on "being fed"

There is a phrase tossed around by church people these days, and it sort of just slays me.  I hear it often when people decide to leave my church, or, alternatively, when they are discussing what they like so much about our church.  "I left City Road because I just wasn't being fed."  "I love my church because I'm really fed by what happens there."

I think the concept of spiritual nourishment is vital to a church, and we experience it in a number of ways (most dramatically in the sacraments, but also in preaching, praising, fellowship, liturgy, and more).  Anytime we receive a fresh infusion of God's grace in our lives, our parched souls perk up.  So, this idea of "being fed" makes sense to me.  But I also object to the way the phrase is thrown around, for a couple of reasons.  I use my experience with my children as a way of explaining my objections:

1)  Only infants need to be fed.  At one time, we were all spiritual infants.  Paul has a lot to say about this (check out I Corinthians 3).  However, at a certain point, human development demands that we begin feeding ourselves.  In fact, each of my children was EAGER to begin feeding themselves.  They wanted to control what they ate, how much, when, and all the other factors related to eating.  Self-feeding is a developmental milestone - something the doctor asks you about at your baby's checkups.  Likewise, after we have "been fed" briefly, as spiritual infants, we take on the task of feeding ourselves.  This means that we practice the means of grace.  We immerse ourselves in scripture.  We fellowship with believers.  We become missional, having been sent out into the world.  We understand that God is the source of all spiritual nourishment, but it is up to us, as maturing followers, to feed ourselves from that bounty.

2)  If my children got to pick what was on the menu, they would eat craisins and chunks of butter for every meal.  Maybe with the odd bowl of plain powdered Parmesan cheese thrown in.  My job, as their parent, is to create well-balanced meals that offer a variety of nutrients.  However, I cannot force them to eat anything.  Point being, sometimes God puts things on the menu that are not particularly appealing to us.  This does not mean that they aren't nourishing and necessary.  My mom was a big fan of liver and onions, which is one of the most nourishing meals there is.  When it was on the menu, I regularly went hungry.  (Mom wasn't into making multiple meals for picky eaters.)  So, perhaps it's not that you aren't "being fed."  Maybe it's that you can't stomach what you need to eat.

That last phrase has become my retort when I hear that people "aren't being fed."  Consider this:  maybe it's not that you aren't being fed.  Maybe you just don't like what's on the menu.

Seeing all the colors

I think a lot about what it means to be risen with healing.  Every Christmas we sing the quintessential Wesley carol:  "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," which contains the curious line "ris'n with healing in his wings" - referring to the Christ who will be born to die, and then rise from that death.

Once a month, also, we affirm our common faith through the Apostles Creed.  We state, along with Christians since the fourth century, that we believe in the "resurrection of the body."  This is classic Pauline theology, which emphasizes the fact that God created every bit of us (body, soul, everything) and the whole cosmos, and that everything will be resurrected.  We are not perfect souls placed in imperfect bodies.  The ENTIRE CREATION will be made new.

So what does this mean for someone born with a disability?  What does this mean for someone whose illness has become an integral part of their experience of creation?  What does this mean for Shirley Baker, created by God without eyes?  What does it mean for her to be risen with healing, as Christ was and promised for each of us?

Our brilliant teacher last week, Dr. Carla Works, told a story that reminded me of something else I suspect about the afterlife.  I believe that the distorted experience we have of this creation has limited our ability to understand what God will be able to do with us and the creation.  Like, now we have five senses - maybe then we will have ten?  Now we see "through a glass darkly," but then we will see clearly.

Dr. Works told a story from Radiolab (which is a fantastic public radio program) about how certain people have additional cones in our eyes that enable us to see more colors than others.  She also mentioned how in the ancient world, the color blue was not a concept.  Last week I saw the musical Matilda with my aunt and uncle, and the lead character sings something like, "what if what I see as red is not what someone else sees as red at all?"

The mantis shrimp has 12 sets of cones in their eyes, enabling them to see four times as many colors as the average human.

What if being risen with healing is like having the capacity to see every single color, when now we only see a few?  How can we even imagine what it could be like?  We have little bitty glimpses, every now and again, of what God's Kingdom looks like.

we women

My friend Betsy is great about posing questions to me about Scripture and Christian culture.  Lately, she sent me an email saying, essentially, "What do you think about all that stuff Paul said about women not being in charge?  And there being categorical differences between men and women beyond biology?"

I had to think long and hard about my response.

I used to be really incensed by Paul's attitude, and a more general stance in Christianity, that women and men had different capabilities, and that women needed to submit to men.  I still totally disagree with the last part about submission, but being pregnant and having a small child has changed me.  Struggling through the fact that, despite modern advances in medicine, carrying and delivering a child is something that can kill you.  And then, the continual weight you feel in being solely responsible for the feeding of a tiny being who could conceivably die if you don't do it right.  These things tend to change a person.  I am no exception.

