This is a recent and feverish craziness. Weaver-Zurcher, a Mennonite whose expertise nicely straddles the academic and trade publishing worlds, explains that the Amish romance genre putted along at just a few new titles a year for the first few years of the millennium, but in 2008 this jumped to twelve new titles, then shot to 45 in 2010 and 85 in 2012. If you were so inclined today, you could purchase a new Amish romance title every four days (that’s the rate of release anyway). The top three Amish romance authors have together sold about 24 million books. And this analysis only accounts for “inspirational”—that is, “clean,” Christian—Amish romance released through publishing houses. It does not count figures for re-releases, self-published Amish romance, Amish fiction in other genres such as mystery, novels about other “plain” people such as Mennonites, or Amish/vampire novels, or LGBT-themed Amish fiction. Yes, there are such things. Not kidding.

Weaver-Zurcher applies literary and cultural theory with a light touch, examining the Amish romance phenomenon from various angles. She considers the history of the genre, production and readership, literary quality and whether that even matters, accuracy and whether that even matters, the wrinkly relationship between evangelicalism and Amish fiction, the problems of exoticizing/domesticating/commodifying/appropriating the Other, and perhaps most importantly, how a variety of readers use and think about and are (or are not) influenced by Amish fiction. She is never disdainful of the genre, its readers, or the publishers, but consistently cheerful, fair-minded, and curious.

Nevertheless, we do enjoy some witty observations and critiques here and there. A caption under some cover art notes that “On many Amish romance covers … the heroine is depicted between heaven and earth.” Indeed, it seems that these covers follow conventions, typically featuring the face of a clear-skinned maiden—with prayer cap and improbably plucked eyebrows—floating over a pastoral landscape depicting “focal things” such as barns, buggies, or contented cows. In the chapter in which Weaver-Zurcher examines how accurately these novels represent Amish life—definitely a mixed bag, it turns out, despite everyone’s good intentions—we read about an Amish practice entirely made up by novelists, the “Mythic Man Swap.” Another chapter sports the jaunty title “An Evangelical and an Amishman Walk into a Barn.”

Perhaps you are wondering: do the Amish read Amish fiction? The answer is yes. Some enjoy it very much, despite the inevitable inaccuracies and misunderstandings. Other Amish readers find it silly, roll their eyes, and ignore it. Some find it insidious, usually for its valorizing of romance, self-actualization, and individualism. In fact, the most troubling revelation for me was the way in which evangelical novelists (who write the vast majority of Amish romance) have had a tendency to import evangelical values into their Amish protagonists’ lives—numerous plot lines, in other words, in which a character is “converted” from some form of Ordnung-induced works righteousness, or perhaps a merely cultural religious life, to a real and genuine personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This plot pattern caricatures the Amish (or perhaps some nasty bishop gets the blame) and plays on terms and distinctions that don’t register for many Amish. Obviously, Amish people are hardly taking all their spiritual cues from fiction, but Weaver-Zurcher wonders about “releasing narratives of individualized piety that counteract the bonds of this collectivist society.”

But never mind these intriguing questions connected to Amish readers. What about us English? What, after all, does explain the astonishing surge in popularity of what might seem a niche genre about a religious group that composes only one-tenth of one percent of the U.S population? Well, naturally, it’s complicated. But Weaver-Zurcher’s best answer seems to be: hypermodernity, including hypersexualization.

With due thanks to theorists Gilles Lipovetsky, Jean Baudrillard, and Kenneth Kammeyer, Weaver-Zurcher observes that in a culture characterized by “hyperconnection, hypertext, hyperreality, hypercapitalism, hyperindividualism, hyperconsumption, hyperintelligence, hyperterrorism,” we’re bound to long for a simpler and slower way of life. And in a pervasively “pornified” and raunchy popular culture, we’re bound—well, at least some of us—to long for modesty and chastity. Suddenly Amish-world seems a welcome respite—serene farms, handmade quilts, quiet evenings spent in quiet conversations with beloved family, stalwart community, a life of decency and piety, and of course, hearty, homemade meals with pie for dessert.

Now this part I understand. Not the pies, but the longing for a respite from hypermodernity. The other night I went to a family birthday dinner in which conversation for most of the evening fluttered around everyone’s latest device: mini-ipad vs. Kindle, how to get wifi on one’s phone, the latest operating system upgrades. And I can’t even blame this on the young people. The median age of the gathered relatives was 47. For the record, I’m not the only grump tired of not being able to look people in the eye because they’re preoccupied with their cellphones. Even hip, postmodern author Jonathan Foer isn’t happy about this. And then there’s hypersexualization. I was appalled to read the copy on a little packet of hair product my stylist gave me. It stated that if I used this product, I would receive, among other things, at least eight invitations to engage in casual sexual encounters, except the word used to describe said encounters began with F, its crudity lightly disguised with asterisks. On conditioner packaging! The company that made this product is based in Australia, but that’s no excuse.    

So I get that we live in a hypersexualized, hypermodern world and that reading is one way to retreat to an alternative universe. As Weaver-Zurcher observes, “literature can serve as a semaphore for the subculture that produces and consumes it, a flag by which it expresses concern regarding contemporary cultural directions.” In other words, we create and consume the fictions we need in order to deal with our anxieties, and apparently, many readers find Amish life an effective tonic. At least a fictionalized version of Amish life, nicely adjusted to give readers a pleasant dip—or as Weaver-Zurcher describes it, “imaginative transport”—in another world through fiction.

This is not a bad thing, necessarily. It’s one of the most important cultural purposes of fiction in general. So I’m not as inclined as I used to be to be, thanks to The Thrill of the Chaste, to regard this genre with disdain. I now have a much clearer understanding of Amish romance, its readers, and its cultural uses—which are not so different from the ways we use higher-brow genres.

