{ the cost of delusion }

( A reflection on Luke 14:25-33 )

Jesus asks if we ever consider what it might cost us to undertake some task. The answer is of course we do. If anyone's going to build a house, buy a car, embark on a journey, pick a fight, set a goal, it's only common-sense, logical, to take into consideration what it's going to demand of us, to question whether we have the means to achieve our end. And we also have a fairly good grasp of what not doing this is. It is oversight, rashness, lack of foresight, blindness (it is not risky, for risk is knowing the odds and betting against them, or moving on despite them). Of course any sane, level-headed person would count the costs, especially if it costs something of oneself.

And surely the costs to oneself are the costs in question in Jesus' examples. The builder who could not finish the tower not only failed to adequately calculate the material cost of supplies and worker's pay, but failed to see what it would cost him if he failed - ridicule, surely, maybe a hard time getting employed again (for you build a tower for the city, not for yourself), so maybe it cost him his job too, his livelihood. Maybe even then his family, his friends.

And what of the king who goes to war with too few troops? He has not only underestimated his enemy, that is, given no thought to his enemy's resolve and resources, but he has failed to see the weight of the matter, failed to take war seriously, failed to grasp the consequences of defeat. All he can do is try to appease his enemy, and either accept his terms or accept defeat.

In the two examples, what is undertaken are means of defense (the tower) and dominion (waging war). Both have consequences beyond their immediate failure: if the tower is entrusted to a builder, and the builder fails, the city may fall and all is lost; if the army is too small, and the enemy is not so kind, the kingdom may fall and all is lost.

The costs that were unaccounted for were not rooted in mere physical oversight (the funds or militia needed), but rather, in a self-assurance that fails to account for the costs of defending one's self or overtaking another's. In both cases, it is imperative that the builder and the king recognize that nothing is more important, nothing more worthy of careful attention to their own resources, than the defense and triumph of one's self (whether that be through - or in the image of - the preservation of one's livelihood or kingdom, the difference is merely the scope).

And so Jesus, obviously, in calling us to a life of discipleship would tell us that faith is the most important wall, the grandest offensive. That if we are going to emerge victorious, we must make sure we leave no stone unturned in accounting for our self-worth. That once we have tallied our resources, taken stock of our kingdom, and found ourselves sufficient, only then do we even need bother to follow after him.

This should chagrin us in two ways: in what it assumes about ourselves and in what it takes as discipleship.

I feel as though the typical reading, the reading I have somewhat hyperbolized here, takes it that Jesus is telling us to make sure we enter into discipleship with everything we have, to take stock of ourselves and our resolve, and to give everything, our everything, to that endeavor. But do we really think we have that to give? Do we really think that our everything is enough? Or, if so, do we even know how to do that, to give all of one's self? Is that not the life, the maturation, of faith? Surely the leap of faith is not the complete abdication of the self, but the commitment to this particular path of abdication (the way of the cross). So if our everything is not enough, or if we have no way of accounting for the depths of our selves, our everything, how could we even begin to quantify that and would the sum we arrived at even budge the scale?

I feel that the reading I have been comfortable with for so long does not think these questions are at hand. But I'm led to think this is because, if these are (the) relevant questions, then Jesus' teaching about discipleship shakes the ground I stand upon. And Jesus shakes this ground, necessarily shakes it, because he has the courage and author-ity to truly acknowledge it. He recognizes that discipleship, if it is to be human discipleship, has to confront the truth about who we are, or rather, has to confront the lies we have told ourselves about who we are.

So I'm led to consider Jesus' examples as purposeful. He could have picked any goal, any task. Why these two? I would venture to say that it is because they are pictures of self-defense and dominion. They are pictures of self-assertion (the establishment and protection of oneself by oneself) rather than self-expression (the giving of oneself to others through commun-ication). I do not think these are pictures of discipleship, I think they are pictures of how we typically conduct our lives. I think these pictures point out both that the endeavors we usually undertake are of this self-asserting nature, and that such undertakings demand a lot of attention if we are not to end up the object of ridicule or defeat. I think Jesus is giving us certain images of self-assertion, of the illusion of self-sufficiency, of, ultimately, sin.

This is why I do not take his examples to be illustrations of discipleship. I do not know how to read his examples in a way to have them correlate with his comments on discipleship just before and after (to say nothing of the entirety of the Gospels). He says that we must count all we have, all that is closest to us, as nothing. We must value it as naught. If we are to so discount our own life and soul (psyché), how can we then go on to think that, after we look into ourselves, we may come up with anything that is worthy to contribute towards the building of a "tower of faith," or strong enough to fight a "spiritual battle"? We are to count all as naught; there is nothing to give, to contribute, that will make us worthy of the kind of discipleship Jesus calls us to?

And what is that kind of discipleship? It is one in which we are given a cross. Not by Jesus, but by the world. (What we are given by Jesus is the hope, joy, and love to be able to accept it.) It is a life that abdicates the role of self-protector and so opens itself up to ridicule. (Was this not the life of Christ?) It is a life that knows the only self and kingdom of any worth cannot be established through domination, and so can only ask for peace. (Was this not the life of Christ?)

We have to trade our images of power for images of oppression. We are not building towers and waging wars for the powers that be, we are accepting their crosses. For in a world where everyone (including ourselves) is engaged in the up-building of (our own) empires, there is nothing left for love but, because of its expression, to be kept out by those who are building towers and killed by those amassing armies.

