Be Curious

“Be Curious.”  That’s the Seattle International Film Festival slogan for this year.  I look forward to SIFF each year at this time.  The Festival is many dozens of American and international films packed into three weeks.

“Curious” seems to me an essential attitude to bring to the festival, as it is to anything international.  Curiosity implies that the viewer is open, questioning, and eager to learn.  The alternative–incurious–implies anything from apathetic to rigid or narrow-minded–maybe not the most helpful attitude in encountering diverse international worldviews!

“Be curious” also seems to me good Christian theology.  Our hunger for truth can lead us to cling to what is familiar.  Curiosity implies risking exploration of spiritual terrain outside our comfort zone.

In last Sunday’s reading from John, Jesus assured his friends that the “Spirit of Truth” would eventually lead them “into all the truth.”  While our human tendency is to want to pin down “the truth,” what we find in the life of faith is that truth is revealed less as fixed notions and more as ongoing revelation, often in new and astonishing ways.  As Jesus put it , I still have many other things to tell you but you cannot bear them now.

Lest we become discouraged and wonder what formidable spiritual gifts are required to unlock the secrets of God, Truth, we discover, can be approached in surprisingly ordinary ways.  On one occasion, for example Jesus said, Unless you become like children, you cannot enter the kingdom of God–which might be another way of saying...Be Curious!

Grateful to Pay

I remember my first job:  When I was thirteen, maybe fourteen years old–almost forty years ago–I signed on to detassel corn near my home in Iowa.  (Detasseling, for those unfamiliar with this regional “starter job,” is all about developing hybrid strains of field corn.)

Since then I’ve held many jobs, everything from summer employment as a student to full-time jobs as an adult.  The range of incomes earned in these jobs represents a variety of tax brackets.  (Oh, for the days of the “EZ” form–and thank God for accountants!)

Today, April 15th, is the deadline for paying 2012 taxes.  It’s an annual event that typically generates a fair bit of resentment and grumbling among the tax-paying public.  I’ve never quite understood that.  Whether paying a small percentage or a much larger percentage of income tax I’ve always considered it not only a responsibility of good citizenship but a privilege, as well.

Like all tax-paying Americans, through government services of many kinds I get much in return for what I pay.  That said, I don’t pay taxes thinking “what’s in it for me.”  After all, some of what I pay in taxes I may never see.  Social Security could go down the tubes.  I may not even live long enough to earn Medicare benefits.  But, someone does.  Someone will.  Whether or not I benefit from my contributions someone else will benefit.

I have a pastor friend whose baptismal anniversary is April 15th.  This happy coincidence seems to me an appropriate counterpoint to tax-day grumbling.  Baptism, after all, is all about remembering that the life we choose to embrace is ultimately not about us.  It’s about God’s goodness, and living gratefully in response to that goodness.  Much of how gratitude is expressed in our lives plays out through the extent to which we give cheerfully to others (2 Corinthians 9:7).

On April 15th–and hopefully every day–I am grateful to pay.

Superstar

Even though it’s a crazy-busy time, every year during Holy Week, or thereabouts, I try to squeeze in a screening of the 1973 film Jesus Christ Superstar.  After all these years I still find it to be the most compelling account of Jesus’ last days.  For me, much of the rock opera’s power is that, told from the perspective of Judas, it’s a very human story.

For years I’d had an old VHS copy of the film but finally ordered the DVD this year.  The disk includes special features, including a 2004 full-length running commentary by actor Ted Neeley (Jesus) and Norman Jewison, the film’s director.  Thirty-one years after its release, I’d expected this commentary to be a nostalgic “walk down memory lane.”  Instead, it was a moving testimony to the power of this film to permanently transform the lives of two of the characters who figured prominently in its production.

The author of The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective, is Pinchas Lapide, a Jewish New Testament scholar. He is not a Christian; yet he believes that God raised Jesus from the dead. For him, the proof of the physical resurrection lies in the changed lives of the disciples.