In any case, I have my lowbrow “vices,” too, my imaginative transports of choice to help me escape the perils of hypermodernity. I used to love Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, for example, and more recently, the wonderful/awful show Merlin. Amish romance is still not going to be my choice, but hey, there are worse ways to cure what ails you when you’re suffering from the hypermodernity blues.

It’s time once again for guest blogger and advice columnist Pious Petunia to provide savvy answers to the pressing dilemmas readers present in their letters. This week, Miss P tackles summer’s special challenges to the faithful life.

Dear Miss Petunia: My husband and I bicker every summer about his preference for golf over worship services on sunny Sunday mornings. “I worship God so much better on the golf course!” he claims. I think he’s just being lazy about the spiritual life. Either that, or I’m jealous. What should I do?

PP: Ah yes, summer Sundays, when worship means sundresses and sandals, guest preachers, and the soporific drone of fans cooling the sanctuary—or the unearthly chill of the air conditioner, if your church managed a capital campaign. How tempting to forego that routine and instead feel the grass beneath your spikes and the breeze on your cheek as your gaze follows the ball into the rough—yet again.

Actually, Miss P has nothing against the “I see God in nature” principle. Many a Christian summer camp and retreat center makes outdoor worship a centerpiece of their programming. Arrange the campers on rustic benches in a “cathedral in the pines,” strum a guitar in three-chord fashion, and promise a “mountain top experience.” No problem. It’s all good. People really do feel closer to God in nature—but notice that “nature” here usually refers to pleasant groves in the summer and not freezing rain in October. And those pleasant groves must be visited at times other than dawn and dusk, when mosquitoes tend to remind one of the curse of Adam rather than the glory of the Creator. Even so, it’s probably true that we all need a Sabbath from the Sabbath routine once in a while, and I’m all for campfire singing, trail meditations, and rustic benches.

I would suggest keeping two things in mind, though. First, even Moses had to come down from the mountain. In fact, even Jesus did. It’s easy to feel close to God in nature because there are no church committee meetings there, or budget squabbles, or people who arrive earlier than you and steal your usual seat. In other words, eventually you have to come back down to the banal realities of life in community. General revelation only gets you so far on the path to sanctification.

Second, golf is probably not a good substitute for worship. It tends to promote cursing. So I would suggest that if your husband wants to golf on Sunday, he should get a very early tee time and be back for regular worship, where he can repent of whatever he shouted after shanking with his three-iron. As a further strategy, while he’s on the links, you can hit the driving range and prepare to out-golf him. If you then insist on going along for those sunrise Sunday rounds, and you beat his score on a regular basis, he’ll probably start preferring church.

Dear Miss Petunia: Now that the weather is so warm, people’s clothes seems to be disappearing! Young ladies, especially, seem to believe they can expose any body part they please in public. Young men jog around the neighborhood in nothing but skimpy shorts and a sheen of sweat. Is there no modesty anymore? How is anyone supposed to avoid lusts of the flesh?

PP: I hear your pain on this one. Miss P does not consider herself prudish, but even we wise-as-serpents/innocent-as-doves types have our limits, and I do long for the days of greater modesty. I notice that this year the style calls for dress lengths so short that it seems young ladies stepped out the door wearing only a tunic, having forgotten to slip on any bottom-half outer garment at all. I suppose this serves the interests of capitalism by necessitating the purchase of pretty underpants, because one must surely plan on the entire world catching a glimpse of one’s dainties.  

What to do about this? Announcements of an imminent apocalypse, I’m afraid, will have no effect. So I suppose we must shrug it off, taking the line that constant exposure to skin tends to deaden any arousing effect. Indeed, as my friend Jason Lief points out, often enough, the exposures in question stir up not so much the storms of lust as the gags of horror. Perhaps we could all take the opportunity this summer to become very matter-of-fact about the body, meditating on weakness, aging, weight gain, sagging, and the inevitable truth that “all flesh is grass.” For those who find this difficult, I recommend a stint in the hospital following a nurse on his or her rounds. A few days of this, and the only thing bodies will make you think of is odiferous bodily fluids. Pregnancy and birth have a similar effect.

As for the lusts of the flesh, those in the throes of youth hardly need near-nakedness as a precondition for temptation. I’m sure parka-clad young people in the dead of an Arctic winter have their struggles. For the rest of us, summer is a time for practical good humor about the body. I would simply recommend avoiding water parks, which force you to jostle about all day in close proximity to nubile, nearly naked teenagers in wet swimsuits. No one can survive that, not even if you resolve to focus your gaze only on the tattoos.

Dear Miss Petunia: I’m dreading the day when the kids are finished with school and home for the summer. Am I a bad parent?

PP: Be gentle with yourself, dear. Summer can be hard for everyone, including the kids. Do you imagine they’re sitting in school in early June, thinking “Oh boy, I can’t wait to spend all day every day for ten to thirteen weeks with my beloved Mummy and Daddy”? Right, they’re already thinking up strategies to avoid you, especially if they are older than age nine.

I’m a firm believer in summer plans that balance structure with freedom. No need to schedule soccer camp followed by swim lessons followed by intensive Latin camp. Kids need things to do, but they also need lazy days and the valuable lessons of boredom. Besides, those camp fees add up. Which is why churches invented Vacation Bible School. 

Miss P also advises that parents follow the wise tradition of deliberately arranging summer experiences that induce suffering and thereby make everyone appreciate their regular lives. This is exactly the purpose of backpacking, family road trips, and sleepaway camps.

Dear Miss Petunia: Is it OK for Christians to eat hot dogs? I worry about this every year starting on Memorial Day, and the question plagues me right through Labor Day.

PP: What an intriguing theological problem! One could consider hot dogs an example of good stewardship, since they make use of the less, shall we say, prime parts of the animal carcass, avoiding waste and applying the principle of I Corinthians 12: 22-23: “those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor.” Hot dogs, a most improbable and imaginative food invention, are also an example of human creativity and could be said, therefore, to help us reflect the image of God.

