Author Archive
Matthew 1:4 Ram fathered Amminadab and Amminadab fathered Nahshon
Wouldn’t it be great to be Billy Graham’s brother? I’m not so sure. How would you be introduced at parties? Whose exploits would your children talk about around the dinner table? In public, whose reputation would you be most concerned to protect? CNN, Time, NBC would all contact you… with only questions about Billy. Imagine your whole life and personhood defined by someone else.
Amminadab knew that feeling. His name appears nine times before the gospel of Matthew, in four separate books of the Bible, and we know nothing about him. But we know about his son Nahshon. Even in the middle of a genealogical listing, the registrar pauses to trumpet Nahshon: “Ram was the father of Amminadab, Amminadab was the father of Nahshon, the leader of the people of Judah.” The only reason Amminadab’s name crops up at all is to note his relationship to Nahshon… except for his first appearance, when he is footnoted as the father-in-law of Aaron, the high priest of Israel.
We all live in someone else’s shadow that is cast by the spotlight on their better performance in cooking or speaking, patience or punctuality. As I do life with others, it is naturally hard to feel good about myself, hard to avoid competing with Jennifer’s achievements, hard to resist comparing Jason’s friendliness to my own. But when our culture also constantly rates us against our fellow, noting how we fall short, it becomes nearly impossible. I can either sign up for this game where I must be a winner (in everything) to feel adequate, or I can opt out and be labeled a loser. That is, I can constantly chase after the adequacy that is just beyond my grasp or I can give up in despair and accept my own worthlessness… or I can stumble into grace.
When you consider Amminadab, Nahshon, Aaron and Moses in the light of their descendant at the culmination of Matthew’s genealogy, they all rank shoulder to shoulder. We all stand equally shadowed by Jesus’ glory. But here the simile breaks down, for Jesus does not diminish us by his greatness, but transforms us by it. We stand not in his shadow, but in his glory, and this comes not as the borrowed, vicarious glory of a famous relative, but in his fulfilling in us all he designed us to be. Jesus being all he is makes me all I am and can be. May we be such life-givers to one another.
Matthew 1:3 Perez fathered Hezron and Hezron fathered Ram.
Hezron and Ram have no stories, no histories, no parts to play. They are nobodies, appearing in the Old Testament simply as names in lists of genealogies. The vast majority of Israelites who lived then are not mentioned at all. They plowed and played; they held one another as their crops failed and laughed with delight at their grandchild’s first words; many worshipped God faithfully and walked with him daily but are completely unknown to us, very much like Hezron and Ram.
Since the Jewish Bible is primarily about the nation of Israel, the leaders of the nation and events that directed its course are inevitably featured. Still, it seems that God considers the “movers and shakers” as the important ones, the ones to write home about, the role-models to recommend. Compare how much we know of David in contrast to his brother Eliab, the firstborn. If you want to be on God’s A-list, you have to make a big impact in the world, make a name for yourself in his kingdom. And to do that, all you need is faith.
This view of the Bible seems oddly familiar to me. When I was growing up, the heroes were folks like Lincoln, rising from an obscure log cabin to the White House, or like Einstein, stepping out from behind a clerk’s desk to become the foremost scientist of his time. I grew up believing that I could be anything I wanted if I had enough self-confidence and commitment to the vision. This is the American dream, and ours is the land of opportunity where the only limitations are our faith and determination. This take on life provides a value system, a goal, and a means to that end, and without realizing it, I bring all of this to my reading of Scripture.
I measure the strength of my faith by the greatness of my deeds—am I like David? The completeness of my commitment will make me a Daniel. The weight of my godliness will get my name written down next to Job’s. I can be one of God’s role-models for my generation. If I simply make myself wholly available to God, he will make something great of me. But what if I give it everything I’ve got and never make it out of the log cabin or clerk’s office? Do I lack faith, is my commitment faulty, am I unusable? Does God find me of little value?
Perhaps something is wrong with my perspective of what God wants, what is important, and what I should value and aim for in life. I don’t think God was less pleased with the unnamed in Israel who sincerely followed him. But this culture runs in my blood—I invariably measure the value of my contribution, for instance, by how many folks read and find benefit from my blog. The engine is not more valuable than the engine mount bolt… without the bolt, the engine will fall off and the airplane crash. Every role in God’s kingdom is vital, irreplaceable. If that’s my theology, why do I so often feel like a loser?