Jesus asks us, "Who doesn't count costs? Who doesn't watch his back? Who doesn't go about making sure he avoids ridicule and defeat?" And he answers for us (because he is that answer, because we would have never found it on our own), "Those who would call themselves my disciples."

{ tradition and treason }

Tradition. It's hard to think of a less stale word. A word that can't even be bitten into, tasted, much less savored. It's hard to think of word that is more safe, secure - but like the room of a child who doesn't want to venture forth into the world, or of a prisoner who can't. The word looms like a storm cloud or a falling piano, and we often pity or fear for those who live beneath its shadow. We feel as if it stands at the gates of our minds, monotonously commanding our words, "Abandon all hope, ye who would enter the world." (And often our words turn back, for they, stifled at an early age, had no hope to part with....) The word is brown and sluggish, it is black with death, and whitewashed thereafter.

But how, with a refracted tongue, the word cries out to us from the grave of a dead language! Oh, tradition whose long-lost twin is treason! For we receive both children from the Latin womb, traditus: the X-chromosome, trans- "over" and the Y, dare- "to give." Tradition, that which is handed down, is also that which is handed over. And there is no safety in this "over." It is not the "over" of hierarchy, or of perspective, but the dangerous "over" at the root of treason, transgression, trespass, transcendence. It moves! And as such, it risks, it has to risk, is has to continually be given over. It ever and always risks cessation and atrophy. Even the state of transparency depends on being able, with ever second and every atom, to cede way to the light which passes through. To hold that light, to keep it for the briefest of seconds, is to forfeit its very identity.

And so tradition is a moving noun, it is not merely that which is given over but the state, the motion, of giving over. To stop that movement is to lose the very thing you thought you possessed. It is the stilling of a waterfall in a photograph. What a precarious possession! For in focusing on that possession, in that now beautifully framed print, we have but a memory of, a memorial to, the grandeur we had witnessed (unless our gaze was ever only through the viewfinder - and then never witnessed, a view found but wholly lost!). And that photograph - tradition held - can be nothing but a memorial, for not only is it not the thing itself, but is a witnesses to its death, or at least, to its paralysis at our hands. (Even the best of photographers can only create the semblance, or better, the illusion, of motion.)

And so tradition is never ours, or only ours as we are its, that is, as we both receive it at the hands of others and then turn and give it over into the hands of others. But tradition is not a precious painting (or photograph...) being passed down a line of gloved officials! It is a child we run with, it is an old man who leads us to the most spectacular views, it is a parent who brings us in from the cold, it is a lover who leads us to bed. And in all these, there is a giving of one self to another, a sharing of one self - who one is, what one has - with another. And so in tradition, this is what we receive and what we must give. For part of the beauty and vitality that tradition can be - if we let it - is that not only is it alive itself, and thus gives itself ever over to us, but it also connects us with those around us as they give themselves to us and we give ourselves to other.

Tradition is grabbed with bare dirty hands, bloodied hands, crippled hands...if we let it be (and if the tradition itself has room, a pulse, for this), and if we have faith that this is not to its detriment, but to its growth, its fulfillment, its glorification. And so we hope that in giving it over into these hands and others that they and we may be taken up, glorified with it.

So maybe this is what faithfulness to tradition looks like. Not the gloved procession of a relic. No, we misjudge tradition if we take the thing itself to be that which is precious. What is precious is the communion of lives that tradition enables, no, necessitates. What exactly that communion will look like, however, is frighteningly as much in the hands of the tradition as it is in those who find themselves within that tradition. And so the matter of whose hands we take (and in taking, offer - no, more, entrust! - our lives and selves and the very life and self of "our" tradition) is very much a matter of what we make of not just our tradition, but of ourselves as we hope those selves to be (a hope, of course, shaped by that tradition, shaped in turn, of course, by ourselves).

Tradition need not kill or stifle. In fact, if it does, we have lost not only the tradition, but ourselves. Tradition is a giving over, not a holding over (as a punishment is held over a child in threat), nor a taking over (as an occupying force disrupts and abolishes the prior life of a land), nor a leaving over (as if we didn't want it anymore). It is a giving over, it is gift. And we only give tradition as we give ourselves, and so, the frightening and humbling realization solidifies: Tradition is only as life-giving...or as poisonous...as we who give it are.

And here the Christian, at least, can only hope in the Spirit, for she (should, need to, must) know herself to be the most poisonous of all. And so she hopes in the story of the cross, in which the life of Christ is extinguished by the world (a world she calls her own, her self), and yet a life which is raised by something beyond the world in order to transform the world. And so the Christian prayer for (in) Christian tradition (the life of Christ) is that God may both transform the poisons we find ourselves to be as we keep, no, as we give over, that tradition - that life! - and that God may yet work in the world despite - even through! - the poisons we yet find ourselves to be (and find because of that tradition, that life). It is the prayer that we may be given the grace to betray ourselves, to be guilty of treason of the highest order: that our allegiance (our heart, our life) may be found to lie beyond the boundaries we have ourselves so well and so carefully mapped out.

{ fire }

I've been looking for a fire,
someone to inspire
this wooden heart to burn.
The city lights won't lend a spark,
no matter how bright they are.
And though they burn the streets are always cold.
But last Thursday I saw a glow
shining down on that December snow,
And like a moth I was drawn towards the flame.
Lights were dancing in her windows,
flames inside giving life to shadows,
and I felt my heart begin to burn.