On the other hand, those who object to eating meat have sound arguments, and those uncomfortable with mystery will definitely want to avoid them. I would refer you to Matthew 15:16-18, Acts 11, and Romans 14. Then, if you are still worried, get in touch with covenant theology and choose Hebrew National brand kosher franks—enjoy.

Perhaps next time we should consider a careful theological analysis of that other summer staple: the marshmallow.

I suppose I have simply gotten used to unfinished business. As more academic years slide past and pile up behind me, I have less a sense of closure in May than a sense of constant motion. Even this year, when two of my own children are graduating—one from high school and one from middle school—I’m having a hard time savoring the moment. It all seems to be flying past me in a blur.

Perhaps this is why Psalm 90 has been on my mind, a psalm about the passage of time, the ephemerality of life. For God, a thousand years are like a day, and our little human lives are quick as a breath and no more substantial. Humbled by this reflection, the psalmist pleads, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Teach us how very small we are. Melt our self-importance away in the light of divine perspective.

I’ve always loved how this psalm ends. At first glance, it seems to shift topics. “May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us—yes, establish the work of our hands.” Where does work come into this? After meditating on the brevity and sorrows of life, now we’re talking about the “work of our hands”?

Yes. Exactly. This is how we make meaning out of years “whose span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.” We busy ourselves with “the work of our hands.” That’s what the favor of the Lord looks like: something to do in life, a meaningful task. The Hebrew word for work is very general—it simply means “activities” or “deeds,” not only tasks at work or home but all our interactions with others, all the ways we weave ourselves into the world.

Whatever it is we do, though, our business will always be unfinished. I think of this as I close the books on one semester and notice another one appearing the horizon. I think of this as our graduates move on, so many papers and projects behind them and so much life ahead of them. I think of this as a parent, as I wonder if I’ve done enough and taught my children enough and equipped them with everything they need for the next stage.

The answer to that, of course, is no. That is why we need the prayer at the end of this psalm, and we need to pray it twice: “Establish, yes, establish.” The favor of the Lord looks like work, but the outcome of that work is the Lord’s. We cannot ever do enough, and we cannot know what the work of our hands will mean to others, not fully. That is in the hands of God.

In the end, this is a psalm about letting go in trust. So hard to do, but what choice do we have? We can only try to be faithful, and then let go with a prayer: “May the favor of the Lord rest upon us.”

Well, Daniel put it out on the net, and it went viral. Not surprisingly, her post swirled up some rough weather. She was called smug, a bitch, a religious bigot, and other names you can imagine. Tolerance and diversity, after all, does not extend to religious people, since religion is obviously the sworn enemy of tolerance and diversity. It’s fine to bash religious people, but when a religious person strikes back, woe be unto her.

So what happens when your blog post garners 579 comments on the Huff Post? That’s right: you publish a book. Daniel is an established writer, contributing regularly both to the Huffington Post and the Christian Century. She already has two books published, one on testimony and one co-written with another pastor on the clergy life. Her new book, which just appeared in January, places an expanded version of that viral essay at the front of a flotilla of her other short pieces, many of them previously published. It’s called When “Spiritual But Not Religious” is Not Enough: Seeing God in Surprising Places, Even the Church.

I’m a fan of Daniel’s writing and happy to recommend her to those who have not read her before. In her day job, she is senior pastor at a congregational church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. Her wry humor and spiritual depth remind me of early Barbara Brown Taylor, and she represents the best of mainline sensibilities.

I’m not sure what to make of this particular book, however. I was once told by a wise editor that a title is a promise to the reader. This title seems to promise that the book will make a case for the church to the skeptical reader—not just Christ, or the faith, but the church. The back ad copy seems to confirm that purpose:

While so-called “spiritual” life keeps people self-focused and vague, religious people have something that spiritual people do not: centuries of careful religious thought, ongoing meaningful debate, and, most importantly, a supportive community that challenges and strengthens their faith. Humorous and sincere, this is a book about people finding God in the most unexpected, unspiritual places: prisons, airports, yoga classes, committee meetings, and strangest of all, right there in their local church.

All right, I thought, when I cracked the book open, let’s hear it. Bring it on! I would love to hear an extended argument for organized religion and the institutional church. Obviously I don’t need that argument for myself, but it certainly would be handy when I encounter the spiritual-but-not-religious skeptic on a plane or wherever else.

So I dove in and found myself enjoying the essays very much. I especially appreciated the longer ones in which we begin by strolling along with Daniel through some intriguing aspect of modern life, then suddenly a scripture passage sneaks up on us, and we realize we are in the middle of an affecting sermon, with Jesus standing right among us, warning about the Pharisees or remarking on the older brother of the prodigal in ways directly pointed at our lives. The other essays, on immigration reform and animals on planes, a little kitty who lived a brave life, teaching masters-of-ministry students in prison—all great stuff. I think my favorite might be a beautiful piece on the mystery of marriage in which, before a wedding ceremony, the groom reminisces with Daniel about running wild in the church building as a kid. He asks her if kids still do that, and she assures him they do. But walking down the aisle and committing to marriage, she tells him, “may be the craziest thing you’ve done here yet.”

Unfortunately, when it comes to that argument for the church promised by the title and back ad copy, I don’t think the book delivers, not even in an indirect, narrative sort of way. Those of us already in the church will find Daniel a congenial companion. We’ll nod knowingly and appreciatively throughout. But I doubt anything here would convince a church skeptic or prove useful in addressing one. Granted, a collection of essays may not be the best way to make such an argument anyway. Short essays are notoriously difficult to mold together into a coherent collection. They tend to fall apart like too-dry cookie dough, especially when, as here, writings of widely differing lengths are mixed together. And what happened in the editing process so that the original blog post simply appears without comment as Chapter 19, when we’ve already had a longer and better version of it as the opening essay?     

