Tornadoes tore through East Brainerd, where I live, on Easter Sunday night. We lost power, and didn't have it again for three days. In the path of the tornado a swath half a mile wide and 4 miles long was devastated. Hundreds of homes were destroyed, thousands damaged, many thousands of trees uprooted or cut in half. The entire landscape is changed from a tree-covered one to bare, rolling hills covered in downed power lines, snapped poles, wrecked homes and dead trees.
A Facebook friend posted a picture of a church destroyed in Alabama. Its large, ceremonial cross was still standing, this considered a miraculous sign of some sort by a certain portion of believers.
Most of the people who read this blog know that I cheerfully reject as bunk the major tenets of the Christian church. I am Judeo-Christian in that I find inspiration and guidance in the Bible, and believe in a singular God (who is acknowledged by many names). I am a complete pagan in believing the birth and resurrection stories are fiction, as well as all the 'I am' statements of John, and the concept of substitutional atonement. As one friend put it, "All the post-resurrection "sightings" of Jesus have, for me, the same validity as Elvis or Martin Bormann sightings". He's right.
If I feel that way, why do I venerate Christmas and Easter? In the words of one alto I know, the church compresses the entire life of Christ into 4 months every year. Why value those days? Because they represent something real and eternal- the immortality of spirit, the presence of God when the world is dark and cold. Like all myth, it is never true, but always true.
There was no mystical, miraculous sparing of a cross in Alabama. I drive by entire churches flattened and scattered on the ground here. Symbols like a cross have no intrinsic meaning, and the bigger they are the more insecure I think the individual must feel about their beliefs. And yet God as I understand God was present everywhere.
On Monday morning all major roads in East Brainerd were impassible because of downed trees and wires. Even electric company equipment couldn't get into the area. It took me 45 minute to thread my way down one 3 mile stretch of road. And all along it, there were men in dirty jeans, carrying chain saws, chopping up the fallen debris, clearing their neighbors' driveways, clearing the roads. Not looking for credit, or money, or food, or applause. Just doing what had to be done because they could. In my effete neighborhood of big homes many people have generators, or could sleep in fancy hotels for a couple of days. If we had seen most of these men come into the neighborhood at Halloween we would have been offended, if they drove in at night many would call the police. But it was just those men, those sweating, cursing, struggling, ordinary men, fornicating, smoking, drug-taking sinners, that cleared the roads. And then it was other ordinary men in electric company trucks, in cherry pickers, with cranes, who labored around the clock to restore power. Ordinary, filthy, lusting men.
I have long argued that claiming the presence of God in Jesus as a singularity in history is a slander to God and Man. To God, because we imagine the totality of God can be represented by one person. To Man, because we claim God is not present in every one of us. Jesus has been dry-cleaned to the point that he is sinless, unstained, even has straight blond hair! Jesus was from a very poor village that by the Gospel accounts themselves was of so low reputation that people were surprised a preacher could come from there. Jesus was undoubtedly more like the men with chain saws than the investment bankers, doctors and entrepreneurs who are my neighbors.
In Beach Music, Max Rusoff, a butcher's assistant, is secretly in love with the daughter of the wealthiest Jew in his town. When Cossacks are raping her, he takes his cleaver and kills both men and their horses. He feeds all the town's Jews on horsemeat, and saves his secret love from defilement and death. For this, he is castigated by the Rabbi for his violence. Good Jews, he is told, were in the synagogue, praying for deliverance. Max replies, crushingly, "I'm sorry Rabbi, I am not an educated man. My prayers took a different form."
So did East Brainerd's. With many churches destroyed, neighbors and total strangers came with chain saws to help each other. The crude forms they cut with saws from dead trees meant more than any cross. Their simple actions manifested God in the flesh more than any service or dogma. Easter came late, but it came for real, in the flesh, God made manifest in the sweating, filthy labor of strangers. And Easter is important, for an apostate like me, because it is a reminder that every one of us carries in us the spark of God that can manifest not in piety, or tithing, or church membership, but in helping the helpless and feeding the hungry.
Ted
A Facebook friend posted a picture of a church destroyed in Alabama. Its large, ceremonial cross was still standing, this considered a miraculous sign of some sort by a certain portion of believers.
