Casting Magic

"For the sake, as he sees it, of the ones he preaches to, the preacher is apt to preach the Gospel with the high magic taken out, the deep mystery reduced to a manageable size...The wild and joyful promise of the Gospel is reduced to promises more easily kept. The peace that passeth all understanding is reduced to peace that anybody can understand. The faith that can move mountains and raise the dead becomes faith that can help make life bearable until death ends it. Eternal life becomes a metaphor for the way the good a man does lives after him. "Blessed is he who takes no offense at me" (Matt. 11:6), Jesus says, and the preacher is apt to seek to remove the offense by removing from the Gospel all that he believes we find offensive. You cannot blame him because up to a point, of course, he is right. With part of ourselves we are offended as he thinks by what is too much for us to believe. We weren't born yesterday. We are from Missouri.

"But we are also from somewhere else. We are from Oz, from Looking-Glass Land, from Narnia, and from Middle Earth. If with part of ourselves we are men and women of the world and share the sad unbeliefs of the world, with a deeper part still, the part where our best dreams come from, it is as if we were indeed born yesterday, or almost yesterday, because we are also all of us children still. No matter how forgotten and neglected, there is a child in all of us who is not just willing to believe in the possibility that maybe fairy tales are true after all but who is to some degree in touch with that truth."

~ from Frederick Buechner, "Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale"


Over lunch one day, a professor-pastor-friend in college told me that for him, whenever he would visit someone in the hospital, that he felt he should remove his shoes at the door because he was about to tread on holy ground.

Another professor, this one in seminary, once told my class that the most dangerous thing that any pastor can do is forget that they handle holy things.

And by holy, I mean magical. Call it an over-active imagination or a divorce from reality, I believe in magic. Not the cantrips we hear about in Harry Potter, that unlocks doors and makes things float. Not modern Wiccan rituals or decapatated chickens or devil worship. Real magic. What Aslan calls, after his miraculous resurrection, "The deeper magic."
What the church calls Easter.

I grew up losing myself in stories about fierce, awe-inspiring dragons, powerful and dangerous wizards and valiant, iron-clad knights. And I cannot help but believe that these journeys into another world were a vital part of the formation of my faith, perhaps as much as any other event that led me to Christ: the freedom to believe in magic; the ability to envision a world where extraordinary things can happen that make a lasting, life-giving difference for everyone. More importantly, the ability to see (on my good days) that world in this one.

I think Buechner is quite right to see the Gospel as a fairy tale. Not an entertaining story that's mostly for children and earns millions for movie-makers. The tales that actually talk back to our reality, peeling back the mundane to reveal the magic that's been there all along; the magic we're often too busy to notice.

The magic of the Gospel and its Easter-Christ, that proves He can bring resurrection to the most unlikely places and people.

But we're scientists and enlightened minds. We want hard proof before we give up our precious time and energy following leprechauns and Holy Grails. We'll take cold hard facts over warm bread and ruddy wine any day.

Because that's what we can control: our facts. Magic is beyond our control; of another world that we haven't spent enough time in to feel comfortable there. But that's just the point: faith in Christ is all about living into another world; or rather, the true world; where the grass is so real, it can cut your feet (as it does in C.S. Lewis' heaven in his account 'The Great Divorce.') .

"My kingdom is not of this world..." Jesus tells Pilate. The crowd chants for their agenda (the assassination of a God-Son they cannot contain). Weary Pilate just wants a little peace and quiet for a change, and a little truth. But even in Jesus' beaten body, magic is already at work that is going to mystically sweep away all of sin (the sin of the crowd that wants him dead, of the betrayer, of the denier, of the bystander-friend who wants to do something but is paralyzed by fear) and open the wardrobe to a magic kingdom, where peace is had, where companions and neighbors find endless joy in serving one another, where evil is easy to spot and where the King is trustworthy, compassionate and just and brings order.