Still, the problem here is not the writing, but an overpromise for the book’s agenda. In her book-related speaking engagements, Daniel seems to be engaged in a public accounting of what’s good and valuable about religion and the church—doing in person what the book doesn’t exactly do. So good for her. She’s absolutely right that religious people should not always be on the defensive, fielding outsiders’ bigoted (let’s just say it) accusations about the Holocaust, the Crusades, and abortion clinic bombings. 

I wonder, though. Is a defense of the church even possible? Even with the most airtight arguments or winsome stories, could we ever convince the skeptic that the church is a good and beautiful place to center your life? I realize that apologetics, of which this is a sub-variety, serve more to assure the faithful than convince the “heathen.” At best, apologetics can clear away a little brush and open up some space for other forces to work.

But it has always seemed to me that loving the church is simply a gift. Why do some kids brought up in the church stick around and others wander off? It’s not always about some grievous wound. And love for the church is not the same as accepting Christian truths. No doubt you know people who more or less assent to faith propositions, but just aren’t interested in the church. How do you explain that? The church fails to “appeal” and “be relevant”? I suppose, but we’ll always fail at that, and many of us love the church anyway.

The only thing I can think of is that loving the church is a gift. Some of us love the church sufficiently enough to show up fairly regularly; others of us love it enough to serve it with our lives and labor. Either way, I think this love is simply given to many of us, like a complementary tote bag, when we surrender to faith.

The gift is not always a blessing. Sometimes loving the church hurts, because Christ makes the church out of people, and people fail. As Daniel sardonically notes, church skeptics would like the church a lot better if we could get rid of all the people in it. I would add: Love for Christ first is the only way to survive love for Christ’s church.

And that’s the hardest thing to explain to an outsider. Many of us can testify that encountering God in church is not surprising or strange at all, but a phenomenon upon which we have scaffolded our lives. We encounter God in the faithfulness of good people, in the prayers and songs in which our voices join, in the dying and rising pattern of our lives together—but all of this, all of it, is an inexplicable mystery: the Spirit imprinting the image of Christ upon us.

Last night, thanks to the cleverness and curiosity of internet geeks, my husband and I were able to listen for about three hours to Boston police scanners—live-streamed over the internet—during the operation that captured the Boston bombing suspect. We knew, before it was broadcast on the TV news shows, that he was hiding in a boat parked in a driveway on Franklin Street. I can tell you that the words “the suspect is in custody” were announced on the police scanner at 8:42 p.m. EST.

We had the TV on, too, but muted. We saw the images of police vehicles and ambulances gathered in the streets of Watertown, Massachusetts, with hundreds of law enforcement people standing around for hours, watching and waiting. We didn’t have to listen, though, to the news show hosts chattering away to fill the wait time, conveying no actual information and interviewing whatever tangentially relevant guest they could get on the phone. Instead we heard the police doing their job. It was fascinating.

What impressed me most was the careful competence of the Watertown, Boston, and state police; the FBI; and the various bomb squads, special ops, K-9 units, hostage rescue teams, EMTs, and firefighters. It took a long time to get the guy because they were thinking through every possibility—does he have bombs? could he blow up the boat’s gas tank? if there’s a firefight, would all our guys be out of the line of fire? should we use the FBI dog or the Boston police dog if he runs? We didn’t hear them ask these questions, but we could surmise them from the communications. We heard the people on the ground call for light from the helicopters to check for movement in the boat. We heard them report the use of the flash-bang to stun the guy. They communicated with each other, thought of possible scenarios, relied on their training. They were very, very patient because they had to get it right.

After it was over, before we started seeing video on TV of the law enforcement people leaving Watertown to the grateful cheers of residents—an impromptu small-town parade, complete with people waving American flags—we heard the various units congratulating each other over police radio. “Great job, everyone.” “High fives all around.” “You guys were awesome.” Even from 800 miles away, I felt grateful, too, for all these people in high-stakes jobs doing their work well, behaving with professionalism and care, serving others.

Of course, the law enforcement people were only part of the heartening side of this story. Many people acted generously and heroically in the immediate aftermath of the bombings. The FBI actually crowd-sourced the suspect identification project, and within hours they had identified the bombers. (Excuse me: alleged bombers.) The people of Watertown, though terrified, cooperated with police and stayed in lock-down for about 24 hours. So many people honored the basic social contract of being good citizens, helping others—so much decency, common sense, and care.

What do I make, then, of the dark discouragement that has been on my mind most of this week? A fertilizer factory explosion in Texas killed 14 people and wounded 200, with 60 still missing. Congress utterly failed to pass even the easiest measure in a series of proposed new gun laws, the background checks that a huge majority of Americans favor. A This American Life episode from a few weeks ago described in heartbreaking detail how a high school in South Chicago manages to struggle through the days when they lose, as a matter of course, several students per year to neighborhood gun violence.

One more. I had the privilege last weekend of attending the premier of my colleague Stephanie Sandberg’s new play, Grains of Hope. Stephanie interviewed over a hundred refugees and refugee advocates living the Grand Rapids area and, with her students, she created an inspiring play to tell their stories. All the words in the play come directly from the interviews. Since I’ve been studying immigration issues with my own students all semester, I knew these stories, but seeing them performed was a visceral reminder of the terror and fear from which many of them come. In many places in the world, the social contract has collapsed completely. Militants arrest people randomly in the middle of the night, people are forced into refugee camps, boys are brainwashed into rogue militias, women are captured and gang-raped. Decency and good will are overwhelmed by evil and rage. It can happen very quickly.

So today, I don’t know what to make of these contrasts. People can be so desperately evil; people can be so bravely good.

I could “explain” it theologically. I know the terms, I know the routine. But right now, the theological explanations seem like sticks we throw helplessly at a terrible mystery.

