Marlin and Sally: Frontline Stories from a Backwards Brain

Hiking the Land

With Sally and a group of 3 other men, I am hiking through a part of Israel and the West Bank.  We've already been at this for 6 days.  The next several posts will be reflections on this trek.

Why do this?  Well, partly, or perhaps even more than merely partly, because I want the experience.  I said I was going to do this one day, and so …

Partly because walking the land is one good way of getting at the story or stories.  And there are a lot of stories here that are told and retold, read and reread, interpreted and reinterpreted.  I’m not talking about stories of the Bible only, but other stories.  Old stories out of the long history of this place – stories like the one told in Ancient Egyptian writings about the battle for Megiddo waged in 1478 BCE by one of Egypt's mighty kings, Thutmose III.  He chose a path less traveled by, came through a supposedly impossible way, and surprised his Canaanite foes.  Today, you can stand on the Tel (Mount created by layers upon layers of history), and you can look to the Northwest and see the relatively recent buildings of the Kibbutz of Megiddo, founded by Holocaust survivors following the 2^nd World War (really, only the 2^nd?).  See what I mean about layers of history?  New vision?  Perspective?

So why do this?  Partly to see whether this experience is one that others might like to have – others like me, pastors and learners and teachers, who want to get the place of all these stories down into their bones.  Two days ago we walked by a ruined Mosque and we wondered about it.  That night we had access to the Internet so we looked for any record of a story rising out of the spot of that ruined place.  The crumbling minaret marking the place of the Mosque was under the shadow of the Horns of Hittin where the famous battle was fought between Saladin and the Crusader armies in July of 1187.  What was there that is marked now only by this barely standing minaret?  A village was there once, but no more – Kfar Hittin was her name (The Village of Hittin).  It was an Arab village then, a village of over 1300 men, women and children.  Kfar Hittin was destroyed in 1948 by the Israeli army.  Around the old village are ancient olive trees that have lots of stories to tell were we able to listen to the talk of old trees.  But we have no ears to hear what old trees have to say.  An Arab man was sitting in a beaten up old car there in the middle of these old trees surrounding the barely standing minaret.  What was he doing there under those precious, living witnesses?  What is his story?  Is his story connected to these trees?  Do they know his story?  Do they remember the day when a new master moved in to claim them and harvest their fruit?  In the back of the old car was a sack that he was filling with ripened olives.  Never asked so will never know, but had I known then …

Why do this?  Why not?  A month spent doing this might seem a month lost for some.  But for me, it is a month of walking over the layers of history in order to let the stories find me.

Soccer Papa

Went to granddaughter Emma’s soccer game on Saturday.  

“Emma, get your nose in there,” I’d cry out as she hung around outside the “scrub.”  

She’d look over and smile.

Okay then.

“Kick it Emma.  Kick it.”  When the ball came her way, she did.  Now and then she even found herself in the middle of things and then she held her own – kind of.  

“Way to go Emma!”  

Later that week I picked her up from school and drove her home.  In order for her to work off a little after-school-steam, we went out and jumped on the trampoline. (I know, I know, growing up we never had a trampoline in our backyard.  Get over it.)

I got tired. 

“I need to rest Emma.” 

She sat right down on the tramp, crossed her legs, and kindly said, “Me too Papa.”

“I liked coming to your soccer game Emma.”  

She nodded, looked over at me and said, “Could you ever once take your eyes off me, Papa?”

I startled her with my laughter – pure joy induced laughter.  I reached over, pulled her into me and said, “Not once Emma, not even once.”

Mr. President, blow the shofar.

In 70 C.E. (Common Era) the center of the Jewish world was destroyed – The Temple in Jerusalem.  Now what?  And this “now what” question is a practical matter as much as anything else.  Now, who will make the critical decisions around the every day, every month, every year issues surrounding the practice of the Jewish faith?  Who will determine the Jewish calendar, for example?  How is Passover, as one of the Temple-oriented feasts, to be celebrated without the offering of the biblically ordained sacrifice for that occasion?

Huge.  Critical.  Life or death for the Jewish faith.

Meet Yohanan ben Zakkai, a man ready and willing to lead, a leader who “gets it.”

“Yohanan ben Zakkai, how will sins be atoned for without the Temple sacrifice?”