Most of the people who read this blog know that I cheerfully reject as bunk the major tenets of the Christian church. I am Judeo-Christian in that I find inspiration and guidance in the Bible, and believe in a singular God (who is acknowledged by many names). I am a complete pagan in believing the birth and resurrection stories are fiction, as well as all the 'I am' statements of John, and the concept of substitutional atonement. As one friend put it, "All the post-resurrection "sightings" of Jesus have, for me, the same validity as Elvis or Martin Bormann sightings". He's right.
If I feel that way, why do I venerate Christmas and Easter? In the words of one alto I know, the church compresses the entire life of Christ into 4 months every year. Why value those days? Because they represent something real and eternal- the immortality of spirit, the presence of God when the world is dark and cold. Like all myth, it is never true, but always true.
There was no mystical, miraculous sparing of a cross in Alabama. I drive by entire churches flattened and scattered on the ground here. Symbols like a cross have no intrinsic meaning, and the bigger they are the more insecure I think the individual must feel about their beliefs. And yet God as I understand God was present everywhere.
On Monday morning all major roads in East Brainerd were impassible because of downed trees and wires. Even electric company equipment couldn't get into the area. It took me 45 minute to thread my way down one 3 mile stretch of road. And all along it, there were men in dirty jeans, carrying chain saws, chopping up the fallen debris, clearing their neighbors' driveways, clearing the roads. Not looking for credit, or money, or food, or applause. Just doing what had to be done because they could. In my effete neighborhood of big homes many people have generators, or could sleep in fancy hotels for a couple of days. If we had seen most of these men come into the neighborhood at Halloween we would have been offended, if they drove in at night many would call the police. But it was just those men, those sweating, cursing, struggling, ordinary men, fornicating, smoking, drug-taking sinners, that cleared the roads. And then it was other ordinary men in electric company trucks, in cherry pickers, with cranes, who labored around the clock to restore power. Ordinary, filthy, lusting men.
I have long argued that claiming the presence of God in Jesus as a singularity in history is a slander to God and Man. To God, because we imagine the totality of God can be represented by one person. To Man, because we claim God is not present in every one of us. Jesus has been dry-cleaned to the point that he is sinless, unstained, even has straight blond hair! Jesus was from a very poor village that by the Gospel accounts themselves was of so low reputation that people were surprised a preacher could come from there. Jesus was undoubtedly more like the men with chain saws than the investment bankers, doctors and entrepreneurs who are my neighbors.
In Beach Music, Max Rusoff, a butcher's assistant, is secretly in love with the daughter of the wealthiest Jew in his town. When Cossacks are raping her, he takes his cleaver and kills both men and their horses. He feeds all the town's Jews on horsemeat, and saves his secret love from defilement and death. For this, he is castigated by the Rabbi for his violence. Good Jews, he is told, were in the synagogue, praying for deliverance. Max replies, crushingly, "I'm sorry Rabbi, I am not an educated man. My prayers took a different form."
So did East Brainerd's. With many churches destroyed, neighbors and total strangers came with chain saws to help each other. The crude forms they cut with saws from dead trees meant more than any cross. Their simple actions manifested God in the flesh more than any service or dogma. Easter came late, but it came for real, in the flesh, God made manifest in the sweating, filthy labor of strangers. And Easter is important, for an apostate like me, because it is a reminder that every one of us carries in us the spark of God that can manifest not in piety, or tithing, or church membership, but in helping the helpless and feeding the hungry.
Ted
Super - I really liked this blog entry. It is so practical, down to earth, and inclusive (as opposed to most religions' exclusiveness), showing how some of the biggest "sinners" are those on whom we depend, rather like the traveling Jew did on the half-breed good Samaritan in Jesus's parable. This is something that I, too, have noticed. In I Corinthians 12:22-23, Paul wrote about how some of those members of our body we deem less honorable are, in practice, the ones on which we bestow the most honor (by treating them with special modesty). Your blog shows how some of those on whom we as a society deem less honorable are, in fact, those who we ought to bestow honor, because we depend on them.
ReplyDeleteA Siskel & Ebert two thumbs up on this blog.
-D-