Good Friday parable

“Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered Him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”
Isaiah 53:4-6

The wolf saw the bear before the hunter did. In fact, the hunter didn’t see the bear at all. The hunter was not a great friend of the wolf, but the bear was an enemy of both. The wolf saw, from his place on an outcrop of rock, that the bear was making straight for the hunter, but that it had to cross the wolf’s path to get to the man, who was underdressed in a ball cap, jeans sweater and leather gloves.

The wolf knew the bear would make short work of the man, who was busy at something in the middle of a clearing, paying no attention to his surroundings. The wolf had a decision to make: stay uninvolved and let nature take its course, as it were, or enter a fight that was not his own for the sake of a weaker animal, with the potential of serious harm to himself. For although he would have the surprise factor on the bear, and a superior position, a fight with a bear rarely leaves a wolf unscathed.

The bear was building up steam, sniffing the air, puffing out great clouds of cold air when the wolf was suddenly upon him. The bear was so startled that it had no time to roar, because the wolf was immediately at its throat, and had him down on the ground. The bear reached for the wolf, but its claws hit nothing but air as it struggled against the darkness. The wolf and the bear lay still for awhile, and just as the wolf thought he was out of danger, the bear’s back claws reached the wolf’s hide and ripped. The wolf yelped with pain, but held the bear’s neck fast, getting a new and better grip, and held on until the great bear was lifeless.

The wolf struggled along the path, and made his way over to the man, to assure him that the danger was past. He saw the man on the other side of the clearing, startled at the wolf’s presence, but suddenly pleased. The man crouched down, in supplication, summoning the wolf with a wave of his hand. Here was a new thing, the wolf thought, a man and a wolf, friends at last. He made his way across the clearing, but as he took a step in the center, two metal jaws clamped around his paw.

The pain was incredible, and he knew three things at once – 1) his paw was useless; 2) his life as king of the woods was over; and 3) the man had done this to him.

The man watched the wolf walk in circles for awhile, watching the snow around the trap gradually get pinker and pinker with the wolf’s blood. The man got bored watching the wolf dying after awhile, and then got busy setting something on a tree stump near the edge of the clearing. He took his gloves off to touch some buttons, and finally he was ready. The wolf, tongue lolling out of his mouth, near death, walking in circles relentlessly, looked up just as the self-timer on the man’s camera went off.

"Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."

A few moments later, after suffering at the hands of the one he saved, the wolf died in the pink snow.

(Just so I'm not misunderstood - this is a real photo taken by the hunter pictured here. I came up with the parable when I saw it, and imagined what might have occurred beforehand. Obviously, a wolf is not going to take on a bear, so I'm applying for a poetic license here.

Regardless, this picture's posting sparked an outrage, which you can read about here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/04/05/2064017/idaho-wolf-trappers-smiling-photo.html)

He loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah

Holy week. The perfect time to talk about the Beatles.
No, this is not about how god-like the Fab Four are, nor is it to dredge up that Lennon quote about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus (he was right, by the way), nor is it to scoff at the potential Beatl-ettes group. The reason I'm coming to you with news of the Beatles is because of my obsession for metaphors.
This obsession is well-known in my family, who, when I get that certain comparative look in my eye, will interrupt exasperatedly and often simultaneously with: "Yes, we understand it, so we don't need to know what else it's like."
But I was listening to the Beatles this week, as part of my life-list quest to finish 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. Three things happened.
1) I regret my early life hipster stance against all things Beatles. When I was first becoming a music snob, I obviously eschewed anyone or anything that was the least bit popular. And since they were the most popular band of all time, I necessarily sniffed my disapproval. Well, they are the most popular band of all time for a reason, and listening to Hard Day's Night, Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, The White Album, and Abbey Road straight through humbled me. They really are the greatest band of all time.
2) I started a Facebook conversation asking Beatles fans in which three songs the Boys used the word "sin". It's at 38 comments and counting. Winners were Phil Van Munching and Mike Volt Rusticana for getting "You Can't Do That" (Hard Day's Night) and "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" (White Album) No one got "Love You To" from Revolver. Runners up included Virginia, Pete and Lori for earnest tries and Penny for most amusing exchange: [Mike - "No Penny, you can't do that...." (correctly answering the question) Penny - "I can't do what?"]
3) I thought of a metaphor! It happened as I was listening to Sgt. Pepper on my iPhone and one of my ear buds came out. I was listening to "When I'm 64" at the time, and suddenly, I was only hearing the music, and not the words. I realized it would not be safe to put the ear bud back in my right ear, so I continued listening to the rest of the song with only the left ear bud in. To my amazement, the cool Lennon song about growing old together (with Yoko?) became a kind of clarinet-y, circus-y bit of weirdness featuring bells and toy piano. A person who  hear only half of this song would expect a bear in a tutu to suddenly appear.
This became a metaphor for a) our lives without God, b) the Law without the Gospel (!) c) the life of a Christian without church d) Snickers without peanuts. We could go our whole lives of knowing only a) ourselves, b) a brutal, damning law c) the facts of Christianity d) chocolate and caramel and not even know there was anything more to life. But when we strap that other ear bud on, oh what beautiful music is made! We now see the way the song was meant to be heard; the universe explained; the Scripture to be read; the life of a Christian to be lived; the candy bar eaten.
It's almost like living life without metaphors.

