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Don’t be Ridiculous (Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58)

In Garrison Keillor’s mythical Lake Wobegon, Pastor Ingqvist is alarmed when he glances at Dear Abby columns and notices how often she refers her readers to ministers. Talk to your minister, Abby counsels a 14-year-old deeply in love with a 50-something married man serving serious time in a federal penitentiary.

. . . as she pours out her love for Vince, her belief in his innocence, the fact that his wife never loved him. . . not like she, Trish, can love him, and the fact that despite his age and their never having met except in letters, there is something indescribably sacred and precious between them; all the pastor can think is: "You’re crazy. Don’t be ridiculous."

Thou shalt not be ridiculous. Paul says, "See then that ye walk circumspectly not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil." When Paul wrote that wonderful sentence he probably was sitting in an upper room in Athens. It was late at night, quiet, and all the fools were asleep. He could write the simple truth, and no fool was around to say, "Huh? What do you mean? Are you saying I shouldn’t go for the world long-distance walking-backward record? But I can do it! I can walk backward for miles."

One of the marks of the human condition is that it is not simply depraved or lost; it is also ridiculous. Paul says that as we relate to each other we are to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody to the Lord in our hearts and giving thanks to God at all times. But even in the church we end up spending more time fighting about the kind of melodies we should sing, and whether the Lord God prefers organ or guitar. People split churches over how loudly the songs should be amplified. We are ridiculous.

Things are no better outside. Imagine what the world might be like if CEOs of large corporations would go into Watts or Cabrini Green and sing and make melody in their hearts. Or if Israelis and Palestinians spent a day singing psalms and hymns to one another. When we are alone at night and all the fools are asleep, it is not hard to imagine such a world. But why does it remain so ridiculously remote?

Of course, folly in the tradition of ancient wisdom literature involves something more tragic than wasting energy trying to get into the Guinness Book of Records. Foolishness, in this way of thinking, is not so much a disease of the intellect as of the will. The fool says in her heart that there is no God; or that she will live as god, which is perhaps the same thing. The fool thinks he needs bigger barns for the riches that he in his cleverness has accumulated, and forgets that the night when his construction project is finished is the night he has scheduled a massive coronary. You Can be a fool and still find good work in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or on Madison Avenue. Sometimes it helps.

Paul said of fools: ‘Their god is their stomach." They have a philosophy of life that was perhaps best articulated by Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster: "See cookie. Want cookie. Absorb cookie. Seek ye first the cookie." Some of the highest-IQ people in our world stay up late at night trying to find new ways to convince us that we are nothing more than a collection of appetites. See. Want. Absorb. What would Paul say to a society whose magazine covers feature well-coiffed, aerobicized versions of the Cookie Monster? "Thou shalt not be ridiculous."

Scholars tell us that the ancient Hebrews had a fierce appetite for wisdom. They loved wisdom so much that they spoke of her as a person: Does not wisdom call out? Does not understanding raise her voice?. . . Listen to me: happy are those who keep my ways . . . For whoever finds me finds life," They hoped for the coming of wisdom as we hope for the resurrection of the NASDAQ.

Then wisdom became a person. He came so that hungry people and thirsty people could finally be filled. (To be hungry and thirsty, Dallas Willard writes, is to be driven by unsatisfied desires. We live in a hungry world.) Wisdom was born in a manger and died on a cross, and in between said that our only shot at ever being filled up is if we follow him in the life of self-emptying love. He said that our only hope for being filled is to be filled with him, to absorb him, to follow in the way of the one who emptied himself and thus became the fullness of all things. See Jesus. Want Jesus. Absorb Jesus.

Paul said for such people a new kind of fullness is possible. "Don’t get drunk with wine" -- Don’t consider yourself a giant appetite to be gratified. . .but be filled with the Spirit. I grew up in circles where we stayed far away from wine, and were not all that sure about the Spirit. But it is in the Spirit where true fullness lies, in "the shy member of the Trinity," as Dale Bruner says, the member who is always pointing beyond himself. The fullness of the Spirit comes only when we are emptied of all the ego and self preoccupation that promises so much and delivers so little; emptied of all that is foolish and dying and ridiculous. It is the Spirit that Jesus was so full of that the life came spilling out of him as well.

Be careful how you live . . .

Pharisees Are Us (Mark 7:1-8, 21-23)

I grew up in an era before video, Veggie Tales or Bible-based computer games. I was raised, at least in terms of religious education, on the flannel graph. To this day, although I know that the scriptures are peopled with characters of texture and nuance, I think Bible people and see pastel paper figures pressed on a felt board.

Perhaps the most flattened characters were the Pharisees. They were presented as foils against which the virtue of New Testament heroes stood out in sharp relief. When the Pharisees got into a fight with Jesus over hand-washing the flannel graph reduced the story to a simple battle of bizarre legalism and a Lady Macbeth -- like obsession with purity versus simple, sanctified common sense. We all knew whose side we would have been on.

But over the past few decades, we’ve learned that things were not quite that simple. Gregory Peck, not long before he died, said that if you’re going to play the part of the devil you have to look for the angel in him, and if you’re going to play an angel you have to look for the devil in him -- a kind of actor’s "hermeneutic of charity." We may need to do this with flannel graph characters. What else might have been going on in Mark’s chapter seven besides a simple contest between legalism and common sense?

James Dunn notes that in the first century a disproportionate amount of rabbinic attention was devoted to three areas of the law: dietary rules, Sabbath-keeping and circumcision. This was in spite of the fact that rabbis would not have claimed these as the central aspects of God’s will for humanity. They knew that the essence of the law was the shema -- the loving of God with heart and soul and strength. So why the relentless focus on dietary laws, circumcision and Sabbath-keeping?

The answer, Dunn says, involves "identity markers," or boundaries. All groups of human beings have a tendency to be exclusive; they want to know who is inside and who is out. So they adopt identity markers -- visible practices of dress or vocabulary or behavior that serve to distinguish who is inside the group from who is outside.

For instance, if you were driving along in the ‘60s and saw a Volkswagen van plastered with "Make Love Not War" bumper stickers, with a long-haired, tie-dyed, granny-glasses driver, you’d know you were observing a hippie. If it were the ‘80s and you saw a BMW driver wearing Gucci shoes and a Rolex watch, you’d know you were observing a yuppie. Every fraternity or sorority has its own uniform.

With this in mind, the attention given to the purity codes in the first century becomes clearer. As Tom Wright says: "The Temple cult, and the observance of Sabbaths, of food taboos, and of circumcision were the key things which marked out Jew from gentile, which maintained and reinforced exactly the agenda, both political and religious, of the hard-line Pharisees."

Jesus is not accusing the Pharisees of an early form of Pelagianism, of trying to earn their justification by strenuous moral effort. He does not regard these laws as bizarre or outlandish. Perhaps most important, he does not reject his own religious culture. He agrees with the Pharisees that God’s work in human history is happening precisely through the life and destiny of this people of Israel.

But now, he says, the kingdom is breaking into human history in a new and unexpected way. It means the end for the "kingdom of the gentiles," although the kingdom of God will triumph not by "paying back the gentiles in their own coin," as Wright says, but by turning the other cheek and walking the second mile. The identity markers that will proclaim the authenticity of the people of God will be a circumcised heart and a diet of justice and love. Then people will not simply try to do right things; they will be the kind of persons who want to do right things; they will be clean "inside." Jesus saw this not as the repudiation of Israel’s ancient dream, but as its ultimate fulfillment.

