This Advent, I'm Not Waiting for Peace: Isaiah 40:1

At this point in the Advent season, tradition emphasizes people waiting for the peace associated with the coming of Christ. As I at least hinted at last week, I believe the real impact of Advent is not waiting for Christ, but embodying the return of Emanuel. When I sing, "O Come, o come Emanuel," I am not singing for a human to come out of the clouds, as if I believed heaven were literally above the sky. Rather, I am singing for God to be born in me, that I might be pregnant with God's transformative love and power. The second coming of Christ is not a one time event to happen in the future. This parousia is a continual event. Like the first advent, this advent consists of Christ being born in humans. But this time, unlike the first, it can happen in all of us, not just in Mary.

In light of this understanding of Advent, I don't wait for peace.

"Comfort, O comfort my people," says your God.
"Speak kindly to Jerusalem;
And clal out to her, that her warfare has ended,
That her iniquity has been removed,
That she has received of the LORD's hand
Double for all her sins"
A voice is calling, "Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness;
Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
Let every valley be lifted up,
And every mountain and hill be made low;
And let the rough ground become a plain,
And the rugged terrain a broad valley;
Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
And all flesh will see it together;
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken." (Isaiah 40:1-5)

I am not waiting for peace, because I am making it.

In an attempt to mimic the Hebrew words, Isaiah 40:1 has become hard to understand in English. In the Hebrew, the verb is in a tense known for intensity (Piel). The intensity increases when the word is repeated, not something we do in English. In verse 1, God really wants comforting to happen, given the verb tense.

Apparently comforting is really needed. In v.2, we find out why: "[Jerusalem] has received [...] double for all her sins." Generally one dose of retribution is bad enough, let alone two. For this sort of comforting, generally you expect divine action. The Bible is full of God promising to make up for any sort of suffering of the Israelites, even when it is deserved.

But in this instance, God tells someone else to be the one doing the comforting. Actually, God is telling a group of someones to be comforting; the imperative "comfort" is plural in Hebrew, a construction we don't have in English.

To whom is God talking in the mind of Isaiah the author?

I don't care.

Let's remember that Isaiah or Deutero-Isaiah and Tertiary-Isaiah understood the world like people understood the world before the common era (BC/E). You know, back when it would have been acceptable to think evil existed below us, in the center of the earth.

I don't care who Isaiah thought God was talking to, because God can only be telling us, in reality. A few truths from Isaiah 40:15 are: (A) people need comforting and (B) God wants those people comforted. Who is going to do that comforting? Us, the people of God.

It is no wonder that Isaiah 40:1 echoes the common construction of "your God" and "my people" from "I will be your God and you will be my people." The two concepts are inseparable. If God's people are to be comforted, then God will do it through God's people. It isn't just the concepts that are inseparable. God and God's people are inseparable. God exists in God's people.

"I will be your God and you will be my people." Today's Christianity knows this concept better in the idea of "the body." The Church is the body of Christ. They are one and the same. Inseparable. Interdependent.

Don't wait for the advent of God's peace. Be God's peace. People, let it be born in you.

My Advent Hope & Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go"

Today I finished Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. The book is a story of recollections from a girl who was raised for the sole purpose of donating her organs as an adult, donations resulting in her death. She and a number of other clones were raised at a unique boarding school that treated the clones similarly to normal children with a liberal arts education.

Their school, Hailsham, was unique because most other clones were treated as commodities, not people. Near the end, the characters weigh whether or not it was good for them to be taught to believe in their humanity or if they should be treated like the commodity they end up being.

One character asks, "Why Hailsham?" Why be taught to create art, to appreciate art, to be more than simply healthy, but also to enjoy life when, in the end, you are not seen or treated as fully human. Why Hailsham if you're going to be ignored and die in the end?

"Why Hailsham?" is a question from everyman and -woman when "Hailsham" is understood to be the home (-ham) from which one hails. Now the question is not only by and for the characters in the book, but also for us. Why life? Why are we raised to seek pleasure and think our lives are significant when we die at the end and donate our organs--and the rest of our bodies--to the cycle of existence?

