The Lost and Foundness of Alzheimers

One of awful things about Alzheimer’s disease is that you grieve the loss of a loved one while that loved one is still alive. It’s like you’ve lost someone and found someone else.

It doesn’t bother me that my mother has no idea who I am nearly as much as it bothers me that when we were at lunch when I visited her in California last week she picked up a cucumber slice from her salad, nibbled off its green edge and then hid what remained under a piece of lettuce.  Eighty years of life reduced to hiding food made my heart break.

It doesn’t bother me that my mother doesn’t remember her three sons, our wives or her grandchildren nearly as much as it did when I watched her play with a remote control dog someone had given her.   She was lost, the way a child gets lost with a new toy. I felt the weight of realizing that what made her happiest made me saddest.

I struggle with the theology of this. How much has God been involved with what’s happened? I’ve heard someone say “God is useless in moments like this,” and what that startling statement means is that God hasn’t stopped any of this from happening.  I struggle to reconcile both my belief in a loving God and my mother’s life-long Christian faith with who she is today.   

And yet, I realize for the most part she’s happy. I know other Alzheimer’s families have it far worse than we do, and maybe that’s still to come for us, but right now my mother isn’t agitated or upset.  How can losing your memory bother you if you can’t remember that you’ve lost it?

Alzheimer’s has made her less inhibited and more affectionate.  My mother was telling me what a kind and gentle man her father was (she still remembers her parents) and then she picked his picture up and said, “I love you so much I’m going to kiss you on your bald head,” which was followed by a big smooch. Compliments flow and she hugs and touches often.  I said, “I love you, mother” and she shot back, “I love you, too, brother,” which made us both laugh.  Was all that extravagant affection always there, hidden under other layers of her personality that are gone now?  Or is she just someone new?

A moment of inspiration came to me and I said, “Mom, do you know this?” and I started to sing, “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me . . .” A broad smile came over her face and she looked into my eyes and sang “I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” 

We kept staring at each other, smiling, and I was thinking “I don’t remember staring into my mother’s eyes and smiling since I was a very young child” when my step-father’s voice started up, “’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. . .” and we joined him for that verse.  I glanced over at my brother on the other side of the room, and he was sitting silently with his eyes closed. When we finished the second verse my brother sang, “Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come . . .” and the three of us joined him for that verse.  Then, without pausing, all four of us sang, “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, then when we’ve first begun.”

I once was lost but now am found. She beamed when we finished singing.  The other three of us sat in silence, stuck in the awfulness of the lost and foundness of it.

Something to Eat

Have you ever thought about how much food there is in the Bible?

I’ll admit I hadn’t thought about it much until last week, when I spent a couple of days with Doug Worgul at the Buechner Institute of Faith and Culture at King College in Bristol, Tennessee.  Doug Worgul has written a wonderful first novel called Thin Blue Smoke, a book about second chances, love and loss mingled among generous quantities of barbecue, Buechner, baseball and the blues. 

At the Buechner Institute, Worgul talked about food and the Bible, drawing on his expertise as marketing director of Oklahoma Joe’s Bar-B-Que in Kansas City; a place Anthony Bourdain named one of the “Thirteen Places to Eat Before You Die.”  Among Worgul’s wealth of knowledge about barbecue is this: that the word itself has a Caribbean origin meaning “sacred fire pit.”

And there is something sacred about food.  Food is not God, but God is food. Providing food is how God shows his love to us and we show our love to each other.  He commented on the significance of the resurrected Jesus asking for something to eat.  “Theologians point to this passage as proof of Jesus' bodily resurrection, as opposed to a merely spiritual or, lesser yet, a symbolic resurrection. I point to it as proof that Jesus was hungry. After all, he’d been to Hell and back, which can be an exhausting trip.”

Food is not just a metaphor.  It is how we stay alive. Jesus needed something to eat.  We all do.

Here’s a little more from his address:  “In the Episcopal tradition of which I am now a part, the center of the liturgy — the worship service — is not the bringing of the word, but rather the breaking of the bread.  After the scripture and the sermon have been delivered, and our sins confessed, we rise and move to the center and stand in line as one people, waiting to be fed. We move forward together toward the altar, slowly, patiently. Communion is not the bread and wine we will receive once we reach and kneel at the altar. The communion is the standing in line together. Together with people you love, and people you don’t particularly like, with people you don’t know, and people you know too well. All waiting to be fed. All waiting to eat.”

