Uncomfortable Flight

Jesus, long ago, was baptized by John in the Jordan. It was a glorious event, with the Gospel recording the heavens opened and the voice of God speaking. But Jesus couldn’t get very comfortable following his baptism. He was led, rather, driven into the wilderness immediately following.
I don’t think God ever lets us get too comfortable. We try to get as comfortable as possible, but spiritually, comfort leads to complacency, and complacent is not really in God’s vocabulary.

TD Jakes says it this way in his book, Before You Do: Making Decisions You Won't Regret (TDJ Enterprises, Atria Books, New York, 2008, p. 186):

"The writer in Deuteronomy says that God stirs up our lives like an eagle stirs her nest. Maybe you’ve been watching Animal Planet more than I have, but let me share what I’ve learned about how mother eagles move their young to maturation. She rearranges her nest, the safe little haven she’s built as a nursery for her brood, so that it becomes as uncomfortable as possible. Why would a mother treat her children this way? She doesn’t want a nest full of dysfunctional birds who cannot move beyond where they began. She knows that if her babies stay in the nest, not only do they miss fulfilling their potential, but they also become an easy target for larger scavengers."

That leads me to ponder my own baptism, and to ponder the spiritual restlessness that I often feel. I wonder in what direction God might be inviting me to travel through the wilderness.

How about you?

Do we dare take on Gaza?

A friend sent an email this week asking for my thoughts, as a Methodist minister, on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis in Gaza.
So many thoughts swirl around my mind - I make no claim to the rightness or wrongness of them. I hope to continue to be influenced and educated on the nuances of the situation. Nonetheless, there are some perspectives from which I've given the issue thought in conversations with Jon and on my own:

-- As for the biblical witness, Israel has been coexisting with other religions and persons since their original inception. The issue of what to do with other religions in your midst is treated with a wide range of responses in the Hebrew scripture.
--The Bible reports that the Promised Land was conquered by Israel in the time after Moses, and it was reclaimed by force after World War II. Israel (and Judah) were conquered and reconquered throughout their history; they've been on the giving and receiving end of hostile takeovers.
--Americans don't have much moral ground to stand on here, as the nation as we know it was taken by force and coercion, too. Much of our projection of force in the 20th and 21st Centuries has been in the name of spreading democratic or capitalistic values, often in response to 'unacceptable' incursions into regions of our national interest.
--That said, a HUGE part of the Hebrew scripture is concerned with self-criticism of abuses of power, violence, and other atrocities. The excesses of other countries military strategies are also criticized by God speaking through the prophets.
--The treatment of aliens is an important theme in Torah and the Writings and Prophetic tradition. Aliens, persons with no political power in your midst, are often given equal status with Jewish widows an orphans.
--I would dare say that modern Israel functions and behaves as a political state guided by a parliament and government, not a theocracy, as was envisioned by many of the biblical writings. While some of God's promises are independent of the quality of religious observance by God's people, the vast majority assume that the people of God uphold their end of the covenant with devotion to God and not the state.
--Christians ought to be very cautious about making specific interpretations of apocalyptic prophesy that apply to this conflict at this point in time. Despite the caution, every age has appropriated Revelations and other prophetic words to their own time and situation. I believe that the only thing that makes today closer to the second coming or the end of days is that we live in chronological time - in the same way that I'm one day closer to my next birthday than I was yesterday.
--Jesus had very little to say to nations. So did Paul, for that matter. Just War theory is an ethical construction and one of many interpretive perspectives put forward on the relationships between nations by serious christian thinkers. Pacifism is another such ethical construction with equal, if not superior, merit based upon New Testament writings. That said, I think one would be more easily found huddling in a basement Gaza apartment with cowering innocents, than in the turret of an Israeli tank.
--Radical grace and forgiveness will be necessary to break the deadlock over who gets the land and how. Nations are not very good at either.

Hopefully I'll get the chance to elaborate on these topics in the coming days.

Ed