Sworn to Protect a World...

This Sunday marks the beginning of the Christian year—the beginning of Advent.  For some people, it marks the beginning of the Christmas Season.  For others, that began the moment Santa Clause rode his float down 6th Avenue.  Or is when he makes the turn onto West 24th?  You get the point though—in many families you don't even consider putting out the Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving.  Of course, with advertisements for Black Friday sales and the way seasonal sections of grocery and department stores work, we've been seeing Christmas creeping in for months already.

For the record, when it comes to the church year, Advent and Christmas are not the same thing.  The Christmas Season actually begins on Christmas Day and runs up until Epiphany on January 6th.  For those of you counting, yes, that's 12 days!

So...  if Advent isn't all about "Away In A Manger" and "Go Tell It On The Mountain," what is it about?

Advent is more like, "Come, oh come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here..."  Advent is all about seeing all the stuff that's wrong with the world and yearning—no, needing—for someone to fix it.

Advent is like the words of the prophet Isaiah, speaking directly to God:

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
   so that the mountains would quake at your presence —
as when fire kindles brushwood
   and the fire causes water to boil —
to make your name known to your adversaries,
   so that the nations might tremble at your presence!

This is a familiar theme for geeks.  An oppressive monarch.  An evil empire.  A downtrodden people eager for a hero to come and save them—it's the starting point for nearly every hero journey I can think of, from the Chronicles of Narnia, to The Lord of the Rings, to Star Wars...  In fact, it's so familiar that it's tempting to blow right past it as I consider those words from Isaiah.

Because I don't know about you, but while I resonate strongly with the great desire for the ills of the world to be rectified when I read those words from Isaiah I find myself...  hesitant.  I mean, do we really want God to tear open the heavens, make landfall, and hit the ground running?

The truth is that just a fraction of that kind of power freaks the average human being out.  The Marvel Universe has always had a handle on this:  Spider-Man is a menace.  The Mutant Registration Act.  The whole Civil War storyline.  Superheroes have amazing powers that they use to save the world—and the world is terrified.

Sometimes that fear is legit (can you say Onslaught, boys and girls?), but more frequently it's unfounded.  Your friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man feels his great responsibility.  The X-Men protect a world that hates and fears them.

And then, sometimes, the fear is less about danger and more about disrupting the status quo.  The gut-instinct fear reaction to the existence of girls who can walk through walls is less about protecting yourself than it is about protecting your stuff.  And it's less about protecting your stuff than it is about your mind balking at how her existence changes everything.  Never mind that she's a person, right?  Her parents are Carmen and Theresa.  She's Jewish and her grandfather Samuel was held in a Nazi concentration camp.  She has a name, Katherine Ann Pryde.

But most people call her "Kitty."

The point I'm trying to make is that we seem to be all to willing to cry out "help me!" as long as the people who answer the call are just like us.  We're all too willing to ask God to tear open the heavens and come down to earth until Jesus turns the tables on us—literally and figuratively.

The point I'm trying to make is that if we want to the world to change, we can't let that fear stop us.

Be good to each other,
Rev. Josh
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The scripture lessons for November 30th—First Sunday in Advent Year B—are:
Isaiah 64:1-9—Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19—1 Corinthians 1:3-9—Mark 13:24-37

But I am the Chosen One!

In an earlier post a made a quick reference to Harry Potter, "...that kid forced to live in the closet under the stairs by his wicked aunt and uncle after the horrific murder of his parents who turns out to be The Boy Who Lived, The Chosen One..." and made an even quicker reference to something that is at the heart of what it is to be a geek—namely being ostracized and rejected.  I think maybe that's one of the appeals of one of the stereotypical hero journeys, the kind where the little guy, the underdog, the powerless one forced to the margins of society turns out to be the one who's actually important.  In other words, we geeks can instantly relate to Harry being whaled on by Dudley Dursley and we all—well, I was going to say we all secretly wish for an owl to deliver us an invitation attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but I think most of us are actually out in the open on that one.  That's the other piece of being a geek—openly loving things that might get us pushed to the margins ourselves.

Jesus tells a story about the end of days, when we shall all be judged and separated out into two groups—the in crowd and the outsiders.  Only he used the metaphor of sheep and goats.  Of course, that's probably because he was talking to people in First Century Palestine.  But you get the point.  They guy in charge, a character Jesus calls "The Son of Man" comes to earth and separates us all out into two groups.  One group will be "in" and the other "out."  So the most important part of the story is learning what the measuring stick is that will decide whether you're in or out.

