The Best Place to Store Health

Usually my entry titles are a reference to a (more or less) universally known geeky reference.  But today I'm quoting an old gaming companion from college.  We were playing Dungeons & Dragons together, and one of the other players was trying to decide if it was more wise to keep a healing potion for a later emergency, or to consume it right then and there to bring themselves up to full health.  And he said, "The best place to store health is inside of your body."

And he was probably right.  I know that when lost hikers are found dead of thirst, they are frequently found with water still in their canteens because they elected to ration their water rather than drink it.  It would have been better to store it in their bodies, for sure!

One thing a good D&D adventure and real life hiking have in common is that you never know when something might go wrong--so it is best to be prepared.  That's really what the discussion around the healing potion had to do with--how shall I best be prepared?  With a potion in hand or with full health in my body?

Jesus once told a story about being prepared--ok, actually, he told several--but the one I'm thinking of has to do with a wedding.


Now, I have to admit that we don’t have all of the details, but most scholars believe that in those days and in that place, weddings were even bigger events than anything you’ve seen on “Bridezillas.”  

For one thing, there was a pretty lengthy amount of negotiations beforehand.  Not between the bride and the groom, as we would expect today, but between their families.

It seems quite a bit backward at best and misogynistic at worst today, but the families had to agree to the bride-price--the amount of money or property paid by the groom or his family to the family of the bride upon their marriage.  There seem to be several possible reasons for this arrangement--the money could be to compensate the family for the loss of their daughter’s labor.  Or it could be to care for her should her husband die or get a divorce and return to her family of origin.  Or it could simply be an incentive for the husband to not divorce her in the first place!

In any case, once all the haggling and legalities between the families are settled, you have to go and fetch the bride and the groom and celebrate.  For days!  So the image of the bridesmaids all sitting around and waiting for an indeterminate amount of time and eventually dozing off with their lamps still burning would have been a familiar one to Jesus’s audience.

And in his story, Jesus tells us that some of the bridesmaids were well-prepared and had brought extra oil with them.  And so when word came to them that the bride and the groom were on their way, they refilled their lamps and were in good shape.  But others found their lamps going out and had no oil with them.  Those bridesmaids ran off to buy more--which is really foolish, since it was the middle of the night--and got locked out of the wedding.

You have to be prepared for the arrival of "The Kingdom of Heaven," Jesus is telling us, "for you know neither the day nor the hour."

So what is the oil?  Or the healing potion if you prefer?  What do you need to have with you to be prepared at any moment for the Kingdom to arrive?

Well, I believe that it's love.  Over and over again Jesus taught us that it's what in our heart that matters. That it's how we treat each other that matters.  That if we want to follow the Law and the words of the Prophets that we have to do three simple (but difficult!) things:

Love God

Love Neighbor

Love Self

That's why I beseech you every week to...

Be good to each other,
Rev. Josh
031015

This week I worked with a text that belonged in November according to the Revised Common Lectionary because I'll be preaching over it at a church that uses a narrative lectionary instead.  The Spirit must be moving, however, as I somehow neglected to write a blog entry for that Sunday!


Matthew 25:1-13

[Jesus said:] "Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this.  Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.  Five of them were foolish, and five were wise.  When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.  As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept.  But at midnight there was a shout, 'Look! Here is the bridegroom!  Come out to meet him.'  Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps.  The foolish said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.'  But the wise replied, 'No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.'  And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut.  Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, 'Lord, lord, open to us.'  But he replied, 'Truly I tell you, I do not know you.'  Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour."

What's Your THAC0?

As much as I love the Psalms in general, and Psalm 19 in particular, I have to admit that part of me cringes a little when I get to verse 7:

The law of the Lord is perfect,
   reviving the soul;
the decrees of the Lord are sure,
   making wise the simple;

Not because I don't believe in God's law or it's perfection.  But because I can almost feel my unchurched brothers and sisters rolling their eyes and thinking, "Here we go again."

Because I'm embarrassed that my Christian brothers and sisters are so willing to tell each other that their understanding of God's law is the only legitimate Christian interpretation.

Because, quite frankly, I've seen God's law used as a weapon too many times.

Too many by far.

And this is one of those places where I'm tempted to uplift geeks.  To point out that when the rest of society looks down on the things we love, we band together and love them anyway.  To point out that because we know what it's like to be ostracized we're more likely to play nice than the cool kids.

But it's Lent, a time of introspection, and in my heart of hearts I know the truth—we can be just as horrible as anyone else.  We just have different triggers.

Take Dungeons & Dragons.  Folk who experienced 1st or 2nd Edition AD&D as their first experience of the game remember THAC0 (To Hit Armor Class 0).  In all honesty, I first learned to play with THAC0 and I found it to be more complicated than strictly necessary.  I'm not a number-cruncher kind of geek.  I'm more of a reading a paperback novel while I wait for my food to come in the restaurant kind of geek.  Yes, I was that kid.

Yes, I did.

In any case, I remember struggling to wrap my mind around THAC0 at first.  I remember the atmosphere in the group as my struggles slowed down the game, and how I feared that I would be deemed not smart enough to play.  And I remember how proud of myself I was when I finally got it.

At it's best, THAC0 was an initiation—a secret handshake you had to learn to be part of the group.

