Advent Musical Reflection #2 :: 2nd Week: "Ain't No Man" The Avett Brothers

I'm going to do a weird thing this week - and contradict and not contradict the main idea of this song. How does that even make sense? Well, it's a both/and situation. Yes, that happens. Jesus is both human and divine, so blammo.

Human AND divine, you say? We call it Christ's dual nature, that Jesus was both 100% divine and 100% human. This, of course, makes no sense. Back in the early church several heresies gave alternative views, that Jesus was just divine and his body was an illusion, or he was a man who divinity was given to, or just a cool guy. Eventually, after those theories had been thrown out, people generally understood Jesus as human and divine. Then, around 300, Arius hit the scene.

Arius poked a hole in the rhetoric around Jesus's relationship with the Creator and said that the Son must be a creation of God the Father's, and therefore not eternal. The dogma of Trinity had not yet been fully formed, so he made some headway with his argument. He even had a slogan: "There was a time when the Son was not." (Placher 73) I have a story in my head but I can't find the source (if someone can cite it for me that would be great!) that in Alexandria, people at the marketplace were debating this topic.

Imagine that! While bartering and haggling was happening, the nature of Jesus was being debated. Imagine a world where talking faith and discussing theology was as common as buying bread. Emperor Constantine even got involved in the debate, even though he didn't understand the difference. "Having made a careful inquiry into the origin and foundation of these differences, I find the cause to be of a truly insignificant character, and quite unworthy of such fierce contention." (75) Constantine, probably worried about the unrest, called the Council of Nicea and (now Saint) Athanasius, who was the champion of anti-Arianism was declared the winner and Arius a heretic. Arianism did not quite hit the mark.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/33/af/49/33af491c8d0d1c166d45c95d420a64b5.jpg

Why is it so important? Why did Saint Nicholas punch Arius? Why was the extremely stubborn Saint Athanasius so adamant about the words begotten and of the same substance/consubstantial? (or homoousios in Greek, but that starts a whole other story about the Trinity which is connected but I won't go there for this. But it's super interesting.) So what does all this have to do with an Avett Brothers song?

I hear this song in two parts: the first and third lines, and the rest of it.

There ain't no man can save me

...There ain't no man or men who change the shape my soul is in

That's true, except for one. There is no man or woman (Trump or Clinton) who can save you, or change the shape of your soul, except for one. And that one can save you because he is both human and God. He is begotten or consubstantial or however you would like to say it with our Creator. There was no time when the Son was not. That is something to rely on when there's not much else that can be considered eternal.

There ain't no man can enslave me
...There ain't nobody here 
who can cause me pain or raise my fear
'cause I got only love to share

The rest of the song, lines 2, 4, and beyond. All that is true because of this great mystery of divine and human as one person. "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because God first loved us." (1 John 4:18-19) We have the ability to love because our Eternal Creator loved us; we know how to put our love into action because the human Jesus gave us examples.

This song is joyful; Advent is joyful. Advent is our preparation for celebrating this great mystery, something we celebrate every Sunday but commemorate in a special way with Jesus's birth. Another big word (because I didn't give you enough in this post) is Incarnation. That is the word we use for Jesus's birth as both a fully human and fully divine being. God incarnate. This is what I mumble to myself whenever I watch a bad Christmas movie tell me the "real meaning of Christmas" is family, or caring, or warm fuzzy nonsense. It's about the Incarnation. (so, all those things but only because of the Incarnation) It is incredible to consider being loved so much that my Creator wanted to live, die, rise for me. And you. And everybody.

So there are a couple lines I contradict, but I affirm the other lines because of the contradiction to the few. Theology so often works out in that confusing kind of way, but the message of all of this is always the same: you are loved.

If you're looking for truth I'm proof you'll find it there.

original image http://www.stpatrickshamilton.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Advent-Wreath-5.jpg

Placher, William C. A History of Christian Theology: An Introduction. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1983.

My Weird Personal History with the Parable of the Sower

It's been entirely too long since I last posted. I hope no one was holding their breath.

From http://catjuggling.com/new-illustration-parable-of-the-sower/

For most of my life, I've hated the Parable of the Sower. I think there was a children's book based on it floating around my church with sad-looking seeds withering on a path or being devoured by evil-looking weeds that made me think of it as rather cruel. Then, of course, the more I thought about it the more it just seemed like he was a terrible farmer. Who doesn't weed? Who doesn't know their land? Who would waste seed by throwing it on a path? What is he, an idiot?

I got a bit older and I could say I understood the metaphor of each bit of land, but I still hated the parable. It just seemed so inhumane. I blame the illustrator of that children's book; anthropomorphic seeds represented people to me, and I could never imagine God throwing people to the weeds or the rocks or the birds. 

