A Beautiful Story

One of my favorite movies is A Beautiful Mind, a biopic about the renowned mathematician and Nobel Peace Prize winner John Nash. The movie opens with Nash's years in graduate school at Princeton, chronicling his failures and successes, as well as narrating the close relationship which developed between Nash and his roommate Charles Herman. After Princeton, it follows Nash through several years at Wheeler Labs at MIT, as he is married and becomes involved in a highly dangerous task of cracking the codes of Russians who are hiding a portable nuclear bomb. About halfway through the movie, Nash begins to be pursued by Russians and he becomes extremely paranoid. This culminates in his lecture at Harvard where he is forcibly sedated and taken captive by imposing men in dark suits. (If you have not seen the movie, stop reading - spoiler ahead.)

The next scene, Nash awakes to find himself in a mental institution. And through a conversation between Dr. Rosen, the head psychiatrist, and Nash's wife Alicia, the audience learns to their shock that Nash is schizophrenic and the story of the Russian code breaking, which had consumed the better part of the movie, was all a delusion. Moreover, his Princeton roommate Charles Herman, a character the audience had by now grown to love, was also a delusion. The audience is then taken on a journey through Alicia's searching to various places that Nash visited during his delusions. What had been a beautiful old mansion, where he had dropped off his code breaking research, was truly a dilapidated old house. What had been a highly sophisticated entrance system, was truly just a rusted out mailbox. All of Nash's research was still sitting in the drop box, never picked up, never opened. The audience learns with Nash and experiences with him his disbelief of the poignant words of his wife: "It isn't real."

This point in the movie, though midway through its plot line, entirely changes the story. After learning this information, the audience realizes that they are not watching a movie about Russian codes; rather, they are watching a movie about a schizophrenic man. Had a person stopped watching the movie prior to this point, he or she would have had an entirely different interpretation of the first half of the movie.

There is a striking parallel here to the story of Scripture. Imagine a person sitting down to read the Bible for the first time. Imagine further that this person had never heard of anything in its pages before. Not knowing where else to start, she starts at the beginning. As she reads along in the first few books it becomes clear to her what the story is about, a people group who is chosen and redeemed by their Covenant, Creator God. But like A Beautiful Mind, there is a crucial turning point two thirds through the story: "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth."

These words, much like the words of Alicia Nash, change everything. When we go back and read the first part of the story, we see things differently, things we didn't see before are there and things we saw before are no longer there. For instance, if you read the first part of the story, you might be prone to think of the Creator God as one who sanctions war. But after reading the sermon on the mount and seeing the God on the cross, you realize that this is not true. If you read the first part of the story, you might think that the Creator God is an exclusive God, coming for only one group of people. But after you read the letters of Paul, you realize that Christ came for all people.

Whereas the Fathers, starting from the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, inherently understood the truth that the testaments cannot be read apart from one another, most biblical scholars and Christians today do not understand it. You see the misunderstanding every time an OT scholar insists that we must understand the OT as the Jews would have understood it. You see the misunderstanding every time someone argues for the death penalty or for war or for some other controversial point using verses from the OT with no concern for the coming of Christ. These kinds of arguments are the same as if someone argued for the reality of Nash's roommate Charles Herman having only seen the first half of the movie. Herman is, of course, not reality but one has no way of knowing that without watching the entire movie.

Of course metaphors are not exactly the same as that which they portray; therefore, metaphors by nature break down. Where this one breaks down is precisely in the category of truth. Whereas John Nash's turning point showed him that things in his life he had thought were real were actually illusory, the coming of Christ in the flesh shows that the stories of God and the prophecies therein are the only true thing.

Ashes to Ashes . . .

For myself and the hundred or so other worshippers around me, today's noon hour was one dedicated to contrition and repentance as we were led through the corporate prayers of the Ash Wednesday liturgy. After the communal prayers, each of us walked to the front and a cross of ash was marked on our forehead as the following words were spoken over us:

"Remember that from the ashes you came and to the ashes you will return."

The symbolism in this ancient Christian tradition is thick. The cross on the forehead comes from the Hebrew tradition of binding the law on the forehead prescribed in Deuteronomy. To them, this tradition symbolized the law consuming and controlling their minds. To us, the cross consumes and controls our minds - we think, we see, and we live cruciform. The ashes symbolize the dust of the earth from which we were made, and we realize through them that without the breath of God we would not have physical life and without the Spirit of God, we would not have eternal life (the word for Spirit in both Hebrew and Greek can also mean breath and wind).

Ash Wednesday is not a joyous celebration as many of our other feast days are. It is a day for remembering the abyss from where the Lord has taken you, of remembering and confessing your many sins, that they may be covered, and of the beginning of fasting to commemorate and to be conformed to the sacrifice of our Lord.

After service, I went back into the world conscious that the cross of ash on my forehead was visible to all. I made certain that I smiled a little bigger at people, I held the door open for more people, I was more patient with a slow library worker. All this because I knew that I would be identified with that cross on my forehead. I wonder why I am not always conscious of this identity? I wonder what the world would be like if all of us who identify ourselves with the cross lived as though there were always one of ashes on our foreheads.