It seems a still deeper issue clouds my view of what really matters to God. Does he care more about what I do or who I am? Why do I find myself so obsessed with doing rather than becoming or relating? Why does accomplishment determine my value–“I may be only a bolt, but I’ll be the best bolt ever made”? How drastically would my outlook and life change if my focus were rather on who I am and how I relate to others? How would it impact my understanding and application of Scripture? If it is David’s faith rather than his triumphs, skills, and leadership that is to inspire us, what would that faith look like in the life of a farmer, a seamstress, or a store clerk, in Hezron and Ram and me? Rabbi Zusya said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me, ‘Why were you not more like Moses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’” Considering how God filled the earth with “nobodies” instead of “somebodies,” he must value us a lot! Or to put it differently, everyone is a very big “somebody” to someone else, even if that someone else is only God. Did I say, “only God”?!
Things were going fairly badly this last weekend. My several hundred dollar chain saw died before Friday’s storm, which not only was a loss of that amount, but prevented me from making money clearing trees for the thousands who had trees down (about every other house on our street, for instance). A huge tree from our yard was uprooted and crushed our neighbor’s shed, and I was trying to find out our home-owner’s insurance deductible (but the insurance company was closed for the weekend). Our power went out, and hundreds of dollars of food was spoiling in our fridge and freezer. We had no air conditioner or fans or ice on the very week the tempurature decided to climb above 100F. My mower stopped working in the middle of cutting a lawn on Saturday, and I had no way of getting it up the steep ramp into the back of my truck (it weighs 500 lbs.). I had to finish the 1 acre lot with my push mower (in said heat). We had no internet to know what was going on (when the power would be back on, for instance), and my brother, undeterred by our lack of electricity, suddenly showed up in town for a visit (from the West coast)… we offered him warm orange juice and a candle to use the bathroom. In this sweltering heat, we soon found out the electricity would be out for a week.
The financial hit was troubling me most as I have been unable to drum up enough clients to make my summer mowing economically feasible for us. On Monday, I reached State Farm and found out that since this was an “act of God,” my neighbor’s insurance would be responsible to cover the costs. My wife and I had been planning to visit a nearby friend (her “step-aunt” I guess) to celebrate the 4th and spend the night. When they found out our electricity was down, they very graciously opened their home to us and allowed us to pack our refrigerated food into their fridge and freezer. So here we sit in a beautiful lakeside house for the week, forced to have a vacation we could never afford. As we were packing up to drive down here, Kimberly brought out a netbook she had but never uses. I forgot it was around, and suddenly I realized I have the replacement for my laptop (which I’ve been badly missing for 2 months) only smaller and so much handier. I figured out how to get the mower onto my truck (backing it up to a bank where I had towed my mower and pushing it in on the level ramp), and on Monday I was able to fix it with a $6 spring. All in all, the week has been a wonderful refresher.
Gilles Le Cardinal shares a vital life concept he learned from those with disabilities, an idea he called revolutionary
Because it is about how our weaknesses can be fecund and fruitful. Especially for handicapped people, but also for others. And that was something I discovered from handicapped people, when they said you do not have to hide what is imperfect in you. And this changed me. Because in a competitive world, you must hide what is weak or wrong. Someone will try to beat you when they discover a weakness, try to take advantage of the weakness. When two players on different teams play, they try to defeat each other. And that is exactly where the handicapped disagree. They respect our mutual weakness.
And then Ian Brown, the author who quoted this conversation, a father of a severly disabled boy named Walker, goes on to write a naturalistic explanation with more respect for “the least of these” than many a Christian perceives.
One is revealed by one’s need. There is no need for posturing…. So you can perhaps forgive me for thinking, some days, that Walker has a purpose in our evolutionary project, that he is something more than an unsuccessful attempt at mutation and variation. For thinking, probably vainly, that if his example is noted and copied and “selected,” he might be one (very small) step towards the evolution of a more varied and resilient ethical sense in a few members of the human species. The purpose of intellectually disabled people like Walker might be to free us from the stark emptiness of the survival of the fittest.
Which, I might add, is a tendency we all have to cope and get ahead in this world, even we who are not evolutionists.
WHAT LANE?!
Kimberly has a conjunctive view of life and I a disjunctive, she responds to input by assimilation and I by differentiation, she creates a unified mosaic and I a careful pattern. We are very different and we are blessed, enlightened, and expanded by that difference, but it often shapes up into an emotional disagreement where we both feel the other is rejecting our viewpoint. This happened again on Monday when we were reading about Sabbath rest on the seventh day of creation, and I was inspired by the thought that we were called to imitate not only God’s rest, but God’s creativity, to express our true selves to the world as our gift and offering during the first 6 days of the week. I was excited about that image and wanted to explore its potential.
I heard Kimberly respond that many jobs (such as an assembly line) had no room for creativity. I sensed she was objecting to my idea and countered with illustrations of how creativity is possible even in dull jobs. She heard my resistance to her input and needed to defend her own view. This is a very common conflict between us. Thankfully, this time I was not too emotionally invested in the topic and we were able to explore the conversational dynamic itself dispassionately.