I've been searching for a fire
in a world consumed in winter.
The chimney bellows her name
now my heart burns with the same.

Is God the spark? Is she the flame?
Am I the ashes that remain
once her fire's taken hold?
I'm so afraid I can't provide
the fuel she needs to burn inside.
Will I bring this blaze to a glow?
She stops me and she quiets me,
says, "darling don't you see,
it's only when we're both consumed that we are one."


...Happy Valentine's Day.

{ swing low }

Swing low, sweet chariot. 'Cause that's where I've found myself. Low. Not the low they knew, not the low the chariot had to swing down to in those days. Mine is not a spirit cracked by whips nor crusted over with blood that sometimes struggles to find reason enough to flow. But low to where I've slowly dug myself with the shovel of boredom, with the shovel of distraction, with the shovel of aimlessness. Low to where I lose sight of the horizon - with its promise that the heavens do indeed touch the earth. Swing low, sweet chariot. Come for to carry me home.

Come for to carry me home? But did I not have a home? No. Slavery was no home - that house which was a prison, built my by own hands or not. And this desert is no home. And the home of my forefather, before slavery and sand? My father was wandering Aramean, he had no home - he left his long ago for the promise that I'd have one my own. So, sweet chariot, carry me home, carry me to where I'll learn all that home was ever and always meant to mean.

But then, then! I looked over Jordan - that river, that ocean in the desert - and what did I see coming for to carry me home? What did I see coming forth from that promised land? What did I see, coming for to carry me home? A band of angles coming after me - coming after me, 'cause they had to chase me, 'cause I ran, 'cause men wandering in the desert are accustomed to sand and monotony, and don't take easily to heavenly beings.

No, they had to chase me. I ran. I turned back to the monotone in dead-fright of the harmonies that pursued me. I didn't expect home to be such a frightening place! Couldn't it have been just a more comfortable desert...without angels. I don't know what to do with angels. But they were coming after me, coming for to carry me home. Yes, the love of God runs on the wings of angels, it's a heedless, reckless love that sprints with no thought to distance. It will pursue you till it has to strip itself of the weight of glory just to have a chance at catching you. You ask, what did I see? I saw a band of angels coming after me, coming for to carry me home.

...and they'll drag me into the Jordan, down those muddy banks and drown me. Oh sweet chariot! And they'll drag me through the Jordan, 'neath the waters that are death and chaos and birth and life - the primal stuff that the breath of God moves into new creation. Oh sweet chariot! And they'll drag me out of the Jordan, up those muddy banks and set me on my feet. But feet that are now coated in the muddy clay of home. Oh sweet chariot!

Swing low, sweet, sweet chariot. Swing low and sweep me from this shallow timid grave. Swing low and sweep me through the muck and mire of Jordan's muddy banks. Swing low, sweet chariot, come for to carry me home.

{ avatar & district 9: worlds apart }

[ note: movie spoilers ahead ]

I recently gave into the hype and bought my excessively overpriced ticket (13€, not including the 1€ charge for glasses) for James Cameron’s latest blockbuster, Avatar. And yes, I am completely and unashamedly OK with admitting that the movie was a thrill-ride of the highest order and hands-down, one of the most visually stunning things I’ve ever seen on the silver screen. Probably the only things that lacked any real sense of depth in this 3D adventure were the plot and the characters. But I’m not a movie critic, so I’ll leave its merits as a “film” there. What does interest me though, being prompted by a few conversations, is the juxtaposition of Cameron’s Avatar with Peter Jackson’s District 9.

Though they seem to be two very different films, here are some overarching similarities:

1) Both films focus on an alien population whose future is being threatened by a more powerful human population.
2) Both human populations want the land upon which the aliens live.
3) Both alien populations refuse to leave.
4) Both of the main human protagonists are central/key figures in the attempt to remove the alien population.
5) Both protagonists become acquainted/involved with a particular individual alien.
6) Both protagonists come to sympathize with the alien population.
7) Both protagonists become aliens in the end.
8) Both films end in a victory for the aliens.

So in Avatar and District 9, the plots start in practically the same place, end in practically the same place, and use essentially the same steps between. And it is this basic, shared structure that makes looking at the differences that much more of a tenable, and interesting, endeavor.

One notable difference is the aliens themselves.

{ Neytiri, from Avatar }

{ a "prawn" from District 9 }

Notice that Cameron’s aliens are much more anthropomorphic. They are practically really tall humans with a tail and elfish ears; they have all the appropriate joints and bone structure, even five rightly proportioned toes! The Na’vi are beautiful, alluring creatures, they are even attractive. Cameron obviously does not want you to have any trouble identifying with his aliens.

Jackson does not make it so easy. His aliens are deliberately insect-like. Instead of skin, they have exoskeletons, their hip joints are insect-like, and one would certainly shrink away from their hands it they ventured a touch. The only human-esque feature are their eyes (which is no small thing, and yet such a small, small thing). The “prawn” (a derogatory name given the aliens in the film) are decidedly non-human and unappealing.

But it is not merely their physical appearance that is off-putting. The prawn inhabit a S. African slum and Jackson goes to great lengths to depict real slum life: there is violence, drugs, even prostitution. Nor is the prawn community in harmony with the surroundings; the documentary-style interviews with the local human inhabitants make that abundantly clear.