I wondered, as we listened to the police scanner live-feed, what the young man in Watertown was thinking as he lay in that boat for hours. For the last two of those hours, he was surrounded by the full-on power of just about every law enforcement outfit in New England. He had to know there was no way out. Did he feel remorse? Was he pondering the moral quandary of his existential state? Was he balanced on that narrow line—so dangerously narrow—between our darkest impulses and our better selves, thinking perhaps of the violent history of his Chechen heritage, contrasting that with the cheerful complacency of decent Americans among whom he had lived for many years? Was he writhing in the grip of some warped view of reality in which he was a hero, surrounded by oppressive tyrants? Or was he just too exhausted and injured to think? We may never know.

I wonder: how does God tolerate, let alone love, the exasperating contradiction of the human race?

I've always liked the story of doubting Thomas. When I wrote this meditation several years ago for

John 20:24-31 comes round the lectionary circle every year on “Low Sunday,” that anti-climactic day when the entire church staff, having pulled out all the stops for Easter, drags back to church in a state of exhaustion. The trumpets are back in their cases, the lilies are beginning to wilt, the second stringers are in charge of leading worship—and the text of the day brings up the touchy subject of doubt.

In the literary arc of the Gospel of John, however, this text is the climax. Both scholarly and literary reasons argue for Chapter 21 as an appendix, a kind of seaside coda in mezzo piano. The major fortissimo cadence chord sounds in chapter 20:31.

This little pericope resolves the issues of signs and belief that have occupied the gospel writer from the first chapter. Who is this Jesus, and how do we know who he is? John’s magnificent prologue announces immediately that our previous ways of speaking cannot convey an adequate answer. The writer must break through ordinary referential language and use a comprehensive metaphor: Jesus is logos. Throughout the gospel, we see an emphasis on metaphorical thinking. In episode after episode, John depicts Jesus striving to get his listeners to think in new categories. This leap corresponds to the way metaphor works: metaphor combines unlike things to create a “new referential access,”[i] a fresh and enduring means to comprehending something that was previously incomprehensible. In John, this new access is given the shorthand term “belief.”

Unfortunately, very few people make the leap immediately and easily. “The light shines in the darkness but the darkness has not overcome (comprehended, understood) it.” In fact, all of us need prompting. The gospel is everywhere sympathetic with our need for evidence, for signs. It’s true that signs are not enough; some people insist on ignoring them. But signs are necessary, as they jolt us (like metaphor) out of our old perceptions.

The signs that Thomas insists on in verse 25 are very specific to the situation and to the particular truth claim at hand—that Jesus is not dead, but alive. Because of this specificity, Thomas has gone down the ages as the doubter, the empiricist, the fellow who needs material proof. The famous painting by Caravaggio, Doubting Thomas, epitomizes this Thomas-as-empiricist tradition. Jesus is pulling back his robe while Thomas leans in close, his finger buried up to the first knuckle in Jesus’ wound. The other disciples, we notice, are not exactly indifferent. They are crowding in to get their own good look.

We are sometimes told that Thomas’s approach to belief is overly fastidious, second best if not suspiciously over-scientific. If we wish to be truly spiritual, this way of reasoning goes, we will not insist on putting our finger in Jesus’ side. On other occasions, we may hear the opposite view: Thomas takes on the role of the doubter’s hero, the only truly modern disciple. In this case, we’re told that Thomas’s empirical needs are completely valid. After all, Jesus himself validates them, kindly delivering precisely what Thomas demands. In the Caravaggio painting, Jesus’ own hand rests on Thomas’s wrist, guiding his fascinated touch.

In the context of the gospel as a whole, I think we should neither scold nor idolize Thomas. He is not so different from anyone else in this gospel. They all needed signs and proofs, too. People came to believe in Jesus when he demonstrated clairvoyance or healed lifelong disabilities or multiplied loaves and fishes. As for the particular question at hand in Chapter 20—is Jesus alive or not?—the other disciples needed their signs and got them. The beloved disciple saw the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene heard Jesus call her name, the others received his warm breath.

Thomas, therefore, is like all of them and all of us. His second name, Didymus (the twin), perhaps signals that he is of two minds. He is both doubter and believer at once. The two states of mind wrestle inside him, and in that sense he represents us all.

For that reason, I see Jesus’ words in verse 29 not as a scolding dismissal of Thomas, but as a gesture of mercy directed right at the reader. After all, we never walked the streets with Jesus, we have never seen the nail prints. Jesus says here to us, “I know it’s hard to believe when you haven’t seen me as these people could. Blessed are you for accepting the testimony of this writing.”

Seeing is believing—this is the idea (rooted right in the close relationship between the Greek words for “see” and “know”) that the gospel writer persistently deconstructs throughout the gospel. Some who saw did not believe. Even those who saw needed to break through to a new way of thinking in order to believe. Here the writer wishes that those who have not seen might yet believe. This is the purpose of the gospel: “Jesus did many other signs…  But these are written that you might believe.” The document itself becomes testimony, a mediation between sign and belief.

Belief in what, exactly? Often in this gospel, the word belief is used without much precise content. It signals an openness to something new and a trust in the person of Jesus. That was the best the characters in each story could manage in the moment. (John 11:27 is one exception.) But here, for the benefit of the reader, the word belief is followed at last by specific propositional content: “that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” The content is the result of sustained reflection on the events recorded here. 

This is not to say that the ultimate goal of this “new referential access” is merely a propositional statement. If so, the gospel would be only one verse long. Instead, we are given the stories of the gospel as sign, “that we might have life.” The stories become miracles for us. They are a mediation through which we can see a Jesus we have never seen, as Jesus himself is a mediation through which we can see a God we have never seen. 