Original Sin

Today’s blog is in response to an assignment I have for seminary on original sin, in which I am to respond to the following statement: 

“It just doesn’t seem fair for God to hold us responsible for Adam’s sin.”

My response would be an unqualified, “So?” and if pressed, “Life’s not fair.”

After picking myself up off the ground (for my interlocutor is the size and strength of Pastor Brian, but less Lutheran and more violent), I would ask my new friend to further explain her question. I imagine our dialogue would go something like this:

She: You Lutherans are always going on about the freedom of the will, and that we are saved by grace, but if this isn't Calvinistic pre-determinism, I don’t know what is. You’re saying, with the doctrine of original sin, that innocent babies are born having no choice but to sin, that we are condemned from the outset by our ‘loving God,’ and that we can’t do anything about it?

Me: Yes and no. We are conceived in sin, and there is an indelible mark against us called “sinful nature.” That is why, if you listen carefully on Sunday, that the pastor forgives you of all your sins – the sins of thought, word and deed – but not of your “sinful condition.” Those sins that you commit – the actual sins – are the misdeeds that you confess each week, the ones committed by you. But we can never escape our sinful condition; not by ourselves anyway. So is there something you can do about your actual sins? Of course – you can commit to loving your neighbor and doing all the things a follower of Jesus would do. There is nothing you can do about your original sin (which is not, to quote Eddie Izzard, poking a badger with a spoon, though that definitely is original.

She: But that’s not fair.

Me: Tell that to the child born with AIDS, or leukemia, or crack babies, or children with the proclivity towards alcoholism, or other forms of instant gratification. It’s not fair. And who do we blame for their condition?

She: In the case of some of those conditions, their parents.

Me: And what did they do?

She: They drank or smoked crack while pregnant, or slept with someone who had AIDS.

Me: So you’re saying that the blame lies with the parents.

She: Yes.

Me: Me too.

She: Wait.

Me: No, you’re right. Those children inherited their disease from their parents. We inherited sinfulness from our parents. And lest you go laying all the blame on Adam and Eve, if it hadn’t been them, it would have been Cain. And if Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel would have somehow been able to live a perfect life, someone along the way would have started the stain that became original sin. My choice would be Lamech (Gen. 4:23)

She: But why is this important?

Me: It’s foundational to our belief, because we do not believe that people are inherently good; and think of the shift in our educational, psychological, political and sociological policies if we operated under that supposition. You don’t have to look any further than the recent housing crisis to conclude that it arose from our sinful nature, of wanting something for nothing.

She: I think I’m almost there, but could you give me a metaphor from Bo Giertz?

Me: I’m happy you asked. Bo asked us to picture sin and our sinful nature as a Norwegian bachelor farmer clearing his farmland. Some of his sins are like grapefruit sized rocks evident from the surface that he can easily toss away. One sweep of the ground, rocks in the bin, a good days’ work. As he starts to plow the field, however, he runs into some bigger rocks below the surface. So he spends a week unearthing those sins that are not quite evident from a surface examination. He works hard, and excises all of the bigger rocks. Satisfied with his work, he sets about plowing his field once again, and discovers a sin the size of a boulder. Realizing he cannot by his own strength get rid of that boulder, he calls his friends and neighbors and together they first set about breaking the boulder into smaller pieces, until he can haul them away. This takes the better part of a month, and he and his neighbors are satisfied that he is free and clear to live a righteous life; i.e. plant his crops.

The funny thing is, though, that while he was standing in the bottom of the hole they took the boulder out of, he discovered that there was something hard underneath the ground. Thinking it was another boulder, he quietly tapped-tapped it. It was bigger than a rock, bigger than a bigger rock, bigger than even a boulder. In fact, the more he cleared the dirt away, day after day, he realized that it was not a rock at all, but a foundation of granite that lay underneath his entire land. And upon this discovery, he was humbled, and then rejoiced, because he realized that he had plenty of good, fertile land to upon which to grow his crops; and yet there was this underlying hardness which he could never get rid of.

That granite is our sinful nature, upon which we can live as righteous followers of Jesus, but never escape completely.

She: Thank you, Lutheran man o’ God!

Me: You’re welcome.