Here is where Jesus’ words become as convicting in our day as they were to the Pharisees, for the struggle of Mark 7 is a struggle inside every human being who seeks to take faith seriously. There is a self-righteousness in me that does not want to die. There is something inside me that is not bothered when others are excluded, that wants others to be excluded, that feels more special when I’m on the inside and somebody else is not. There was something in me -- even when I was young -- that enjoyed looking at the flannel graph and thinking about how much wiser and more loved by God I was than those foolish, exclusive Pharisees.

Henri Nouwen wrote that it is very hard to stop being the prodigal son without turning into the elder brother. Any time people are not experiencing authentic transformation -- as in Mark 7:21-23 -- they will inevitably be drawn toward some kind of faith characterized by boundary markers. We will look for substitute ways of distinguishing ourselves from those on the outside. The boundary markers change from century to century, but they all reinforce a false sense of superiority, fed by the intent to exclude others,

Ironically, the one human being who was perfectly free from self-righteousness is the only one who was completely righteous. The least exclusive member of the human race is also its most exalted. The only person who has ever been truly free of a messiah complex was the Messiah.

True Grit (Mk. 7:24-37; James 2:1-10; Matt. 15:21-28)

When I was in first grade, teachers assigned students to reading groups based on how well they could read. They would name all the groups after birds so that everyone would feel equal, but you could always tell how well you were doing by what bird your group was named after. There were the Eagles, the Robins and the Pigeons. The Pigeons were not reading War and Peace.

Ken Bailey gives a wonderful treatment of Mark’s story about Jesus’ encounter with the Syro-Phoenician woman in his comment on the parallel passage in Matthew. To grasp the point, Bailey says, it is helpful to think of it as a kind of test that is being given simultaneously to two sets of people, the woman and the disciples. Watch who ends up in the Pigeons group.

Matthew tells us that the woman approaches Jesus with the traditional cry of a beggar: "Have mercy on me." She humbles herself and adds the title "Lord" -- a term she will repeat twice more. She calls him Son of David -- she knows something of Judaism and is deeply respectful.

Jesus does not say a word. Matthew deliberately draws our attention to this point. This woman’s daughter is suffering terribly but when the woman appeals to Jesus with humility and reverence, he acts as if he doesn’t hear.

She must decide if she’s willing to persevere.

Meanwhile, Bailey says, Jesus is testing the disciples. He ignores the woman to see what they will do. "Send her away" they say "She keeps crying out after us." They are exaggerating a little -- there’s no indication the woman approached them. But they’re confident Jesus will do what they say.

"I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel," Jesus responds, apparently agreeing with them. "I was sent to Israel, God’s favorites." Good call. Let’s send her away.

Only he doesn’t send her away, but watches the disciples to see how they will respond. Will any of his students understand that many are coming "from the east and the west"? Will anyone say a word on behalf of the woman?

No. They all nod their heads.

The woman will not go away. In her mind she can hear her daughter’s screams. Maybe it is desperation. Maybe it is trust. She kneels on the ground and utters a single phrase: "Lord, help me."

Now the tension in the disciples starts to build. Their theology tells them this woman is to be shunned, rejected. They would say just the same thing Jesus did.

And yet . . . they listen to the anguished plea of a heartsick mother for a suffering child. Something in them is moved -- something must have been moved. This is striking at deep assumptions about whom God loves. Could it be that God is better than their theology?

Jesus speaks again -- it may be that he is still facing the disciples. "It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs." Dogs were regarded as unclean scavengers, little better than pigs. The meaning is clear. Jesus is giving voice to their theology. It is one thing to have contempt for someone behind his or her back. It is another thing to hear the ugliness of our thoughts and feelings expressed out loud to a real human being.

Will any of them speak up for her? Will one of them love her? No. Not today. There will be other tests in days to come, and they will do better, But not today.

Jesus turns to the woman. Bailey notes that of the two primary words available for dog, Matthew selects kunariois – a little dog, a "doggette" -- to soften what he says to the woman.

Still, her response is unbelievable. "Yes, Lord," she says, calling him Lord for the third time. "But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table." She picks up on the diminutive form of the word "dogs" and uses the same form for the word "crumbs": "even the little doggettes get the little crumbettes from the master’s tables." Here is a woman who comes back at Jesus with grit, grace, even wit. She has an attitude. "You are still my Lord and master. Go ahead and make it look like you’re pushing me away I’m not going anywhere. By all means, feed the kids. But I bet you have a crumb even for me. I bet you do."

She just wont give up.

Finally Jesus turns to face the woman. Finally the mask is off. For a moment Jesus conceals the great goodness of his heart but that moment is quickly past. The test is over. She’s aced the final.

"O woman," he says, "Great is your faith."

The disciples look on in astonishment. This woman -- their enemy, their inferior -- has been given one of the greatest commendations ever bestowed by the one they follow so closely. It turns out that they -- who thought they basked in the exclusivity of what C. S. Lewis called the "Inner Ring" -- belong in the Pigeon reading group. And this pagan gentile woman is one of the Eagles.

"My brothers and sisters, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism," writes James. Jesus’ followers are still tested in offices and cubicles, at school desks and cafeterias, at the boundary lines between nations, races and cultures, around breakfast tables and family rooms.

The story of this woman shows what we are all so slow to grasp: that the most desirable society in the cosmos turns out to be the humblest. Father, Son and Spirit are determined that the circle of love they share from all eternity should be ceaselessly, shamelessly inclusive. None are left out except those who refuse to enter.

Job on Prozac: the Pharmaceutical Option

In The Biblical story, God tests his faithful servant Job to see whether Job will stay devoted to God even if God takes everything away from him. Now you don’t lose your family, health and possessions, as Job did, without falling into a terrible funk. It’s possible, then, to understand Job’s story as being about remaining true to God through a devastating depression. Suppose that Job had had a prescription for Prozac to help lessen his pain. Would it have been cheating to take a couple of tablets a day while God was tossing all manner of pestilence at him?

I suspect that if Job were around today, he would be strongly advised to get himself to a mental health clinic for a prescription. After all, the most important thing is to keep following the Lord. If depression prompts you to turn off the road, and Prozac keeps you on it, then don’t think twice -- take your pill.

In his Doctrine of Virtue, Immanuel Kant argues that we have an indirect duty to make ourselves happy, because when we are miserable we are less likely to fulfill our moral duties. Similarly it could be argued that if I know that I lose faith in God when I am blue, then I have an indirect religious obligation to take medications that will protect me from depression.

