BLOG 3/2/16. “WITHOUT BLOOD, OR SPERM, OR EXCREMENT” WHAT?
This may sound weird, but stick with me here. Somewhere I have misplaced my copy of the wonderful novel Zorba the Greek, so I am resorting to my fallible memory and the one page I have saved. But it is the story of an intellectual who had grown weary of academe and had engaged in some enterprise in which he needed a foreman to assist him. He found this rambunctious guy, Zorba, who was good at his work but also loved music, dance, drink, sex and humor. After many adventures together the narrator is lamenting that his own first life he and his colleagues had turned all of life into something so “bloodless, odorless, void of any human substance. Pale-blue hollow words in a vacuum. Perfectly clear distilled water without any bacteria, but also without any nutritive substances. Without life … Life had turned into a lucid, transparent game, unencumbered by even a drop of blood,” i.e., without blood or sperm or excrement. He envied Zorba his zest for life.
On the other hand, he reflected, “the human is brutish, uncouth, impure—it is composed of love, the flesh and a cry of distress. … All the things that had formerly so fascinated me appeared this morning to be no more than cerebral acrobatics. … Everything having turned into words, every set of words into musical jugglery, the last man goes even further: he sits in his utter solitude and decomposes the music into mute, mathematical equations.”
I was reflecting on this classic after my participation this past weekend in the centennial celebration of the church which I had pastored a half-century ago. It was an overwhelming time of affirmation for me. I was asked as a guest of honor to pronounce the benediction on what is now a very fruitful and diverse company of university students, professionals of all sorts, and many thoughtful Christian folk. Who was I looking at as I stood there to send them forth into their week? What surprises, challenges, intractable problems? What uncouth situations, what fractured personalities would they encounter? What numbing routines? What career changes? What domestic or professional difficulties?
The benediction, or charge that I gave to them was: “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may about in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). My charge to them was to go as agents of that hope into their Monday morning world. The question that comes, however, is: how do we as the church’s teachers equip God’s people for such an encounter with all of the uncouth situations, the broken-ness, the surprises and challenges of each week. Is it possible that we create a concept of the Christian faith and worship that is like the “pale-blue, hollow words in a vacuum?” Could the worship experience be nothing more than an escape for a while that only reinforces our dis-incarnation, our failure to realize our mission to be the demonstration of God’s New Creation in the uncouth realities of the week? Are we equipping to give a zest for life?
Before us this week were the political primaries which have been in themselves almost frightening. There are family members and friends who are, perhaps, self-destructing. There are those larger issues which we can brush off to the margins, but which still are there: environment, the enormous tragedy of hundreds of thousands of refugees, or of that host closer to home who cannot live on their minimum wage incomes. So many unexpected surprises.
No, our Christian faith is that of God who became flesh and dwelt among us. It is a calling to live out our New Creation lives, as did our Lord Jesus Christ, amidst the realities of injustice, sickness, poverty, homelessness, and of ruthless wealth and power. It is a calling to live out our calling right in the presence of all of the realities of “blood and sperm and excrement.” Our times of worship are to encourage us and equip us to live in just such realities. That is where we become the agents of our great Hope. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may about in hope … incarnate in the realIties of this world and life.
