology meets the Theos.  "I AM the resurrection and the life."  This is not last day stuff.  The Resurrection is here, now.  And as we continue to read the story through chapter 11 we discover that Martha's brother does rise again.  This day, not the last day.

So often I am waiting for what will happen at the end.  I am slogging through this vale of tears in the hope of the last day.  I read John 11and am reminded that he who is the resurrection and the life is here this day, in me, poured out through the Holy Spirit as a guarantee.  The Life is today.  Theology meets the Theos now.  To be sure there is a consummation which will eclipse what we know now (we see now as in a mirror, dimly, then we shall see face to face.)  But the promise is that he is among us now as well.

Our metaphors, images, ideas and theology help us to see and understand.  But they are not the point or the end.  Jesus is.

A vow of silence

I said, "I will guard my ways,
that I may not sin with my tongue...
I will guard my mouth with a muzzle,
so long as the wicked are in my presence."
I held my peace to no avail,
my distress grew worse.
My heart burned within me.
As I mused, the fire burned; 
then I spoke with my tongue.
Psalm 39:1-3

After a multi-week silence (at least from a blogging perspective) it is ironic that I am struck today in Psalm 39 with the psalmists unconquerable urge to speak.  But I have known this very experience many times.  The vow, "I'm not going to say anything," firm and resolute, melts then evaporates in the pressing heat of my opinion or my sense of justice or simply my need to be heard.

I have known this vow of silence and subsequently burning need to say something when one my children exits the front door wearing something our household euphemistically calls "a bold use of color."  I have know it in study groups where I feel I am talking all the time and want to rectify that.  And in situations, perhaps more like the psalmist's, where the wicked, or at least wicked behavior, goads me.

As so often is the case, I am amazed that the ancient voice of the psalmist describes perfectly my very contemporary experience - resolution to hold my tongue overcome by my impulse to speak.  And from there I look at and listen to the rest of the psalm to see what it says to me.  And that, today, is also very interesting.

One might think that the application here is to self-control.  But I think not.  When the psalmist opens his mouth it is not to critique alarming clothing choices*, nor to add his wisdom to the conversation, nor to bring justice to the wicked.  It is to ask God to grant him humility:

Lord, let me know my end and the number of my days,
so that I may know how short my life is...
We walk about like a shadow,
in vain we are in turmoil.

And it is not exactly humility that we need?  The lowliness to acknowledge, however good, salient or true, not every situation requires my input. Humility to remember my own failings and "bold uses," to remember that the conversation can survive very nicely without my contribution and that I, too, am a sinner in need of correction.

Lord grant me humility, that I may be enabled to keep my vow of silence.


*A good friend once counseled me on this front: "If you can wash it off, take it off or cut it off, don't sweat it."