And in the story, the measuring stick is how the people treated the Son of Man during their lives.  The people who fed the Son of Man when he was hungry, gave him something to drink when he was thirsty, welcomed him when he was a stranger, clothed him when he was naked, took care of him when he was sick, and visited him in prison get to be part of the in crowd.  Everyone who refused to do those things is tossed out in the cold and dark.

Which all makes sense.  Except that both the "in" folk and the "out" folk are thoroughly confused.  "When did we do that?"  So the Son of Man explains, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me."

Do you see what Jesus is doing there?  He's taking the marginalized people—the little guy, the underdog, the powerless ones—and he's saying that they are the most important!  It feels pretty good, doesn't it?  After all, who doesn't like Harry Potter?  Who doesn't want to be the Chosen One?

But here's the thing:  as is frequently the case, this story carries both hope and a challenge.  It's pretty easy to see the challenge that this story has for the privileged upper classes who's mantra of "I worked hard for this!" not only keeps them from feeding the hungry and taking care of the sick but also subtly implies that the sick and the hungry simply aren't working hard enough.  But there's a challenge here for the marginalized—and yes, I'm looking at us, fellow geeks.

You see, in my experience groups of marginalized people have a tendency to get hyper-focused on their own oppression.  The gay and lesbian community sometimes gets so caught up in their own struggles that they fail to support the struggles of trans folk—let alone other kinds of genderqueer people, for example.  Some furry communities get so marginalized that they become completely xenophobic, for another.

So the challenge for geeks (and the queer community and furries and whomever) in this story from Jesus is to recognize the Son of Man in each other, not just their own people.

What it comes down to is simply what I tell you every week.

Be good to each other,
Rev. Josh
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The scripture lessons for November 23rd—Thirty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A—are:
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24—Psalm 100—Ephesians 1:15-23—Matthew 25:31-46

For another blog entry that relates well to Matthew 25:31-46, click here!

Talent Tree

It has been a long hard road to get here—and I recognize that my journey is far from over—but the house is finally sold.  Our things have been successfully stored, no thanks to Merlin, by the way.  I finally have some time to spare for blogging again, so here we go!

I've been pondering the Parable of the Talents, and even I am almost surprised at how well it can be framed in geeky language.  If you're a language geek, you might be interested in the etymology of the word, "talent."  Originally, the word referred to a unit of money, so when Jesus begins a story with the setup, "...a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability," what he's talking about is silver.  In fact, when Jesus was speaking a talent of silver was about 130 pounds.  Can you imagine the kind of wealth the man in the story was tossing around?  A hundred and thirty, two hundred and sixty, six hundred and fifty pounds of silver!!  In any case, it was the parable of the talents—and its most common interpretation—that changed the meaning of the word "talent" from a unit of measurement to today's meaning of a natural ability or aptitude.  How cool is that?

The other thing that immediately popped into my head, of course, was the rpg version of "talents."  Those special, heroic abilities that you earn for your character through gameplay.  A new talent is a goal worth working for when you're gaming.  And for a good gamer, choosing a new talent is usually a carefully considered process.

That's when it hit me that the Parable of the Talents could be retold in gamer terms:

When the word ends and we have to answer for the way we've lived our lives, it'll be kind of like the end of a tabletop gaming session.  The GM decided to give out new Talents based on the quality of the RP and the combat skill of each of the players.  The GM gave the Rogue five talents, the Warrior received two, and the Mage received one.

And then the players all went home until it was time for the next week's session.

And the GM asked each of the players in turn what they decided to do with their talents?  The Rogue had done of a lot research, not only into how each Rogue talent interacts with each other, but also into how they might interact with each of the other party members.  The result was beautiful example of min-maxing for the sake of the party.  The Warrior decided to focus on her own damage output, linking together her Talents in a clever way that would allow her to solo foes greater than her level.  But the Mage hadn't chosen a new talent.  He was afraid of choosing the wrong one and came to the table unprepared.  And the GM was ticked and took away the Mage's one Talent and gave it to the Rogue.  "You can't play tonight.  Go home."

 The Parable of the Talents, you see, is kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The Mage would have been better off picking anything rather than coming to the table empty-handed.  But he was so afraid of making the GM angry by picking the wrong thing that he did nothing.  And that made the GM more angry than anything else could have!  It's better to be prepared poorly than completely unprepared.

What does it mean to be prepared though?  What Talents should we chose?  I believe that we can never go wrong choosing those Talents that align with the Rule of Love. Or put another way...

Be good to each other,
Rev. Josh
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The scripture lessons for November 16th—Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A—are:
Judges 4:1-7—Psalm 123—1 Thessalonians 5:1-11—Matthew 25:14-30