aintsobad

Ahiuzote: A Startlingly Clear Look at Eternal Life

   Nahua forgot his own life for the sake of his sons. He denied himself all pleasures.

   Naturally, this led him to frustration and an early death.

   Ahiuzote and Xocoyotzin were just sixteen when Nahua's life trailed off into darkness. Nahua had been their support and curse. He had taught them the seven languages he knew, trained them in mathematics and the hard sciences, insisted they learn music from theory to composition. Each boy was an accomplished poet by the time Nahua died.

   Neither one knew how to act around others. In his fear of the ill omen of their twin birth, Nahua kept them from meaningful social contact.

   At sixteen, with no means of support, they would now have to make their own way in the world.

   They would be hugely successful.

   "I am going to the church," Ahiuzote said.

   "I am going to the academy," Xocoyotzin told him.

   "We will not live together now," Ahiuzote told his twin.

   "We will not be far apart," Xocoyotzin replied, wistfully, with a pang of regret, for both knew their life together was now ended.

   Ahiuzote departed for the City of God. Xocoyotzin made his way into the Academy of Humankind in the center of the Great City of the Mountains.

Ahiuzote: A Startlingly Clear Look at Spiritual Immortality

   The ancients built great gardens in their cities. In fact, their cities were mostly built around the concept of the garden. Palaces and temples were constructed to complement the lush growth, fit for the gods. In fact, the gardens were intended to attract the gods who had not yet deigned to live on earth, exactly recreating the vision of the heavenlies the priests and prophets saw in their hallucinogenic worship. The gods would want to come to earth and bring their heavenly homes with them if man could just recreate the other-worldly scenes. In fact, until the heavenly city could be recreated in its entirety, to the last detail, the gods would not come.

   Until the earthly recreation of the heavenlies, a god-like being would have to show himself on earth. In a pre-scientific, pre-democratic stage of cultural evolution, he would have to be skilled in war and, so, adept at the heart of war, the poltics of aggregation. In return for severe ruthlessness to his enemies and his allies, he would live in a palace fit for a god. He would be recognized as the earthly manifestation of the regional deity. A priestly caste would grow up around him. His legend would grow until it was rumored (no, confirmed) that he was the offspring of a human woman and a heavenly being. Somehow he would have a humanly imperfection, sure to his undoing. He would live, for a while, like a god on earth.

   If art imitates life rather than guides it, the ruler-god of the ancients, with his palaces and gardens, imitated life as men hoped it could be some how, some day, some where. They were doomed to disappointment but seldom lived long enough to know the futility of their efforts. The gods did not come to earth, not really. The gardens did not entice the heaven-dwellers to bring down their city, for to layer exactly over the earthly replicas. Fear beget ruthlessness. Lamech was known for his slayings, not his mercy. Fear opened the window to anger. Anger jarred the door to depression. Men lived in fear, married to anger, never far from despair.

   After centuries passed with civilizations rising and falling but no heavenly city descending on its perfect replication, men began to think about their errors. Perhaps it was not the earthly city that needed replication. Perhaps it was the inhabitants of the cities. The people of the plains perished because of their mad behaviors. Far from condescending to live with errant man the Heavenly Power despaired of finding a single person of righteousness. The Heavenly Power was seen making abortive attempts at total destruction, only to stay divine genocide because of an intercessor, who could claim little or no righteousness of his own.  

   Why did the Heavenly Power listen to men? Why did he accept sacrifice and then declare it unfit because of the heart who offered the sacrifice?

   The ancients began to look at their own hearts. They would not know to call the seat of their emotions the "heart." In fact, they expressed feeling, rightly, from where they felt emotions; the bowels.Only much later would they equate an unfeeling muscle, prone to blockages and replete with broken vessels, with their emotions. Then, they would learn to call it their "ego." They would seek to repress the damage in their "heart," done by those closest to them at their most vulnerable life stage. Before they could differentiate from the tree-dwellers, the ancients would have to learn about the  dark wants created by their long, needy infancy and adolesence.

   Always, they wanted more. Their gardens died, their city walls crumbled, their god-kings lost wars and lives and empires. How would the gods ever decide to live one earth, they must have wondered, if men could not build and hold their cities?