Thomas is not a counterexample for right belief, then, but a metaphor in his own way. He signals in his passionate insistence how we are to respond to these texts. See the nail marks in these stories; put your finger in these words.

[i]           Janet Martin Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: Clarendon-Oxford UP, 1985), 57-58.

Here’s how it usually goes down. You arrive at church, and a smiling usher hands you a little palm branch. Your fellow parishioners, likewise armed with palm branches, line up as best they can, the adorable little children in floral dresses (girls) and tiny sweater vests (boys). Adults of various ages are doing their best to look cheerful, when actually everyone is feeling awkward. The music revs up—something processionalish—and a little parade begins. “Hosanna to the King of Kings!” we’re all supposed to say, or sing, or otherwise convey.

At this point, we congregants are essentially playing the role of the crowd in the Triumphal Entry narrative from the gospels. We’re supposed to be feeling joyful, because Jesus is the King of Kings, and here he comes in triumph, the humble king whom prophets foretold as Savior. Except that this is the beginning of Holy Week, and Jesus is coming into Jerusalem to die. Unlike the crowds in the story, I know exactly what’s coming, and I do not want to wave a little palm branch about it.

Later in the service, if things go as usual in my experience, we will once again be compelled to play the role of the clueless crowd against our will. Someone, typically the preacher, will scold us for turning on Jesus just a few days later and shouting “Crucify him! Crucify him!” How fickle you are! How quickly you turn away from the Jesus you praised just moments before!

But wait a minute: I didn’t sign on for this crowd role in the first place, and now I’m getting scolded?

This is not meant as a criticism of worship planners. In fact, I sympathize with the challenges of planning a Palm Sunday service. So much paradox. Sure, we can sing: “Ride on, ride on in majesty/ In lowly pomp ride on to die.” But apart from that, how do you deal with the weird contradictions of significance and feeling that characterize this event in the narrative of Jesus’ life?

The rest of Holy Week is much easier. On Maundy Thursday we remember the Last Supper and Gethsemane, and we enter into grief. On Good Friday we meditate on the crucifixion and feel sorrow. On Easter we celebrate the Resurrection and feel joy. Easter Vigil, for those who observe it, is a helpful bridge, emotionally and dramatically, from the former to the latter. But on Palm Sunday we’re faced with a triumphal entry that is not actually triumphal and a cast of characters who feel all the wrong things. So how are we supposed to feel? Ironic? How do you create a worship service around that?

This whole challenge is made worse by the trend toward observing “Passion Sunday,” in which we attempt to cram not only the Triumphal Entry but also the entire Passion narrative into one fast-paced Sunday service. Jog-trot through it all, take a deep breath, wait a week, and show up again on Easter.

I understand why churches do this: it’s because so few people attend the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday specialty services. I get it: people are busy. It’s tough to spend virtually an entire weekend at church. And I really do understand worship planners’ compromise solution: better to do a little Passion stuff the Sunday before than to have people skipping over it completely and leaping right from palm parades to flowers, bunnies, chocolate and Easter joy.

This is not an ideal solution, however, because at the root of this problem is the inherently dramatic nature of liturgy. Liturgy enables us to re-narrate our lives, to shape our own little stories so that they take on the contours of the great narrative of Redemption. Holy Week is the heart of that drama, and we need time to walk through each of its stages. We should accompany the disciples at the Last Supper, and toward Gethsemane, and at the foot of the cross, and at the empty tomb. But we can’t do it all in one hour! These are hard emotional places to go, and we need time to enter into each of these moments, feel what we ought to feel, speak what we ought to say. This is why the church in its wisdom has spread the dramatic arc of Holy Week over several services over several days.

From this perspective of liturgical drama, we might now be able to discern the essential problem with Palm Sunday. For this first act in the Holy Week drama, we are asked to make what turns out to be a false start. The crowd and the disciples were feeling triumphant for all the wrong reasons. I realize this can be turned toward one of two useful lessons: either we are reminded of all the ways we have wrong expectations about Jesus, or we are reminded that this is indeed the beginning of Jesus’ triumph through sacrificial love. Fine, but those are matters of understanding rather than feeling, so that the drama of the service itself feels manipulative and untrue. We’re asked to play roles we can’t really inhabit and feel things we know we shouldn’t feel.

What’s the solution? I don’t know. The one Palm Sunday service I recall actually enjoying and appreciating, at St. James Picadilly in London, involved a live donkey. Never underestimate the power of livestock combined with the Book of Common Prayer. Short of that, though, I think Greg Scheer, the Minister of Worship at my church, has a decent solution cooked up for this Sunday.

He was given the task of planning a Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday service that involved a reading of Matthew 26-27:25 rather than a sermon. So he took all the episodes of the Jerusalem sequence and used them to give resonance to our usual liturgical structure. The greeting, for example, briefly explains the triumphal entry to give context to our little palm procession. The confession evokes the cleansing of the temple, and the assurance comes through Jesus’ remarks about wishing to gather Jerusalem as a hen gathers her chicks. The anointing at Bethany sets up the offering, and of course an evocation of the Lord’s Supper leads us into the communion sequence.

What I like about this is the way it reorganizes all the dramatic moments of the passion sequence, subsuming them into the liturgical drama of our usual Lord’s Day service of Word and Sacrament. This is a Sunday service, after all, which in the Reformed tradition, even in Lent, is a Resurrection celebration, an eighth day, a retelling of the covenant story from creation to the consummation. Later in the week, we will enter into particular moments along the Holy Week dramatic arc. But on Sunday, we have a larger perspective. We do not have to be stuck in the role of the clueless crowd for a whole service; instead, we can stare down the week to come as the redeemed people of God.

So I like Greg’s solution in theory. We’ll see how it turns out in practice this Sunday. If it doesn’t work, I’ll propose that next year we’ll have to try a live donkey.    

I’m a collector of quotations. Cliche for an English major, I know. But there’s one in particular that’s stuck with me since early high school.