Side by side with this question about the meaning and enjoyment of life, we are presented with the questions about another's quality life, about the Other's quality of life. What a natural progression: when pondering the meaning of one's own life, you are pondering life in general. If your life has meaning and deserves enjoyment, then the lives of others have meaning and deserve enjoyment.

"Never Let Me Go" left me with conviction. I act as if my life is meaningful, yet my life stands on the shoulders of suffering based on systemic issues about which I cannot change by myself or in a timely fashion.

Yet, today is the first Sunday of Advent, a time for hope, specifically hope for the coming of Christ. The church I attended this morning lit a candle for awareness instead of for hope. How appropriate for Never Let Me Go. In the novel, the main characters become more aware of their status in regards to the rest of the society and the more aware they become of themselves and the world. This awareness raises more questions than anything. The elevation of awareness gives rise to the need for hope--hope for meaning and hope for a better tomorrow.

By "a better tomorrow," I mean a tomorrow in which all life that is meaningful has the opportunity to enjoy life. Hope for fair trade practices, philanthropy, love of neighbor and equality regardless of your race, religion, gender expression, sexuality, nationality, or ethnicity. Hope that those who are hungry will receive bread and that those who have bread will be hungry for justice. Hope that the luxuries of life will not mean the suffering of those less fortunate. Hope that the poor will teach the rich lessons and, in turn, the rich will give the poor opportunities to turn their lives around.

And my hope is built on nothing less than Christ effecting that change. By "Christ" I mean God's transformative power--love. In this season of Advent, it is appropriate that my hope is for Christ's advent. However, my hope isn't a traditional Advent hope. I am not hoping for the second coming of Jesus. Rather, I am hoping for that same Christ we saw in Jesus to be in us. If humanity is to be the body of Christ, then the only hope for advent is that we embody Christ, that we embody the advent of Christ. Our hope is in a holy trinity: God, neighbor, and self.

I hope we will embody that Christ enough to turn the world upside down, like Jesus did before us.

Context: A False God

"Context" is one of the false gods of biblical studies, biblical studies referring not exclusively to what happens in the academy, but also in the church.

Context is especially praised at the level of translation. Just like in English, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Aramaic have words with many meanings. How do we determine which meaning to use in a given situation? Omniscient Context tells us.

The Ever-Blessed Context also receives much praise in hermeneutics (of which "translation" could be a subcategory, depending on how you look at it). Preachers and academics alike will tell you certain words, passages, and pericopes are misinterpreted, because they are taken out of Context's loving hands.

Take the Hebrew word dowd. It is translated "beloved" many times in the Song of Songs. Dowd is the same word used in describing how Esther and Mordecai know each other: she is the daughter of Mordecai's dowd, generally understood to be his uncle. How do we know that "dowd" refers to a lover in the Song of Songs and to an uncle in Esther and other places?

Thanks be to Context.

But Context isn't exactly clear here. Love in ancient Israel included a lot of relationships understood as taboo in current, US-American culture. Would it really have been that unheard of for Mordecai to have catamite or some other sort of male lover? Pederasty and homosexuality was not unheard of in ancient times and although Mordecai seems very traditionally Hebrew in this story, we cannot be sure how much he may have acclimated to Persian culture at this point in the exile.

But now I've gone outside of Context's realm. Context in translation is immediate context, not levitical laws, cultural mores, and, of course, the heterosexual bias of the majority of biblical translators and readers. By immediate context alone, we cannot translate the dowd of Esther or the Song of Songs definitively as uncle or lover.

However, Context is wider than just a single book. Although the Christian or Hebrew Bible is not immediate context for Esther--the book was written independently of any canon--it is an Israelite book and therefore has Israelite stories in its background, including levitical laws.

But levitical laws do not change the scandals that go on many places in the Bible. Sometimes God's decrees are neither obeyed nor condemned in the Bible. Famously, Hewbrew midwives in Egypt refused to obey Pharaoh when told to kill all baby boys born to Hebrew women. The midwives simply don't do it, but they concoct a story for Pharaoh. That is, they lie, breaking one of the Ten Commandments God later gives the Hebrew people. What is God's response to these lies? "So God was kind to the midwives" (Exodus 1:20). Mordecai could be a Sodomite and God might not care. Apparently God doesn't always care when you're a liar.