   It was men who were imperfect, then. Somehow, men would have to be remade. At first, they worked to make god over in their own image. The man at the top of men, he was god, and men would have to be like him.

   Men disappointed. God could not possibly have all those faces. God could not be intermittently good and evil. Men began to see men were just men.

   Men began to need more than a city similar in function and design to the heavenlies. They would need a remade ego. God would have to come sit on man to restore the divine image. With a rebuilt bowel structure, human feelings would change. God would write his way of living on the heart, not on stone tablets.

   When men were good enough, they thought, God would come to live with them again as He had once lived with them, in  a garden teeming with life, water and food. Heaven would be available to the remade man on earth.

   To remake man in the heavenly image proved to be just as unfruitful as trying to build, down to the last detail, a city they had not seen.

 

Ahiuzote: A Startlingly Clear Look at Eternal Life

   The real change in world conditions came in 2236 C.E., when incontrovertible evidence of spiritual immortality was revealed. Naturally, the times being what they were then, the discovery was made by a blond Mexican native, the warrior-priest Ahiuzote.

   Ahiuzote was the twin brother of the warrior-governor Xocoyotzin. Xocoyotzin emerged from the womb first, with Ahiuzote clinging tenaciously to his heel. The hand to heel connection was considered an omen of bad luck for the older and early death for the younger, at least according to the Mexic people. Nahua, the father of the twins, determined he would sacrifice everything to remove the curse from his sons.

   Nahua left his unfortunate wife as soon as the umbilical cord was cut. He wrapped Xocoyotzin in red and Ahuizote in black to confuse the Fates. Nahua took the two boys deep into the bowels of the Great City of the Mountains, lodged between the high peaks that held the outbreaths of four million citizens in place. He set one boy in a corner under the Sign of the Moon, the other under the Sign of the Sun. He desperately set himself to protecting them. He also set himself to forget which son was the holder and which one the heel.

   "If their mother cannot find them," he wrote in his journal, "the Fates cannot find them."

   "If I cannot remember the name of either child," he continued, "no ill luck can come calling their name."

   Nahua, an educated man, took the lowest job he could find. He made just enough money to keep a roof over their heads and feed the boys a simple diet of corn and flour tortillas. He himself drank only black coffee and ate only crusts of bread.

   Nahua never took another wife. He led an impoverished life, far from the upper scale neighborhood where he had grown to manhood.

   "No god, no imp, no demon," he noted in his journal, "would begrudge us this life."

   He was right in his reasoning. He was very, very wrong in his conclusion.

Author's Note: I should have warned new readers at aintsobad. I am returning to fiction writing here for awhile. No, I do not know how long. I had some thoughts on a renewed memoir but I am not staying there. I am going to write, in fiction form, some of my thoughts on muscular unbelief, Christianity and eternal life (spiritual immortality). Sermon helps will still be over at pastor's pal.

  I do not know how long this story will take to tell. It is, after all, about eternal life.

The Church As Atavistic Reliquary-Acts 6:8-15

   The slings and arrows of outrageous Temple Worshippers came at Stephen from every side. The point of Acts 6:9 is not which of this or that kind of fellow hated Stephen and his message. These were men of various synagogues from various points of the compass. The point is simply put. All of them hated the message.

   All of them hated the messenger. Stephen is especially dangerous to them. He is not Jesus. He is not an apostle, one of those chosen by Jesus personally. Stephen is extra dangerous. He is a second generation of Christian, won by the ones who were won, apparently. If Christianity cannot be stopped by the public execution of Jesus the Christ, if threats against the apostles will not silence them, then the violence against the new movement must escalate.

   This is not an anti-semitic message. Judaism is so evolved in our day it does not proselyte. Judaism recognizes wisdom and good in all faiths. In many rabbinical schools, willing converts to Judaism are discouraged in every way from leaving their own faith.

   Christianity is not so accepting. We chase a perfect faith, conceived in the blood of our Lord. We do not blame anyone for His death; not as a race or part of a race. It is not Judaism, or Roman tyranny or any combination of the two that put Jesus to death. It is the sin of first man/woman and every man/woman since the first. We are not born into the faith but born again into the faith. It is a decision one makes, a choice to respond to a divine calling.