Emerson says, “Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.”

There are so many ways I could organize and discuss the idea of beauty. The word is used in so many contexts and with varying levels of depth and complexity. An adroit way for me to wrap my mind around the subject, though, is to think about visible and invisible beauty.

Visible beauty is what probably comes to mind first. We see beautiful people, beautiful art, beautiful nature. There’s the elegant way a thin, tall tree clears its throat quietly to interrupt a panorama. Or the way that in winter, everything takes on a sharp outline against the carpet of snow, the reverse of a flashlight pinprick in the dark. We see beauty when someone waits far too long to hold the door for us. Or when we let our roommates eat that last piece of coffee cake or when we buy a blue shirt because it’s the same color blue as the sky in that painting we saw in a textbook.

Invisible beauty is beauty of the spirit, perhaps even the fruit of the spirit. It’s the love we have for each other and the joy we take in the little things and the peace we hold on to in busy times. It’s patience when we’re frustrated, kindness when it won’t be reciprocated, and belief in the goodness of people. Faithfulness to our values and loved ones, gentleness in manners, and self-control when we’re anxious — these are all manifestations of beauty. You can’t take a picture of invisible beauty, but when friends picture you, these things will come to mind.

I think Emerson, while a gifted naturalist with a keen eye for visible beauty, is primarily speaking of invisible beauty when he says that we are always on the hunt for striking things in life. He knows that it’s human nature to search for people who bring us peace, who are faithful, who love us, and who demonstrate patience and self-control.

But, he says, we can’t find that unless we’re first willing to acknowledge it within ourselves. “We must carry it with us.” This is the part I love best. If I don’t know what it looks and feels like to have patience or joy, I’ll be hard pressed to find those things around me. It’s like trying to read before you know the alphabet.

I’ve used this quote for years to inspire me to look inward when I get discouraged. It reminds me to take notice of little movements inside myself, to be mindful of my mood and attitude.

Recently, though, I’ve been thinking beyond the quote. There is a responsibility, it seems to me, to share beauty once I’ve found it. If I only live according to Emerson’s mantra, I’m living a quintessentially selfish life. To only gather up all of the beauty I can find, both in myself and then in the world around me, is to live in a way that is not beautiful to begin with. Once I discover something delightful, it’s up to me to find a way to share it.

How do we share beauty? Just live that fruit of the beautiful spirit. Display love, joy and peace. Share patience, kindness and goodness. Have faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Other people, whether you’re aware of it or not, will notice. They’ll learn about beauty through you. You never know who’s watching.

It’s the middle of a middle month of winter, a fact that seems to make the calendar sag with the weight of it. And this year, it’s also Lent. We’re two weeks in, just far enough for a sigh and a twinge of mild discomfort from whatever little deprivations we have devised for ourselves. At church we can expect to hear about repentance, the wilderness, conflict with the Pharisees, sin, and failure for several more weeks. 

At my college, it’s also the fourth week of the semester. The anxious awkwardness of the first days has worn off, thankfully, but by now we’ve got the yoke firmly in place for the long pull ahead. Naturally, some viral plague is going around, so students and professors are struggling along, sick enough to feel lousy but not so sick that they can legitimately put off the work. Spring break is weeks away.

In my household this week, atmospheric conditions degraded into a perfect storm of blah. My husband is up to his ears in work. My college-age daughter had four tests. I soldiered through the week as best I could with a sore throat and sinus pain. My high school senior neglected his homework in order to juggle two different competitions, a college audition, a youth symphony performance, a college interview, a rehearsal, a show—stress beyond the breaking point can collapse into blah. At least my eighth grader and the dog remained fairly cheerful. Although one of them did complain bitterly about having to get a haircut. And it wasn’t the dog.

And then there are taxes. We still have to finish the taxes.

Maybe God invented February to challenge our spiritual resilience. If every season of the year were sunshine and Easter lilies, would we ever build the strength we need for the real sorrows and troubles of life? Maybe February is a kind of practice wilderness, where we face the easier temptations of self-pity, apathy, sloth, disengagement, and discouragement in order to limber us up for the bigger deadlies, at whatever season they might appear. After all, before the Lord became desperately hungry and thirsty in the desert, he was probably dreadfully bored.

Maybe. But I worry about the people for whom the February blahs feel like another pile of heavy slush on their already sagging spirits. People fighting serious illness or the diminishment of aging or their own inner demons—do they really need this dead spot in the year to make it all worse? I wish these people could leap right over, past the weather tantrums and potholes of March to the high fluffy clouds and soft breezes of April, to the jaunty tulips and the smell of awakening soil.     

For those of us remaining here in the blah of February, I wonder if this is a good time to lower our thrill threshold and cherish again the smallest mercies and delights. Yesterday, my son and I each crawled happily back into our beds at 7 a.m., granted a surprise bonus Sabbath by a school cancellation. Later, settling down with my morning tea at my desk by the window, I spotted a pair of crazy cardinals cavorting in the middle of a snow squall. They knew the wind would quiet in a half hour, so they were just showing off. Later still, I managed to wrangle a finicky old snow blower, successfully removing snow from the driveway while simultaneously showering myself like a flocked Christmas tree. And even my son had to agree that his haircut turned out great.

Thanks to Jes for her thoughtful post earlier this week on cloudy places in Luke’s Transfiguration story. To further prepare for Sunday, here’s a meditation I wrote two years ago when the lectionary was Matthew 17.    

The Transfiguration story speaks to that part of us that longs for the mountain-top experience—for the epiphanic moment when, even for an instant, we perceive through the veil of clay to the numinous glory beyond. If only we could find a thin place, maybe we could eradicate those quiet suspicions that faith amounts merely to wishful religious thinking. If only God, the overshadowing mystery, would appear in blazing light, maybe our doubts would scatter forever.   