Berly receives new ideas with openness, assuming they fit into her worldview. She is inviting, embracing, inclusive. This not only goes against my personality, but my brain. I simply cannot understand an idea unless I can differentiate it from other ideas. As I am faced with new ideas, I evaluate them so that I can determine how they fit into my worldview. If I cannot fit them in, I reject them. Kimberly understands her world relationally and I understand mine logically… this does not mean that she is illogical and I am antisocial, but that she is intuitive and I am analytical. (In fact, I just had to edit that sentence, because I originally wrote “Kimberly organizes her world relationally” which is biased towards my view… you can see our problem!) I grow constantly by listening to her perspective.
In the case of my creative approach to occupation, Kimberly was feeling the need to support those who had no space for fresh ideas. Because of a harsh boss, family crisis, emotional distress and the like, many people at work just hang on to their jobs, barely fulfill their duties, and my pushing for creativity would be oppressive, something for which they had no emotional energy. She suggested that there might be many other ways of improving one’s work situation which would trump creativity as the next important step. In other words, creativity is always a possible play, but it is only one card in the hand. I agreed with her.
Kimberly was not challenging my view as wrong. She was not disagreeing, but supplementing, trying to include those whom my view seemed to ignore. She works under the assumption that when she proposes a different point from mine, there is room for both views; whereas I am inclined to see incompatibility and competition in something that is different. Over the last couple days reflecting on this dynamic of ours, I realized how often I create conflict in discussions where there need be none. Inclusive thinking does not come naturally to me… I lack imagination and motivation for that exercise. Kimberly’s idea did not restrict mine, but added to mine. I can still fully explore the possibilities of bringing creativity to my occupation while also exploring other facets of growth and engagement at work. I realize now how often I fail to learn from those with whom I seemingly disagree and build a block for them against my own view by assuming incompatibility. Interaction is about understanding one another, not simply understanding ideas.
Kimberly and I have started reading a book on “Sabbath” each Sunday morning. It suddenly occurred to me today that we are called to follow not only God’s example of rest, but his example of spending 6 days in creativity, like him expressing who we are to the world (for our gifts are simply an outflow of the unique creation each of us is). If we could discover and have the courage to be our true selves before the world, offering it what we have rather than what we do not have, the world would be marvelous. If we could only value each one for who she truly is and what her being means to my life and the life of the world as a whole. If we could only live in a spirit of curiosity and receptivity for (and therefore blessing from) the uniqueness of each.
D.I.Y FACELIFT
Instead, we live out of who we are not, pushed into acting in ways for which we were not created, living a lie. We hide our shame with pretenses and cover-ups, unable to encourage others to be themselves (and delighting in it) because of the fear out of which we live. We find the uniqueness of others to be threatening, confusing, irritating, dividing, and so we push for them to conform to our ways of thinking and doing and being. It is unsafe for any of us to be himself, since being rejected for our essence is the ultimate disgrace. Sadly such shame disables and distorts God’s own creation as he designed each to be, with both our limitations and our abilities. May we all learn to welcome and relish the beauty of differences.
I have been listening to my George Winston channel on Pandora this morning. Music has such power to affect my feelings. It can help me connect more deeply with myself and my experiences emotionally, but its influence is so strong it can also hijack my emotions. This can be profoundly disturbing when I want to experience my emotions, but it can be a drug of preference to escape unwanted feelings. Sometimes we need this medication to provide a rest from our life struggles, but it can easily become an addiction, helping us avoid the unhappy truth our hearts are speaking to us, a truth we must work through if we are to heal.
It is not only music which can be the escape hatch. Many folks use television, sports, hobbies, internet, and even friends for this purpose. Still more dangerously, I can use meditation, spiritual reading, ministry, and church as a powerful narcotic to avoid rather than connect to my soul… so that I not only feel good, but feel right for feeling good. When we pick and choose Bible verses to provide quick, simple solutions to deep heart issues, we may be using the Bible itself as the great escape, “talking” ourselves into different surface feelings and missing the chance to experience fundamental transformation. Often these pat answers we offer one another are simply unconscious reflections of our culture’s values which have shaped our view of Scripture. Instead of using the Bible to reveal and heal our hearts, we can use it to wall off our hearts. I know this was a huge block to my own spiritual growth–(mis)using God’s word against my true self. (more on this later)
Berly was having a black day this morning, remembering some very painful experiences in her last work place. I sat and listened and asked questions. Her sharing gave me a new perspective of my own struggles over the years because of my time in India. I had no solutions, but just listening and accepting her thoughts and feelings picked up her spirits and enabled her to deal with some of the detritus from that time. Some time later I was feeling emotionally fatigued, it seemed that life had no purpose and that nothing could change it. I shared my sense of hopelessness, and simply interacting about it with Kimberly lifted the heaviest part of that weight. We are continually amazed at how just sharing our feelings with an accepting person, who shares empathy rather than advice, does a work of healing in our souls. Since nothing is actually ‘fixed’ and often no new insight is shed, it always suprises us to feel the relief, like little miracles that have no rational explanation. Real Grace.
