Northeast United Church of Christ

Edit: I needed to preface this with "an Inspiration" ... to finally contribute to this blog I'd been invited to. Without further ado, then.

A conversation with a friend who lives far away, but is in a relationship unlike any she's ever been in before. She is a person who was raised in a strict Christian home, but rebeled against it. Suffice it to say she has lived a VERY wild life. He is a person who was raised in a religiously ambivilant household, but who, after his own wild period, 'got saved' by the same denomination she was raised in, but no longer adheres to. Got it? These two folks are really at cross purposes (ha).

So, she calls me all the time for relationship advice, and my husband too. I guess because we are a couple who's spiritual paths are somewhat divergent. Or maybe because she doesn't have anyone else to call. Who knows? Yesterday we were having this conversation specific to some disagreements they've had about a whole variety of things, many of them small. They, in their relationship building, have been doing a lot of talking about the "what-ifs" in their future. It sort of hit me like a bolt from the blue, in the midst of offering some sort of comforting words about it... I stopped and changed direction. It occured to me that she and he were really worked up about a lot of tiny details, and a lot of very unlikely what-ifs. I wondered "Did our grandparents have these kinds of conversations?" I don't know if it's the sanitized screen through which we view our ancestors, but I think not. In this age we live in, so full of technology, consumerism, and fear, we (and I mean most everyone in my peer group) build relationships in very funny ways. We are writing Disaster Recovery Plans for our relationships... but we aren't working on key components. We want to know what happens if there's a tiny blip in our relationship data, and how to fix it, but we don't understand any of the hardware or the software. We don't even account for the human element anymore. We want a plan, something to guide us and fall back on if there's an error. We want to know what it will cost and how long it will take and what the steps are. We don't even worry about not having the skills or equipment to deal with it. We want the plan, we want the guarantee. But relationships aren't about guarantees. Life is not about guarantees. Humans are fallible (just like the technology we turn to every day, created by us in our feeble attempt at godlike control) and so while we hope and pray for the best every day, sometimes it doesn't happen. We're not wired like a network, or a rack full of servers. We're NOT logical. We stumble, we make mistakes, we second-guess, step back, start over. Life throws us curves when we don't expect them. Things change, jobs change, people die, babies are born, and time marches on. We write those Disaster Recovery Plans for 100 scenarios, and the 101st, one that we never considered, comes in and completely destroys our hard drive.

Our culture of fear and consumerism and technology has brought us to a terrible impass with the very nature of mortal existance. There is no money-back guarantee on life. It doesn't come with instructions for assembly, or an FAQ that's easily understood. And while I believe that God is as present in our lives as we allow God to be, and while I pray regularly in times of doubt, or trouble, and in times of joy and upliftedness, very, VERY rarely is it like calling tech support:

"Oh, just push that big OFF button on the left side."
"Thanks God, I feel like an idiot for not thinking of that!"
"No problem, that's My job."

We just have to figure out, often by trial and error, what does and doesn't work. We have to look to our parents, grandparents, peers and experts for examples of what *might* work. (or in some cases, what definitely doesn't) There is no Disaster Recovery Plan for life. There isn't one for relationships either. Just focus on loving each other, on communicating with each other, on looking forward, on moving forward. I don't know what else to tell her. Until you have a server to store it on, stop focusing on the data.

I'd like to hope that one day, we'll all have the courage to face life, and build relationships by talking about our dreams, and our desires and our hopes... ...and stop talking about all our fears and wants and the minutiae of what might happen IF this one thing goes wrong. I think we all, on some level, want beauty. I want for the human heart to see the future like an impressionist painting... full of swirling color and fuzzy detail... it should be bright and alive and not completely rigid or 100% clear. It should NOT look like an architechtural drawing. I think there is beauty and hope in not knowing everything. Stop listening to sources that tell you otherwise.

Right now, I'm 135 pages in to John Dominic Crossan's one million page book The Historical Jesus. It's quite the read, but it does require patience. Offhand I'd say Crossan has mentioned Jesus of Nazareth less than ten times in 135 pages. Much emphasis has been placed on the region, the socioeconomic classes of the time, and the political system in place thus far in the book. This takes a long time for two reasons:

1. This is a lot of information that required years of research and
2. John Dominic Crossan is a nerd. Nerds like to talk a lot.

This might end up being a series of posts, now that I think about getting into this.

The first thing that I'd like to talk about is the "Jesus was a country boy" image that a lot of us (including me) have. It's easy to imagine villages like Nazareth being a lot like small towns in the United States except without infrastructure and industry, although this isn't the case. In the first century of the Common Era, major cities were surrounded by smaller villages. The small villages supported the peasants and artisans (like carpenters) while the cities supported higher classes like priests, nobles, land owners, and rulers. In the case of Jesus, he grew up in Nazareth which was a small village outside of Sepphoris (see map).

Sepphoris was between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sea of Galilee and on a major trade route through the region. Jesus was a native of a village just outside a major city, on a major trade route that stems from a major body of water (the Mediterranean) in a country that was occupied by the Roman Empire. He was no country bumpkin.
Because of his proximity to Sepphoris, he would have been familiar with the arts, economics, government (local and Roman), and customs of all classes in the region. This would have made him aware of the struggles of the peasants and the destitute in the area and better able to speak knowledgeably and the brutality of the Roman Empire.