“Ah yes, well, listen: ‘For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings’ (Hosea 6:6).   Act with loving kindness toward all and these loving acts will be as effective as any sacrifice.”

When the Jewish New Year (Rosh HaShanah) fell on a Sabbath (a Saturday), the custom in Temple times was to blow the shofar (ram’s horn), but only in the Temple’s precincts.  After the Temple’s destruction, Yohanan declared: “The shofar should be blown on Sabbath even outside Jerusalem, even without a Temple.”  In fact, he went on to say, the shofar should be blown throughout the land, and beyond the land, even around the world, wherever Jews gather to ring in Rosh HaShanah.

After Yohanan made this declaration a group of old order Jews, well intentioned and justifiable concerned, approached Rabbi Yohanan to request discussion over the decision.  Their fear was that this movement toward something new might diminish the desire for building a new Temple.  Furthermore, if something can be done anywhere that was once done only in the Temple, then maybe the feeling will be that there is no longer a need for a Temple.  Serious stuff!

Yohanan said, “Yes, we will talk about this, but not until after the blowing of the shofar to bring in the Jewish New Year.”  After all, he reasoned, the New Year was upon them, and the shofar must be blown.

“So be it,” agreed the concerned conservatives.

The shofar was blown in the village of Yavne, one of the first centers for Judaism on the rebound - located on the southern coast of Israel - and then the men of the old order came to Yohanan and said, “Now let’s talk about this.”

“No,” Yohanan said.  “Let’s not.  The shofar has already been blown in Yavne.  There is no longer any need for discussion.”

It would seem, at first glance, that Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai was a bit of a trickster.  However, let’s look a bit deeper.  The lesson in the story, probably a legendary story at that, is that there are certain critical moments in the life of a nation when action is what is needed – no more words.  The Temple has been destroyed.  The nation is in mourning.  Will Judaism survive this?

The well-intended members of the old order want to talk about what to do.  Yohanan ben Zakkai blows the shofar.

The people stood between the Red Sea and a sea of Pharaoh’s finest.  The people came to Moses and expressed their fears, real fears.  Moses did his best to reassure them and then, it would seem, Moses turned to God - cried out to God.  The LORD said to Moses: "Why do you cry out to me?  Tell the people to go forward” (Exodus 14:15).

There is a time for talking and a time for walking.

This may be such a time in the history of our nation.  We might say to President Obama: “Mr. President, blow the shofar.”

Do something about health care.

Do something about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Now is not the time for more and more words.  Now is the time to act.  “Mr. President, blow the shofar.”

100% sure ...

85 years ago, Ivan was born.

6 years ago, a part of Ivan died.

But still, with the part of him still alive, Ivan lives on.

Ivan is a farmer who lived his entire life in the village of Clymer, located in Up State New York.  Beautiful place, Clymer!  Green, woods, lakes, streams, cows, horses, Amish (65% of the county), hills, valleys, little churches with big steeples, old people, children – a uniquely common place like like-places all over the world.

Ivan lost his wife Doris - the day a part of him died.  He misses her.  No, that doesn’t even come close to a description of the impact Doris’ death has on Ivan.  Ivan pants for Doris' presence the way a thirsty deer pants for water.  Ivan is paralyzed by the fear that Doris is gone - forever gone.  Ivan perishes at the thought that he will not get to know her again as he knew her before.  Not everyone who loses a spouse misses that spouse like Ivan misses Doris, but more do than do not, I suspect – I hope!

Ivan has questions that he is living with, questions that are killing him.  What did Jesus mean when he said that in the Kingdom-to-Come, marriage would not be a part of the equation?  Did Jesus mean that Doris’ death ended Doris+Ivan, the one flesh Doris+Ivan?  Ivan can’t live with that thought.  Kills him to say it out loud to me as we roll up and down the hills on the way to Erie, PA, and the airplane that will take me back to Michigan.

“I got my first tractor in 1946.  It was a LV John Deere.” I have no idea what a LV John Deere is, except that it was John Deere green.  “Loved that tractor,” Ivan said.  Chuckled as he said it as if to acknowledge that it was a silly thing to love a tractor, but still …

“Yeah,” I said.  “My first car was a 1959 Chevy Impala, white, big fins, big engine.  Loved that car.”

Ivan nods his head.  This in common.