And every Sunday, the preacher dances between lunacy and comfort; between the fairy tale that men and women (who "share the sad beliefs of this world") have forgotten but come every Sunday to hear and at the same time, speaking encouragement to those same tired souls. And all the while, this preacher himself fights to remember that he too is a child and that the bread and wine and Storybook and hospital rooms right there in his hands are magical; visible signs of the holy fairy tale that have punched through the veil; that has more to with the real way of things than reality itself.

The Pursuit

Philip Yancy begins his book on prayer by comparing the frustratingly different experiences of prayer between our fore-bearers of faith and us today. He quotes several legends (Martin Luther, Jonathan Edwards, etc.) talking about their many hours spent each day in blissful communion with God. When interviewing people today, a vast majority of responses reflect a sadly familiar tune: that while prayer is regarded as vitally important, most people found they spent only 5-7 minutes a day at it, and that, most people did not feel closer to the living God by doing so.

Someone asked me a while back for advice for some scripture passages that they might read with their spouse at night in order to draw closer to God in their marriage and also to one another. This person confessed their previous efforts left them wanting for something more and frustratingly not closer to one another.

As a younger man, I would use quiet mornings to read Scripture and journal about what I would find there. For months, this was a rich exercise. I would rise from the table, feeling like my day had perspective; as if I'd oriented myself to the map and was now ready to begin exploring. Lately, having lost that particular discipline, I feel hungry inside.

Hunger is not a bad thing in itself, really (at least, living in a culture where food is not so difficult to come by). A stomach's growl is our body's very normal way of letting us know it needs more fuel. But certainly, hunger is meant to be paid attention to and reveals an immediate need that requires attention sooner rather than later.

What are we hungering for, then? When our attempts to approach God in prayer, or to know God more through studying Scripture, end with only more longing, what are we missing?

Have we become so existential that only what we experience in the here-and-now has value to us? Maybe we've lost our ability to look at the horizon, to see where our praying and Scripture reading playing into the larger picture of who God is and where our lives fit into the cosmos; the old forest vs. trees problem. Maybe we've lost appreciation for the things that only come with time and perseverance.

"And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." ~ Romans 5:3-5

Or maybe we are too busy to think about "big things." It's become a litany of the modern day, when someone asks, "How's it going?" quite often, "busy" is one of the words that leaps to our tongues. And if we're not saying it, we're probably feeling it as this polite intrusion is keeping us from getting things done. Maybe we're just too distracted, our brains too cluttered with boxes of obligations to make space for big ideas or a bigger God. And if so, maybe we're so adept at squeezing God into our schedules that the moment we allow more space for it, we're scared at just how much space God can fill; so much bigger than any of the other boxes we shuffled around; definitely much bigger than we could lift or fit neatly into a space some where.

We can be such emotional pack-rats, grabbing hold to everything that seems to have meaning and cramming it into our attics, even though we'll forget it is there after a while, like dusty boxes full of things we'll never use but that takes up space nonetheless.

JP Moreland articulated once that although we have more stuff, more security, more food than any culture in existence has ever had, we are less happy than we've ever been. He argues that it is because in the last 3-4 decades, humanity (Western Civilization specifically) has sought to be happy instead of seeking "a life of virtue." The distinction is that we've equated virtues with ice cream: that we use the same word for foods we like and for what Christ did on the cross (i.e., "I love ice cream" and "God so loved the world...") He says that for centuries, through many cultures, people have pursued a life of virtue over one bent on being happy, and have found a level of contentment, even in the midst of adversity, that seems illusive to many today.

Is that the problem? Are we so bent on being happy, entertained and dazzled, in other words, self-absorbed, that we've forgotten what it is to be part of something bigger than ourselves? Is our stagnation with prayer and Scripture a result of trying to make our own universe, where we shuffle and arrange things around us, keeping the things that give us a moment of pleasure closer and pushing back the uncomfortable baggage we'd really rather not bring to the light of day. Doing that instead of finding the steady joy that comes when we live, not for ourselves, but for something bigger?

People are hungry for answers to questions about God, about why bad things happen, about why they are miserable, or at least, unaccountably discontent. And for some reason, we've all decided we won't be happy until there are answers that will attend to us, like butlers, and bring order to things for us. And until then, we all seem content with misery instead of the agonizing task of crucifying our self-orbiting universe and entrusting ourselves to something bigger; of surrendering our control (which is a pleasant-enough myth) to the One who is life and peace Himself.

