Electric Circuit Rider

Ron Delbene asks, “Have you have ever felt vaguely hungry and gone to the refrigerator and looked inside? You don’t know what you are looking for, but finally you take something out and eat it. Then you are still not satisfied. Perhaps you want something to drink? You find something to drink. You are full and you aren’t thirsty, but you still aren’t satisfied.”

That is often the way a spiritual search begins. Our century is seeing more and more people on this search. Many of them are young. Many of them have very thin spiritual resources like Julius, a character in the movie Pulp Fiction. After miraculously surviving a fusillade of bullets, Julius decides to “walk the earth” like Caine in the TV show Kung Fu, which was his only exposure to any kind of religious tradition.

In a sermon, Pope John Paul II described a young man who had grown up in an atheistic communist home in Poland , since his parents were minor government officials. The young man had almost never heard the word “God” mentioned during his youth. Yet one day he stood knocking at a monastery door because he was looking for something and he believed the monks might know what it was.

Fruitful churches recognize that people open the door of a church like we so often open the refrigerator door; looking for something – but they don’t know what. So these churches offer to help people find what they are looking for. Much of this takes place in Intentional Spiritual Formation. This goes way beyond Sunday School for kids.

They offer small groups that get together for study, prayer and service. They give people a chance to learn the “basics” of the Christian faith. They give people a chance to reflect on the meaning of their life experiences in the light of scripture, tradition and reason.

In our church, we have Disciple Bible studies, and other mid-week studies – some that run all year and others that run for only a few weeks. These help people find meaning and faith. So does the Faith Weavers class on Sunday morning.

Right now, we are looking at ways to bring together men and women, seniors and teens, singles and families, in different groups in different ways to help each other grow in faith. One of our current projects is setting up a series of classes on just the “basics” of the Christian faith that will run through May and into June. Designed primarily for those who would like to explore membership in our church, it will also be open to members who want to “begin again” – or maybe for the first time – in growing in faith.

OK, you’ve stared into that refrigerator so long the butter is starting to melt. What are you really looking for?  

Some years ago when I was serving another church, a parishioner complained to me that I never preached from the Book of Revelation.

The truth is that I often preach on it during Advent and during this season that we call Easter that runs between Easter morning and Pentecost.

The problem is that I never spend much time preaching about the problem the airlines will have when their pilots have been “raptured” or drawing parallels between what’s happening in the Middle East and the Battle of Armageddon.

I could do that. I grew up with a devout belief in Dispensationalism  that forms the basis of the Left Behind series and much of the preaching about the Book of Revelation in North America , today. I have memorized the timetable of the years of tribulation under the reign of the Antichrist, the Millennium, the great last battle between good and evil and the Last Judgment.  I know what to look for in the news  that will tip me off that the END IS NEAR.

I also know that, while not exactly a bunch of hooey, that interpretation misses the point of the Book of Revelation.

There are Bible scholars who seriously question whether comfortable North American Christians who feel “persecuted” because they aren’t allowed to dictate the prayers everyone will say in a public schoolroom, can really understand the Book of Revelation.

This book was written for people who had their backs against the wall. The Christians in the Sudan whose crops are burned, villages are pillaged, women are raped, men are killed and children are sold into slavery probably understand Revelation better than we do.

The basic message of Revelation is:

No matter what happens, no matter how bad things get, no matter how much evil seems to triumph don’t give up hope, because:

God is at work, even now, defeating evil, not with a lion, but with a Lamb. So then,

• Love will triumph over hate. Right will triumph over wrong. Peace will triumph over war. Inclusiveness will triumph over prejudice. And community will triumph over selfishness. 
• The poor will enter the Kingdom. The meek will inherit the earth. Those who mourn will be comforted. Those who try to do the right thing will succeed. The peacemakers will triumph. And the persecuted will be vindicated.

The Book’s vision of the New Heaven and the New Earth promises that, in the end, we will live, not playing harps in the clouds but working out God’s policies in a new world.

The Left Behind books aren’t wrong. There is a terrible end in store for all the false powers of this world – and for our false selves. But all that is real and all that is right will live forever in God’s light.

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of watching more movies over ten days time than I ever have in my life. My wife, Jacquie, was one of the judges of the shorts program at the Cleveland International Film Festival.  She saw 160 short films over those 10 days. I didn’t see quite so many, but she and I did take in some great movies from all over the world.

In one of the short films from Bosnia, a teenage boy on a bike is hit by a bus and rushed to a hospital in the capital city of Sarajevo . The boy was hooked up to monitors, IV’s and other equipment designed to save his life and it looked like he would be all right as his parents sped from their rural home to be with him. Then a bomb dropped by a NATO bomber during the bombing campaign of 1995 knocked out the power supply to the hospital. By the time the boy’s parents arrived at his hospital room, their son had died – along with many others in the hospital whose survival depended on electricity.

I remembered, as I watched the movie, that I had been in favor of NATO intervention at the time. The news had been filled with reports of a huge massacre at Srebenica as part of the ethnic cleansing campaign engaged in by Bosnian Serbs. We couldn’t just stand by and idly allow another Holocaust.

The film, however, was a reminder that geopolitical opinions formed in the comfort of my armchair about what should be done on the other side of the world can have disastrous results if my political leaders decide to do exactly what I think they should do. Like most Americans, I wasn’t in favor of sending American soldiers to the Balkans to be in harm’s way. But bombs dropped from 20,000 feet – especially “smart” bombs that, of course, only kill bad people – wouldn’t that be a neat solution to a nasty problem?

I guess it was. The bombing eventually led to the Dayton Agreement, which brought the conflict to an end.

Still, a lot of innocent people died, not just because the “bad” people killed them, but “good” people like us Americans, killed them, too. And they are just as dead, whether murdered by the “bad” people or the “good” people.

I went away from the movie feeling a little like the people of Jerusalem must have felt after hearing Peter’s sermon on Pentecost. They, too, had acquiesced to – even approved of – the execution of the carpenter from Nazareth called Jesus a little over a month earlier. Now, they were learning that they had crucified the One who was both “Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36).

What were they to do? They asked Peter.

He replied, “Repent and be baptized”.

My baptismal vows call on me to repent. They call on me to renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness (such as violence) and to reject the evil powers of this world. They also call on me to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.

Killing the bad people by dropping bombs on their cities from 20,000 feet isn’t in keeping with those vows as I understand them.

Lord, have mercy.