I was always one who had more guy friends than girl friends.  For some reason, I've always been drawn to the company of men.  I like the way that they joke, they don't fuss at each other, and the way that plans seem to come together more effortlessly than with a group of women.  I have always struggled to find a good group of girlfriends (one of the reasons I joined a sorority - one of my favorite surprise game-changers in conversation with people!).

So, when I found out I was pregnant, there was so much I wanted to talk about . . . and guys just aren't the right audience.  No one was rude, or told me I was gross, but there was just a mismatch in the conversation.  After all, no men had any experience they could offer me firsthand.  And as things progressed, I needed women even more.  As I was scared about the complications at the end of my pregnancy, made it through the travails of labor, and went through some dark times in establishing good growth for my breastfed baby, I mostly just felt like I needed my mom.

But that wasn't possible, because she had died six years earlier.  So, enter this woman:

This is my sister, Nelle (on the right.  That's your truly on the left).  She is seven and a half years older than me, and has a son who is almost four.  She also had a baby on January 1 (the first baby born at their hospital in the new year . . . she got so much free stuff), so we were able to compare notes.  We talk and text daily, and she has coached me through this whole motherhood thing with ease and grace.  She's also a registered nurse, so she has medical expertise to add to sisterly caring.  I could not have made it to this point with any sanity if she wasn't around.

And enter these women:

This is our Bradley birth class - after we'd all been through the marathon we trained for together!  Amber, our teacher, is on the far right.  Amber truly became more than a teacher to me.  She was there to address all my crazy questions and fears no matter what time of night.  She offered continually to come to my home and help me work through plans for labor.  She is someone who is deeply invested in making sure women know the power they have in bringing children into the world.  And the other women in our group have become such a great support for me.  With the addition of other members with young babies from La Leche League, neighborhoods, and friends of friends, we have a fantastic playgroup that meets weekly for advice, sharing, and just being there for one another.  My baby is the youngest of the group, so I get lots of hand-me-down clothes, as well as a good dose of "it's going to be okay my baby went through that phase too."

So, although Mom isn't here with me now, I know that her spirit comes to me in these other women.  And my mind has changed a little bit about Paul.  Women truly do experience things that men can never know.  It doesn't make us worse or better, but it makes us need one another.

firstfruits of the resurrection?

I recently had a parishioner come to me with a question about a Bible verse.  Now, this made me ecstatic on a couple of fronts:  I have a congregant who is reading the Bible regularly!; I have a congregant who is willing to come to me with a question about Scripture!  This in itself was worth the $50,000 degree!  Okay, maybe not.  But still, it made all that time I had spent studying the Hebrew Bible and New Testament seem a little more valid, in a real-life kind of way. 

His question had to do with I Corinthians 15, which is one of my favorite passages of Scripture.  I use it at every funeral I officiate, as it contains Paul's famous taunt against death's power.  My congregant's little "daily verse of Scripture" email had sent him I Cor. 15:20:  "But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep."  His question basically was "What the h&*# does that mean?"

An excellent quandary.  It took a good bit of explaining for me to try to get across what I think Paul was saying.  Essentially, he had a totally different vision of what life after death looks like than contemporary culture espouses.  If you are a Christian, by and large, you have been taught that after you die, you will enter immediately into some kind of immortal afterlife.  Now, depending on the flavor of your Christianity, there may be judgment involved, and there may be one of two places that your soul goes.  I'm not getting into that whole experience here today.  I think Paul had a different timeline than our common Christian culture teaches now.  He thought that no one would experience judgment or be sorted into their various eternal soul resting-places until Christ returned in final victory, at the end of time.  Therefore, there had to be a kind of "soulsleep," an intermediate resting-place between death now and resurrection then.  This is why he said Christ was the "firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" - Jesus was the first one who awoke from his sleep and experienced resurrection.  Zombie movie anyone?

The clash between Paul's vision of soulsleep and the eventual afterlife and the more common mainstream Christian interpretation represents part of the problem about relying solely on Scripture to back a theological argument:  you can find passages to support just about anything.

Where this hits home for me is in thinking about the reunion we often envision with loved ones who have died before us.  I think of my mother, and how much I want to hug her when I meet her again.  What if that won't happen until a general resurrection and the return of Christ?  Will I even be able to tell time in soulsleep?  Do I think Paul was full of it, as I sometimes do on certain of his doctrines?  I do believe that God loves a thoughtful believer . . . so what do you think?