Planet Earth, Zootopia, and God’s Holy Mountain

Planet Earth and Zootopia help to begin a conversation about Isaiah and God's Holy Mountain.

Have you ever watched the documentary series Planet Earth? I recall with glee the first time I watched these at my friend’s home right after college. I was completely blown away! Right there captured in high definition were intense and intimate images from all over the globe that were so remarkable it was hard to believe these events actually happened on planet earth and not some production studio or on some other planet altogether. I have tried to watch this series again with my wife, but if the episode features predator stalking prey we run into a problem.

 

This natural drama stands out as one of the beautiful aspects of this series. A shark ripping a seal ten feet out of the ocean as the predator clamps down its rows of teeth around the prey defies physics. An owl silently swooping in to scoop up a mouse that the bird spotted from hundreds of yards away lifts me out of my seat. However, the one scene even I concede gets my stomach turning features cheetahs chasing down a limping baby gazelle. As usual, my wife stands correct (but don’t tell her I said that). 

“Out in the open field the cheetah’s speed is only matched by one creature,” Lord David Attenborough might say. “Cheetahs will work together as a team to corner the herd of gazelle, then as the predator forces its prey to make a decision, one of the weaker members of the flock will be separated from its mates. At first the young gazelle will dart away from the big cats, but eventually the pack of predators outmatch the prey.” It’s these moments that while extraordinary to watch give us soft-hearted folks nightmares, as we empathize with the adolescent gazelle, even in this circle of life.

“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. 7 The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. 9 They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 10:6-10)

In seminary class in which we talked about what God is like we read this passage from Isaiah as a descriptor of what the Kingdom of God will be like. As we read it I remember thinking about Planet Earth and the shark, the owl, and the cheetah. I slowly raised my hand to ask, “What if Isaiah has it wrong? I mean, isn’t the wolf the most wolf-like when it’s stalking the lamb? Are not leopards, lions, bears, and snakes made to be hunters?” I may empathize with the gazelle, but how do we separate the pinnacle essence of a creature from the creature? The professor turned it back upon me and the class. We spent an hour wondering about what is the highest order of a cheetah or a fox? 

This summer I got another glimpse of an answer to my question when the youth went on our work week and watched the movie Zootopia, a film by Disney. In this animated world made up of talking animals predators have given up their hunting ways and live in peace with prey. Yet, as the plot unfolds following a bunny breaking into the ranks of the Zootopia Police Force a mysterious crime spree happens in which predators actually attack prey. I will not give away the ending of the movie, as it is well worth watching, but while watching this movie I saw the way that animals (including humans) interact differently. I still may not have an answer for my question from seminary, but I caught an image of hope. 

Something more exists for all of us. The cheetah is called to something more even than when he is hunting down the gazelle. The same may be said for the owl or the shark. Yes, we may appreciate what animals do when they hunt in this world, but all of creation is called to something even more than we may be able to imagine. God calls each of us to dwell on God’s holy mountain where we no longer hurt or destroy. Instead, we will be so filled by the knowledge of the Lord that we cannot help but bow to the divine in the other as that other bows to respect the divine within us. 

We are in the season of Advent when we hope that this Kingdom of God will come, not just in the future, but right now! And in this time, we are called to slow down enough to remember God’s ultimate reality. The best is yet to come as the Cursillo community reminds us. We are each called to listen to how God is calling us to be a part of God’s Holy Mountain. 

How will we defy even our greatest human instincts to dream with God, like a lion lying down with a lamb? How will we allow the Holy Spirit to so dwell within us that we cannot help but see God’s Holy Spirit tying all of us together? How will we live our lives so connected to the Christ living within ourselves that we see in all other creatures the Christ that dwells in them? Slow down this Advent season, dream with God, and seek to create God’s Holy Mountain right here and right now!

Practice Gratitude!

Tomorrow is a day that we set aside to give thanks. We trace the roots of our celebration back to settlers making it through some difficult times when coming to the land we know as America. I like this connection, but for me the day actually has more significance than just the historical link.

Tomorrow we set an entire day aside for giving thanks. Honestly, we would do well to do this all day everyday, but I'll take what I have been given (and be thankful for it). One day to give thanks; however, we do not often actually remember that giving thanks is the purpose of tomorrow. Instead we get caught up in the preparations of the food, the details of the parade, the football being played, the drama of family dynamics, or the absence of someone who is no longer with us. All of these are important, but in the messiness of these elements we can get so distracted that we only pause to give thanks during the blessing before our festive meal.