Little Theophanies

This is Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday in the season of Epiphany and the high point of Christ's ministry on earth, when his true nature is revealed to the disciples on Mt. Tabor. This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent marking the forty day mourning period as the church moves toward Holy Week, corresponding to Christ's movement toward Jerusalem in the Gospels. The Gospel lectionary reading for today is Luke 9:28-43:

"Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and James and John, and went up on the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white. And hehold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem . . . a cloud came and overshadowed (the disciples); and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, 'This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!"

To the ancient reader of Scripture, steeped in the Scriptures of Israel this text screams one word, THEOPHANY, which in parochial terms, simply means: "God showed up!" The ancient reader of Scripture would have thought theophany because Luke's text is laden with references to the first theophany, namely the appearance of God to Moses on Mt. Sinai in Exod 19:

"So it came about on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled."

God descended to Mt. Sinai and interacted with humans face to face for the first time since they had been cast out of his presence in Eden. He calls Moses up to the mountain who is enveloped in the cloud, much like the disciples, and gives him the instruction by which the people of God are supposed to live. And when Moses comes off the mountain, he is described thus:

"It came about when Moses was coming down from Mount Sinai (and the two tablets of the testimony were in Moses' hand as he was coming down from the mountain), that Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because of his speaking with him. So when Aaron and all the sons of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to go near him."

The truth of the Transfiguration is that when humans commune with God, they experience His light, they are themselves transformed into the light of God. Modern readers of the Transfiguration text will either, at best, assume that Jesus shown because he was God himself or, at worst, dismiss the account as fantasy. But the ancient readers saw here the truth that when we commune with God, we are transformed into him by his light. That is, we become the PLACE of his presence, as Mt. Sinai was in the OT. We become, as it were, little Theophanies. God's light rests in us! And this was often seen to be the case. Consider the following examples:

1. The first martyr Stephen is taken before the elders and the scribes to give an account of the "lies" he has been preaching about Jesus. Soon he will give his final testimony and be stoned to death. He is described directly prior to the account thus: "And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel."

2. In the fourth century, there was an explosion of monastic aesthetics (we might call them hermits) who went off by themselves to the deserts of Egypt to find God. There are short little accounts written about these men. One such account reads as follows: "The Fathers used to say that someone met Abba Silvanus one day and saw his face and body shining like an angel and he fell with his face to the ground. He said that others also had obtained this grace."

3. Another account from the Desert Fathers reads as follows: "A brother came to the cell of Abba Arsenius at Scetis. Waiting outside the door he saw the old man entirely like a flame."

4. Macrina, the elder sister of the fourth century Fathers St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nyssa, died in the presence of her young brother. Gregory describes the scene this way: ". . . the cloak was placed over the body. She shone even in the dark mantle; God’s power, I think, added even such a grace to her body that, exactly as in the vision I had while dreaming, rays of light seemed to shine out from her beauty."

These four examples show the truth known by the saints, that God "showed up" in Christ and that Christ now "shows up" in us. And to say that Christ dwells in us is a much more profound truth than I think we ever realize. For he no longer dwells on mountains, or in temples, or even in church buildings. He dwells in his followers, in those who have conformed their lives to his and in so doing, have made their bodies condusive to his presence. May each of us attain to this profound grace.

The Sum of Perfection

"Forget created things,
but their Creator, never;
the core attend forever;
love Him from whom love springs."

-St. John of the Cross

Together

In 115 AD, Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, was in chains on his way to Rome to be fed to lions in the Coliseum. On his way, he wrote several letters to different churches which provide an amazing glimpse into the life and values of the early church. One of those letters was to a fellow bishop named Polycarp. He encouraged Polycarp with the following description of God's church:

"Labor together with one another: struggle together, run together, suffer together, die together, rise together."

Amen. May it yet be so today.

The Importance of Context in Reading Scripture

I believe that in understanding the meaning of a story, context is everything. Nowhere is this insight more crucial than in our understanding of Scripture. Just as one would not be able to pick a paragraph out of a novel such as To Kill a Mockingbird and understand the meaning of the story, its comments on the rapant racism of the South in thr 1930s, so one cannot read a verse in Philippians and understand what Paul is saying in the letter, much less the entirety of Scripture.

This truth might seem self evident. Unfortunately, however, many current practices in reading Scripture encourage just this practice. We often read a verse or two for our quiet times, in no particular sequence, and think we understand without giving any thought to the context in which it is set. The context than becomes whatever we bring to the verse resulting in an interpretation that best fits what we need, but may or may not have anything to do with the actual biblical narrative. Pastors, unfortunately, often model this practice, by reading one or two verses (sometimes even a half of a verse) and then making a 40 minute sermon on some topic that evidences little resemblance to the Scripture. While we may here a nice message, we are nowhere closer to understanding Scripture, which is, afterall, the primary duty of preaching.

The following blog was written by Chuck Gutenson, a former professor of mine at Asbury. It is one of the best pieces I have read on the importance of understanding the context for understanding Scripture: Gutenson's Blog.