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| Last night, on our way down to spend Christmas Eve with our dad, my sister Bekah and I listened to Tim Keller talk about the truly unique and powerful way that Jesus impacted history. A lot of people have made a deep mark on history, he said, and a lot of people have claimed to be God. But the only person who fits in both of those categories is Jesus.
Today on the website of the Arab language news service, Al Jazeera, they had these photos of "Christmas Worldwide." As I was looking through the photos, I couldn't help thinking back to that talk. What other person in all of history has had this kind of influence? 2000 years later, we celebrate this man who was a nobody for thirty years, preached and taught for three years, and then died. Why? Contrary to what we would have expected, we have more evidence for Jesus' existence than we have for Nero's, or Julias Caesar's, or Plato's. Their positions and status seemed to indicate that they were the ones who would leave a bigger mark on history, but no one anywhere celebrates their birth. What's the explanation?
Christians say he was God. Either Jesus was God--God in human form, living among men--or he wasn't. We know (from sources outside of the Bible, even from sources antagonistic to Christianity) that most of the people who were closest to him, who lived with him, saw him every day died because they said he was God. If anyone knows our worst sides, it's our families, our roommates, our best friends--the people closest to us. The people closest to Jesus died calling him God. Today, people all over the world say the same thing. The fact that they say anything about someone who should, by all human reasoning, be completely forgotten by now, means something. Jesus' life in first-century Palestine and his legacy all over the world today mean something.
Everyone who knows what Jesus said should have strong opinions about him. There's no way to know what he said, to really understand it, and be ambivalent about him.
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| I can never go to a wedding without imagining myself getting married; I
can never go to a funeral and not imagine myself in the casket. I
suppose no contemplative person can.
This past weekend, my friend Luke’s dad
died. At the funeral in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, I watched person
after person stand and talk about him. They praised his love for his
wife and kids, his giving heart, his concern for the people around him.
Each of them summed up in a few words, as best they could, their
experience of that good man.
Annie Dillard wrote, “We live on mined land. Nature itself is a laid trap. No one makes it through; no one gets out.” Martin Heidegger
wrote many cryptic pages saying, among other things, that the only way
to live authentically is to accept, not only the possibility, but also
the inevitability, of our own death.
As I sat there listening to people at the funeral, it occurred to me a that this is the earthly end of every story. Of my
story. “No one makes it through.” One way or another, we all end up in
a box. How often do I really think about it? Almost never.
Earlier in the same book, Dillard quotes the Mahabharata
saying, “Of the world’s wonders, which is the most wonderful? That no
man, though he sees others dying all around him, believes that he
himself will die.”
Paul wrote, “Let each one take care how he builds,” and “each of us will give an account
of himself to God.” Paul—in fact, every poet and prophet in the
Bible—and Jesus himself are telling me that I am accountable for how I
spend every minute of my life. And my life, like yours and that of
every one we know, is almost over.
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| ps--if you'd like a visual tour through my last two weeks, click on this photo of the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela:
pretty cool place, that Santiago de Compostela. i'm looking forward to going back.
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| As I had lunch an hour ago with Jonas and Marrty, another teammate's wallet was stolen, interrupting our lunch and her life. It's such a frustrating experience, and I found myself mentally revising all my normal habits and trying to see where I am vulnerable. Now, sitting in my apartment, which has been burgled at least twice in the last few years, I find myself doing the same thing. "How can I avoid becoming a victim?"
Maybe there's no avoiding it. Maybe we're supposed to be able to live freely without worrying about people attacking us and stealing from us. Where are things safe? (rhetorical question) The answer is that things are not safe. The answer is that this is not the way the world was supposed to be. "The kingdom of God has come upon you," but we were still told to pray, "may your kingdom come."
"Store up your treasure in heaven, where thieves don't come in and steal, and where moths and rust don't destroy--because wherever your treasure is, that's where your heart will be." Where's my treasure now? There's my heart.
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| One of my favorite parts of Catalan culture, the castellers.
(Click on the photo to see how they build the towers.)
This was from an exposition about a week ago, in Vilassar de Mar. My friends Martty and Angela live there, with their two kids.
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