Now contrast the slum of District 9 with Avatar's Pandora, with its lush Edenic landscapes; and then too the prawn's impoverished and crime-ridden society with the Na'vi's peaceful and environmentally harmonious lifestyle - a thinly veiled idealization of Native American culture akin to what you'd find in Disney’s Pocahontas (though, to Disney’s credit, they actually did more justice to human nature there than Cameron does here).

So already, in choosing how to depict the aliens and their lifestyle, Cameron and Jackson have determined your initial response. But I think these decisions not only set the stage for the audience’s response to the films' aliens, but reveal the general tenor and depth of both films.

Cameron’s aliens are idealized and utopian. Yes, you have the jealous and suspicious warrior, but he is singled out as such. As a whole, the Na’vi are never depicted in a negative light. They are easy to love because they (and their planet home) represent that illusory return to Eden we long for in the midst of our busy and overly-complicated, technologically-dependent lives.

The humans - or at least the social spheres of corporations and the military - are portrayed fairly consistently as the opposite of this. And because Cameron has given us two characters who each represent one of these entities, it is all the easier for us to project our hatred and frustration with our own world (especially in regards to these spheres) onto them. He gives the evil "they" a face.

And so, in Avatar, the “good vs. evil” conflict is over-simplified and wholly externalized. The sides are easy to distinguish, easy to choose. And luckily for us, the audience, the “good” aliens look enough like us that we don’t mind standing beside them in their struggle.

District 9's picture is, again, a bit more difficult. Is it the repulsiveness of the aliens' appearance or that of their lifestyle that makes us cringe and want to look away? I would venture that the alien's off-putting appearance is meant as a challenge: these creatures will be hard to love, you will have to work at it. In a sense then, their physical appearance makes manifest to us that reaction we all too often have to the disparaged and dispossessed in our own world. Simply put, we do not want to be one with these aliens, nor do we do want to inhabit their world. At all.

And the humans in District 9? Well, they’re a lot more human, a lot more complex. Given, there is still the fairly one-dimensional military, but it is not as fully collapsed onto a single actor. And our main protagonist, Wikus, is a good man and a loving husband, but he is also a bit goofy and inarticulate, and definitely not the most attractive of the cast. He’s honestly forgettable, a face and a personality that would easily get lost in a crowd. And he’s also terribly flawed, as his trials throughout the film reveal his general disdain for the aliens and even a willingness to betray the very one that has been helping him.

So the “good vs. evil” conflict in District 9 is convoluted, complex, and located not so much between characters, but within them. You want the best for the Wikus, but more out of pity, and his fearful and self-serving conduct makes us shrink back from fully supporting him. And moving from a charitable pity to a true empathy with the aliens is a transition not fully guaranteed either.

It is within these over-simplified or realistically complex worlds that each director wishes to guide us, by way of their main protagonists, to discern what is truly human. What makes these films peculiar is that that discernment takes place as the main characters become more and more alien. But how that transformation takes place and is utilized in Avatar and District 9 makes all the difference.

In Cameron's version, Jake Sully (the main character) mentally inhabits his "avatar," which is an alien body he remotely controls from the safety of the human camp. As the film progresses, we begin to see Jake - and he begins to see himself - as more and more a part of the alien tribe due to his enculturation into the Na’vi (via his avatar) and the romantic relationship that develops between himself and his alien tutor. (Think Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves.) It is only in the last scene that Jake gives himself fully and permanently to inhabit his avatar and will thus, implicitly, go on living with the Na'vi on Pandora.

The transformation of Wikus in District 9 could hardly be more different. Here, our protagonist accidentally sprays himself with some alien fluid early on in the film. Throughout the rest of the movie, Wikus is slowly, and very unwillingly, transforming into an alien due to his exposure. This is met with horror, disgust, exploitation, and violence - by both himself and those around him. By the end of the film he is fully alien and living in the refugee camp himself, left only with the hope that the aliens whom he helped will return in 4 years with the promised antidote.

So how do these transformations work as far as revealing what it means to be human?

In Avatar, Jake's enculturation and final transformation is not at all dramatic, for it is what the audience did at the outset of the conflict: as soon as Cameron established the sides, we chose to identify with the aliens. And so we like Jake more and more as he gradually changes sides in the fight between humans and aliens (evil and good, respectively). The general message of Jake's transformation then, I think, might be that we often do not recognize and may actually be struggling against what is the most human (and "good") thing to do because it may appear so foreign to us.

But blunting the edge of this "scalpel" (which we need to cut away our own skin for self-examination) is that we, as the audience, recognized this truth right away. Neither Jake's acts specifically nor the film generally lead us into uncomfortable, new territory of what it might mean to be human; we were simply waiting for them to resolve where they did. So the moral edge to Avatar is only internalized as potential ammunition to use against others: we say to those who disagree with us as we said early on to Jake, "How can you not see the error of your ways!?"

But whereas we needed no encouragement or coercion to give ourselves to the aliens and their world in Avatar, District 9 has to drag us there kicking and screaming. In District 9, we (and Wikus) spend the whole movie hoping for a miracle that will reverse the transformation process. He does not want to be an alien. We do not want him to be an alien. Wikus' transformation is only a horrible disruption, a tragedy without poetic justification.

