In response to Q Prentice asking tough questions about God, Job and the experience of brokenness in the world I wanted to share a personal worship experience from this past Sunday.
At my home church we make Lectio Devina a somewhat regular practice, something I have embraced personally now for a little more than four years. On this evening we read the story from Mark 4 of Jesus calming the storm. Afterward the congregation shared their reflections.
One of the pitfalls of Lectio is that it necessarily focuses on a very small story or section of Scripture (also one of its strengths!). The reflections that were shared after this story basically came to: Jesus cares about us, he's in the boat with us, and he will calm our storms if we ask him.
These comments come out of good Dutch-immigrant axiom's I grew up with: God never gives you a load your shoulders can't bear; He never gives you more than you can handle; it's all to make you stronger (etc). Thus emerges a picture of a loving, but stern Father God who allows pain because it benefits us - personally, in some future-unknown manner.
I don't know about this. I don't know about this at all. Our pastor asked us what kind of images occurred to us hearing this story. Maybe I have a little "glass-is-half-empty" syndrome, or I study the dark side of international politics too much, but the image that came to my mind was: walking along Atlantic coastal villages in Newfoundland, with good friends, reading the plaques and memorials of ships that went down, all hands lost, at sea. "Poor bastards", I thought. "They obviously didn't get a calm sea like Galilee that day in Mark 4". My experience of the world tells me pain and suffering doesn't always make me stronger, it doesn't always benefit me or allow me new important insights on life and God - sometimes it hurts like hell, it doesn't ever make sense, it breaks us, and we die.
This is a bigger discussion: about judgment, about evil, about suffering, about God. But I don't want to get lost in academic and theological jargon to lose the existential heft. There is a real intellectual and emotional effort to be made by Christians to confess that God is indeed omnipotent, indeed all-loving, but that doesn't necessarily mean He's my personal go-to guy who's never going to let bad things happen to me. Just because Jesus is in the passenger's seat, doesn't mean I won't rear-end that Volvo. I believe the Dutch axiom that covers this is: Trust God, but lock your doors.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Sentimental Jesus
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2 comments:
Hey Adunare,
This also highlights the danger of Lectio or any other Bible study that says, "What does this mean to you?". Since the root of the story is not about Jesus being in the boat with us but about Lordship and about Jesus being God. The passage ties back to the Psalms where we are told that God controls the wind and the waves. When the disciples see that Jesus does what God does they are overwhelmed and name him Lord and worship. This passage is not first about us, but about a declaration of who Jesus is. Secondly it is about us and brings comfort, but only in the sense that we find comfort in knowing that Jesus is Lord and in control of even the waves and winds. That knowledge, however, says nothing about when or how he will use that control.
Maybe this idea that this passage is first about us also speaks volumes about how self-focused we've become. Could it be that those of old Dutch Calvinism would never have seen this passage first through their felt needs, but instead through the eyes of a sovereign God?
That's more or less the suggestion I'm making, I suppose. The long tradition of Lectio - furthermore - is not really about "what does this mean to you?" It just seems common to have things push in that direction.
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