In his recent book Finding God In Prozac or Finding Prozac in God: Preserving a Christian View of the Person Amidst a Biopsychological Revolution, Charles Biovin contends that Christians should not hesitate to use the new brands of antidepressants such as Prozac and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors -- commonly referred to as SSRIs -- as spiritual lifesavers. Biovin argues that even a casual study of the Old Testament reveals that the fathers of our faith might today be classified as reductionists who believed that the soul and body are one. The Hebrew prophets would have been quick to agree that melancholy is a physical malady

While I am not as sanguine as Biovin about either the efficacy of SSRIs or the claims that they are physically innocuous, many people have found a balm in this new class of medications. A friend swears that Prozac saved her life. Other people attest that if it were not for anti-depressants they might have died to the idea of a personal God. In a Christianity Today article, a woman states that while she was depressed she went to church only because she feared the frowns of other parishioners, However, after a few weeks on Prozac her motivation changed. ‘Now I go because I truly desire to be in God’s presence. So, in the sense that I no longer feel the need to fake my spirituality Prozac has replaced religion for me -- though it has not replaced true spirituality."

As Biovin observes, "It is perhaps this aspect of the Prozac revolution for persons of faith that is the most provocative. Not that it can enhance emotional or psychological well-being where prayer did not; rather, that it reveals to us more than ever just how inextricably interwoven the biochemistry of the brain is to who we are and how we relate to each other. Whether we like it or not, Prozac and its successors have become enmeshed in the fabric of day-to-day American life and cannot help but challenge persons of faith to reconsider the nature of spiritual well-being and renewal."

Things like Prozac, Alzheimer’s disease and taking a few stiff drinks all remind us that biochemical changes in the body can radically affect the way we think and feel. Nevertheless, these reminders do not compel us to believe that our feelings are simply the echoes of chemical perturbations. The fact that physical interventions can alter our experience in systematic and predictable ways does not imply that all our experiences are reducible to physical causes. But Biovin is correct that perfervid faith in pharmaceuticals challenges traditional ideas about psycho-spirituality perhaps in ways that should give us pause.

For all the fanfare about radical breakthroughs in neuroscience, we have no scientific reason to believe that our emotional lives can now he understood in purely physical terms. The relative success of the use of SSRIs in treating depression suggests that there may he some relation between neurotransmitters and melancholy; however, that is about as far as our current knowledge goes. In his comprehensive atlas of depression, The Noonday Demon, Andrew Solomon observes: "It is comforting to think that we know the relationship between neurotransmitters and mood, but we don’t. It appears to bean indirect mechanism. People with lots of neurotransmitters bumping around in their heads are not happier than people with few neurotransmitters. Depressed people do not in general have low neurotransmitter levels in the first place. Putting extra serotonin in the brain does no immediate good at all."

More than a few who suffer from depression do not respond to medication but do respond to intensive psychotherapy. Serotonin aside, many people marvel over brain-imaging studies as though the MRI were a font of revelation. However, the fact that parts of the brain light up or fail to light up in depressed people is hardly proof that biochemical processes alone are responsible for depression. There are neurological correlates for every form of mental activity and, as Biovin himself acknowledges, just because imaging studies show that religious experiences are correlated with activity in a particular part of the brain, it does not follow that that activity is the cause of religious experience. Whether or not depression is best understood in biochemical terms remains an open scientific question.

The Scottish philosopher David Hume argued that when we cannot decide the truth or falsity of an idea on empirical grounds alone we should consider its moral effects. Following Hume, it might be useful to ask, "What are the spiritual effects of believing that psychological problems are fundamentally biochemical in nature?’ Many people writing on the issue of faith and pharmaceuticals are legitimately concerned that some people try to pray their way out of psychological squeezes that could be treated effectively by medication. While I acknowledge this danger, I am concerned about a different complex of problems, such as our tendency to medicalize all experience.

Every year more and more students approach me at the end of the semester to confess that they have one or an-other psychiatric problem that is beyond their control, and to insist that because they are clinically depressed, bipolar or have attention deficit disorder they must be given extra weeks to hand in their work. Having walked under the black sun myself, I almost always agree to an extension. Still, I often want to inform these students that many great writers have kept writing through soul-chilling bouts of melancholy. My charges, convinced that they are suffering from a chemical imbalance, would find such a homily anachronistic.

These currents of the classroom have also entered the pews. The Prozac literature has it that the loss of faith resulting from feelings of hopelessness is a medical problem. But if religious numbness is the result of nothing but molecules in motion, then what about feelings like envy, lust and rage? Christianity claims jurisdiction over the heart. Indeed, Jesus admonishes us that to lust after someone in our hearts is as a bad as acting on that lust (Matt. 5:28). And yet, if depression can be chalked off to chemistry, then why not concupiscence? No doubt many Christians think that if Jesus only had known what we know about the brain, he would not have uttered such hard and hyperbolic sayings.

Make no mistake about it, the Prozac revolution has implications for our understanding of sin -- implications that people may or may not find disturbing. Many who believe that Jesus washed away our sins will not be troubled by the fact that sin is quietly being ushered out the same back door through which judgment and the Evil One departed. Recently I attended a Good Friday service that made no mention of sin. Afterwards, I screwed up my courage to press the pastor about omitting sin from his sermon. He explained that talk of sin only makes people feel bad about themselves. Speechless at this triumph of the therapeutic, I walked off musing about Kierkegaard’s claim that what we really need a revelation to understand is sin, not the idea of the forgiveness of sin. Indeed, faith may require us to believe we are responsible for states of mind that doctors assure us are not sins at all, merely symptoms of a medical condition.

Pharmaceutical fundamentalism also invites misconceptions about moods and feelings. In the argument for the spiritual efficacy of drugs, much is made of feeling or failing to feel God’s presence. But what exactly is the relationship between feeling God’s presence and faith? The question of faith is answered not at the level of feelings but in regard to the way we relate to our feelings. Whatever else faith is, It involves trusting that God is there even when God seems absent. When Jesus seems a cold abstraction, faith requires us to consider the possibility that we ourselves have locked the door that Jesus seemingly refuses to open. The old orthodoxy had it that when we can’t relate to God we ought to search ourselves and reflect on whether perhaps we have made a god of something else.

If the only way that we can feel the breath of prayer is by leaving our office jobs and living on farms, then we probably should pack our bags. If the only way we can remain alive to God is by smoking grass or taking Prozac, then it might be best to bow our heads and use whatever drugs we need to awaken spiritually. After all, many religions throughout the world have relied very heavily upon the use of drugs. But it is one thing humbly to admit that we need something to make us feel well enough to pray, and another to conclude that when we cannot relate to God it is always only because we are low on neurotransmitters.

For all the stress that the God-and-Prozac evangelists put on feeling God’s presence, they regard other moods and affective states such as anxiety and depression as of little or no spiritual significance. In an 1843 journal only the melancholic Kierkegaard noted that the worst fate that can befall a person is to regard "the substance of his feelings as drivel." And yet presenting the emotions as drivel is just what the medical model does. The biochemical catechism treats depression and anxiety as pathogens that obscure our spiritual vision and make us strangers to ourselves.

In contrast, Kierkegaard and others maintain that the emotions have a cognitive component. For example, Kierkegaard believes it is through the experience of anxiety that we come to understand we are free. In the coda to his Concept of Anxiety he describes anxiety as a teacher imparting the fundamental theological truth that we can do nothing without God. In the television ads that drug companies run at half-time between beer commercials the message is always our malaise, social anxiety or nervousness is a meaningless internal miasma that can be dispersed by a few pills -- pills that will return us to our true alacritous selves. There is no need to by to understand our feelings.