What Wikus' transformation does do, however, is force him (and thereby, the audience) into the world of the aliens. It is his search for a cure and the threat he faces from the humans (especially the military) that force him to take refuge in the camp and seek help from a particular alien. And it is through this interaction with the alien and the realization of the aliens' plight and, for lack of a better word, humanity, that Wilkus slowly begins to be an courageous and self-sacrificing person. And while this can be said of Avatar as well, the difference is that District 9 takes us somewhere difficult and asks us to love those who we find, if we are honest with ourselves, truly repulsive.

Moreover, it is Wilkus' own reluctance (which mirrors ours) to enter this world and act with compassion towards these creatures that make Jackson's depiction so much more honest. Sometimes it takes having our lives unpredictably entangled with those we'd choose to keep a "respectable" distance from to make us realize our shared humanity, and which actually calls us to a higher humanity. I would even venture that part of the challenge of District 9 is not to go about saving the world (like Jake Sully), but to acknowledge that our lives are already entangled, that the distance we put between ourselves and the slums is not so significant, and more illusory, than we think . . . or want.

I think that much of the difference I find between Avatar and District 9 boils down to the realities left in the midst of each work of science-fiction. Avatar simply asks me to take one step too far into unreality – it asks me to imagine a world (or universe, which is just “world” writ large) where there are no conflicted individuals and where good and evil are easily disentangled. In other words, where there is no such thing as the “human experience.” District 9, however, retains this reality, amplifies it, banks on it. In Jackson’s sci-fi world, humanity does not become subsumed into an imaginary "alien" perfection, but has to work damn hard to live up to its very name, and, as it turns out, it is the companionship with the unwanted "alien" that's most helpful - if not necessary - in doing so.

{ healing and forgiveness, a postscript }

When I wrote the last post, I have to admit I rushed the end. I was so excited and relieved to have finally made some sense of Jesus’ enigmatic question, and so committed to keeping the series to only four posts, that the conclusion ended up, in my opinion, fairly trite. Okay, so the Church is about healing and forgiveness, but we knew this already. And that all this is gift, well, as it stands I fear that doesn’t read much better than a bumper sticker. So if I could have one more go at drawing some conclusions from this passage in Matthew, maybe these lengthy reflections could better be shown worthwhile.

My first complaint with my conclusion in the previous post is that, after all the reflection on the paralytic and the scribes, I rushed to put “us” - the readers - in the place of Jesus. And while I do not think that to be a wholly unwarranted move, I think it might be more helpful and honest to approach Jesus and our participation in Jesus, trough the other characters in the story. For if central to Jesus’ self and life was the attempt to form a community based on the Father’s love, then it would appear that we cannot understand Jesus in isolation, that we have to understand him in his being with others (for isn’t this even what it means to truly understand ourselves?).

This passage in Matthew presents two different ways of approaching Jesus: the way of the paralytic and the way of the scribes. I tried to show what I felt to be at the heart of each of these characters in the previous posts. The paralytic’s approach was characterized by the acknowledgment of brokenness and human vulnerability that is able to hear Jesus’ words and thus to truly be in his presence. The scribes’ “approach” however, wasn’t even an approach, but a skepticism that kept its distance. They displaced their own guilt (however unknowingly) and failed to recognize true author-ity in the midst of asserting their own (illusory) authority.

In view of these characterizations, I think that these parties, in one sense, represent a single, albeit divided, human being (I am not sure there is any other kind). In the confrontation with Jesus, we are asked to bring our self as we truly are - the paralytic. This is the self the Potter can work with. But to allow his hands to work, to shape his story in us, is to acknowledge that all authority on heaven and earth is His. But this is what is so hard. This is when we find ourselves with the scribes, when we do not understand that for Jesus to write our stories is for those stories to be more truly ours.

In this passage, if we read the two groups as a single individual, we have here the struggle of faith: between the self we truly are and are called to acknowledge, which somewhere we know has to be brought to Jesus, but which would require being seen as weak; and the self that we have authored ourselves, that can stand just fine in making judgments of right and wrong, being as learned and devoted as we are. There is the self that we must ask others to carry for us, because we know we are to weak to walk alone, and there is the self that stays among its kind because illusions (especially of strength) are easier held in numbers.

And the differences continue. The point I think needs making though, is that the Christian life is a move from one to the other, from scribe to paralytic. The Christian life takes us from the deep self-delusions, not of modernity or capitalism or communism, but of sin, and asks us to see ourselves as in need, as vulnerable, that is, as we truly are.

That Christian life is partly a “movement” from this one self-understanding to the other, requires a way, and that Way is Jesus. If we are to find ourselves freed of our illusions and vulnerable enough to hear the reality of forgiveness in Jesus, then we have to walk after him on the way to the place where true humanity inevitably ends up in our world, in brokenness, on the cross. That is the way that Jesus is, and as we grow in Christ along his way, we shall be graced by the acknowledgment of our vulnerability, of our fragile, needy humanity, and see ourselves more like the paralytic. That, anyways, is what Matthew calls “faith.”

But we cannot start walking unless we recognize that we are, at the moment, scribes, and that the world we have made ever calls us to take our throne. Jesus’ words of retribution, of calling our righteous judgments “sin,” have to be accepted as truthful if we are to acknowledge that we actually need forgiveness.

But do we stop with the paralytic as our model for humanity? That is to ask, was my move of identifying “us,” the Church, with Jesus a legitimate move? Let me try to answer that question by way of, and in the midst of, another.

Thinking back through the story, and about the comments my friend had written about the similar event in Mark, I thought it interesting who was given voice in the story. As my friend pointed out, the paralytic never says a word. Put this in contrast then with the scribes who do have a voice, and use it to make the accusation of blasphemy.

