Virtual Choirs, Perfection, Clay Jars, and Making Space for Each Other

Recently I listened to a choir conductor explain the process of creating a virtual choir performance. It requires skill, but also a sensitivity to the human because the best virtual choir performances won't be 'perfect' if they are to sound beautiful. Perfection, when put together by a computer program will sound robotic and manufactured. In creating a virtual choir performance slight 'imperfections' are introduced to make the performance not just beautiful to the ear but also human. What a great metaphor for being human, and the church for that matter.

We are clay jars (2Cor 4:7-15), but who prefers the factory manufactured clay piece to the piece of art that has within it the 'imperfections' of the human hand? The more perfect, the less human, generally. And we recognise this on the screen in those dystopian movies and TV shows that have regimented societies seeking perfection by brainwashing and violence. History is replete with real-life examples. Thank God the preferred human way of fashioning human perfection is not God's way of bringing the metamorphosis of transformation! God works with our imperfection and makes something beautiful from them.

This is not to abandon the call to perfection. (Matt 5:43-48 cf Luke 6:32-36) But it is to make space for each other's imperfections. There is something beautiful about the 'making space'. And this 'making space' is to make space for our mutual imperfections without condoning or condemning ourselves or anyone else. And in this space, we seek the transformation that comes through God's love discovered in our mutual love of one another.

Last week I spoke of the space that the cross gives human beings. (Here.) God provides space for us to be who we are, even to the point of crucifying the Son of God. And it is in this space of weakness (1Cor 1:18-25) that God brings the transformation of forgiveness and resurrection. It is a space of mutual forbearance, but not of carelessly inflicting our imperfections on each other. It is a space of discipline and a space for repentance, for experiencing the love of God in forgiveness without any hint of self-rejection.

Who is this? Mark 4:35-41

 Without the cross, the answer to the question (about Jesus) "Who is this?" pops out wrong. But with the cross and the resurrection of the crucified, the answer is Christianity. Because of the cross and the resurrection of the crucified:

1. Christianity has a sensitivity to the voice of the victim and the human tendency to scapegoat. Where Christianity has taken root in a culture so too has the moral high ground of victimhood. (Look at the West now and the place of the voice of the victim. But this sensitivity is meant to be coupled with conversion to Jesus and his way of forgiveness to prevent making new victims.)

2. Christianity teaches of a God who is sympathetic to the human condition, for in Jesus God has suffered with us in the flesh. And it is through this suffering and death as a victim of human sin that God has brought about union with us. A union with us at our lowest point, i.e. as sinners.  (See Rom 5:6-11) One can never get to this spiritual insight without the cross (and resurrection) of Jesus.

3. And then, this crucified Jesus, now risen, offers forgiveness, not vengeance or 'justice'. (John 20:19-23) There is no line in the sand that to step over brings destruction. Instead, we discover the patience of God and space for human freedom, and the means to be transformed through repentance and forgiveness.  (2Peter 3:8-9) 

4. And in the space (to sin) that we see in the cross of Jesus, we see also a model of what creation is like. As Creator God does not transgress our freedom but gives creation space and its own integrity to be who we are, and in that space to be transformed by love. (1John 4:7-12)

5. To be Christian is to know God's love revealed in Christ and his cross and resurrection. And to be judged by this love, not the judgment of others or the judgment of self-loathing. This love that has given all and reaches the depths of who we are, asks of us everything. For it is in the spiritual renunciation of all that we believe we are that we transcend the boundaries of our current humanity, bringing to light that which is hidden. In other words, we learn to be loved and to love.

The Kingdom of God is Like a Weed

 Jesus likens the kingdom to a weed. (The mustard seed grows into a weed.) So the kingdom isn't the project you are doing in the shed, it is to be found behind the shed in the unkempt part of the yard not usually visible from where all the action is happening. That's funny. It must have provoked at least a little snigger amongst some, while others may have been a little offended.

