Blogging Backwards
To Sunday
October 14, 2007
"A Chip Off the Ol' Block"

Porta-Potties, Firenze, Forgiveness and Authentic Humaness

Yesterday we continued our series in our Sunday Gatherings at Fruitvale Pres. Church on Heroes and Heroines for God. King David, a man whose heart was after the heart of God was our hero for the day selected by one of our community members.

The passages we reflected upon and built our gathering around were 1 Samuel 24:1-22 & Matthew 6:7-15. The reason that Nancy had picked out this story in particular about David was the theme of "forgiveness" and the radical example of trust, risk, solidarity with God's purposes and compassion that David exemplifies in the story of him hiding in the port-a-pottie-replacing cave.

King Saul is pursuing the un-coronated David to kill him. God has said that Saul will be dethroned for his self-centered evilness and David will replace him as the King of Israel. He badmouths him. He slanders him publicly. Then he decides to take him out. But Saul is so pissed off and irate that he doesn't just hire a bounty hunter to go all bobba fet and track down David, he sets out after his protege - with part of his army - to wipe him out. Ends up Saul uses a cave to go to the bathroom during the long journey. David is in the cave. Saul is distracted. David could kill his ennemy and make his life a lot easier. And David chooses to show mercy, to not kill, but to embrace non-violent trust that God will bring justice and balance.

What would you do if that happened I asked? What if Osama bin Laden came into the cave where you were? What if ________ (you fill in the blank with the name of the person you think of....co-workers, family, someone who has wronged you that you struggle to forgive)? I asked what would you do if someone who had opened fire with a gun in your child's school (thinking of last week's tragedies in Cleveland) came into the cave? On one hand it's easy to answer...take'em down. If I'm honest, I'd struggle to show compassion to an ennemy. And yet what would it change to strike them down? Doesn't that just purvey the endlessly downward spiral of vengeance, violence and victory-at-any-cost? Isn't that the very thing that I believe Jesus' death on the cross overturns, undermines and reverses? Tough. It's ugly to face the stuff inside us - or at least inside me.

The second passage is Jesus teaching on how to pray. (Today we call it the Lord's Prayer when we communally offer it aloud each Sunday in our Worship Gathering). Jesus says that we should ask God to forgive us as we forgive each other...in fact we ask God to do so aloud and in public each Sunday. Jesus continues after the teaching on prayer emphasizing that as we forgive God will forgive us and that if we don't forgive God won't forgive us. YIKES. It gets even tougher. I'm a classic first-born virgo as friends tell me.....quick to want to perform, to embrace perfection, to be moody, flighty and to hold on to my bitterness. So forgiving, really forgiving, you know those deep down difficult destructive things is hard for me...it's hard to let go. I suspect I'm not alone. So how do I grapple with my desire to be a person of faith, following Jesus of Nazareth, when what I'm asked to do - live from, by and into forgiveness - is so seemingly impossible.

Michelangelo created the amazing statue of David picutred here. I'm told that it's the most perfect re-presentation of the human body. It's in Florence in the Galleria dell'Accademia. It's enoromous, something like 8 feet tall. When I saw it the noisy bustling of the heat-exhausted crowd was hushed rapidly to a whisper when people's eyes fell upon the beauty of the statue. Tradition says that the piece of art had more humble beginnings than we'd expect. Michelangelo found the monolith piece of marble in the Florence dump. It was a chunk of stone considered imperfect, unwanted, left to suffer from the elements. He took it and transformed it by his loving hands, connectional creativity, and passion into something that superceeds our normal notions of beauty.

Maybe that's the answer to recognize that I - that we - rhat even David - are just like that statue. David is an example of godliness and faith-full living, yet he was also self-centered and unfaithful except to his own lusts. Some of his shortcomings in life were killing the husband of his married lover, and choosing favorites among his own children. Yet I think that faith - and the mystery of God's incarnation, embodied in Jesus and also in us today - points to the fact that we are complex creatures filled with both light and darkness. Often feeling like unwanted, overlooked items left in the mess of the town dump that can be transformed into paragons of beauty, invited to participate with authenticity in that ongoing process of transformation - that is being facilitated by the power I call God - of chips off the old block into masterpieces. Maybe what this story and what Jesus is trying to teach is that being able to choose to forgive - either by our own grit or God's grace - is what it means to be authentically human. That choice to reconicile and resurrect relationships is ours alone in the diverse community of creatures with whom we share planet Earth?

PS - a rumor circulated around our church community yesterday that this is actually my portrait. While I wish it was true, I have to be honest that I'm not this pale and my pecs are more oblong. :)