Years went by before I really got it: love. Love, of course! The seeds weren't people, they were the Word! We are the soil! Dumb illustrators, ruining parables... The Word doesn't look like a little seed with a terrified expression on its face. The Word is courageous, compassionate, full of light and truth. It is given to us whether we have a heart of fertile soil or hardened path because God loves us.

By margauxeve http://uptowncollective.com/2012/04/06/instagramuptown-margauxeve/

I only had this revelation a few years ago, embarrassingly recent. It was such a huge epiphany I tweeted about it. That counts, right? Since then I have been walking closely with this particular parable. It comes out to hit me at the strangest times.

Just last week, we lost a member of our parish. This was a young man in college who died, along with his companions, in a canoeing accident. For their loved ones, the funeral at our parish was just one of four they would attend within a week. It was enormously sad and heart wrenching. I did not know him and his family had not attended church in a long time so I do not know them, either. I hope the rest of this post does not seem heartless, as I had another moment with this parable during the funeral and that is the focus of this post. What happened to those young men and their families is undoubtedly a tragedy, and I feel deeply for them. That is, however, not what I will be focusing on. Sometimes, two things happen at the same time.

I was asked to be at the funeral by our business manager to help with any support pastorally or as a staff member. I was able to get some more chairs out as our church was overflowing, and I was asked to distribute communion. This is not one of the regular ministries I perform, but I love doing it on occasion. It is special, intimate, and holy in a way I will not try to describe here. The funeral itself was beautiful. Our pastor's homily was perfect, not an easy feat, and every person was there to mourn and to celebrate his life. 

From http://stmatthewcatholic.org/extraord

As happens at most funerals, there were a large number of Catholics who had not been to church in a long time and non-Catholics. For those of you not in the know, to receive the Eucharist you must be a Catholic in good standing. This rule is not meant to be exclusionary, it is meant to emphasize what we believe about the Eucharist: it IS the Body an Blood of Christ. Not a symbol, but the real presence. The rule is meant to make sure that those receiving actually believe that. That being said, it does often feel exclusionary to visitors and is fairly impossible to enforce. You don't know every person who comes forward and even if you do, you don't know what is going on in their heart. Some public figures have run into trouble with this rule as their faces and views are widely recognizable, so some priests have withheld communion. 

This might not be everyone's approach, but I am not going to check each person's "Catholic card" when they come forward to receive communion. Particularly not at a funeral. There were some who obviously had not been to church in a long time and while I have no way of knowing for sure, some who were not Catholic and had no clear idea why they were in line. If you are a non-Catholic reader, the expected response to the minister's presentation of the host or cup and "The Body of Christ" is "Amen." I got a nearly comical range of different responses:

"Thank you"

"Thank you, Amen"

"Amen, Thank you"

"Peace be with you"

And from one teenage girl, "cool."

I mention the last one was a teen but I got these responses from every age. I had many very polite and slightly confused "thank you's" from boomers and gen Xers. (Could we please stop blaming millenials for everything? Really, the rest of you ruined it first and raised us, and I'm pretty sure boomers invented blaming your parents, so... /endrant/) 

So there I was, handing out communion in what was probably the most literal Parable of the Sower possible. I was handing Jesus to soil that could be fertile, rocky, full of weeds, or hard. Perhaps in that moment someone had an encounter with Jesus. Maybe they will laugh it off with their sarcastic friends later, or maybe they will ignore it completely. But maybe one person will decide to come back to church sometime this month. Maybe one person will come back this week and never return again. But they did have an encounter with Jesus. The love of God touched them, and I was lucky and/or blessed enough to help facilitate that encounter. What they do with that experience I have no control over, but being able to witness that was incredible.

As ministers, we are asked to be trusting farmers and spread the seeds of God's love wherever we can. Like the farmer, we are supposed to trust the power of the Word instead of forcing and hovering. One of my favorite books about youth ministry is The Godbearing Life: The Art of Soul Tending for Youth Ministry by Kendra Creasy Dean and Ron Foster. In it, the authors remind us that we are not Jesus and we cannot be Jesus for others. We do not save people. Jesus saves people. What we can do is bring Jesus to others, to be Theotokos, God-bearer, like Mary. We have to remember in the midst of finding enough chaperones and honing a talk just right that the work done in the hearts of those we minister to is not done by us. We bring Jesus so that God can do the work in their hearts, something we do when we distribute communion, sing in church, hug a friend, pray for a loved one's intention, or any other use of our gifts for others and the glory of God.   

I look forward to the other ways the Parable of the Sower surprises me in the future. 

The Sower, Vincent Van Gogh. from http://counterlightsrantsandblather1.blogspot.com/2008/08/van-gogh-sower.html