These days it is difficult to find someone in the church who doesn't recognise the danger of identifying our pet projects with the kingdom. We know that when we give our hearts to pet projects (that is, the pet project becomes an idol, displacing the kingdom from its place of honour in our hearts), all kinds of problems and disasters occur. Idols always distort those who worship the idol and the outcomes. 

If avoiding making our pet projects into idols were as easy to say as do, I suppose human history would look significantly different to what it actually does. And this isn't just for religious people. Pet projects become ideologies, driving adherents to say and do all sorts of crazy stuff. Like any idol.

And this is why the parable of the mustard seed is so helpful. It's a warning against pet projects. Even when we think the pet project is the kingdom. Even when the pet project begins in kingdom-type activity. It's just too easy to equate what we are doing and thinking with the kingdom. We all decry the empire-building of yesteryear but are happy enough to think that when we act justly or evangelise (or whatever it is your church tradition values in particular) that we are doing God's work. Well, yes, possibly. But it is a slippery slope, and is why history looks like it does.

I could just say, let's hang loose people. Let's not invest too much in our pet projects. But how to give (of self) genuinely and hang loose? How to avoid becoming tepid? (Neither hot nor cold, see Revelation 3:16.) Well, keep looking behind the shed. That's the point of the parable, or at least part of it. Keep looking behind the shed. And when we do, and we see the weeds growing, let the weeds take your interest for a while. We can divide our attention, which is a good, practical way to get our hearts off the pet project and (at least potential) idol in the shed. God is doing all kinds of stuff, not just our pet project. It might be time to move on from the pet project. The kingdom requires nimbleness.

Here is a parallel from the Christian tradition. People hunger for spiritual experiences. Christians have always hungered for spiritual experiences, and when an 'experience' is granted, hang on to the experience. And not just Christians, it seems that many contemporary people are hungering for 'spiritual' experiences, although who knows exactly what the world thinks it means by 'spiritual'. Anyway, the advice from the Christian tradition is not to hang onto the experience. The experience may well be helpful, but hang onto it and it will become less and less helpful until it has the opposite effect. Kind of like how the pet project can become an idol. The advice is to just go back to praying, like normal, and leave behind the experience. The experience has done what it was meant to do. Move on. And that is part of the problem with seeking a  'spiritual experience', it feels like it is helping us grow, but it will actually stop us from moving and growing in a relatively short space of time.

Or another parallel. In the Christian tradition, God is more unlike than like any image or thought we have of God. Words and images have the tendency to become replacements for God, that is, idols. Or, less dramatic, prevent us from continuing our journey into and with God. We get stuck. Just like spiritual experiences, we can get stuck. Just like pet projects. We can get stuck. The kingdom is moving on, let's keep looking, moving, joining, looking, moving ...

Satan Casting Out Satan

 When the opponents of Jesus turn up accusing him of being in league with Satan (Mark 3:22) he doesn't so much as deny it as play with it. It is not the ones we humans expel as evil/immoral/ etc who are in league with Satan, but the accusers (who believe themselves to be righteously casting out Satan) who are in league with Satan, the great accuser: Satan casting out Satan. (3:23)

This dynamic of expulsion is played out among us and through human history. It seems good and right, even necessary to expel. And its effects of a temporary peace (by expelling the supposed source of conflict/sin) reinforce and support the sense of virtue retained/regained. But this peace is temporary, for a house divided is inherently unstable. (3:24-26)

And Jesus will ransack the strong man's house by first disarming him, like a thief. (Mark 3:27; compare Matt 24:43, 1Thess 5:2, 2Pet 3:10, Rev 16:15) The strong man is Satan, and he will do this on the cross. Satan will cast out Satan, and Jesus, in the disguise of a criminal and immoral person rightly crucified, the lie of accusation will be unmasked and God's vindication of Jesus in the resurrection will give us eyes to see.