Where will Context lead us next? Or more precisely, where does Context end?

"Il n'y a pas de hors-texte."
--Jacques Derrida

There is nothing outside the text (or: there is no outside to the text). To state it positively: everything is context.

No matter how much we use the name of Context, it is in vain. If I argued well, you now see how Context (at least immediate context) cannot show us if Mordecai's relationship to Ahihail was lover or nephew. Neither do we know if the relationship in the Song of Songs is purely sexual or if it is sexual and familial. But we can still have more to consider in the name of Context, because we, too, are part of the Context.

The Hebrew scriptures did not "close" with the writing of the last book. Neither did it "close" with canonization. Interpretations came afterwards and people still cite how early Rabbis (famously, the Mishnah) and commentators understood those texts. They became part of the text the moment they read it, the moment they entered into it, learning it intimately, becoming dowd, both family and lover--becoming one.

Or, if you don't appreciate my blend of text- and reader-oriented theory, imagine, then, how some get from Context being the Hebrew scriptures to Context including the New Testament. Then how Context begins to include language: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English. For that matter, translation context includes many different versions of the texts we know as the individual books of the Bible. Finally, translation necessarily includes the translator as part of the context, because translation is interpretation. Then the subsequent interpreters have their own contexts that begin to swirl around in the amorphous context that influences the interpretations of other interpreters.

You may trust that God has aided translation to be accurate. Even so, you have again entered the context, because your interpretation includes your beliefs, what many hermeneuticians would prefer to call your "pretext." But, "il n'y a pas de hors-texte." It is all context.

You are context. I am context. Our histories, backgrounds, and cultures are context. Context is not omniscient in the sense that it knows all. However, perhaps Context is omniscient in the sense that it knows everything known, since everything is Context. We--everything--are the body of Context. When we die, we enter more completely (in the sense of being finished) into the relationship of the trinity of Context (author, text, and reader).

Perhaps Context isn't that false of a god after all, just not in the traditional understanding of a god.

Things To Do After The Rapture: Top 5 List

Did you hear Jesus might return to earth on Saturday? If he does, then my lack of belief in the calculability of any such date will likely result in my staying on this wonderful blue sphere we call earth. It is most likely way too late for me to change enough to get raptured, so I've compiled a quick list of things I might do if the rapture does occur on Saturday.

5. I'm already planning to visit my parents. While there, I will re-read the Left Behind series to figure out what I'm in for.

4. Re-read Revelation in the KJV. I didn't figure the rapture was going to happen in the first place, which is why I'm reading Left Behind first. This read through, I'll have a different perspective.

3. Get my two overtly religious tattoos covered up, just in case some sort of anti-Christ comes into power.

2. Move to a commune in the wilderness that grows their own, sustainable, organic food, but sneak in my iPod so I can listen to some cool tunes while gathering fire wood.

1. Thank God that the New Jerusalem really did descend to earth. I guess the rapture was God's way of getting rid of the crazies who think they can calculate a God-ordained apocalypse with a little bit of math and a Bible.

Lesson(s) From Divinity School: Love, God, and Self

Despite the various classes I've taken during my four and a half years in divinity school, I've only learned about three things: love, God, and self.

Love may have been the hardest lesson I've had to learn. And, let's face it, I'm still learning it. Many people make a fuss over how English speakers use the word "love," condemning much usage as flippant. I love my dog. I love justice. I love pizza. I love my friends. I love my parents. I love my partner. I love my neighbor. I love God.

In each of these situations, love is a little different. Nobody loves pizza the same way they love their partner, at least, I hope not. And nobody loves their pet the same way they love God. If I were giving a sermon, this would be the part where I talk about the different kinds of love in biblical Greek and you all groan, because you've heard that sermon numerous times before.

Since this isn't a sermon, I want to let you in on a secret. Ancient Greek doesn't have a word for love, let alone three or four words for it. Greek has four different concepts that we translate as love, which is very different from saying Greek has four different loves. Instead, Greek saw agape, philia, eros, and storge as four different emotions. English, however, sees them as one.