In addition to peddling misconceptions of sin and the emotions, the better-living-through-chemistry movement invites a new form of idolatry. The pre-Prozac counsel for combating melancholy was that we should reach out for the hands of our neighbors. However, we Americans are so obsessed with autonomy, so nervous about feeling emotionally needs that we much prefer seeking solace in a bottle to calling a friend and asking for help. Many people on psychotropic drugs actually feel as though they have a friend in their medicine cabinet.

A couple of years ago I argued in these pages that those of us on prescription psychotropic medications ought not to be judgmental about the uninsured people who try to assuage their depression with illicit drugs. One man who took umbrage at my argument nevertheless proclaimed, "With God and Prozac I will make it!" Lauren Slater, who recounts her problems with Prozac in Prozac Diary (1999), still felt as though she found a slice of salvation in serotonin. She writes, "Falling in love is a state of surrender, not necessarily pleasant. Like a depressed person, you let yourself go . . . you just say yes. Yes. I fell in love one day, only it was not with a person; it was with my pill."

Reliance on pills spares us from the messy business of having to think about and make sense of our experience. Prescriptions can spare us all the indignities of needing others. For many, Prozac and its chemical cousins provide a feeling of autonomy and choice -- two words that are veritable god-terms to Americans.

It is a well-known fact that people in the U.S. use more psychotropic medications than the rest of the world combined. While I am not against the use of drugs to treat depression, I do think that faith in chemistry has its spiritual temptations. The first time Prozac lost its magic for her, Slater wrote: "Prozac had betrayed me, but not before its belief system had leached to the very root of me, the belief that, when all is said and done, we are beyond the grace of stories, that only chemicals can cause hurt, and thus only chemicals can cure." And that conviction is spreading as though it were the Good News itself.

Not in Our Backyard

Philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that it is always wrong to treat a person or a people purely as a means to an end. According to Kant, to say nothing of common moral sense, human beings are subjects and as such should never to be treated as mere instruments or objects. And yet it seems that the U.S. is rather transparently using the people of Iraq as a means to the end of keeping the battle with the Osamas of the world off of our shores.

In his graduation address at the Naval Academy in May, President Bush came right out with his better-in-Baghdad-than-in-the-Beltway strategy. "We are," he insisted, "taking the fight to the enemy abroad so we do not have to face them here at home."

The metaphor that Bush strategists often resort to is this: it is better "to keep the ball in their court" than to have suicide bombers careening down Main Street.

Former national security adviser Richard Clarke recently called the "better there than here" strategy into question on pragmatic grounds. According to Clarke and many others, taking the battle to Baghdad has provided an enormous recruiting boon to al-Qaeda. And the war has also become a veritable training ground for our foes. Fighters who used to be ignorant about urban combat are fast becoming wily veterans.

The practical issues aside, the idea of fighting a war in someone else’s backyard so that we do not have to fight it in our own is in itself morally questionable.

Depending on the issue, politicians seem to acknowledge that people are not to be used as instruments. Not long ago, when Congress pondered the ethics of embryonic stem cell research, one of the arguments for limiting such research was that it is wrong to use even a potential human being as a means to an end.

And yet the "ball in their court" strategy entails treating the people of Iraq as a means to the end of our own quiet streets. It is as though when one’s neighborhood is threatened with a great melee, one protects oneself by figuring out a way to stage the fight on someone else’s property.

President Bush’s singular accomplishment is that there have not been any terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11. Bush has vowed to continue to fight terrorists in Iraq "so we do not have to face them here at home." The president explained, "When terrorists spend their days and nights struggling to avoid death or capture, they’re less capable of arming and training and plotting new attacks on America." But this very same struggle has been a blight to the people who are hosting this struggle.

Moralists that we Americans take ourselves to be, let’s be honest enough to ask: How much devastation are we permitted to visit on other people in order to keep the land of the free free from terrorists? We are out of moral bounds if we imagine that we are entitled to plow other lands into killing fields so long as we judge that to be in our national security interests.

Mystery Women

Book Review:

Crooked Heart.

By Cristina Sumners. Bantam, 336 pp., paperback.

The Book of Light.

By Michelle Blake. Prime Crime, 304 pp., paperback.

Out of the Deep I Cry.

By Julia Spencer-Fleming. St. Martin Minotaur, 304 pp.

In the shadowy world of the mystery novel, nothing is ever quite what it appears to be, including the nature of justice itself. The justice on the surface of detective stories is earth-bound and human-centered. Fictional detectives mimic real-world investigators: their primary tools are science and psychology, not prayer or heavenly visions, You won’t find Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot conducting trials by ordeal, or P. D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh making suspects walk over hot coals to prove their innocence. Yet beneath the surface of every mystery lies a powerful, sustaining faith: that perfect justice is not only possible but inevitable. Truth and righteousness ultimately will prevail.

Even if we know that justice is far from inevitable here on earth, we are willing to suspend that knowledge when we read mysteries. In the real world we hope, but sometimes doubt, that good will triumph over evil. A mystery novel offers us a glimpse of the fulfillment of that hope: in the context of a story we observe the convergence of human and divine justice. A fictional detective becomes our appointed prophet-priest: through special knowledge, she deciphers the handwriting on the wall (or in the ransom note) and finds meaning in texts -- perhaps telephone records. At the end of each story her conclusions are affirmed: the criminal confesses, or leaps from a bridge or drops a smoking gun.

Think of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes seeking enlightenment in an opium trance; of Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey meditating on a folio of Dante; or Agatha Christie’s quiet Miss Marple hearing confessions at the tea table. These are priestly, sometimes monkish figures: brilliant eccentrics with the power to summon logic in the face of chaos. Lacking badges, side arms or fast cars, they fight crime by drawing on invisible fountains of intuition -- what Poirot calls his "little grey cells," but what seem more like Delphic vapors. What is intuition but spiritual discernment, the prophetic gift?

Recently, three outstanding crime novelists have turned directly to the church for inspiration, presenting amateur detectives who are, in vocation as well as in spirit, priests. (Not that clergy have never before been portrayed as detectives -- think of C. K. Chesterton’s humble Father Brown, Ellis Peters’s canny Brother Cadfael, or Brother William of Baskerville in Umberto Eco’s marvelous The Name of the Rose.) The three priests in these new series have two things in common: they’re all women, and they’re all in love with their collaborators -- who happen to be policemen. (And these priests, like the authors, are also all Episcopalians.)

In Crooked Heart, a first novel by Cristina Sumners (herself a parish priest), we meet Kathryn Koerney, rector of a small church in a New Jersey college town that resembles Princeton. Kathryn is a Lord Peter fan and shares some of that great detective’s idiosyncrasies, including a cozy private fortune and a Bunter-like servant ("Warby") whom she treats as a friend rather than an employee. Kathryn’s partner in crime-solving and, eventually, romance is Tom Holden, a policeman who happens to serve on her vestry.

The attraction is uneven at first. Tom, stuck in a bad marriage (to a daytime TV addict), quickly falls for his winsome new priest; but Kathryn finds Tom "as sexy as Donald Duck." It takes the strange disappearance and possible murder of a local woman to bring this unlikely pair together. As they uncover the facts of the crime and explore the dark mysteries of human nature, Tom and Kathryn feel a growing mutual respect, accompanied by the powerful stirrings of love. They’re flirting with danger, and they know it. When the mystery is solved, they walk off into the mist together -- not to consummate their relationship, but to share a private Eucharist and a moment of spiritual reflection.