“I remember when the first Farmall came out with rubber tires.  What kind of a color is red for a tractor?” He interjects out of thin air.  He doesn’t wait for an answer, because the question, and the way he asks it, answers itself.  “I remember that we all were 100% sure that spending money for rubber tires on a tractor was the same as throwing the money into Findlay Lake.”  He looks over at me, shakes his head in wonder at the obvious lack of foresight in his generation of farmers, and smiles.  I purse my lips and nod back.

Then he says, “Funny how you can be 100% sure about something and at the same time be 100% wrong.”

“Actually,” I say, “it’s not funny at all.  It’s down right sobering.”

“That it is,” he says.  “That it is.”

“Take for instance," I continue, "the thoughts we have about some of the thoughts Jesus thought out loud.” (Makes you think about the ones Jesus didn't share, doesn't it?)

Ivan gives me a look that says, “Okay, I’m skeptical, but go on."

I don’t need any more encouragement than that, so I do.  “Jesus said that in the life to come we would not know marriage as we knew it before.  We read that and think that marriage as we know it now, is now over, which of course is exactly what Jesus says.  However, are we 100% sure of what Jesus means?”

Same look.

“What if what Jesus meant was that marriage as we know it will be transcended into something more and better, something divine and eternal, something beyond what we can even imagine when we are at our very best in believing and hoping?  What if Jesus meant to say that in the next life your relationship with Doris will transcend anything you have ever known or can ever know until you experience it anew in the Kingdom of God?  What if that is what Jesus meant to say when he said what he did?”

Ivan is nodding, thinking, pondering, hoping, wanting to believe this, but not sure he is allowed to have such a wild and crazy hope as this one.  He says nothing.

“Of course,” I say, “I could be wrong.”

Starring straight ahead, Ivan says, “You think?”

“What, that I’m wrong?”  Clearly Ivan doesn’t know me very well.

“No, that what you just said is possible?”

“Why not?  Sounds more like what God would want than the other.  Or at least it does to me.”

Ivan nods.

“Of course, if I was 100% sure then we wouldn’t call this thing of ours a faith thing now would we?”

And that is where the rubber hits the road for us, isn’t it? We believe that God is God and that God is good, and not only that, but that God is good at being God, better than we are, at the main fact of the faith matter.  Which means then that we live on even though a part of us is dead.  We live on and we ask our questions, and we express our doubts and our worries and our fears.  We live on knowing that those things about which we are 100% sure might be things about which we are 100% wrong.  And we’ll never know what those things are until the day comes when we can look back and see what the future held.  There’s a healthy dependency connected with living like this, an openness to listening and seeing through different lens, a certain humility that is like that of Christ’s, I think. You know, the "emptying" thing in Philippians 2.  We empty ourselves of the need to be sure about everything, the need to know all there is to know - that "emptying" thing.

But then, of course, I could be wrong!

Finding what we seek ...

“Everyone finds in the Bible exactly what he/she seeks,”  Professor Isaiah M. Gafni, Hebrew University (The Challenge of Hellenism).  “Furthermore, we often read back into the text that which was never intended, not even in the original writing.”

Professor Gafni does not intend this declaration to be damning, but rather a statement of what is, in fact, fact!  Gafni painfully points out that the case for an afterlife, for example, does not become a Hebrew, and therefore a Jewish theological concept, until after the influence of Hellenism (Greek culture).  Then, he says, Jewish thinkers revisited Hebrew texts to find support for that which they now believed to be so – i.e. life after death.

He does not say that this means there is no life after death, no heaven or hell, but rather that the belief in such came later in the collective religious life of Jews, and as the direct result of Hellenistic influence.

“Everyone finds in the Bible exactly what he/she seeks.”

Mike Huckabee just returned from a visit to Israel/Palestine.  He proclaimed, with just the right touch of sobriety, that the land belongs to the Jewish people, and therefore the Palestinian people ought to do the right thing and leave.  And if they do not leave then the Jewish people ought to be given liberty to do whatever is necessary to get them out.   I have no idea how far he would take this, but I get the feeling that “no holds barred” would be pretty close.  Of course, all this in a spirit of Christian love, albeit, tough love, because Pastor/Governor/Talk Show Host/President Wanabe Huckabee is, after all, a decent, loving Christian man.