   Stephen is dangerous because he chooses the choice. He makes a decision for Jesus Christ. He gets a really heavy dose of the Savior.

   Stephen is a raw, primitive believer. In his ministry the church starts to grow. He is full of the Holy Spirit and so of spiritual wisdom. His testimony confounds the Temple Worshippers who hear him.

   Stephen is a relic of the early church. Greater than any place we might mention as great in our memory, Stephen's example, simple, raw, primitive, powerful, converted and so converting is the great hall of our remembered faith.

   Stephen:

• Acts in wonders among the people, Acts 6:8-10 The power within him is undeniable. In fact, the power he has is so evident he cannot be overcome with valid argument. Is his power of speech so great men have to believe? If the remainder of the story of Stephen is any indication, he is one who simply tells the story of the Savior in relation to the people from which He came. 
• We should say that only a foolish man announces he does not care about his heritage. In fact, one of the proverbial facets of foolishness is raging unconcern about matters of personal and familial import (Proverbs 10:9).  At no point does Stephen denounce his national or religious heritage. He simply says Jesus comes to finish the promised state.
• Attracts the lies of persons who cannot accuse him truthfully, Acts 6:11. A lie may not be in detail but in application. Assigned motives impugn the character. These assigned motives may not have anything to do with actual intent. Stephen does not intend to destroy the Temple or to denounce Moses. His motivation is to preach Jesus and so convert hearers. In many generations across the ages, this is unacceptable to men who need conversion.
• Amazes his accusers, Acts 6:12-15. For all those who hate the message and the messenger there is still an apparent difference to the man. He looks like an angel, which may mean not more than he seems a steadfast messenger. He is able to stand up to the disapproval of the forces arrayed against him, however, quite because this is a man able to see what awaits him, Acts 7:52-55. Stephen can keep his eyes on the prize.

   Now, really, am I going to get up and tell a church, in sermon form, it should be an atavistic reliquary? No. It is more likely I am going to study up, pray up, think up about five times what I have time to give and let the Holy Spirit call out what God wants for that day. In terms of vocabulary, it is possible I am learning a word or words and so use them in a title or a sentence or just that I like the way two words sound together.

   What would be good, atavistically speaking, is for the church to recapture the primitive power of its ancestors. Stephen gets to speak in the synagogue. He is not silly. He knows the coming result of his message but he is convinced about God's truth and man's need.

  

  

Be Healed-Acts 5:12-42

   Churches should not fear spiritual healing. The television "faith stealers" should not have this domain to themselves, any more than the "prosperity preachers" should get to dominate the potential for divine provision.

   We all pray for sick people. We all know those who benefit from the prayer of faith for the sick. This is a blessing thing, like angels and heaven. No amount of sanctimony or self-promotion on the part of some should scare away the many who want nothing for their prayers except the deliverance of the sick/oppressed.

   Physical deliverance from illness and evil is certainly presented as part of the life of the first Christian century church. As the church matures, there seems to be less attention paid to actual healing miracles but this may be more because their place is assumed in/by the early church than it is about an end to healing. The great need for doctrinal teaching (in our day more than ever, apparently) is the primary purpose of the epistles, as the church works out how it will live in relation to other churches and to the world in general.

   The healing ministry of the early church has several consequences, which appear to manifest themselves repeatedly. They are:

• Deliverance from illness/oppression is referenced as a sign or wonder. That is, each of these miraculous acts is intended to point to God as deliverer. The acts of the Holy Spirit in signs and wonders are not ends in themselves but means by which persons may glorify God, Acts 5:12-13.

• Deliverance from illness/oppression are extended to each, as he has need, in order to gather all, Acts 5:14-16
• Healing ministry seeks to minister healing, not to place blame, as to moral failure or to lack of faith, 5:16
• Provokes companions to faith and opponents to jealousy, 5:16-26
• Since it is a matter of sign/wonder, the healing ministry so results in pointing to God's acts, 5:21
• Since it is sent by God, the healing ministry of the church will see other acts of God in tandem with it, Acts 5:19-21 

   The healing ministry of the church is done publicly but is not for publicity only. One heals/delivers in order to proclaim. Note that in the encounters with their opposition, the apostles are not questioned about their healing wonders but about their authority in proclamation, 5:28. The occassion of healing is the need of man meeting the provision of God for the sake of relieving human suffering and growing the Kingdom of God.