Michelle Blake’s The Book of Light, while less ecclesiastical in tone, presents more inherently religious themes. Lily Connor is the cowboy-boots-wearing chaplain at Boston’s Tate University (the author teaches at Tufts). One day Lily receives a visit from an old acquaintance, Samantha Lamb-Henderson, a well-known biblical scholar. Samantha has a big secret: an anonymous correspondent has informed her of the actual existence of Q -- the hypothetical source for material in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Has the church deliberately hidden Q for 2,000 years, and, if so, why?

The ensuing intrigue involves guns, safe deposit boxes and mysterious deaths. The similarities to The DaVinci Code are obvious, though perhaps coincidental. Like the scholarly heroes of Dan Brown’s novel, Lily and her policeman lover (another Tom) face a secret society determined to maintain its hold on ecclesiastical power, no matter how many commandments it has to break to do so. While The DaVinci Code makes female sexuality the answer to nearly every riddle, The Book of Light gives us something less sensational and less predictable -- a female mind. Lily’s preoccupations are moral and intellectual rather than erotic: she wants to know how to live -- especially how to coexist with Christians on different sides of the theological spectrum. After she views the text of the sacred manuscript, she begins to experience miraculous changes in her own heart. For the first time she’s able to find patience and even sympathy for a conservative believer who shows up at her door.

Julia Spencer-Fleming’s Out of the Deep I Cry offers neither a plot dependent on religious questions nor parallels to current blockbusters. It may, however, be the most insightful and enjoyable of these three novels. Spencer-Fleming writes with uncommon sensitivity and depth.

In one of her previous mysteries, A Fountain Filled with Blood, she succeeded at a feat that’s been the ruin of many lesser writers, plunging headfirst into a current social issue (homophobia) without being swept away by it. Her saving grace there, as in Out of the Deep I Cry, is her ability to create a story both intensely human and delightfully unpredictable, with events flowing naturally from collisions of character rather than the exigencies of plot. Such character-centered writing is a mark of good fiction in any genre, but in detective novels, where the author may feel enslaved to solution-hungry readers, it’s especially rare.

Like Lily Connor and Kathryn Koerney, Clare Fergusson is a tomboy priest, a firmer army pilot who’d rather be out saving the world than raising funds to repair the roof of historic Millers Kill Episcopal Church. As it happens, Clare’s fund-raising efforts set wheels of violence and tragedy in motion, stirring up the dust on the graves of four long-dead children and reviving old questions about their father’s sudden disappearance. Glare is as brave as you d expect a chopper pilot to be. In A Fountain Filled with Blood, she rescued the man she loves, policeman Russ Van Alstyne, from a helicopter crash. Here she and Russ make a narrow escape from a flooded cellar, but not before indulging in a much anticipated kiss. Yes, with hypothermia just a couple of degrees away, with water rising and no help in sight, Clare and Russ manage to forget about his wonderful wife (the woman he truly loves, the woman who helped him through posttraumatic stress syndrome) and finally give in to three novels’ worth of lusty longing.

The parallels between these books are striking, especially the shared trope of the priest-policeman romance (a cliché has been born). This, of course, leads to all sorts of metaphorical coupling and conflict. The priest benefits practically from the policeman’s civil authority (Clare gets to accompany Russ to crime scenes), while the detective draws on the priest’s spiritual insight and her position in the community (when people have confessions to make, they naturally gravitate to priests). Each is physically attracted to the other and feels that the other completes a part of him- or herself that no one else can. But their worlds can’t fully merge in this life, either because of family issues (Tom’s family doesn’t think he and Lily should be together; we’re not told why) or because one of them is married and both think adultery is a sin. The consummation of the priest-policeman union must remain incomplete in order to survive as a metaphor. It’s hard to imagine how Tom and Clare will follow up on their deep kiss.

Could it be that the writers (and some of us readers) want to avoid a choice between the amateur and the professional, between the representative of human justice (the streetsmart cop) and the person devoted to divine justice (the priest)?

Since World War II, much of the detective genre has migrated toward realism. An army of police officers has marched forth to investigate the most sordid of crimes in the most up-to-date way. Sporting badges and guns rather than top hats and violins, they scour the darkest streets to investigate perverse murders perpetrated by killers who bear no resemblance at all to villains like Holmes’s Moriarty.

And yet it’s all just theater, this apparent realism. No matter how disgusting the crime or how common the murderer, the earthiness of the earthiest crime novel is a ruse. Human justice by itself can never guarantee that truth will triumph. Visions of truth must always come from elsewhere, whether they land upon trained detectives or amateurs, and the reader’s faith that those visions will come is what makes crime fiction possible. The trend toward realism notwithstanding, the police haven’t yet driven out the freelance genius, the inspired layman or laywoman, as solvers of mysteries and restorers of justice. Priestlike amateur detectives abound in bookstores, though they hardly exist outside them. Some policemen have apparently decided that if you can’t beat them, you may as well join them. How convenient if the amateur happens to be female, single and sexy.

Which brings us to a disturbing question. Why do writers think readers will accept as a hero a female priest who flirts with a married man? Some may respond that priests are real people, after all, and real people have complicated desires and longings. Grace often comes through our frailties, and even sinful relationships can be redeeming. But however we might try to rationalize it, a strange dynamic seems to be afoot. It’s as though the moral rules are different for female clergy. What if Kathryn Koerney were a married male priest flirting with a woman in his congregation? What if Clare Fergusson were a single male pastor (say, a Southern Baptist) having regular lunch dates with a married woman in his church and whispering double-entendres into the telephone?

We’d hardly accept such a hero. Indeed, we’d probably figure that he was the prime suspect in the case. In a woman priest we find ourselves able to overlook, even sympathize with, behavior that would appall us in a clergyman. We would accuse a male priest who behaved like this of being careless or selfish, of taking his vows lightly and even of abusing the power of his office.

Could it be that we haven’t let our female heroes grow up? It’s significant that the priests in these three novels all seem like underdogs, emotionally or socially uncertain. There’s a girlishness about them that’s attractive but also scary. Of course, sexy vulnerability is almost a prerequisite for contemporary heroines. We can probably blame this image, like so many other things, on television and the movies, where crime-fighting women usually look appealing and dress seductively.

This combination of weakness and authority is troubling. It’s as if we’re supposed to see female clergy, shepherds of their churches, as lost sheep. Never fully at ease with ecclesiastical life (which in these books seems pretty awful), they find comfort in relationships with male authority figures. It’s a double irony: while priests play detective, policemen play priest.

Yet there is also something positive about this invitation to readers to appreciate the human frailties of clerical detectives. The priests’ shortcomings continually remind us that ultimate justice flows neither from human institutions nor ecclesiastical insight, nor even from the sensible practice of a moral life. It flows from God, in spite of human inconstancies and sometimes because of them. In fact, often when we’re at our most stupid, God surprises us with visions of truth. That’s a comforting thought, which should make us as humble as that wisest but most unassuming of all priestly detectives, Father Brown. As Chesterton once wrote (in a story called "The Queer Feet"), "his head was always most valuable when he had lost it. In such moments he put two and two together and made four million."