Why do Peter, James, and John get this special treatment? Why does Jesus invite them, and only them, on this little field trip? Those of us who do not feel especially spiritual might wonder whether these three are being rewarded for something. Perhaps for Peter’s confession in the last chapter: “You are the Christ”? That was the tryout, and now Jesus is choosing his varsity team? This story might trigger a little jealousy in us, not only of these three, but of all the giants of faith who seem specially marked for extraordinary revelation—the great mystics of history or people in our own lives for whom the presence of God seems readily accessible. We might pray—a little frustrated—in the words of the hymn, “I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasy…” Look, Lord, I don’t ask to be Julian of Norwich, but could you at least “take the dimness of my soul away”?

The passage does not tell us why only the three disciples were given this gift. I don’t think we can know why some people have mountain-top experiences and others don’t. Or why we have one great encounter with God—perhaps around a campfire or at a concert or with dear friends in prayer—and then for a long time feel strangely numb, and wonder whether something has gone wrong. Why these experiences come and when they come is a mystery. 

We do notice that the disciples had been following Jesus for a good while before this happened. They prepared for the mountain-top moment by tramping along behind Jesus in the ordinary moments. This is rather like Mary Magdalene, who, in the gospel of John, is privileged to be the first witness to the resurrection. Even in a time of unspeakable grief and confusion, she determined to do what she always did: attend to Jesus’ ordinary needs. She came to the tomb to care for his body; and in the midst of her usual habits, she received a world-shattering revelation.

So perhaps the best response to our longing for epiphany is simply to cultivate habits during ordinary times that keep us in Jesus’ presence. Prayer, worship, Bible study—the usual routine. We have to stick to the usual routine even when we don’t feel particularly holy or special or joyful or close to God, because this is the tramping around behind Jesus that we need to keep on doing if we ever hope to catch a glimpse of him in his transfigured glory.

As for the purpose of this experience for the disciples, I have more questions than answers. Was this some kind of dream or hallucination, or maybe a trick of the light? What is Jesus chatting with Moses and Elijah about? What did the three guys think was going on? Why on earth does Peter propose building shelters? 

Matthew is actually rather kind to Peter about the shelters. Luke and Mark both feel the need to apologize for the idea. In the NIV, Mark says Peter “did not know what he was saying because he was frightened.” Luke just says Peter did not know what he was saying. The meaning of the term for shelters or booths is a little uncertain, but it seems to refer to a wilderness tabernacle, Old Testament style. At any rate, nothing comes of the idea. It seems we are not wandering Israelites anymore, and the mountain is not a place to set up camp.

Instead, the disciples hear a voice. Matthew’s gospel is structured with three signposts of extraordinary revelation, and this is the second one. The first is Jesus’ baptism, and the third is the resurrection. The voice we hear in this passage is the same voice that spoke at Jesus’ baptism. In fact, it’s precisely the same line from Matthew 3—“This is my Son whom I love. With him I am well-pleased.” Except now there’s a new part. This time the voice adds: “Listen! Listen to him!”

Evidently, the disciples find this a terrifying command—it blasts them right to the ground. Well, fair enough. The things Jesus has been saying have been difficult all along: blessed are those who mourn, turn the other cheek, pray for your enemies, sell all you have. And lately he’s been talking about suffering and crosses. So yes, we understand that listening to Jesus requires courage. He tends to tell us painful truths, even when we don’t want to hear them. He tends to assign challenging tasks. Yet listen is what the divine voice tells us to do. That’s what these thin places are for—to reveal to us who Jesus is so that we take his words to heart. Difficult as it is, we need to live the question every day: what is Jesus saying?

Happily, Jesus’ next word to the three is all kindness. “Get up, don’t be afraid.” The Greek actually means “be raised.” This suggests that the epiphanic moment is not meant to last forever. Remember Mary at the tomb again. She wants to hold on to her resurrected Lord, she wants to dwell in the glorious now. But Jesus says, “Don’t hold on to me.” Why? Because the purpose of the moment is to prepare her for what comes next, for the task ahead: “Go tell the disciples what you have seen,” Jesus says. 

On the mountain, too, the vision of glory fades, and the little group tramps back down to reality. The epiphany was an affirmation, an assurance, but even more, it was a motivation for the work ahead. And in this case, the work will be especially difficult.

The way Matthew tells the story, Jesus asks the three at this point not to tell others “until the Son of Man is raised from the dead”—a revealing detail. Jesus knows that if the disciples were to tell about their experience at this point, they would not be telling the whole story. The task assigned to them now is to walk with Jesus into the darkness. They will only understand their experience in retrospect. They won’t understand what they’ve seen on this mountain until they have walked the whole way with Jesus to that other mountain, Calvary, and beyond.

True, the disciples don’t do that task very well either. The next time Matthew shows us these three disciples together is in Gethsemane. And what are they doing during Jesus’ most desperate hour? Sleeping. Come to think of it, maybe our heroes were asked to the mountain not as a special privilege but because they needed an extra workout—not so much the varsity team but the ones who need to run a few extra laps after practice.

After all, at every point of the way—before, during, and after this glorious moment—Peter, James, and John fail to model heroic perfection. This is the graciousness of the Gospel, since in their failure they are wonderful models for us of God’s grace revealed. We, too, may do our best to cultivate the habits that open us to God’s glory. We may do our best to listen. We may do our best to accept the tasks Jesus asks of us. Hard as we try, though, we will probably not do any of these things very well very often.

Nevertheless, we have this promise: through our baptisms, we have already walked with Jesus into the darkness, we have already been raised with him. This week we pass once again through Ash Wednesday’s gate onto the path, the one that leads to darkness. We may stumble, and we may only understand it all in retrospect, if then. But by grace, we please God most in our companionship, our very unity, with this one, this Jesus, with whom our God is well pleased.