Tomorrow instead of confining your act of giving thanks to a single moment when your family, friends, and/or loved ones gather around a table, let the gratefulness expand a little bit. Every week at church in our Eucharistic Prayer (also known as the Great Thanksgiving) we say, "It is right and a good and joyful thing always and everywhere to give thanks." We go on to direct that thanks to our Triune God, but what grabs me is the always and everywhere nature of being thankful. You do not have to wait until you are sitting next to grandma with the turkey right in front of you to count your blessings. Instead, begin tomorrow by setting aside some time to practice gratitude.

Tomorrow when you wake up grab a pen and some paper. Maybe grab some coffee first or go on a run if you must, but do not turn on the news or check your email or open FaceBook. Get your pen and paper and begin writing down all the things for which you are thankful: people, places, things, feelings, activities, experiences, events, situations, conditions, and everything else; the good things, the bad things, and all things in between; the small moments, the huge moments, and all moments that are just medium moments. Spend time early in the day asking people you love about the reasons why they are thankful this year. For when we live our days focusing on our blessings we recognize something different than when we let other people dictate what we need to think about as we read the news or the newsfeed or listen to others spout out their opinions.

Tomorrow if you spend time counting blessings what I believe you will realize is that not just some parts of life are worthy of thanks, but all parts. Even the most frustrating things, the most horrible things, and the down right worst things I have experienced are now the events that have made me who I am. I may not ever want to experience them again, but somehow I believe that God walked with me through those moments to teach me something, to show me something, or to grow me in some way that could not have happened otherwise. I may never like going through low points, but I will do my best to be thankful for those moments, just as I am thankful for the high points. All of life is a gift. All of life is a gift. ALL OF LIFE IS A GIFT!

Tomorrow and always may we be thankful for the gifts that God gives to us. 

The Curious Journey We All Walk

Clive Staples Lewis—or Jack as he was known to friends—wrote in Mere Christianity “You must make a choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up as a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon, or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.” These are the words that Holy Women, Holy Men, the trial lectionary resource depicting the lives of blessed ones, use to begin their commemoration of Lewis. And, these words possess within them not just the Truth of what Jesus’ life, death, and Resurrection compels us to do, but also a glimpse into the inner struggle of one of the most popular and widely read defenders and explainers of Christianity in the 20^th Century!

My life would certainly not be the same without C.S. Lewis. Growing up my family had a few noteworthy routines that eventually turned into cherished traditions: decorating the house for various seasons, going out to eat whenever my sister or I made straight A’s on our report cards, and most importantly for the purposes of today’s sermon ironing the upcoming week’s outfits on Sunday afternoons. During the school year I did not have very many outfits that needed to be pressed except for church clothes but everyone else did. While my parents or sister ironed their things we took turns reading the Chronicles of Narnia by Lewis. The only time this changed was during Advent when we read his letters to children. To this day I have a strange love of ironing clothes that I believe stems from reading those books together, but that is not why Lewis’ life remains so impactful.

Lewis did not begin as a faithful son of Christianity. Yes, he grew up in the Church of England; however, his early formation did not stick, at least not immediately. After service in World War I, he began a struggle both with academia and with God. Eventually Lewis would become a lecturer at Oxford and later a Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English Literature at Cambridge. While he pursued these outward posts inwardly Lewis marched from devout atheist to skeptical agnostic to curious theist and finally to “dejected and reluctant convert” to Christianity. His pathway of intellectual inquiry matched with wonderings of faith truly make his diverse works what they are. 

In college I can recall my own similar (but much more accelerated) journey from childhood believer to atheist to agnostic to theist and finally to Christian. The works of Lewis were annoying in many of those phases. Every person who cared enough to try to “convert” me back to the Christian side during college seemed to throw Lewis’ works in my face. Today, I am sad to say I could not take them serious, but I also realize that Lewis himself probably would not have been so pushy. His reluctance to fully take hold of the mantel of Christian was precisely what I felt. And at least for me I struggled with this both because I did not want to take something so serious on half-heartedly and because I knew that I could not really be sure of something like Faith.

The challenge for us is to have a mature faith that involves our entire selves. Doubts are helpful in this process. Without doubts and questioning we would not have Lewis as this figure who could articulate in so much diversity what it is like to be a Christian in the modern world. Curiosity allows us to grow deeper in our relationship with God. And, this is what C. S. Lewis’s questioning helped me to understand, primarily that the questioning and curiosity will lead us not into less faith, but into a deeper Faith!

