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

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
112514

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