But why does the paralytic not speak? Why does he not refute the scribes? To experience the forgiveness of God and not rebuke those who would condemn that act as evil? Would not then have been the most justified time to speak?

But he doesn’t. By one reading, he is content with Jesus speaking for him. Maybe to refute the scribes himself would be giving into the desire to be the author of his own words? For if Jesus is speaking on his behalf, what need he say? What could he say? Maybe then, in the forgiven man’s silence, we can read trust.

Saying all this, what then do we make of a Church that claims to be the body of Christ? And this is made complicated, or better, made more mysterious, by the consideration that the Church is Jesus’ resurrected body. Before his crucifixion and death, we knew how to make sense of Jesus’ body - it was a body just like ours, in all its physicality and materiality. But in the body of the resurrected Jesus we find a deeper mystery, for here we have a body that appears and disappears, a body that is in the Eucharist, a body that is no longer bound by the same restrictions normal bodies are. In the resurrected Jesus, we have a body - a true body, not a metaphorical one - that is, in a deep reality, made up of and shared among several bodies.

This is why it is not so easy to say what “Church” is, for ecclesiology is wrapped up in christology. The mystery of the Church is the mystery of Christ. This does not mean we have to walk away from either, rather, pointing to them as “mystery” is the promise of deeper meanings to be found. So the truth of Church resides in the truth of God. Any theory that is content with stopping short of this will give us a false picture of Church and possibly an idolatrous image of God.

I say all this because I feel a tension in the text between the verbosity of Jesus and the silence of the paralytic in regard to identifying ourselves with one or the other.

For if we are the Church, then we can truly identify with Jesus, for this is what Jesus has promised and what Scripture attests to. And moreover, being Church, we affirm that Jesus’ humanity is the fullness of humanity. So it would seem that we are to identify with Jesus not just as his resurrected body, the Church, but also as living into the fullness of humanity that he is.

So if all this is the case, then it would seem we are to speak. Jesus spoke and still speaks through his body - for this is how all communication takes place; letters, phones, etc. are extensions of bodies. Thus, it would seem that for Jesus to speak today would be for his body, the Church, to speak, keeping in mind the caution that the Church is a mystery that we would be wary of limiting.

But, on the other hand, I feel that we are truly to be like the paralytic, for Jesus says this man has faith, and this is the very thing he asks of us. And Jesus, seeing their faith, forgives him, and this is the very things we need. Thus it would seem that we, like the paralytic, should remain silent, that to offer our own voice and rebuttal would be to revert back to asserting our own author-ity.

So do we speak as Jesus or do we wait in silence as Jesus speaks? Do we really think that if we don’t speak, Jesus will no longer speak in our world? That Jesus “needs” us to speak? But on the other hand, is there not something about the love of God that we participate in through the sharing of the Spirit of Jesus Christ that calls us to speak, to shatter the illusions of sin in the world and confront others with the promise that is forgiveness?

I do not know if we need to choose between these two. For I think there are indeed times when we need to remain silent and allow the Church to speak for and to us, but this is not out of resignation or quieted dissent, but out of a need for forgiveness and feelings of gratitude. I think too that the times wherein we will need to remain silent are also the times when our idea of Church will grow, when we will find the forgiveness of God in places we did not expect it. And I think if we can recognize the mysterious nature of the Church, that it is bound only in the ways that the resurrected body of Jesus is, then we will be better able to be open to that holy forgiveness and presence wherever it may arise.

But if we disregard the model of the paralytic, then I fear the voice we claim and affirm as Church may turn to the voice of the scribes, where we come to denounce these new locations of forgiveness as a threat to the religion we have kept so well guarded. And then Jesus’ words of forgiveness can be but words of rebuke, and we must pray we still have the ears to rightly hear that, less we crucify those who sought but to forgive us.

But there is a time to speak, there is a time to affirm our voice as Church. But note how this voice is spoken in the story. It is one that reveals illusions and offers forgiveness. And this is a voice that we are daily growing in to, learning to speak. We often have a hard time remember the right phrases and our tongues stumble over the more difficult words (I hope it is clear that I say this all by way of analogy, that language is a form of life, that true Christianity is not about simply affirming doctrinal phrases). So as we speak, we need to do so with the humility of those who are still learning the grammar of Christ, looking to and learning from those among us, past and present, who are more fluent that we are.

I will stop here and refrain from attempting to tie all the loose ends together for fear of reducing them to pithy quips. And there is still much more to be gleaned from these verses, and thank God. For it is in hope and thankfulness, not in dismay, that we affirm Scripture is a mystery. Perhaps something else from this verse will strike me later. I can only hope. But for now, I think this is a good place to stop.

{ healing and forgiveness, part IV }

But Jesus perceiving their thoughts, said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”--he then said to the paralytic--”Stand up, take your bed and go to your home.” And he stood up and went to his home. When the people saw it, they were filled with awe, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to human beings.

****

The second part of understanding the scribe’s accusation of blasphemy was to consider how their reaction explains and/or moves this act to its completion. I have to admit that this is a particular hermeneutic, that I am reading their presence in the gospel story as having a particular function.

