Performative Utterances

Philosopher J.L. Austin pointed out that there are statements which are "performative utterances." That is, "there are there are certain things one can do just by saying what one is doing." For example, "I promise" or "I take Thee to be my lawfully wedded husband."

Today, at worship, we witnessed a performative utterance, one exhortation, and one "walk the talk."

Yesterday the papers announced the foreclosure of a multi-million dollar real estate development in which X had a large part. He has lost everything. Today X stood at the pulpit to read 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10:

We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake. You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. The Lord's message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia--your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, for they themselves report what happened when we visited you. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead--Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.

My spine tingled. X was imitating Paul all right, and the gospel was coming full circle, in power through his reading of the Word. As the Lord's message rang out from X, he became a model to the believers in Eugene.

Then Steve preached on Matt. Matthew 22:15-22, "Tax Time."
It's that famous passage about "rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." IMO it was one of his more creative sermons, telling the story from the point of view of the denarius that Jesus held. The sermon concluded:

"This world is better when people like you remember what I learned that day in His Hand. When you remember how God owns you, how He both made you and then bought you again with the blood of His own Son, you will care much less about owning me. You will simply delight, like I did, to be used for His purpose, to answer His call and His desire.

So if, by His good purpose, I should come into your possession, do me a favor. Please don’t hold me tightly. That’s not His way. That’s not what I am for any longer. I don’t really belong to you. Nor do you yourself even truly belong to you. We are not our own. We are His. So do me a favor. Give me up. Give me away. Give me away for Jesus. And then we both will have known the joy of resting in His Hand for awhile. May that gracious Hand bless you.

But just before he got up to preach, someone handed him a card, and Steve announced, "Whoever has a white Honda, you need to go to your car. Someone has broken your front window has taken your purse from the front seat." Up jumped Y. and her son Z., and a couple of men from the congregation to accompany them. We all met in the parking lot, in front of her new Civic hybrid. There stood a neighbor who related how she saw a man on a bicycle come between the cars, smash the window and grab the purse.

"But it wasn't a purse! " Y. exclaimed. "It was Z's lunchbox! He was going to Mt. Pisgah to do his community service after church, and that was his lunch!" Broken safety glass glittered on the pavement. "Why would anyone take a lunchbox? And look--here's a shopping bag on the floor with a birthday present in it. Why did they take the lunchbox, and not the present?"

She stared in disbelief, then exclaimed, "Just think, of all the people that this could happen to, isn't it best that it's me" [she is a professional] "and of all the times that it could happen to me, isn't it incredible that it was today, when I am surrounded by my church family?"

S. and W. got a broom, dustpan and bucket, and began cleaning up the shattered glass. Someone else offered her a car to use until hers could be fixed.

And now as I reflect on the morning, I realize how blessed I am to live and serve with a people who are receiving God's Word and living Christ's life. They are choosing to be used for His purpose, to answer His call and His desire. They are letting Him sweep away their brokenness. They are seeking to have their words and actions form a seamless garment, so that the saying is the doing and the doing is the saying.

The Shack so far

So I'm on the bandwagon, too.

I've been reading The Shack, and am up to the part where he discusses freedom with Papa. Whew! Way to skate through the Big Questions. A regular Reader's Digest version of Intro to Philosophy of Religion. I suppose that's all a lot of people want, or need, but I for one am left gasping and growling, and furthermore, am feeling guilty and wrong for wanting more.

Some parts are great, like Papa's explanation why God is appearing to him as a motherly woman. But overall, I feel like I'm eating fast philosophical and theological food. I may feel full after dining, but I haven't gnawed on any bones or savored any nectar.

(νέκταρ = nek- "death" and -tar "overcoming". )

Overall, it's difficult for me to separate the author from his main character. Perhaps I'm not supposed to? Young himself keeps a safe distance from Mack, telling the story "for him" in third person, which suggests to me that he, as an author, wishes to be "free" and "outside" the narrative. But that's ironic, since the story is about the reestablishment of intimacy and relationship! Maybe that's postmodern irony for you.