Fulfillment

“Happy New Year!” I say to myself as I look forward to this coming Sunday. Oh, I’m too early, you say? Oh, I just wrote a scathing blogpost last week about people putting up their Christmas lights too early and now I’m already moving to the New Year, you say? Well, I was talking about the Church year—thank you very much! Yes, I am a Church nerd; however, I am one not merely as an occupational hazard. No, I care so much about the tradition, experience, and practices of the Church because I care about how we as human beings relate to God. As one such Church nerd, it is my duty and great joy to tell you the good news that we begin a new Church year this coming Sunday with a new season (Advent), new Sunday School classes at St. John's (Come learn about why the Church year is awesome!), and a shift in our readings—chiefly we see this in a move from the Gospel of Luke to the Gospel of Matthew.

 

During new student orientation in seminary we had an icebreaker activity with all sorts of nerdy Church questions: Are you high church, broad church, or low church in your worship style? Do you like praise music, hymnal music, or no music? Would you rather use Rite I, Rite II, or Enriching Our Worship? Which Gospel is your favorite: Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John? I don’t remember my answers to other questions, but I remember that Luke was my favorite Gospel when I entered seminary. If you asked me last week where it stands in my Gospel Power Rankings (GPR) I would reply that it is in danger of missing the four team Gospel Championship Playoff (GCP). Matthew though, does not sit much higher. So part of me rejoiced this morning when I put away my big commentary on Luke, but another part grimaced when I picked up the commentary on Matthew. I especially winced when I read this coming Sunday’s reading (Matthew 24:36-44).

The start of our Church year and the beginning of its first season of Advent when we prepare for the coming of Christ (past, present, and yet-to-come) sounds so scary this year with three distinct admonitions. First, nobody knows when the Son of Man is coming, like those in Noah’s day did not know when the flood would carry them away. Next, when the Lord comes two will be working in the field or at the mill, one will be taken and one will be left. Finally, God will come like a thief in the night. “Keep awake” could be the summary message, or maybe “Let’s get paranoid!” Sheesh, this is how we start the year? It is a little different than a gigantic disco ball, college bowl games, and champagne to ring in the New Year! And yet, I am not giving up hope on the First Sunday of Advent!

While the four canonical Gospels all have much in common—mostly that they are about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth—each has its own distinct flavor. Matthew’s distinct essence, according to the scholar R.T. France, focuses upon fulfillment. Jesus came to fulfill! He came to fulfill the law, the prophets, and God’s plan of salvation! Matthew proves this over and over again with fifty-four direct quotations from the Old Testament (OT) and another 262 allusions to the OT. This statistically does not outpace every book of the New Testament, but it does have more OT per verse than any other Gospel (R.T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, 10-11)! So why are the OT connections important? And, how might this salvage a very direct Gospel passage this Sunday? Fair questions.

The theme of fulfillment is important because it will shape just about every story in the First Gospel, like how the Magnificat’s upside-down worldview provides a key to unlocking an understanding of Luke or how the whole first chapter of John (Logos Hymn) gives insight into knowing the celebratory nature of the Word’s coming in the Fourth Gospel. “All this happened to fulfill what had been written (in some prophet’s book)” will be a commonly heard refrain in Matthew, which will bring the theme of fulfillment to center stage. But, as is the case this Sunday, often the theme of fulfillment will be like an operating software running in the background. This Sunday we surprisingly start the Church Year late in Matthew’s Gospel with a prophetic word about the coming of the Son of Man from Jesus himself, which is to say the least "trippy." This challenging message is still about fulfillment though. 

The Son of Man comes into the world to fulfill all that was written in Jewish Scripture and beyond, and as scary as that moment could be (see: Noah’s flood, left behind series, thief in the night), what Jesus really seems worried about is someone missing that moment altogether! If we truly believe that Matthew wrote his Gospel to help his community and others know that Jesus came to fulfill God’s purposes in this world, then we have the freedom to hear Jesus’ words differently. Jesus urges those listening to pay attention, so that all may be part of the fulfillment that the Son of Man brings. When understood this way these are hopeful words, challenging ones yes, but more than anything (at least according to Matthew) God wants us to be part of the fulfilling of all things! That does make me feel like this is a Happy New Year!