A different approach would be to see their presence as more passive, wherein Jesus acts and speaks as he does in order to provoke or challenge the scribes (or Pharisees) in order to provide a teachable moment. But as was my caution against reading the scribes as mere foils, so too do I think such an approach would lessen Jesus’ humanity. His would be a life of actions not done for their own sake or because it was the most human (and therefore, obedient and blessed) thing to do, but of actions performed as mere examples. It would make it such that we could separate Jesus’ teachings from his person, like actors in safety commercials.

I think such a hermeneutic would practically empty Jesus’ life of significance, because such is not what we mean by “living” life at all. And to follow this hermeneutic to it’s logic end, we see that the cross then becomes not the manifestation of love, or the act of utmost obedience to God, or the inevitable end true humanity meets in a world structured by sin; instead, the cross is but the last (even if greatest) “teachable moment.”

So it is my attempt to preserve the humanity of the One who is humanity in its fullest that I interpret the presence of, and conflict presented by, the scribes as the foils with which the gospel writers make evident that humanity in its fullness. And, following my conclusion from the last post, it is my view that the scribes bring Jesus’ humanity into relief not merely as foils, but also through the illuminating juxtaposition of their own (broken) humanity with that of Jesus. The humanity of both sides of the equation must be preserved, that the scribes or Pharisees are “foils” is just another way of saying that conflict moves a plot forward.

Turning now to Jesus’ response, I hope my last post has made it clear why Jesus begins his response with “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” Let me first, though, address Jesus’ seeming telepathy. It is not my view that Jesus had the ability to read minds. I think such a reading of the text is based on two misconceptions: 1) that the ideal form of communication leaves words behind and 2) that Jesus’ knowledge as God was “super-human” knowledge.

We have a funny notion that if we could only read someone’s mind, then we could know what they were really thinking, that we wouldn’t be deceived or confused by their words. And while we can indeed hide our true thoughts from others, it is not our words that cut us off from each other, but what we do with our words. Our world and our minds are formed as we learn language, and they grow together. We learn our world and our language together: what a bike is, what a mistake is, what church is. The myth of telepathy is but another manifestation of the desire for a universal language, which is itself the manifestation of feeling chafed by our own skin.

Second, since Jesus was both fully human and fully God, we can attribute the predicates of both to him without contradiction. So we can say Jesus was tall or short, and we can also say he was divine. And we can also say he has human knowledge and divine knowledge. What we need not do here, however, is think that these compete with each other or that one overrides the other. To think that Jesus’ knowledge as God was “super-human” knowledge is to think of God as merely humanity writ large. Attributing “knowledge” to God is something we have to understand as metaphorical (or analogical), in the same sense that God has anger or that he repents. Whatever it means for God to “know,” it does not mean that he simply knows everything whereas humans only know a little.

So how did Jesus “perceive their thoughts”? Maybe in the same way we perceive each others': we see the eyes that are holding back tears, we see the hands that are shaking in nervousness, we see the shoulders that drop in disbelief. Jesus perceived their thoughts. Do we need science fiction or the supernatural to understand this? Maybe it is simply that Jesus is so fully human, so intimate with the human condition (whereas we live in denial or confusion about it), that the scribes’ actions spoke only too clearly. Jesus “reads their minds/hearts” in reading what is there for everyone to see: their expressions, their body language, their secrecy. And how blind must we be to be so surprised that Jesus called the thoughts “evil” of those not rejoicing at forgiveness?

Jesus saw the scribes huddling together, whispering to each other, he saw the angry expressions that surely coincide with condemnations of blasphemy, he saw the faces of the self-appointed victims, he saw the displacement of guilt. And from all of this he understood that there was “evil” in their hearts. (And we should not take it lightly or as common place that Jesus calls their thoughts “evil.” For it evidences that he knows their charge of blasphemy was not a righteously motivated one, that at its root was not holiness but self-preservation.)

Jesus then puts a question to the scribes: “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk’?” I would imagine the scribes are left fairly befuddled by this question, likely thinking to themselves, “Who said anything about healing? And what does it matter which is easier?” Jesus’ response seems to leave the charge of blasphemy behind as irrelevant.

But maybe if we go back to the “evil” the scribes thought in their hearts we can better understand how Jesus’ response makes sense. For perhaps it is the case that for Jesus to respond to the charge of blasphemy would be for Jesus to not go deep enough; it would be simply addressing the surface accusation that, as I tried to show last time, was more of a symptom of the problem than the problem itself.

As I tried to show in the last post, the scribes’ charge can be read as the displacement of guilt and the attempt to preserve their position as author-ities. So Jesus asks them which statement is it “easier to say” or, put differently, “easier to claim authorship of”: “Your sins are forgiven” or “Stand up and walk”?

This question has the been at the heart of my confusion about the text, because, before rephrasing it this way, I had no idea how to answer it. For which is really easier to say? Well, to belittle the question, the forgiveness option has 6 syllables whereas the healing option has 4. More seriously, some would say it’s easier to proclaim forgiveness because by proclaim healing, it actually has to happen, so you’re putting more on the line. But would that then mean that Jesus takes the easy way out until he happens to see the scribes mumbling over in the corner? Or is it easier to proclaim healing? But that seems counter-intuitive too. It seems that either way you answer this question, you are still left with a problem. From this approach, the question only raises more problems rather than answering the one at hand.

But might it be the case that to even try to answer the question at all would be to miss the point, to miss the rhetorical intent? Might not the question be intended to respond to the scribes in a way that will silence them, that will lead them out of their “evil” ways of thinking into a promise of something, someone, greater?