Love is bigger than any of the four Greek loves, because it captures the similarities between my love for pizza and my love for God. And what beautiful similarities they are. How spectacular that we can express and mix our love through actions like the Eucharist, where we love God and food. Through times when we are good samaritans, loving God and neighbor.

Loves mix well together. In fact, I dare say it is an essentialist perspective that heuristically delineates types of love, when it is all one thing. One thing with various permutations. Variations on a theme. Love of God is love of neighbor and love of creation and love of self.

"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. The one that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love."

And thus my lesson about love turned into a lesson about God.

"The one that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." This lesson just keeps getting more and more difficult. As it turns out, knowing God has less to do with the ellusive, illusory line between orthodoxy and heresy and more to do with love, with relationship. And according to 1 John 4, it isn't about loving God, about singing hymns and praise songs about and to God, about going to Sunday school, about evangelism, about listening to Christian speakers and Christian music, about going into church buildings.

It--knowing God--is about loving that which and those whom God loves, which will include church and songs and school for some of us. But individuals tend to express love differently, which is why I make more trips to the recycling center than to church, why I don't read my Bible daily, and why I would rather listen about another person's faith than convince them to think like me.

Well, that last one wasn't completely true, which is why this lesson hasn't completely taken root in my life just yet. There are a few people, OK, a lot of people from whom I have no desire to hear. I want them to think like me and shut their mouths. Or, even if they weren't to think like me, I desire them to think a lot less like they do now.

As some of you may now, the PC-USA denomination recently paved the way for individual presbyteries to ordain homosexuals. I started reading Albert Mohler's thoughts, but I stopped, because I have no clue how to love that man. Loving someone you don't know is always a tricky matter, anyways. I could always pull the ol' "love-the-sinnner-hate-the-sin" trick out of the bag, but that isn't love, that is just something we say to make us feel better about our judgment.

But I don't always know how to love without judgment, no matter how much I praise love and deride judgment. In the face of my advocacy, in the center of my pursuit of God, love, equality, and social justice, I'm a judger. The person I want to be and the person I think I am is deconstructed by the person I am, my ego-ideal deconstructs my ideal-ego.

And thus my lesson about God has turned into a bit of navel-gazing, which isn't surprising to me anymore. When I search myself, I end up seeing and seeking God. When I look for God, my theology turns introspection. Maybe I'm a little ADD or maybe God carries the scars of humanity just as much as humanity carries the image of God.

1 Corinthians left us with faith, hope, and love. I leave you with Love, God, and Self. I'm not sure which is the greatest, because this trinity of lessons exist separately in my mind and in language, but they bleed into each other so much in reality that I cannot separate them systematically, not even enough to create a hierarchy. Perhaps they aren't all that different in the panentheistic interconnectivity that is our existence.

Things God Hates: Top 5 List

While thinking about the Westboro Baptist Church tonight, I thought it might be fun to think of things God hates. N.B.: This list will not include homosexuals.

1. God hates signs.
I'm thinking church signs that have cheesy messages, offensive messages, or messages with errors. I'm also thinking of political signs, especially ones promoting a candidate for office or ones with the phrase "God Bless America." They're ugly and they don't make a difference. Although, I wonder how God would feel about an ironic sign touting the phrase, "God hates signs."

2. God hates Esau.
If your name is Esau, you better hope you ain't that Esau. Malachi 1:3.

3. God hates tracts.
Well, this one isn't completely true. I doubt God hates anyone's digestive or urinary tract. However, I cannot imagine God loves people using natural resources to publish and pass out some of the worst evangelistic tools known to existence. Tracts are going to "lead people to Jesus" as much as saying things like "Love the sinner, hate the sin," the "do you know where you'll go if you die tonight?" question, and, of course, carrying signs with the words "God hates fags" on them.

4. God hates being referred to as a man.
I doubt God minds it when you refer to Jesus as a man, since he had (has?) a penis. However, most theologians will agree that God has neither penis nor testicle, neither functioning mammary glands nor vulva. God is not a man and I imagine God is pretty tired of people refusing to overthrow patriarchal language. "I think it sounds more personal when I use gendered language." Well, buck-o, why don't you cry God a river. And while you're at it, get a mop and clean up that river of tears, you baby, because it is the twenty-first century and women are still being oppressed, and badly. Language helps correct mistakes in our actions. That is, language can help prevent people from sinning. So watch your mouth, buddy. But don't worry, when it comes to using masculine pronouns, God loves the sinner, not the sin.