Speaking of which, Mack/Young seems to have really bought into postmodernism, with all its suspicions about authority, institutions and intellect, and its contradictory desire for simultaneous autonomy and community. Lots of passive aggression. For me, reading The Shack is like reading a text in a foreign language. I speak a different philosophical and theological tongue. I can do it, but it takes a lot of energy to constantly keep translating.

We all react to our past, and what goes around comes around. So far The Shack has deposited me back into my late teens, among Christians who told me good Christians don't wonder about Big Questions. Furthermore, they certainly DON'T study Vain Philosophy. (And good Christian women don't ask questions, period!)

The carousel of time now has gyrated so that now not only women but men are told, "don't bother your pretty little heads asking questions...the only answer is the Complete and Certain answer...anything less is no answer at all...and since you are a mere human, you can NEVER understand the Complete and Certain answer...God is too big for you...so just relax....flow with the mystery..."

(musterion --"But whereas ‘mystery’ may mean, and in contemporary usage often does mean, a secret for which no answer can be found, this is not the connotation of the term mysteµrion in classical and biblical Gk. In the NT mysteµrion signifies a secret which is being, or even has been, revealed, which is also divine in scope, and needs to be made known by God to men through his Spirit...mysteµrion is a temporary secret, which once revealed is known and understood—a secret no longer.. "--Harpers Bible Dictionary )

Many are finding The Shack to be a means of deepening their relationship with the Trinity, and for that we should all be greatful. So far it isn't doing much for me. I still return to Eleanore Stump's article, "Aquinas on the Sufferings of Job" when I am troubled by the Big Question of suffering and evil.
"...Everything depends on what you take to be dream and what you take to be reality," she concludes. Now that is something William Young, Eleanore Stump and I can all agree on.

Will Easter ever come?

This sure has been a long Lent.

In fact, it feels like Lent has been going on for a couple of years now.

The latest:

1) A's father-in-law, S.A., has been here with his wife, Momma B., for a month now. A few days ago they took off to visit a cousin in Utah. Yesterday S.A. suffered a stroke out there. His speech is improving, but that is all we know. H., A's husband, is having a routine colonoscopy this morning. Then tomorrow he is going to fly to Utah.

2) A is having gall bladder trouble, and is scheduled to have it removed March 20. A scan also showed that her abdomen is filling with fluid, possibly a sign that the cancer is active again. She is in constant, incredible pain, but her doctor (in whom she has total faith) has made her go cold turkey off her oxycontin, on the grounds that "she is addicted." Dependent, yes, but how can anyone consider a terminally ill patient addicted? She and H. refuse to consider hospice care, believing (against all my efforts) that it is equivalent to dying. Her doctor is an oncological surgeon, who really has no interest in palliative care. A. refuses to consider any other medical advice but his.

3) The good news: our daughter Susan was named as one of two recipients of a scholarship that would pay $50,000 a year for two years so she could pursue doctoral studies in classics. It is contingent upon her acceptance into one of 23 "approved schools."

The bad news: Princeton and Cornell have declined her application, and the other schools she applied to (Univ. of Toronto, University of Washington) are not on the approved list. Oh, she was accepted to the second B.A. program at Downing College, Cambridge, but they don't offer financial aid to Americans; and the scholarship she won is good only for doctoral studies.

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

High Holy Day Hardships

From the looks of things on "Covenant Blogs," evidently the Holy Day Hardships are upon us. Over the past two decades of ministry, I have observed that the Enemy chooses Holy Week and Advent as his favorite times to target Christ's flock. This phenomenon has become so unmistakeable that I finally thought it deserved a name, so I have called it the "Holy Day Hardships."

And it has settled upon us at Valley Covenant, just as it has settled upon Quest and Christ the King and countless other kingdom outposts. Just in the past 24 hours:

• V. died early this morning, leaving his wife and three kids


• A. has lost 12 more pounds, and now weighs only 100 lbs. We are waiting to hear from the drs. if they will allow her to continue her chemotherapy.