My Life on Antidepressants: Taming the Beast

Living in Alabama, I encounter a lot of intuitive spelling. I am no spelling snob. In fact, a roadside sign for "Bowled Peanuts" can brighten my whole day as can a hand-painted billboard exhorting me to "Give Your Loved One A Missage For Christmas." Never, though, have I taken so much pleasure from a spelling exception as the sign at a local health food store. ‘WE NOW HAVE ST. JOHN’S WART’ proclaimed the movable-type sign out front. I imagined dusty all-terrain vehicles screeching up to the curb, relic collectors jostling to be the first through the door,

The storeowners had intended to advertise St. John’s Wort, the herbal supplement that many people take to ease depression. It’s not clear whether St. John’s Wort (hypericum perforatum) actually works. A 2002 study showed that it had no more effect on depressed patients than a sugar pill (Journal of the American Medical Association). On the day I drove past that little store, though, hypericum perforatum had just the right effect on me. Yes, I was depressed, but I felt a momentary lift, an escape from the gloom that followed me everywhere: I laughed. If only I could have prolonged that laugh for a few more miles, a few more days.

People experience sadness in many ways. I know it as a smothering pointlessness. A good laugh felt like taking a big gulp of air -- only after that gulp I wanted another, and so I was always finding new things to laugh about. Gilbert and Sullivan worked for me. So did Flannery O’ Connor, old Doris Day movies, Garrison Keillor, and the front page of the tabloid Weekly World News. But I laughed at myself more than anything else. I had learned from Woody Allen movies that neuroses can be funny. Weren’t my phobias comical? Weren’t my compulsive behaviors, my screwy obsessive relationships hilarious?

When I finally went to a pastoral counselor, she asked me if I’d sought help before. I told her the funniest thing I could think of -- how when my husband and I had once made an appointment for marriage therapy the counselor suddenly left his wife and ran off with a patient. Telling her about this, I nearly fell off my chair laughing at the irony of it, gulping for air.

She stared at me in the annoying way that was going to become very familiar over the next year. "Why," she asked me, "do you always laugh so hard at sad things?"

That question drew me up short. If somebody asked me the same question now, I’d have a ready reply. I’d say that nobody wants to feel sad, thank you, and that laughter eases sadness in two ways. First, it diminishes a wound by diminishing the situation or person that inflicts the wound -- making the victimizer less potent, more easily overcome. Second, research shows that laughter releases serotonin in the brain. So comedy is a natural antidepressant!

At the time, though, I saw myself clearly through the eyes of my therapist -- giggling inhumanely at somebody else’s tragedy either because I was too self-absorbed to feel affected or because I was afraid of being sad. The choice before me looked fundamental: did I want to be a cold person laughing or a warm person weeping? Other people have different choices to make, but the question of when to suffer and when to seek relief is there for everybody at some point. It takes many forms, some mundane, others momentous. Should I go for a walk or have another beer? Live without the things I want or sink into debt? Stay in this bad marriage or get a divorce? Even looking to Jesus’ example for guidance -- choosing love over self-interest – there’s much left for us to interpret. Is it more loving, for instance, to bail a rebel son out of jail or leave him there overnight to learn about consequences?

I’ve noticed that when the choice looks moral or spiritual we often choose the benefits of suffering -- especially for others (Sometimes love must be tough, son! See you in the morning!).When a problem is physical though, most people opt to relieve the pain. Liberals and conservatives reach for the Loritab with about equal alacrity. Maybe this dual approach to pain makes sense, since there’s no obvious benefit from simply enduring bodily illness, no hope of overcoming a bad headache by living through it. Enduring a bad marriage may strengthen the will and teach the heart to overcome, but living with a chronic migraine can wear a body down.

In the case of mental illness, however, the wide range of problems that appear moral⁄spiritual may actually arise from the physical chemistry of the body. "She really needs a kick in the butt," someone tells you about a mutual friend. "She doesn’t do anything all day, just lies around and stares at the wall." While it’s possible that the accused is lazy, it’s more probable that she’s physically sick (depressed), and that relief is only a slight alteration of her brain chemistry away. Many would argue that it’s possible for her to feel better without taking drugs: she could try the "talking cure" (regular sessions with a counselor), or an alternative treatment such as herbal or light therapy If she goes to an M.D., though, she’ll likely carry my a prescription for an antidepressant such as Prozac or Zoloft -- one of these brave new medicines that promise such good results with so few side effects,

For about eight years I’ve taken fluoxetine (Prozac). Twice I’ve tried to live without it, only to slide back into gloomy, horizontal wall-staring. Lately I’ve begun to thank God for it, this chemical that -- if scientists are right, and they aren’t even sure -- inhibits my overly efficient reuptake of another chemical (serotonin) that somehow facilitates communication between nerve cells in my brain. I don’t understand why I feel so bad when those nerve cells are on the outs: I only know that when they’re getting along better, so am I. And so are my husband and children, who don’t like to see me sad. For their sake I swallow my pride, and swallow the pill.

Have I sold out to a materialistic view of the universe? Does accepting the importance of the chemicals in my brain preclude a more spiritual and thought? It seems to me that the value of consciousness lies in who created it rather than in how it happens. I imagine the neurotransmitters in my brain as, collectively, an instrument of perception, a kind of ear meant to pick upon the purpose of my existence. Fluoxetine is a tiny hearing aid: it amplifies the teleological strain in the material world’s great cacophony. Without it, I’m pretty deaf to anything in life that sounds like a point.

Yet I do see the pitfalls of trying to overcome emotional pain apart from an accompanying emotional struggle. Whenever I tell my sister that I’m feeling worried, mad, sad or guilty she says without blinking twice. "Up your dosage." I laugh because it’s a running joke between us. I say, "Yeah, and you’d probably give Paxil to Hitler so he wouldn’t feel bad about himself:" It seems right that I should sometimes feel terrible about things in my life. After all, terrible things happen in my life, often as a result of my own wrong-headedness. I worry that I’ll medicate myself so thoroughly that I’ll lose my desire to work hard at being a better person.

But I think again of my counselor’s question: "Why do you always laugh at sad things?" I was already taking Prozac. She never recommended that I stop taking it or stop laughing. What good would that do? Depression had no particular value of its own. Depression was a thief. It stole my hope and energy and even my affection for my family. It was a beast, and when it had me in its jaws, I’d do about anything to get free. No, her suggestion wasn’t that I embrace depression, but that I look past both suffering and happiness and consciously, willfully love others, even at great cost to myself. Rather than trying to feel well, I was to try to love well.

This sounded impossible to me at first. I didn’t see how I could do it. But not long after that conversation came a moment in which I understood better that Jesus is our man of sorrows, a companion in grief. I had a sense -- maybe a miraculous sense, maybe the finger of God on my neurotransmitter -- that Jesus was with me and loved me. I wouldn’t be alone. I began, ironically, by giving up a friendship I’d pursued for years, because I knew it would be best for the other person if I stopped trying to make things work between us. This felt like starvation and self-deprivation; It felt like the end of the world. But I prayed and I envisioned Jesus on the cross, giving himself for his people. I tried to believe that I wasn’t performing an act of self-denial or self-discipline, neither of which I’m very good at. My action was positive/outward rather than negative/inward: I was offering myself to someone else.