When this scared, frightened band of the apostles which was just about to throw away everything in order to flee in despair to Galilee; when these peasants, shepherds, and fishermen, who betrayed and denied their master and then failed him miserably, suddenly could be changed overnight into a confident mission society, convinced of salvation and able to work with much more success after Easter than before Easter, then no vision or hallucination is sufficient to explain such a revolutionary transformation. [p. 125]

Which for me raises the question:  To what extent is faith expressed today by disciples of Jesus through, on the one hand, doctrine and moral codes, and on the other hand, through transformed lives?  And, to which expression is the world that God loves most likely to be drawn?

Spring Forward

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.  I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  –Isaiah 43:16-21

It’s been probably four years since I planted miniature narcissus bulbs outside my office.  I never feed or water them.  The soil is poor.  Yet, year after year as the days lengthen and warm these beauties faithfully reappear.

I looked up narcissus.  Turns out it’s a word of unknown origin, possibly related to “numbness” or “sleeping.”  This seems a good fit when one considers the Greek myth of Narcissus, the person so preoccupied with himself that he destroyed himself.  Surely narcissism is a numbness to life, a spiritual slumber, more characteristic of winter than spring.  To be human means constantly to be tempted in this direction.

One form of narcissism is clinging to the “former things…the things of old.”  In the life of faith this can mean regret, longing, resentment, self-pity, anger and a refusal to forgive.  Such self-preoccupation can be a way of continuing to live in “winter” when the Spirit is calling us to celebrate “spring.”

As spring greets us once again (Wednesday, 4:02 a.m. PDT) the natural world draws our attention to what is fresh and new.  Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.  The prophet’s words this past Sunday are timely: now it springs forth!

Our faith tradition gifts us with antidotes to narcissism, among them a spirit of gratitude and service.  The best chance we have of being seized by such a spirit is a determination to live in the “now.”

The narcissus flowers outside my window–neglected most of the year–live in the now, responding with apparent joy to each year’s opportunity for new life.  How much more shall I, abundantly blessed and never neglected, live gratefully!

The Jesus Oscars

There was a man who had two sons.  The younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me”…The older son became angry…[and said to his father], “Listen!  For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends…

  –Luke 15:11-12,28-29

The Academy Awards have been announced for this year.  As usual, some of the Oscars were a bit of a surprise; others, more or less predictable.  In addition to the official awards, the press annually metes out other playful (or snarky!) awards.  Red-carpet fashion, for example:  Best Dressed, Worst Dressed, etc.

If Oscars were awarded for Bible stories, what would be your picks?  In the category of Best Story last Sunday’s parable of the Prodigal Son would surely be an Oscar contender.  That said, it would also get my vote for Worst Story Title!

The prodigal (“wastefully extravagant”) son, after all, is really a supporting actor.  Same for his older brother.  But “supporting” is misleading.  Turns out they’re both–one explicitly, the other more subtly–deeply invested in supporting little more than their own self-interest.  Truth be told, the parable is a horse race between the two brothers for the “prize” of Most Ungrateful!  Each of us is left to discern which description most closely fits us: careless and self-indulgent, or, sincere, hard-working, faithful–and therefore “entitled.”  The parable is a cautionary tale against both.

Best Actor in this story goes to the father.  But is it an “act”?  Or, is it the real deal?  One suspects the father would sweep all the categories that matter:  Most Loving, Most Generous, Most Patient, Most Humble, Most Compassionate, Most Merciful, Most Wise, Most Forgiving.

Here’s how writer Nadia Bolz-Weber puts it:  This is a story of the Prodigal Father.  It’s the father who is wasteful!  He “wastes” his love and generosity on children who will, likely as not, continue being ungrateful.  The father gets the Jesus Oscar for Most Recklessly Extravagant.

The attitudes of both brothers probably fit all of us at different times.  Of the two, however, most of us who are life-long Church People might find in the older son a more accurate reflection of our own tendencies.

And yet, rather than guilt and shame this story aims for a response in all God’s children–everyone!–that represents the best in what it means to be most like the father and therefore most fully human:  Most Grateful.