Matthew 1:3 Judah fathered Perez and Zerah by Tamar
Art from Trash
Perez and Zerah are named together because they are twins, but why Tamar was mentioned is a quandry. None of the honorable women before her in the genealogy are noted, but when we hit a scandal, Matthew has to dredge it up. Well, he didn’t really have to go digging because the Old Testament itself was quite blatant about the whole sordid affair. Tamar was Judah’s widowed daughter-in-law, and she prostituted herself to get pregnant by Judah. Anyone proud of their genealogy would surely have skipped past this crooked branch, but Matthew, for some reason, calls attention to it, as though reminding his readers that their glory was not from their ancestors, but from their gracious God who could use the worst to bring the best. It is not to God’s discredit that he used such flawed materials to construct his kingdom, but it shows the incomparable power of his redemption.
God is in the salvage and reclamation business, and he is so creative that he makes the results better than if they had come from perfect materials. His second creation far surpasses his first, not just restoring innocence, but infusing us and our relationships with a far greater life force. The glories of forgiveness, mercy, patience, sacrifice, in short of grace, were unrevealed in Genesis one. It is natural for beautiful things to be appreciated and enjoyed, but that is such a meager understanding of love compared to that revealed by one who treasures the broken and ugly, so much as to sacrifice himself for our sake. Without the Fall, we could not have experienced the depths, lengths, and heights of God’s unconditional love.
WHO IS LOVED?
Being loved for only what is good in us is a direct building block of legalism–be good and you will be loved. If we are loved only in our beauty, then we are unloved as ourselves. How astonishing to discover God saying–be bad and I will love you every bit as much. Unshakeable security only rests in an unchangeable love… for, as Paul tells us, “if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.” He cannot stop being a love-filled God, even though it breaks his heart. It seems to me that we have a far greater awareness and experience of God’s love than Adam and Eve who literally walked with God daily. Who can express the deep peace and intense bond that comes from being loved wholly, being embraced with our every defect?
I’m glad I finally realized the truth stated here by Parker Palmer: “Let Your Life Speak.” His description could be the retelling of my pre-grace life.
Like many middle-class Americans, especially those who are white and male, I was raised in a subculture that insisted I could do anything I wanted to do, be anything I wanted to be, if I were willing to make the effort. The message was that both the universe and I were without limits, given enough energy and commitment on my part. God made things that way, and all I had to do was to get with the program.
My troubles began, of course, when I started to slam into my limitations, especially in the form of failure. I can still touch the shame I felt when, in the summer before I started graduate school at Berkeley, I experienced my first serious comeuppance: I was fired from my research assistantship in sociology.
Having been a golden boy through grade school, high school, and college, I was devastated by this sudden turn of fate. Not only was my source of summer income gone, but my entire graduate career seemed in jeopardy, the professor I had come to Berkeley to study with was the director of the project from which I had been fired. My sense of identity, and my concept of the universe, crumbled around my feet for the first, but not last time. What had happened to my limitless self in a limitless world?
The culture I was raised in suggested an answer: I had not worked hard enough at my job to keep it, let alone succeed…. But that truth does not go deep enough…. I was fired because that job had little or nothing to do with who I am, with my true nature and gifts, with what I care and do not care about….
Neither that job nor any job like it was in the cards for me, given the hand I was dealt at birth. That may sound like sinfully fatalistic thinking or, worse, a self-serving excuse. But I believe it embodies a simple, healthy, and life-giving truth about vocation. Each of us arrives here with a nature, which means both limits and potentials. We can learn as much about our nature by running into our limits as by experiencing our potentials.
Despite the American myth, I cannot be or do whatever I desire–a truism, to be sure, but a truism we often defy. Our created natures make us like organisms in an ecosystem: there are some roles and relationships in which we thrive and others in which we wither and die….
If I try to be or do something noble that has nothing to do with who I am, I may look good to others and to myself for a while. But the fact that I am exceeding my limits will eventually have consequences. I will distort myself, the other, and our relationship–and may end up doing more damage than if I had never set out to do this particular “good.”
When I give something I do not possess, I give a false and dangerous gift, a gift that looks like love but is, in reality loveless–a gift given more from need to prove myself than from the other’s need to be cared for. One sign that I am violating my own nature in the name of nobility is a condition called burnout.
Janathan Grace Reflections 