• E, a single mom's little toddler has been diagnosed with a staph infection.


• P., a beloved high school teacher, was taken to the ER with intense stomach pains. At first they thought it was appendicitis; perhaps it is diverticulosis, or c. difficile? He is home awaiting a diagnosis.


• J.'s brother is on his deathbed in California.


• B. is divorcing D, because D. is having an affair and won't end it.

Once again I am reminded of Nouwen's words:

"Our emotional lives move up and down constantly. Sometimes we experience great mood swings from excitement to depression, from joy to sorrow, from inner harmony to inner chaos. A little event, a word from someone, a disappointment in work, many things can trigger such mood swings. Mostly we have little control over these changes. It seems that they happen to us rather than being created by us.

Thus it is important to know that our emotional life is not the same as our spiritual life. Our spiritual life is the life of the Spirit of God within us. As we feel our emotions shift we must connect our spirits with the Spirit of God and remind ourselves that what we feel is not who we are. We are and remain, whatever our moods, God's beloved children.

We have feelings, but they do not define us entirely. What we feel is necessary for making us who we are, but doesn't sufficiently contain all that we are.

Christ weeps over Jerusalem, and at Lazarus' tomb, and in the garden. He is the Man of Sorrows, but that is not all that He is. The truth is that He was, and is, God's beloved Son, in whom the Father is well-pleased. We weep with V., A., E., P., J., B and D. but we live this truth: we are Christ's flock, and He is our shepherd. We believe that Christ is the Truth and that He has told the truth:

"You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy...I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."

Stories of Unconditional Love: "This American Life," August 8, 2007

A while ago (08.31.2007,) Chicago Public Radio's This American Life with Ira Glass had an exceptional episode presenting two stories of unconditional love. I was especially moved by Heidi Solomon's story. She and her husband adopted a child who was neglected for seven years in a Romanian orphanage. As a result of this deprivation, they had to deal with his severe attachment disorder.

Listening, I remembered 1 John 4, and realized that in relation to God, we all suffer from severe attachment disroder.

"This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another....19 We love because he first loved us."

"If you're the kind of person who actually needs love--really needs love--chances are you're not the kind of person who's going to have the wherewithal to create it. Creating love is not for the soft and sentimental among us. Love is a tough business."--Alix Spiegel (minutes 33:35-36:00 into program)


Listen to the program here

317: Unconditional Love

Stories of unconditional love between parents and children, and how hard love can be sometimes in daily practice.

Prologue.
Hard as it is to believe, during the early Twentieth Century, a whole school of mental health professionals decided that unconditional love was a terrible thing to give a child. The government printed pamphlets warning mothers against the dangers of holding their kids. The head of the American Psychological Association and even a mothers' organization endorsed the position that mothers were dangerous—until psychologist Harry Harlow set out to prove them wrong, through a series of experiments with monkeys. Host Ira Glass talks with Deborah Blum, author of Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection. (10 minutes)

Act One. "Love Is a Battlefield."
Alix Spiegel tells the story of Heidi and Rick Solomon, who adopt a son raised under terrible circumstances in a Romanian orphanage—so terrible that he's unable to feel attachments to anyone. (27 minutes)
Song: "Loveless Town," Sarah Blust

Act Two. "Hit Me with Your Best Shot."
Dave Royko talks about the decision he and his wife faced about their autustic son's future, including whether their son should continue living with their family. (19 minutes)
Song: "I Wanna Be Loved," Buju Banton

A Love Story

Today A.'s husband H. had surgery on his neck. After two years of carrying A. up and down the stairs it seems a crack has developed in one of the bones of his vertebrae, causing him pain in his shoulder, numbness and tingling in his left arm and hand. So the plan was to graft donor bone onto one of his cervical vertebrae.

