Musings

Spiritual Freedom

 

Some friends of mine, outdoor enthusiasts from Albuquerque, moved for a few years to Oklahoma City.  I visited them when I was driving across the country.  They took me to a restaurant in a big mall in Oklahoma City.  After dinner, we noticed a big wall made of faux rocks inside the mall.  My friends rushed over to it and began to climb it. Oklahoma is flat, and it was exciting for them to find a place where they could exert themselves vertically. 

But the people walking past them were offended.  "You shouldn't do that," they muttered.  "Get down from there!"  There was no rule that banned rock-climbing in the mall.  No city ordinance against it.  But people were not used to seeing it happen there, so it seemed wrong . 

In 1981, I went with a group of church peace activists to what was then the Soviet Union.  One cool fall morning, I went running along the Moscow River with one of my clergy colleagues.  Every head in each of the many trams that passed by us turned to stare at us, as if we had dropped down to Earth from Mars.  The fact that my running mate was a gorgeous young blonde might have had something to do with it.  But we both realized suddenly that in that vast city, we were the only ones running along the river. 

For all the many rules and regulations in that so-called "Evil Empire", a ban on running on the Moscow River was not among them.  But people didn't exercise that freedom, any more than Oklahomans exercised the freedom to rock-climb in the mall.

Faith is recognizing our freedom and exercising it.  We are free to see the world in many, many more ways than the media industry tells us to see it.  We are free to interpret our own lives in many, many more ways than our egos think we ought to describe them.  We are free to snap out of the humdrum existence we so often accept as life, and do it very differently, and delight in the vibrancy that surrounds us all the time.  The spiritual path leads us not only to discover that we can write sideways on lined paper, but that we need to do so now and again.

Once there was a man named Zacchaeus, a wealthy tax-collector who wanted to see Jesus when he passed through his town of Jericho.  He couldn't see over the crowd in front of him, so he climbed a tree.  I bet that the people around him were annoyed at him.  You can just hear them saying, "Get down from there!  You are a grown man, not a child! Get out of that tree!"  But there was no law against it, and Zacchaeus exercised his freedom.  What did he have to lose?  The people hated him anyway.  Jewish tax collectors were considered "unclean" because they collaborated with the Roman occupying forces in Israel. 

Jesus looked up in the tree and must have smiled at the sight of that little man waving at him.  One exercise of freedom inspired another: Jesus invited himself to dinner at Zacchaeus' house.  Every head turned on the spot!  It was socially unconventional.  It was not considered proper for a rabbi like Jesus to associate with such a sinner.  But Jesus was a man who knew and practiced his spiritual liberty. 

Zacchaeus was so blown away by Jesus' free-spirited choice that he decided to take a further liberty of his own.  When Jesus came to dinner, Zacchaeus declared that he was going to take the money he had creamed from the local people in the process of collecting taxes, and give it to the poor. 

We don't have to do life the way we've always done it.  We don't have to think the same thoughts we've always thought.  We don't have to categorize other people the way others do.  We don't have to stay stuck in our ruts, not nearly as much as we think we must.  And it would do us good, and do others good, if we actually employed our freedom a lot more.  Use it or lose it, as they say - as true for our spiritual liberty as it is for our muscles!

New Life

Holy Week is a good time for me to ask this question: how have I changed since last Easter?

I'm balder and grayer - that's the easy part of my answer!  (I keep waiting for the Hair Fairy to leave money under my pillow as my hairline recedes!)  But as I look at my inner self, I notice some important changes.  I feel calmer than I did a year ago.  It is said that the true test of a man is how he acts when he doesn't get what he wants.  Though I don't score close to 100% on that test, I feel like I'm getting a better grade this year than the last. I get less reactive, less perturbed; I have more equanimity when the going gets rough.

And when I look back farther, I see that I've changed a lot.  Some people think I'm a pretty intense guy today.  But, whew! I'm a Buddha compared to the person I was 25 years ago.  Back then, I was bouncing off the walls with half-baked plans and scattered energy. 

How  have you changed in the last year? -- in the last many  years?  Who are you now, compared to the person you were then? 

Jesus changed.  He grew away from the person he was at age 12 when he wandered away from his parents in Jerusalem and engaged in the ongoing midrashic disputations of the rabbis at the Temple.  He developed out of being an argumentative, rebellious teenager and into being a nuanced, deep-thinking storyteller and spiritual guide.  He started his three-year work as an itinerant rabbi by being a teacher and healer. Then he evolved into being an activist, creatively challenging the injustices of the established order.

He was killed by the Romans for rousing the rabble, appearing to foment revolt, during Passover in Jerusalem.  And he was buried.  And he was never the same after that.  The sacred myth tells us that after three days, he rose from death and appeared to Mary Magdalene and then to the rest of his disciples.

They could tell he'd changed.  His body was different - it went in and out of physical form.  He was healed of death but still had the wounds on his hands and feet from the crucifixion.  His message had changed, too, as he inspired his followers to make sense of his whole life story.  In a way, Jesus in resurrection did what a lot of us do in our later years - we try to find try to find unifying plots in our lives, try to fit the memories into a coherent story.  In resurrection, Jesus also evolved from being an activist into being a mentor to the activists who engaged in that remarkable community-organizing effort we call "church". 

Easter is a good time to reflect on the new life we're living - so different than the old. And to reflect on the ways that we will be transformed next.  By next Holy Week, I hope my judgmental, harshly-opinionated self will die, and that a calm, kind, yet forthright self will emerge from the tomb.  I could be so much more useful in the world if I could get over my tendency to rant about my views, and instead share them in a way that makes it clear that I'm open to learning more from others. 

And how do you hope to be "resurrected" in the next  year?

 

Feet Forward

Soon, feet will be stepping across America, putting forward an open, inclusive, pluralistic, selflessly-serving form of  Christian faith.      

I’m coordinating a media campaign called WALKING THE TALK for The Center for Progressive Christianity and CrossWalkAmerica.org.  Events promoting progressive Christianity will happen around the country during the walk from Phoenix to Washington, DC,  starting on Easter Sunday.  A small group will make the whole  CrossWalk, with many others joining for parts of the journey. (See more about the campaign at www.tcpc.org/walk and about  the walk at www.crosswalkamerica.org.)
 

We can only imagine the condition of the walkers’ feet when  they finally arrive in Washington on Labor Day!  In Jesus’ time, people wore sandals and walked long  distances on dusty dirt roads. So having  one’s feet washed was a welcome ritual of hospitality. When Jesus welcomed his disciples to their  last Passover together in Jerusalem, he began with this ritual.  Peter objected, not wanting his revered rabbi to take on this task that a servant would perform in a higher-class Jewish household.  But Jesus insisted.  It was his physical way of illustrating his earlier teaching: “He who is greatest among you shall be your servant.”  This lesson was remembered beautifully by Paul in his letter to the Philippians:  “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”

         

So how did a religion founded by an empty man get so full of itself?  How can so many Christians claim that theirs is the only true faith, that they know who will get into heaven and who will not, that they can decide who belongs in the church and who doesn’t?  It’s time for Christians to let their faith be defined by their walk of compassion and caring, and refrain from any boastful talk about it.  It’s time for Christianity to be the humble faith of people who follow a humble man. That’s the message of Holy Thursday, when we celebrate the Last Supper, and it’s the message of the “CrossWalk” across America.

So bring your feet to church on Maundy Thursday!  And let them be washed, rubbed, blessed, and refreshed - so that they can walk the sometimes hard, sometimes joyful path that Jesus took toward a kingdom of universal welcome, kindness, healing, and peace.