   The healing ministry of the church ought to make people stop and think, 5:33-42, as to whether this ministry, this gospel, this church, be of God. If these works be of God, they cannot be stopped. If these things be not of God, they cannot forever be propped up and ought to be allowed to die.

Mission Trip to Washington State

   Got back Saturday evening late. Hit the ground going on the field here Sunday and have not looked up much since then. Posting somewhat infrequent for awhile.

   I thought church stuff slowed down in the summer. Oh, well.

Service Interrupted: A Political Memoir, Volume Two (Day Three)

Prologue: Leadership, the Art of Curiosity

   Fundamentalism is not about fundamentals. Fundamentalism sets acceptable boundaries around a body of thought. Those who will remain within those boundaries. Seekers, thinkers, radicals, wander outside the borders, creating discomfort among the orthodox.

   The orthodox become the conservatives (some would say reactionaries) of their cause. They most often do not despise what fundamentalists do in their name, but rather decry "the way they do what they do." In this way the conservative may not only eat his cake but have it conserved to him as well.

   He dotes on past glory for the sake of his values.

   In fact, his values are usually worth the doting. Humankind always wants change but not too much, not too soon and never with a concomitant loss of caste.

   The conservative guards the door against the progressive skeptic. The skeptic knows what he does not like, though he may never formulate how to establish what he does want.

   The danger for the conservative may be that he becomes like the aged doctor in Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. Refusing to retire, the Grenadian medico sees his acuity decline so far he is called in only on cases everyone knows are hopeless. He considers this a specialization but death is always the result. He holds on to his practice, for his routine is life to him. He grasps life because he fear he may not meet God in death.

   In fact, he dies in ridiculous fashion, in great fear he will neither see God next nor be taken seriously by those he leaves behind him.

   He fails to ask, with faith, "What is next?"

   If a leader can be found with a grasp of real fundamentals, which, in turn, might be, the value of values, the inevitably of change, the foolishness of expression, co-mingled with the sacred sobriety of life, humankind should seize on him/her. He/she would be of magnificent worth.

   He/she would be curious for a purpose, like a child is curious about everything. Jesus, the Christ, propounded childish curiosity as a heavenly necessity on earth. The leader who would take men from earth to heaven would be an endlessly inquisitive person, eager for the knowledge of what is just up around the next bend.

   Religious people hit the marble ceiling of non-verifiability rather quickly. Verifiability sponsors inquiry. The inability of one to know seems to discourage inquiry. If one opinion is as good as another on a given subject, if great harm occurs to huddled masses by the spur of a certain subject, if, after all, we need to fear God will not meet us nor men remember us in death, there seems to be a lack of urgency to pursue this subject.

Service Interrupted: A Political Memoir, Volume Two

 Prologue (Continued): Curiosity, the Art of Leadership

   Curiosity is the next question you ask. Curiosity may be the original question but that one may as easily be conventional tact. Curiosity means the mind enters the labyrinth of the soul and then takes a left, where the light from outside dims a bit.

   Ancient shamans in Mexico, the ones Fehrenbach calls "the magicians," dominated society with their energetic ritual and observances. When they could not deliver on their rain-making promises the magicians promptly disappeared from history. They left behind great advances in carving and metallurgy. The priests who followed them were among the most skilled artisans of their day. Others respected the priestly caste because of their energy and accomplishment.

   A minister/priest/shaman today is a generalist in an age of specialization. The disconnect between priest/shaman is educative and explanatory. The MPS (I tire of writing the minister/priest/shaman thing) reads books by Brian McLaren. His audience reads Harry Potter, or the Sports Page. The MPS fills an ancient place of human need. Her ability to explain satisfactorily what it is she does may only prompt the response, "I can get that on Oprah."

   To bridge the gap does not require the MPS to sunder the bridge between the ancient and the end-times. I use the hyphenated "end-times" not to signal some bizarre announcement of the (revengeful) parousia but rather to recognize this era of beginning again where we find ourselves is the end-time for much structure. This is the post-everything generation. Baptist influence is in decline, America descends toward second tier status economically, denominationalism expires, the world moves closer together to share its communicable frailty. Unless human history will end here and now, this post-everything must surely be pre-something.