It seems to me that seeking peace instead of happiness is more than just avoiding materialism. It's more than rearranging furniture but more like tearing out walls and remodeling altogether. Not just re-ordering but a complete reshaping. Of course, demolition is both messy and dangerous work.

In a recent Nooma video, Rob Bell talks about how often we think of God as being the One who sits way off in the distance up there, and every now and again drops down to visit, to help "blessed" people find parking spaces and bargains at the mall. In the quest to discover what God is like, he offers that perhaps God is more like a song that plays everywhere and in every person; that knowing God is not a matter of knowing the song but being in tune. I bit down on another hook when I listened to him talk about this, tears threatening to break over the wall of my eyelids. It seems to me that being in tune has less to do with understanding musical theory and more about having the courage to play.

Maybe if we all just played more, we wouldn't fret so much about "experiencing God" or finding answers.

Smoldering

"So you open the Good Book
you thumb to the common lection
and you sit down to read
your expectations minimal - what with your busy week
a few half baked prayers for illumination
waft to heaven like smoke from a smoldered fire."

~ excerpt from a Sermon by the Rev. Ralph
"Preaching - Impossible, Indispensable"

The excerpt is from a sermon that had preachers lined up in its sights. But I found its words penetrated deeper than my own practice of sermon writing.

I can't get this image out of my head. And I'm learning to pay attention when that happens. Just like I'm learning to pay attention to unexpected tears. Frederick Buechner talked about those tears that ambush us, unbidden, entirely un-manufactured or conjured. The moments when a word or image snags us to a jarring halt, like how fish must feel when the irresistible morsel suddenly becomes a lethal hook, and life turns upside down as it's yanked out of the normal world and into something that steals its breath away.

The thing about the images that leap into our hands, flailing like a trout, or the tears that crash like waves upon our cheeks, is that they penetrate with surgical precision deep into our lives, to the stuff in our souls that lives underground; our secret-est hopes and most essential needs that we mostly don't have words to articulate or even know about ourselves. But suddenly, a word or a hope that is uttered by another becomes that shaft of light into the bottom of the well, our eyes (so accustom to darkness) stung and dazzled when our expectations are sliced cleanly in two.

"...everything exposed by the light becomes visible,
for everything that becomes visible is light.
Therefore it says,

"Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you."
~Ephesians 5:13-14

"Wake me up inside, Wake me up inside
Call my name and save me from the dark.
Bid my blood to run, before I come undone,
Save me from the nothing I've become."
~'Bring Me to Life' Evanescence

So what is smoldering deep down that such an image would tear me asunder? I don't despair becoming "nothing" (as the lyrics state). But the melodic rock music that cries out with such psalmic vigor stirs something deep in me as well; the longing for more; a faith deeply in tune with the fiercely joyful melody of the Spirit; a life electrified into action, playfully daring for the sake of the Song. So the fear is not in being "nothing", but "nothing much."

I've been told that Augustine says (somewhere) that hungering after God is itself a gift. Whoever might have said it, there is truth there that I feel in my bones. It's like the way that faith in Christ is also a gift, the way that Christ is both High Priest and Flawless Lamb.

"So, surrender the hunger to say you must know.
Have the courage to say, 'I believe.'
And the power of paradox opens your eye
and blinds those who say they can see."
~'God's Own Fool' Michael Card

I hope I'm aware enough of my generation's (and my personal) longing for existential truth: to actually experience the praise and joy of God as a thrilling rush of gratitude (did King David not dance like a wild man?). But where is the peace in pursuing it? Or more importantly, where does it become not about me? Is being known enough? Shouldn't it be? What is the place where the surreal shoulders-up against our "real"?

O God, you are my God, I seek you,
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.

Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
~Psalm 63:1-3

If the psalmists, both in Scripture and today, can long for this, can't we dare to engage the dangerous business of hope for it too?