Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Requiem



Last month I started this blog with the story of Amy's grandmother. At the time it seemed that she would not live more than a few days, but I guess everyone underestimated the woman. She held death off for another month (making her total time spent in a coma just over four years), but eventually, as we all will, lost the battle with mortality. Today was her funeral.

There is no situation like a funeral to make us realize how dependent we are on God for life and hope. We can push death out of our minds for years at a time, but eventually we will come face to face with it, and at that moment we must all acknowledge that we are powerless to overcome death on our own. For Christians though, we have the hope and assurance that death has indeed been overcome and that we ourselves may participate in the resurrection of the dead. God did not leave Christ in the tomb, and he has promised not to leave us there either.

There is one moment from today that I already know has been permanently burned into my memory. It was during the viewing, while I was contemplating the bodily resurrection that Scripture promises, and I saw Amy's grandmother draw breath, rise, and leave her coffin behind. (Another is any moment that involved the presiding Priest, Father O'Brian. This man's personality was straight comedy. In one sense it was a relief. He unintentionally elicited a laugh from even the saddest in attendance. In another it was kind of disappointing because I find the Catholic memorial liturgy extremely significant and beautiful, but this was all eclipsed by Father O'Brien's demeanor. He would best, but not quite, be described as Stuart Smalley on Prozac after a thousand hours of sensitivity training reading a bedtime story to a four-year-old. At one point, in this voice, he abruptly stopped everything, sustained a histrionic silent pause, then reminded all attending to "Breathe...Just breathe.")

As expected, the most uncertainty surrounds Amy's grandfather. He has spent six to eight hours of every day for the last four years caring for his bedridden, semi-conscious wife. Now he does not know what to do with himself. He said today, "The last four years I've lived knowing that at any minute the call could come. Now I live knowing that it has come."

I can only imagine what that must be like. There are many people attending to his needs, occupying the vast amounts of free time that threaten him, feeding him, listening and talking to him...but if you do not mind, please pray for him. His name is Bob Long.

I recently bought Mozart's Requiem. That was a nice, brusque, post-modern shift in topic huh? Don't worry anyone reading this with other than post-modern tastes (is anyone reading this?); hopefully this will tie back into the overarching line of thought before you give up on coherence and move on to another website.

If you do not know, a requiem is a mass or composition for the dead (Already getting back on track). Now for most today a service or prayer for the dead any time after the funeral seems outdated and superstitious (And I would bet that even the prayers offered during most funerals asking God to recieve the deceased into his kingdom are much more for the comfort of those still living than they are for the dead loved one). And I admit that in some ways I fall into this group, but this CD is beautiful, moody and haunting. No matter what else I pop into my CD player I cannot escape it. So I gave up trying to escape it and started thinking about Christian prayer for the dead (which reaches back into our tradition a great deal).

I soon remembered a time last spring when I was sitting in Christian Worship class. It was one of those rare moments when my attention was not riveted on the words of Dr. John Wright (John, if you happen to be reading this, I promise those moments were rare...or at least intermittent). My attention was quickly recovered though when he said, "...and that is why medieval Christians had no problem praying for the dead." But it was too late, and I thought, "Dang. That sounded interesting. I wish I had been paying attention."

So I went back and re-read the book John was teaching from, Torture and Eucharist by William Cavanaugh, and I think I found the passage that led to the discussion that day. In chapter five Cavanaugh discusses a Christian conception of time, and how it has been lost over the last couple hundred years. He says on page 222:
The medieval Christian conception (of time) is marked by..."Messianic time," that is, the simultaneity of past and future in the present. Representations of biblical figures in medieval dress strike the modern observer as odd, but medieval Christians did not imagine they were separated from the past (or the future) by a wide gulf of ever-advancing time. The biblical figures were "contemporaries," connected to the present through divine providence.

In short, he says that the difference is that after the enlightenment time began to be understood according to human experience and reason. To a human, who only experiences time as one confined by it, time seems to be like a chain that is linked horizontally by cause and effect. To a Christian, on the other hand, time is understood in God, who is not limited by time, but is its Master. In God, Christians understood events in history not as vastly separated by horizontal links, but close and even overlapping because of their vertical links to God. That is why Christ's death is still effective and was able to reach back to the fall, and why Christians have a real hope in the Second Coming of Christ. It has already happened, thought we have yet to experience it first hand.