5. God doesn't hate people who don't reduce, reuse, and recycle, but she probably wishes those people would start thinking about the environment more.
For example, if you are going to post a sign on your front lawn stating all of your reasoning for why someone should be elected president, viz., their name, consider re-using materials to make this sign, viz., your sign from the last election when said candidate wasn't elected, most likely because you didn't put up enough signs. You can now make your sign in three easy steps: 1) Cross out the '08 and use a marker with eco-friendly, water-based ink to write '12; 2) Cross out "McCain" and circle "Palin" really big; 3) Write "God bless America" somewhere on your sign so Christian voters who happen to drive by your street will be swayed by your sign.

Good Friday Meets Earth Day: Tweets & Reflections on Dying and Living during Holy Week

My "tweets" for Good Friday and Earth Day:

Don't make the earth go dark again, be Christ on this earth by caring for all of God's earth and all in God's earth. #goodfirday #earthday

If Jesus suffered & died for your sins, don't let people suffer for your food. Drink fair trade coffee @ home & church #goodfriday#earthday

Put your faith into action at church. Don't use styrofoam for coffee at church. Use mugs. Have people bring their own. #goodfriday#earthday

Broaken & multiplied loaves foreshadow Good Friday & Easter. The earth is breaking & only we can replenish it. #goodfriday #earthday

The Earth groans for salvation. It mourns w/us this Good Friday.#goodfriday #earthday

When Jesus died, the earth is said to have shaken. God & the Earth have a close relationship. Honor one, honor both. #goodfriday#goodearthday

In "Due Date," Jamie Foxx's character uses a reusable coffee filter in his home. Will you? #earthday #godsearth

When today began, I was unsure how to celebrate Earth Day and observe Good Friday. Good Friday is a somber day, a time to remember Jesus' suffering. A time to mourn Jesus' death. No death is "good." Even if good comes from a death, it is unfortunate that someone had to die. Even Jesus.

Good Friday is also a time to mourn our sins and the havoc they--no--the havoc we wreak. The wages of sin are not just death, but also the immediate consequences of our sins. If we do not take care of our body, we get sick or we die sooner than we might have otherwise. If we are cruel to someone, we receive regret and their scorn, hurt and physical and/or mental bruise

Those last examples scar me the most. When I mourn my sin, I mostly mourn how other people pay for the wages of my sins. Many commemorate Jesus as paying the price for our sins, but there are a few expenses not even Jesus could pay. If I hit someone, they still bruise. If I berate my children, they develop the psychological complexes. If I buy cheap chocolate, coffee, and tea, the people doing the most menial tasks to produce those luxuries pay the price I don't pay as their quality of life goes down. [1] The same goes for when I buy clothing produced at sweat shops, especially cheap clothing, but even many more chic, more expensive brands and stores. If I buy a lot of individually wrapped granola bars, candy bars, or fast food, the earth pays. God's earth pays. And everything on the earth pays, too. Including us.

God did not send Jesus to pay for those wages of sin. Those wages are ours to pay. So on this Good Friday and Earth Day, I thank God for Christ on the cross and the Earth we all ravage. I remember the death of Jesus and the dying of the Earth. I remember that sins cause death and sins cause suffering, not just suffering on the cross, but also suffering on this earth. And I remember that caring for the Earth is caring for people, just like loving all people is loving God.

Dear reader, I hope you have a meaningful end of your Holy Week. As we come to celebrate Easter, let us celebrate the life of Christ by being Christ, by restoring God's creation to its glory--people, animal, and earth alike.


Footnote:
[1] Christians send missionaries and mission teams to the same people who suffer from our cheap coffee, tea, chocolate, and clothing. If we send mission teams without purchasing fairly traded luxuries, then we are sending quite the mixed message. We say, essentially, that we care for their afterlife, not their current life. We say it is OK for them to suffer in this life because of us and then live beside us in the next.