And for his proof, he goes, of course, to the Bible.  But to what part of the Bible?  He turns to the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament.  He quotes from several of the hundreds of texts that proclaim this to be fact: God gave the land to the Jewish people, therefore the land belongs to them, both back in the then, and in the now, and in fact, in the forever – the land belongs to the Jewish people.

And who can argue with this, right?  Anyone who dares is immediately assailed as someone who does not take the Bible seriously, because the case of Jewish ownership of the land is too obvious to dispute.

So the Palestinians are toast!

And, sadly, so are we.

What?

I mean, if we are going to read the Bible as a book that was written to determine ownership of land, and borders for ethnic groups, and this for all time, then eventually, we’re all doomed.  We’re all potentially victims of the reading back into scripture by whomever has the power to follow through on whatever it is they wanted to find there.

“Everyone finds in the Bible exactly what he/she seeks.”  The truth in this statement would be even more frightening then it is except for the fact that not everyone has to power to follow through on whatever it is they find as they seek.

What?

Apartheid in South Africa was supported by the Dutch Boers because their Reformed theologians found in the Bible exactly what they sought.  Slavery in America was as well. “Everyone finds in the Bible exactly what he/she seeks.”  For centuries Jewish people were persecuted, oppressed and even murdered, on the pretext of truth sought and found in the Bible – New Testament texts that were interpreted to blame the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus.

“Jews killed Christ!”  The Bible says so, right?  Wrong!  The Bible does not say this, not at the deepest level of what the Bible has to say about the death of Christ.  The Empire of Rome killed Jesus just as empires like Rome have killed rebels like Jesus for centuries before and for all these centuries to follow.  Corrupt, misled, and frightened leaders of religion contributed to the execution of Jesus, just as corrupt, misled and frightened leaders of religion have killed their prophets before and kill them still.

And when we allow innocent people to suffer because of a shallow reading of the Word of God, then, over and over again, we continue to kill God-in-the-flesh-and-blood of Jesus.  We kill truth.  We kill justice.  We kill Jesus!  And this done by good and decent people like you and me, and yes, Mike Huckabee too.

Every square inch of the Universe belongs to the God who created every square inch of the Universe, and this God did this creative God-thing with great joy in, and with great hope for, a Universe where justice and righteousness would kiss.  This Sovereign God owns every square inch of the Universe that this God created, even the air we breathe, along with that air that we cannot breathe, because this air leads through some black hole to a place only God knows where.  No one people, and no one person owns any of this created space that God created out of God’s own creative self.  God owns it all.  And thanks be to God, who being as generous as God is creative, allows us to live on this land that God fashioned, and to breath this air that originally came from God’s own breathing. 

And how shall we live?  With awe-filled awareness that none of this belongs to us, not one square inch of it!  We live by grace.  How shall we live?  With justice and righteousness for the widow, the orphan and the stranger!  Why?  Because we are all one phone call away from being any one of these three!  How shall we live?  In love and peace with our neighbors, even, and even especially, with those who are enemies with us!  Why?  Because tomorrow or next year or ten years from today, these same enemies will be discovered to be people not so different from us, and will be our friends, and we will be wondering why we wasted all this time and all this energy hating them and killing them and raging against them.  How shall we live?  As Jesus lived, boldly and bravely and honestly, and die like Jesus died too because death is a part of life, so we die like Jesus died, with forgiveness on his lips, and reconciliation in his mind, and if we are wise as Jesus was wise then we will do this before we die! 

HOW SHALL WE LIVE?  We shall live in the Word of God, with respect to what God intended, and with the constant reminder ringing in our ears and reverberating in our minds, that some of what was said there was meant only for then and there, and not necessarily for now and forever.

How shall we live?  Humbly trying to discern what was for then and there, and what is for now. And then, with fear and trembling, we determine what is forever. And somehow, God helping, we do this together!  And I submit to you, that the primary focus of the Bible is not to determine who owns what, but rather, to declare that nobody owns anything.  It is all of grace.  And for that grace we are to be grateful.  Thank you very much Heidelberg!

Do Jewish people have a right to live in the land of their ancestors?  Of course!  But Palestinians have the same right, and the right they have comes from the same Word!  The responsibility of people like Mike Huckabee, and you and me, is not to travel to this land and glibly determine who has the right to live where, but rather to humbly and submissively come along side both people and encourage them to live humbly, gratefully, and justly with one another.  This is the Word’s word on how we all should live, both then and there, and now and forever.