There’s a world of difference between self-denial and self-giving. Though self-giving does sometimes mean denying my own wants (most of the time, when my children are sick), it often means living like a hedonist, drinking deep of what others offer me rather than refusing out of fear (because I don’t want to feel controlled) or pride (because I always want to be the one who gives). It’s a demanding and adventurous way to live, with constant opportunities for interpretation and evaluation. There are traces to follow -- Christ’s example -- but no hard-worn path. Every day brings new ways of loving and new people to love: every day I watch myself succeed in some ways of loving and fail in others.

The hardest times for me come when the feelings of pointlessness crowd in, as they still do. Then I don’t want to see people, much less serve them, laugh with them, weep over them. Verses from Ecclesiastes pop into my brain. All is vanity, say the unconnected nerve endings. I start to see love itself as a lie, just empty cheerfulness spinning its wheels. Love doesn’t contain anything, doesn’t go anywhere that matters.

But I choose to believe that pointlessness is the lie. I choose to believe that the sane woman -- the sane me -- is the one with the happy brain neurons, shaking hands and smiling -- thanks to the seratonin molecules that float around in there like tiny diplomats, while fluoxetine stands guard at the door.

Yes, that "sane" woman is often sad, often worried or angry -- the world is still a pretty tragic place, and no amount of seratonin can change that. But she’s also happy a good part of the time. She finds joy in giving herself to people, even though love brings pain. She remembers that there’s a reward ahead. And when really dark times come, she prays for help, opens The Habit of Being, and does her very best impression of Doris Day.

Joined at the Heart (Ephesians 4:1-16)

A newspaper cartoon depicts two men tied to a post and surrounded by enemies. One says to the other, "Someday we’ll look back on this and laugh." While the apostle Paul doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who’d crack a joke or offer a sarcastic quip in a tight situation, he does share this ability to look positively at a crisis situation.

In the middle portion of Ephesians, Paul refers to himself as a prisoner for the Lord (chapters 3,4 and 6). Some scholars believe Ephesians is a pseudonymous letter, but whether or not Paul actually wrote Ephesians, he did suffer in prison during his ministry and he wrote Philemon and Philippians while in prison. In these letters we see Paul taking himself, his readers and his congregations from despair to hope, from sorrow to joy and from suffering to gratitude.

Buddhists have an explanation for the suffering that Paul endured. They would say that he was burdened with something he hated (prison confinement, hunger, pain, fatigue), that he desired freedom from that thing, and thus he suffered. Most of us can understand this: we can think of situations from which we couldn’t Immediately extricate ourselves. Some of these were relatively minor: a traffic jam, a long line, a full waiting room. Others fell under "big stuff": an illness, an unsatisfactory job (or joblessness), an overseas tour of duty perhaps even incarceration.

One of my mother’s favorite westerns features the hero and "damsel" tied to a bundle of dynamite, with the long fuse burning ominously. Figuratively speaking, we all understand the predicament. But here’s where Paul leaves many of us behind, and makes that turn from despair to joy. Paul’s prison experience, even with the deprivation and pain involved, does not create in him self-pity or complaint. Instead, with Christ’s help, Paul makes of his situation a positive metaphor. He is an "ambassador [for the gospel] in chains" (Eph. 6:20). He stresses that, as he is bound in prison, so should his congregation be "bound in peace" by its faith in Christ, who has freed us from the Captivity of sin and death in order to be "joined" as a common body.

Paul’s is a remarkable vision. When Christians are joined together they find strength rather than distress. They will be stronger together because they are together in Christ. It’s when they split up that they get into trouble.

Verse 12, "to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ," is well known in contemporary studies of parish ministry. A bewildering number of texts and "paradigms" have appeared over the years on the interrelated topics of parish leadership, church volunteerism and the "equipping" and "liberation" of the laity. Laity should be given permission to lead and minister; they shouldn’t have to butt against parish bureaucracy and entrenched, change-resistant thinking. In the spirit of Ephesians 4:12, parish ministers are to equip the laity rather than performing and controlling ministry themselves. They are to help the laity become empowered by the Spirit.

Parish leadership texts vary widely from the technical to the readable. My favorite is The Equipping Pastor: A Systems Approach to Congregational Leadership, by R. Paul Stevens and Phil Collins (Alban Institute), because it dearly recognizes the complexity and uniqueness of individual parishes. Other books take God’s own work for granted and consider primarily our human efforts. I once browsed through a church growth text and noticed that the author didn’t get around to discussing prayer as a factor in congregational ministry until chapter nine. "Should have recognized it at the start!" someone had written in the margin.

Our lesson from Ephesians corrects that unintentional Pelagianism. In the context of the church, what are leadership abilities other than gifts of the Spirit? To treat them as anything else is to miss the whole point. Furthermore, a congregation and its leaders cannot "equip the saints" without also (as Paul puts it) "building up the body of Christ" and encouraging "the unity of faith," "maturity" and "the measure of the full stature of Christ."

Paul’s words are good to remember in serving congregations. What is the point of all our committees? Does "ministry of the laity" mean getting a bunch of jobs done (because someone has said they need doing) or, as Paul puts it, does lay ministry mean the "knitting together" of Christ’s body "by every ligament"? How well do the various aspects of the congregation contribute not only to ministry but also (and perhaps especially) to unity, faith and Christian maturity?

As Christians, we are joined together, responsible for one another’s Christian walk and well-being. Paul talks about "one body and one spirit, one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all." So when someone we know is in trouble -- some metaphorical fuse is burning in his or her life -- we’re there for that person, praying, talking, listening and helping. We "bear with one another in love," with "humility, gentleness and patience."

Of course, It’s easier to describe that kind of fellowship with good religious words than actually to pull it off. In a New Yorker cartoon 15 or 20 years ago, the Three Musketeers were crossing their swords together. But instead of saying, "All for one and one for all," they declared, "Every man or himself!" Too often we say "one body" and don’t mean it at all. What makes Paul’s prison reflections so remarkable is that he isn’t thinking primarily of his own drastic situation, or of how he’s going to get himself out of his tight spot. Instead he is thinking of invisible bonds of peace, bonds that are far stronger than any of his chains.

The Jesus Diet (Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51)

My father was a cook in the army. Years later, he still cooked as if he were preparing a meal for a division about to take a hill. He believed that food shouldn’t be wasted, yet he cooked potfuls of it for a family of three. "Why didn’t you like it?" or "What was wrong with it?" he’d say when I could only eat one very large plateful. And when I really did justice to his cooking he’d brag, "Paul ate six biscuits!" with the same pride as he’d say, Paul has a master’s degree from Yale!"

Then one year my metabolism changed. I was afraid of getting fat, so I started to watch what I ate. I felt as if I were letting Dad down by not eating enough to please him, but I was not so starved for his approval (pun intended) that I would risk becoming overweight.

Family meals at my Grandma Crawford’s farm were plenteous too. A pump at her kitchen sink drew water from a cistern. An early model refrigerator held bottles of Orange Crush stocked just for me. When our extended family converged, there were we three, plus cousins, aunts, uncles and many more. And did we eat! At the kids’ table, I made mashed potato and gravy lakes on my plate, then gleefully smashed them with my spoon. After dessert, some of the relatives lingered in the kitchen and cleaned up while others stepped outside to smoke and talk about Vietnam. A few collapsed in front of the black and white television set.