It is Jesus’ rhetorical device here that is the clue to its interpretation. In Matthew 19:24, Jesus tells his disciples, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Jesus’ use of “easier” here does not presuppose that either one is possible, but instead highlights the fact that neither are. That it is “easier” for a camel to go through the eye of the needle, itself an impossibility, only serves to highlight that it is all that much more impossible for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. The rhetorical device of comparing two things with “easier” is intended to emphasize the impossibility of both.

So if we return to Jesus’ question in Matthew 9:5, we see now that we are meant to hear the question as a rhetorical one: “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk’?” should be heard as, “It is just as impossible for you to be the author of forgiveness as it is for you to be the author of physical healing.” The point is that the scribes cannot say, they cannot author, either of these statements. They do not have that author-ity. Jesus’ statement returns their accusation of blasphemy with a question that both confronts them with their own human limitations, as well as the fact that they have overstepped those limits. Jesus' response returns the accusation.

And this is why his next statement is not a non-sequiter, but the logical conclusion. While Jesus’ question pointed to the limitations of humanity; his following words now point to the promise of God: “But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”--he then said to the paralytic--”Stand up, take your bed and go to your home.”

The text could not be more beautiful. Jesus does not merely claim that, unlike the scribes, he possess true author-ity, he makes it manifest in his actions and in the body of the paralytic. While Jesus’ rhetorical question underscored the impossibility of both forgiveness and healing, his actions now demonstrate their possibility and reality in his person. Thus, this teaching concludes the same way as Matthew’s other use of the “easier” device: “When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded, and said, ‘Then who can be saved?’ But Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible’” (19:25-26).

The Son of God has author-ity on earth because the Son is God, is the Author, and all things are possible for the Author because the Author writes all that is, defines what is, IS all that is. So Jesus brings that reality which is possible in God into existence because it is in him and him alone, as Son of God, that the author-ity to do so exists.

Jesus’ healing of the paralytic is meant to make manifest that author-ity: “But so that you may know....” While it still seems that the healing is only tentatively linked to the forgiveness, I think it might need to remain this way, or, at least, I am still working through what physical disability means in the kingdom of God. I think there may be something to the point I made earlier, about Jesus not doing things to prove a point, but because it is the most human thing to do...

A friend of mine recently shared some of his reflections with me on Mark’s (and Luke’s) version of the story. He writes:

“And Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the man- 'your sins are forgiven'” (Mark 2:5). Not exactly what we expect, is it? Well, it's not what the crowd expected either. It goes on to say that the scribes and “church people” there got really upset. “How can he forgive sins? Who does he think he is?” It's not until Jesus heals him physically that the onlookers are satisfied. In fact, it says “they were full of wonder and gave glory to God!” I wish we could see the world the way Jesus does. See, because the funny thing to me is we never hear any complaints from the cripple. Jesus forgave his sins! I mean, how cool is that? Just think, everything you've ever done wrong, big or small, all of it gone. No more guilt, no more pain. No more aching deep in your soul. You've spent your whole life lying on a bed of shame, and the Creator of the world looked into your eyes and took it all away. He smiled at you, and in that moment – that lifetime of frustration in your heart is replaced with peace. I think in that moment, the cripple realized that Jesus didn't see anything wrong with him. He had faith, and so to Jesus, he was good as new.

I think this is a beautiful insight. It transforms Jesus’ “know” (in “but so that you may know”) to something more than knowledge, at least knowledge as we tend to think of it, because it is a knowledge that itself brings healing in that it brings people into the knowledge of, and thus into participation in, the kingdom of God. The healing of the paraplegic actually does more to heal the people around him than it does for the man himself. He’s already been made whole in the forgiveness and the unconditional acceptance offered and found in the eyes of Jesus.

We need not necessarily posit some relationship between forgiveness and physical healing. Jesus even warns against trying to do so in John 9:1-3 and speaks of healing in this same way: “so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” In both John and Matthew, the bodies of these individuals are transformed from signs of brokenness in a world that knows only of impossibility (even if it lives in denial of it) to signs of promise that point to and themselves bespeak the kingdom in revealing the power and sovereignty, the author-ity, of God.

And, for the moment anyways, the people rejoice in the presence of the kingdom: “When the crowds saw it, they were filled with awe, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to human beings” (9:8). They have felt, vicariously through this man’s restored body, the healing touch of God. And they have the right response: wonder and praise, not blame and self-preservation, but awe and the glorification of God. But we hear no more of the scribes. Jesus’ response has appropriately silenced their charges, but we hear nothing of their joining in the glorification of God, and so they slip off-screen and the tension remains, and builds.

And just to cover all the bases, I do not think we need to feel discomfort at the crowds interpretation that God had “given such authority to human beings,” for this is precisely what Jesus is. And, what is more, it is through Jesus that such authority is given to human beings, since those who confess to be his body in being “church,” who share in his blood and body at Eucharist, have been promised (as has all humanity) and have received his Spirit and therefore share in his author-ity.

And so this is the mission of the church, this is the possibility that God has called the church to make a reality: healing and forgiveness. By the power of the Spirit, we participate in that author-ity, and so are given the responsibility, the charge, the great co-mission of authoring the kingdom of God in this world. But let us not ever believe that we have this author-ity of our own accord, that it is anything but gift. And let us bring ourselves as we truly are, in all our brokenness (or willingness to become broken) to Jesus, that He may author the kingdom in our hearts and in our skin.