At worst it was a weapon to make people feel stupid.

Personally, I wasn't sad to see THAC0 go, it made it easier for me to pull people into one of my favorite pass-times.  And my saying that can still trigger a rather lively debate among certain groups of people!

(By the way, you can find the t-shirt here.)

I was going to use Macs vs. PCs as another example, but I really don't need to say anything more than that, do I?  Both kinds of machines have their advantages and disadvantages and in the end it's a matter of personal preference.

And yet people will still go out of their way to shame each other over their choice in the matter.

And so I find myself believing that both Christianity and geekdom have something to learn from Psalm 19.

If you're wielding THAC0 like a Vorpal Sword, you're doing it wrong.

If you're shaming someone for the brand of computer they have, you're doing it wrong.

If you're using God's Law to tear down your neighbor you are doing it wrong.

God's Law is supposed to be a beautiful thing.  Using it like a club makes it ugly.

It's supposed to be as great and awe-inspiring as the cosmos.  Claiming that you have the one and only true understanding of it diminishes it.

God's Law is pure.

It revives your soul and makes your heart rejoice.

If you use it with a heart full of hate, then what is the point?

In this geek's opinion, God's Law is just this simple:

Be good to each other,
Rev. Josh
030315

The Temple of Nerull

I think that one of the keys to my geek theology is a sense of conversation:  Christianity may have some things to say to geek culture, but geek culture also has some things to say to Christianity.

I try to uplift the fun positive things that they say to each other as well as the challenging things.  And if I'm honest with myself, I've been thinking about what I'm doing in that duality—the uplifting & the challenging.  Or to put it in church language, the pastoral and the prophetic.

The geek perspective on Isaiah 40:3-5 feels like it's on the challenging / prophetic side.

A voice cries out:

‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,

   make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 

Every valley shall be lifted up,

   and every mountain and hill be made low;

the uneven ground shall become level,

   and the rough places a plain. 

Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,

   and all people shall see it together,

   for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’ 

As a geek, when I read that I can't help but think of a stereotypical Dungeons & Dragons campaign.  The kind that starts with one psychotic death-worshiping cultist in the background, spouting rhetoric from a street corner and ends with the band of intrepid heroes making an all-out assault on their evil subterranean temple.

And it makes me wonder—is that how people see Christians like me?  Is that the prophetic word that geekdom has for Christians?  That ours is a hollow rhetoric barely masking a greater evil?

It's not that great a stretch, I suppose.  One need only look to the Branch Davidians or Heaven's Gate to see where Messianic expectations start looking like barely disguised evil.

There is a prophetic word here for Christianity, but believe it or not, I think that the message is that we've failed at evangelism.

No, really.

I know that the word "Evangelical" has come to be synonymous with a brand of Christianity that's particularly concerned with your salvation.  Which, if we're all honest with ourselves, comes off as simply judgmental to a large portion of the population.  And if judgmental at best and barely disguised evil at worst is the message Christianity is bringing across then we've failed.  Miserably.

Because the message Isaiah is brining us here, is one of hope.  He's speaking to a trampled, ostracized, conquered people.  I started off giving you just Isaiah 40:3-5 to make a point, but a more natural place to start might be with the beginning of the chapter:

Comfort, O comfort my people,
   says your God. 
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
   and cry to her
that she has served her term,
   that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
   double for all her sins. 

A voice cries out:
‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord...

The idea that the Lord is coming isn't supposed to be about judgement in this case—it's more like last week's urge, need for someone to come and fix our broken world.  It's actually a promise that the Lord will come and that when it happens that trampled, ostracized, conquered people will be restored.

Centuries later, when that same people were trampled and conquered by the Romans and kept underfoot with the collusion of their own secular and religious authorities, a man named John came walking up out of the wilderness.  He was a wild man, very much like a street-corner preacher in a sandwich board, with one key difference.

People were listening.

We're talking about a time and a place where a trampled and conquered people yearned, no needed, the Lord to come and save them.  And so people were looking at John and wondering if he was the one who would save them.  Some were even saying that John was actually the prophet, Elijah, resurrected and come to save them from the Romans.

John was clearly a threat.

And so the authorities came and asked John directly, "Who do you think you are?"

And John said, "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness."  If poetry is saying the most you can with the fewest words, John was definitely a poet.  With that one sentence John managed to say two important things.  "I don't claim to be the Messiah who will come to overthrow the Romans," is the first thing.  The second thing is, "But He is coming.  You can count on that."

Yeah, that's right.  John was kind of awesome.  He said what was in his heart, despite the fact that it might make him dangerously unpopular in certain circles.  And you know what?  There's a word for someone who loves something against judgement.  So I'm gonna go ahead and say it:  John was kind of a geek.

More than that, though, the fact that the heart of what it means to be a geek has to do with rejection means that we have a unique ability to know what it's like to feel trampled and conquered.

And so, for me, this message of hope is especially powerful.

And that's why, if the rest of geek culture hasn't received the same message, I say that Christians like me have failed.

Be good to each other,
Rev. Josh
120214

The scripture lessons for December 7th—Second Sunday in Advent Year B—are:
Isaiah 40:1-11—Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13—2 Peter 3:8-15a—Mark 1:1-8