Today that family has dwindled until only my mother, several cousins and I remain. However well those wonderful meals nourished body and soul, they didn’t guarantee immortality.

In John 6:1-15 we read John’s version of another great feeding: the "feeding of the 5,000." From that account, we learn that Jesus "cooked up" an enormous meal for an enormous crowd. There was no fried chicken or pies, but apparently there was plenty of fish and bread. Twelve baskets of bread were left over, although apparently everyone gobbled up the fish. (I imagine a hillside covered with fish bones.) Perhaps some paused afterward to discuss the Roman occupation. And surely there was at least one father who announced proudly, "Zedekiah ate six loaves!"

Word got around that Jesus had put little expense and preparation, humanly speaking, into this meal; in fact, the whole feast had appeared from a boy’s portion. Naturally the crowd followed him when Jesus headed across the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum. But this time Jesus offered a different type of nourishment. He offered them the bread of life -- in other words, himself. In Jesus we have everything we need for life -- if we define "life" more broadly than just by our physical needs. Jesus provides God’s grace, God’s help, guidance and assistance. He provides access to God for our prayers. He helps resolve some of our problems and adverse situations. Other situations he does not resolve for us, but even then he remains present for us as we bring our needs to God. He provides us life forever with God.

What do our lives look like when they’re sustained by the bread of life? Many times in our churches, we aren’t so much nourished by Christ as wearied by preparations. I’m talking not just about potlucks but about all the tasks of ministry. "Sometimes church seems too much like work," sighed a friend one Sunday morning as she hurried to locate people for committee business. Pastors and lay leaders know that feeling. We become satiated by work and not quite filled by the bread and drink that satisfies us spiritually. We remain as needy as ever, and wearied by our efforts.

But when our lives are fed by Jesus’ living bread, they begin to look like those described by Paul in Ephesians. Then we attend to our words. We manage our anger. We work not only for our own needs but are mindful of others’ needs and generous in responding to them. We encourage and forgive one another. We put away those things like "bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander. . . . and malice," and pattern our lives on God’s attitude toward us. Add other "fruits of the Spirit" to the mix, and we have a good picture of a person nourished by Christ and prepared by the Holy Spirit.

As we read in Ephesians 5:1-2, "Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." This was not enough for the crowds that followed Jesus, of course. Like the Israelites who complained of hunger to Moses, Jesus’ opponents complained about him. One can’t help but sympathize with them a little. He was speaking eucharistically before there was a Eucharist, and his intimacy with God seemed blasphemous.

Yet even these first hearers, though disgusted by his talk of eating flesh, could understand other parts of his message. God has become clear in the person of Jesus. God approves us, gently draws us to Christ and teaches us. God has taken full initiative to provide sustenance sufficient for this life and the next. He does not even fret about how much we eat. He simply invites us to his well-stocked table of abundant blessing. As it was for those early listeners, so it is for us.

Whose Casserole (John 6:51-58)

When my daughter was in grade school, her teacher included a unit on table manners. The rule that amused me was, "When served food, you should never ask, ‘What is this?"’

I don’t think I’ve asked that question aloud, but I’ve certainly thought it, especially at potlucks. What is this gray casserole? I can anticipate its quality if I can identify the cook, as one often can in smaller churches.

In John 6, Jesus alludes to the Israelites in the immediate post-Exodus days. As they proceed on their journey, the people despair over the wilderness and long for the plenty of Egypt. They search three days for drinkable water, only to find a bitter spring. They travel farther and still cannot find food. God has promised them a wonderful land, but this definitely isn’t it.

Eventually the Lord provides them with an unidentified flaky substance that sticks to the ground in the morning. Predictably, the people ask, "What is it? Is it edible? What’s it taste like?" The substance is known as manna, which can be translated as "What is it?" (Exod. 16:15).

Manna was sufficient for the people’s needs. It was not, however, sufficient food for eternal life. It was food, period. Jesus contrasts manna with another kind of food, the bread of life.

It is human nature to want to know what food we’re being served. So I ask a similar question of Jesus: What is "the bread of life," the flesh and blood of Jesus which is "the living bread that came down from heaven"?

We hear these words eucharistically, of course, and that is proper. But let’s for a moment think about broader, related meanings. The word bread can also stand for sustenance; in the Lord’s Prayer, our daily bread generally means "what we need for life." Flesh and blood can also mean a vital, actual life. So Jesus’ bread of life is his own life, his own vitality. He gives us his life freely. He gives us grace for living. He gives us access to God, forgiveness of our sins, eternal life and much more. We share life with him more deeply than we share our lives with our relatives and friends.

I’m going through the process of moving my elderly mother to a nursing home and selling her house and belongings. Her house is my childhood home. Since I’m an only child and Mom lives in another state, this process has been logistically complicated as well as emotionally distressing for everyone. But I quickly sent e-mails to several friends all over the country, asking them to pray for my mother and me. I’ve found grace, peace and a sense of the living Christ amid a difficult situation.

There have been other times in my life, though, when I felt much more lost and uncertain. Although Jesus’ bread is life-giving, sometimes we don’t feel satisfied. I don’t want to be flippant and say, "If you don’t feel close to God -- guess who moved." For whatever reasons, our needs don’t seem to be met. Like the Israelites, we feel that God has let us down somehow.

In my own spiritual path, sometimes I’ve confused manna for living bread. Both are God-given, but manna doesn’t nourish indefinitely. Think of manna as the aspects of the church life that are suitable and grace-full but fleeting. Manna is the preaching style of a certain pastor whom you love (but what do you do when a new pastor comes along with a different style)? Manna is the program ministry of the congregation, or the church’s music, wonderful and beneficial but sometimes a source of disagreement. Manna is the small group to which you’re attached -- but people move away and the group magic disappears. Manna is the congregation that you love -- that you’d rather would never change. And what if a crisis in your congregation brings out the worst in the people you trusted as spiritual models? Our walk with Christ can be hampered, even ruined, when we allow impermanent aspects of church to define our spiritual journey.

Christ’s living bread is quite adaptable to all kinds of circumstances; Christ feeds us anywhere, anytime, in all of the ways I’ve listed and more. (A favorite book of mine, one that helps readers evaluate ways they grow spiritually, is Corinne Ware’s Discover Your Spiritual Type.) Christ is our constant benefactor. When we receive his sustenance, we find hope in difficult situations. Amid serious problems, we find solutions that hadn’t been there before. Lovely people come into our lives unexpectedly. Not least of all, we receive the peace which allows us to perceive God’s grace rather than to become stuck in our unhappiness and our preconceived notions.

Another mistake that I’ve made over the years is to think that Christ’s bread is something that will "take" over the long haul if I’m sufficiently spiritual. "My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink," but eating and drinking is something we must do continually. Again, we can think of this eucharistically, or we can think broadly of the need to abide in Christ -- a lovely old word which means to wait upon or dwell with.

That may be one reason why the Israelites, at the early stage of their journey, had difficulty trusting God. Impressive though the Lord’s miracles had been, the people hadn’t the long-term relationship with God that makes for a deeper trust. Just as we trust the excellent cook to prepare a fine meal, we can trust in Christ’s living bread as we abide in him over the journey.