A.is now on uber-chemo, the last big gun they have. After this, there are no more bullets. She had a chemo two days ago but insisted on coming with H. this morning at 8 am, so weak she had to be in a wheel chair. She hasn't been able to eat or drink hardly anything for the last three weeks, and is constantly chilled. Huddled in the wheel chair, dressed in winter coat and cap, and bundled with warm blankets, she clutched her chemo drip bag and tried to keep its line to the port in her shoulder from getting tangled in the wheel.

H's operation was scheduled for 10 am; but 10 became 11 and 11 became 12. A. was scheduled for immunotherapy treatment at 1, so much to her disappointment and worry, I wheeled her over to the North building. They agreed to wheel her back to H. after the four hour therapy was complete, and I promised to pick her up this evening and bring her home.

Steve stopped by after confirmation expecting to visit H. after recovery but he STILL hadn't been operated on. Finally, they took him at 6:30. A. insisted she wanted to spend the night and refused our pleas to go home and rest.

If ever I were to paint a picture of the woman who annointed Jesus in Luke 7:36-50, I would use A. as my model. Before she left for her immunotherapy, she rose to embrace H., pouring what strength she had into rising and hugging her husband. But then she moved down the bed and kissed his feet, silently weeping. "She did what she could," as Mark observed, in his gospel. (14:8).

A. does not have an alabaster jar to break, only her heart. And H. doesn't have a jar to break, either; only his vertebra.

At the Art Institute of Chicago

Last Thursday Jan and I took the train in to Chicago to go to the Art Institute. What a fabulous time we had! Jan was my personal guide, helping me to see the artwork not only historically, but from an artist's eye "I can only handle one Rembrandt at a time," she said, rapt before The Old Man with a Gold Chain. Or before Chagall's The Praying Jew: "Look, he's painted one eye looking upward, and one eye looking outward." Or her disappointment that there were no Rothkos available: "I love those blockes of color. I wanted to be able to share them with you."

Jan, we may not have been able to share Rothko, but we shared so much more together last week! Thank you, and thank God for you.

Francisco de Zurbarán
The Crucifixion.
1627
Oil on canvas


Sano di Pietro,

Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome, Bernardino of Siena, and Angels
1450/60
Tempera on panel



Rembrandt, Old Man with a Gold Chain.
c.1631
Oil on panel
Claude Monet,

Water Lilies.
1906
Oil on canvas

Marc Chagall,
The Praying Jew.
1923
copy of a 1914 work
Oil on canvas







Marc Chagall
White Crucifixion
1938
Oil on canvas

Dieric Bouts

Mater Dolorosa (Sorrowing Madonna).1470/75
Oil on oak panel


Constantin Brâncusi, Suffering. 1907
Bronze

Suffering

God uses suffering to carve our character into Christ’s.

This is what makes me different from a Buddhist.

This is what Americans find scandalous about orthodox Christianity.

This is what enables me to perservere.

True or False: The Major Religions are Essentially Alike

At least somebody besides J.A. Di Noia gets it.

In his July 2/9, 2007 Newsweek article, "True or False: The Major Religions Are Essentially Alike," Stephen Prothero, chair of Boston University's Department of Religion writes:

At least since the first petals of the counterculture bloomed across the United States in the 1960s, it has been fashionable to affirm that all religions are beautiful—and all are true. The proof text for this happy affirmation comes, appropriately enough, from the Hindu Vedas rather than the Christian Bible: "Truth is one, the sages call it by many names."

According to this multicultural form of wisdom, the world's religions are merely different paths up the same mountain. But are they? Religious people do agree that there is something wrong with this world. But they disagree as soon as they start to diagnose the problem, and diverge even more when it comes to prescriptions for the cure. Christians see sin as the human problem and salvation from sin as the religious goal. Buddhists see suffering (which, in this tradition, is not ennobling) as the problem and liberation from suffering (nirvana) as the goal. If practitioners of the world's religions are all climbing a mountain, then they are ascending very different peaks and using very different tools... continued here