Lenten Sundays: The Second Sunday

A Sunday Morning Train...

...of Thought

It started on the way to church with the words of John Prine on the radio program, American Routes....

A Mocca man in a wigwam sitting on a Reservation.
With a big black hole in the belly of his soul
Waiting on an explanation
While the white man sits on his fat can
And takes pictures of the Navajo
Every time he clicks his Kodak pics
He steals a little bit of soul.
Every time he clicks his Kodak pics
He steals a little bit of soul.
-John Prine (Emphasis added)

There was that word soul. Having got to church earlier than usual since I drove with my wife today I picked up a hymnal and started thumbing through Lenten hymns as a way to get my spiritual side in place for worship. There I opened to the old American folk hymn, Wondrous Love:

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this
That caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul!

When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down
Beneath God’s righteous frown,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul for my soul,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul. (Emphasis added)

The juxtaposition of soul in those two incidents put the train on the track with a book I am currently reading, The Wolf at Twilight: An Indian Elder's Journey through a Land of Ghosts and Shadows by Kent Nerburn. It is a powerful and disturbing book about what the Christian theological worldview, mixed with western/European triumphalism did to many young Native American children.

I was struck as I thought through this mix of feelings how much our actions as Christians have so often been so anti-Christian. To kill people - women, children, old people, innocent bystanders - because they are different, because their God is explained differently, is anti-everything I believe Jesus stood for. Which is why He died, after all. He was different and the establishment of the day couldn't put up with that.

So God showed them. He brought Jesus back from the dead. The resurrection is as much about repudiating the culture of death and religious hatred as it is about defeating death itself.

Which then circled to the scripture that my pastor wife used this morning. The Good Samaritan. There they were again, the priest and Levite, those upstanding religious leaders ignoring the different thinking/different believing Samaritan. Somehow or another they might become infected, unclean. Let him lie there in his suffering. They didn't beat up the traveler, but their silence contributed to his pain. Just like so many others who stood around and did nothing while the others were doing the dirty work.

Under it all, my mind continued to wander, to the Nerburn book. It all came down to narrowing one's vision, trying to be right, having My Way be The Only Way. If it isn't, The Only Way, it might be wrong. The Native Elder, Dan, in Nerburn's book says at one place that each people is given a part of the great picture of The Creator. When we kill these others we are killing part of that picture.

Dan spoke of a great mystery. The Creator. God. If we can understand the mystery- it is no longer a mystery. Yet that is what we have tried to do for thousands of years- give The Explanation of The Mystery so that we can understand. We can conquer the mystery and be sure that we are right. We take control.

Which is right back to the Original Sin in the Garden. Wanting to know as much as God. Wanting to be as powerful as God. We want to know it all.

The train of thought then took a side trip back to one of those skits at camp- Mr. Know-It-All where several people are this one brain and they try to give improvised answers to questions. It is hilarious when done well, since each person can only say one word and then pass it on to the next person. They have to just make it up as they go along.

That's what happens when we people of faith, any people of faith, think we know it All. We can't and won't say, "I don't know. It's a mystery." As we realize how much we don't know, as we get deeper into knowing more and more about what lies beyond us we can do one of two things.

We can seek even greater control. We get more rigid. We grow in fear or anger seeking power and end up killing the others, or at least passing by on the other side of the street when we see them in pain.

Or we can be humble. We can stop and give thanks for what we have been given- and then be aware that we don't and won't ever have the final answers to the mystery.

That Good Samaritan out there on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho didn't care about those things of power. He simply knew that someone was in need. He stopped to help.

Which is what Jesus wanted us to know. If we do that we will help people keep their soul instead of snipping away at it piece by piece.

We might even find ours is growing stronger as well.