Now to graft this little excursus fully back into the original line of thought. I have already asked you to pray for her grandfather, and even though I may not completely understand how it can do any good (because I still exist as one within the confines of time), and if it does not offend your enlightened, rationalistic sensibilities too much, please pray for her grandmother as well. Pray that she would know God's mercy and partake in his salvation. Perhaps God honors our prayers before we even pray them, yet still wants us to offer them. Her name is Patricia Long.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Dog


So I just got a dog. I still have not decided on a name. It is a toss up between Cheyenne and Layla. What do you guys think?

If you want to see more of her, click here.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

No Worship on Christmas?

I want to continually guard against my natural tendency to make every post on this site a rant. Though quite often warranted, I do not think they do as much good as I wish they did. So let me begin with something positive.

No. Something better than that. Let me begin with some grace.

After all, we are in the season of Advent, and where is grace seen more clearly than in the story of God becoming man to reconcile his beloved yet rebellious creation to himself? Nowhere. Grace animates the story and uses it to give us a tender hug or a punch to the gut (depending on our need). This is a season of joy and hope, because in it we look to the coming of the Christ in history, celebrate the way he is faithful in continuing to come to us today, and anticipate his coming again.

So think on this, and for now, be happy and joyful. (No this sentence is not redundant. It's nuanced.)

Are you both? Good.

Enjoy it for a moment...

Now...can I move into the next portion of this post and kill some of your happiness while sustaining your joy? I hope to do both.

If it were not for God's action in the incarnation (Christ's becoming man) we would not worship as we do. This is obvious. But it does us good to repeatedly think about what this means. Without Christmas we would not know God's fullness as seen in Christ. We would not know reconciliation with God through his faithfulness and blood. We would not be able to gather together with all people, regardless of their nationality, personal history or economic standing, to worship the Creator of us all.

We would know neither peace nor love.

We would not know beauty or grace.

We would not be able to offer ourselves in sacrificial worship to the One whom we were created to worship and in whom we find our true identity.

We would have no hope.

What is more important to a Christian than this?

Leisure time, apparently.

Several churches in the Phoenix area, and, most likely, a few churches in whatever area you live in are doing the same thing (unless you live in the Vatican or an "underdeveloped" country or a country where Christians are persecuted or...heck, pretty much if you live in America or someplace like it), have cancelled their Sunday morning worship services this year because it falls on Christmas day. This makes about as much sense as Stallone making Rocky VI.

Christmas is one of the highest Christian holidays. We should be gathering in our local churches for worship on Christmas no matter what day of the week it happens to fall on. This is like canceling worship on Easter.

"But it's inconvenient and takes away from holiday time with my family. I only get so much time off of work to relax you know."

Good point. I can relate to how terrible it is to be inconvenienced.

Oh, but wait. It was probably pretty inconvenient for Christ to leave his Father, shed his glory and take a human body, and hang from a cross for the very people who put him there. So strike that. After further reflection I have decided that that is not such a good point after all and that I cannot (or rather choose not to) relate.

Besides, it is not even a point that should have to be made. We should be flocking to worship joyously and willingly. Everything that is not worship should be seen as inconvenient and part of our old, worldly lives. Lives that we have left behind.

Further, on the subject of time with our families, every believer is now part of the same family (Matthew 10:37-38; 12:48-49). Do not neglect this heavenly family that we get to fellowship with here on earth. If you want to have some time with your immediate, earthly family (which is a good thing to have, do not get me wrong), there are how many hours left on Christmas after noon dismissal? Take that time to better explain what you are celebrating on Christmas to your children after they have ravished their presents (and no, what you are celebrating is not their thankfulness to you and appreciation for all the money you spent on them). As good as that might seem, we are, in fact, reveling in salvation. Pure and mind blowing.

What is happening here is so terrible because it is more of a threat than all the politically correct language and legislation working to make everyone call this by the non-religion specific term "holidays." Or everyone trying to take "Christ" out of Christmas. They may not have to anymore. We might do it for them.

This is Christians celebrating a different Christmas. A therapeutic, commercial Christmas that gives Toys 'r Us and Microsoft more to celebrate about than it gives to Christians. Ask Bill O'Reilley. (Thanks to Eric, I believe, who brought that clip to my attention somewhere or other.)

This is true Christmas: the gospel. Jesus has come and comes now and is coming again. Let us live this joy. Not cancel it.

If your church has cancelled worship on Christmas, do not go and berate your leadership. Set an example of faithfulness. Find a place to worship. My Church's doors will thankfully, and with thankfulness, be opened.