This is scapegoating, Satan casting out Satan. When we participate in scapegoating we are in league with the diabolical. Of course, we all think we would never do such a thing. No one ever does think that, we always think we are innocently and righteously identifying the problem (someone else). All kinds of self-righteousness accrue.  Social causes are vulnerable to being pulled into the diabolical. (Its why someone always ends up against the wall when the revolution comes.) Whatever you think of the righteousness of a pet cause (to say this should immediately give pause), the conditions for just such scapegoating are visible around us. 

The lie that allows humans to be content in self-righteousness is best maintained if the scapegoat is guilty of something. That way the fiction of their (whoever they are) guilt can have at least an air of credibility. Scapegoating pops up as sides and causes are taken, and as victims (of evil) and perpetrators (of evil) are discovered and denounced. Satan casting out Satan. As mentioned, it is best if there is some element of guilt present and some element of ostensible (self-)righteousness. But the guilt need not be related directly to the 'crime', only tangentially. But when the invective rises and continues to rise, when we are all forced to take a side, or when to not take a side is to be accused of being on the wrong side of history (siding with evil), Satan is casting out Satan.

Following Jesus asks us to be sensitive to the victims of the diabolical who are innocent of the crimes heaped on them (not necessarily innocent). To be a follower of Jesus is to renounce the false peace and feelings of righteousness that flow from Satan casting out Satan. At a minimum, to be Christian and part of a Christian community is to find our communion in love and forgiveness, not in expulsion.

Am Important Detail at Pentecost

Acts 2:1-12 tells the story of the gift of the Holy Spirit to the disciples after the Ascension of Jesus. It is easy to miss the significance of a small detail embedded in the story. It is crucial that the disciples are given diverse tongues rather than the hearers enabled to understand the (single) dialect of the disciples. Imagine if it were around the other way, with the listeners enabled to understand the one language. Christianity would be another religion, a religion in which God's word is uncluttered with the varieties of human culture, indeed of human experience. A religion that perceived variety as an impediment to unity, or should I say, an impediment to uniformity.

    Christianity affirms that humans don't have to be translated into a monoculture.  We don't have to reject who we are, where we come from, how we have learnt to be human, to be Christians. Hence the church's commitment to translating the gospel into the language of the people. Christianity is a religion in which variety is celebrated, and this variety is not an impediment to our unity.  There still remains a gospel to be heard, and this gospel will change us and the languages and cultures in which we express ourselves. But the gospel is accommodated to the human family in all of its variety, not the other way around. 

Not that this little detail in the Acts story begins God's accommodation to the variety of the human family and all creation.  The pedigree stretches way back.  Most especially so in the Incarnation, with God becoming human in Jesus so that we can share in God's life as human beings. (John 1:14; 2Corinthians 8:9) 

    And this story is not the only example of Christianity's insight that variety is not the enemy of unity. Christianity likes bringing together that which is usually separated. A doctrinal example is the doctrine of the Incarnation. According to the belief of the church expressed in the creeds,  Jesus is not a mish-mash of divine and human, nor some divinised quasi-human. Think here, for example, of the Creed of Chalcedon, 

... without confusion or change, without division or separation. The distinction between the natures was never abolished by their union but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together ... 

The union of that which is usually apart - divine and human. This union provides us with a glimpse of our future in God: union with God without our diminishment (or God's).  But if Jesus were in some way not fully human and fully divine the little detail in the Pentecost story would have to be the other way around. And we would have to change St Paul's reflection in 1Corinthians 12 (especially vv 4-7) on the variety of gifts given to the church. So too the Christian insistence that our final fulfilment is not to be dissolved back into some great sea of being, but to be who we are, in Christ united with the Father, through the Holy Spirit. (1Cor 15:20-28.) And we would have to change our doctrine of creation. In Christianity God not only permits 'the other'/creation, but loves creation, providing creation with its own integrity. (Christianity is not pantheism.)

    All of these examples speak of God's sensitivity to our particularity and personhood, and the variety of all creation in which God delights. So, of course, when the Spirit is given the disciples speak in diverse languages rather than the Spirit squeezing the listeners into a cultural straightjacket.