   How can the post-everything MPS shape that which is to come? Can we blaze a path through cyber-space now, intent to find the way to the new day without erosive damage to a fragile eco-system?

   Curiosity is the next question you ask. The first question may be a polite response meant to rebuff without offence. Curiosity is the soul in descent into the gut, there to find the seat of emotion. Curiosity is equal parts inquiry and fastidiousness, with a dollop of skepticism for flavor.

   The Eastern Tao makes a way through silence into the noise of the clanging brass and clashing cymbal. The missionary Paul must have known the sounds. Did he mean to condemn ecstatic worship in I Corinthians 13 (stop reading this at weddings without explanation, or only in part) or did he ask the second question, the one that pricks the conscience? Why do you bang the gong? Do you hope to repel the demons? Or do you have deep, deep love, the noisy kind, like the rushing water you can hear from a mile above the gorge, high up on the mountain?

   What now? What next? The first is a question of exasperation, frustration, despair. What just happened? How much more can a person, church, world take? What now?

   My grandson, Grant had his fourth birthday party. He was surrounded by complete, total, unconditional love. The star of the show, he could do no wrong. When he sat down to open his gifts, any casual observer could see Grant was the only grandson on either side of the family at that moment. He got things you once had to be licensed to own.

   At the end of his orgy of gift opening, Grant looked up and said, "What next?"

   Do what you will with that one. Since he is flesh of my flesh, I put a happy smile on the experience. I think, after two kinds of cake and ice cream, two dozen gifts and an three hour session with giant inflatables, Grant expected something good, next in line?

   What now? What next?

   Curiosity is the next question you ask. Curiosity is the difference between a nervous wreck and a Renaissance mind. Curiosity is the soul of leadership, if, by leadership, we mean the kind of heart that might take us on to what is next with faith, hope and love.

  

  

Acts 5:1-11 sermon brief up over at pastors pal.

Go to http://aintsobad.typepad.com/pastorspal/ to see this sermon brief on Acts 5:1-11. As usual, get your own illustrations

Service Interrupted: A Political Memoir, Volume Two

   Ok, dear readers. I get the message.

Service Interrupted: A Political Memoir, Volume Two

 Prologue: Some Notable Personalities

   Ministers are as often misunderstood as castigated. Some understand the minister as soft-hearted, others as soft-headed. In the same way politicans are alternately worshipped and cast aside a minister of a local parish can be simultaneously praised and attacked. He or she lives in the public arena, without authority to command but with responsibility to lead. He or she must provide for the common weal without the ability to tax funds. He or she is an object of deep devotion subject to extreme ridicule.

   His or hers is an impossible situation made more difficult by the sudden shift in worship roles and styles. Youth will be served, it is said, and in our culture, youth will be worshipped, until it founders badly and requires experience to serve as souter. Just as often, when experience is finally summoned, the die is thoroughly cast. Two groups will perish, divided,  rather than one group flourish, representative of all.

   One day, when days are no more, all generations will have to account to the Savior for why we could not attend worship together.  The decline and fall of the ancient Evangelical Empire may come from that which dooms most mighty powers; the death of great leaders, the dearth of new leadership.

   God is a people-calling God. God will have a people.

   The groups that have represented God do not have to be in the forefront for God to have a people. They may not be reconstituted. Their wisdom (and wisdom they have) ought not to have to be reinvented. The difference of styles from generation to generation is gustatory. The unwillingness to extend grace from age to age is grievous.

   The minister today watches the tabernacles grow musty, the great halls grow dusty. He or she appeals to a niche in the nave or a mass in the arena with fear and trembling. Is he too wide and not nearly so deep? Is she too demanding of doctrinal authority? Where do love and mercy meet?

   If I had it all to do over, I would like for someone to tell me, "Even in a congregational system, young fellow, attach yourself to one from whom you might draw, and see him (or her) as as accessible for sponsorship as he is for a mentor."

   Today, I do not know who might mentor, or sponsor, this coming folk. Clearly, what is will not much longer be, but what will take its place? In this brief memoir, second volume, I will try to draw from history (mine and others) some of the voices that might counsel wisely, if there were ears to hear.