I’d argue that he’d have been better served by saying “Communion is not just the bread and wine . . . “ but give the guy a break.  He’s a barbecue man/novelist, not a trained theologian.  I get his point.  There is something to all of us seeking to be fed together. His message made me think of the recent major renovation of the chapel at the seminary where I work.  The new space is breathtakingly beautiful.  It also makes a much different theological statement than the original space -- the worship space I was accustomed to three decades ago when I was a seminarian.  In the old days, we sat in pews looking past the back of each other’s heads up to an elevated chancel where a pulpit stood in the center.  Today there are no pews, the seating is flexible, and most days it is arranged antiphonally, so we see the faces of the rest of the community as we worship.  There are four symbols that we are gathered around – the table, a cross, a pulpit and a font.  As you sit in worship, your eyes are also drawn upwards to a warm light source in the middle of the ceiling. The space now has both a horizontal and vertical dimension.

It feels more complete to me.  God feeds us in many ways.  Through each other.  Through the word. Through water. Through the cross. And at the table.  The chapel reflects a sacramental view of reality.

Doug Worgul was born and raised a Baptist.  In his early adulthood he worshiped in two different RCA congregations.  It makes sense to me now that as a nationally recognized authority on the history and cultural significance of American barbecue traditions he’s found a home in a church centered around not water or the word but having something to eat.   

And if you are craving something good to read, if you are craving a book that makes you laugh and sigh and nod your head in agreement, then take a big bite of Doug Worgul’s Thin Blue Smoke. 

A Married Messiah?

Why is it important that Jesus wasn’t married?

Allow a personal disclosure first.  I don’t think Jesus was married.  But in the past month or so since a textual fragment was discovered that suggests he was married, I’ve asked myself the question above.  I haven’t come up with a compelling answer.  Perhaps you can help me.

The primary argument I’ve heard against a married Jesus is that the Bible is mute on the subject.  But rabbinic scholars have argued just the opposite – saying that it was so common for rabbis to be married that an unmarried rabbi would have been mentioned while a married rabbi would have been taken for granted.  The fact the Gospels say nothing one way or the other leads some to speculate he was married. (See, for example, David Bivin’s New Light on the Difficult Sayings of Jesus: Insights from his Jewish Context, En-Gedi Resource Center, 2005.)

I don’t necessarily buy that argument, but I wonder what difference it would make if he was married?  What if some incontrovertible proof were found – I don’t know, maybe a photograph of the Last Supper that showed Jesus wearing a wedding ring?  Would that rock your world or just cause you to shrug your shoulders?  I guess another question is “How theologically important is it that Jesus was single?”

I wonder if there isn’t something else going on in the strong feelings some have on this subject.  I’ll borrow another way to frame my question from Dale Bruner’s masterful two volume commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Eerdman’s, 2004) when, in a discussion of the “mythologizing of Mary,” Bruner asks, “What does Mary lose if she relates intimately to Joseph?”  Here’s Bruner on Mary:

We are given the impression by some teaching that should Mary have later become a wife to Joseph physically she would have lost something spiritually.  I believe that this persuasion is dangerous doctrinally and morally and that it is allied to other errors in the field of sexual ethics – from priestly celibacy and resisting women’s ordination to scientific contraception and annulment.  Today, Catholic sexual teaching is in a shambles.  The rehabilitation of a fully married Mary will be a step toward reconstruction.  Matthew’s subsequent record of Jesus’ honoring but not requiring single life (19:10-12) will be another step toward the wholeness of NT sexual teaching. (vol. 1, page 49)

Can we ask the same question about Jesus?  What would Jesus lose spiritually if he were, in fact, married?

I wonder if the knee-jerk reactions to the idea come from a deep seated shame about human sexuality or a Docetic inability to let Jesus be fully human. Does a married Jesus somehow become weak because marriage suggests he had human desires and needs? 

I don’t find anything in the gospels that convinces me Jesus was married.  And the recently discovered (probably Gnostic) fragment doesn’t provide the sort of proof needed to change my mind.  But if such a proof were to come along, it would not cause me to radically alter my view of Jesus.  How about you?

How the NFL Helped me Love the Law and John Calvin

All is right with the world: the NFL has brought back their regular referees.  A week ago the hallowed halls of the institution I serve were aflame because of the injustice wreaked on the Green Bay Packers by the NFL’s replacement referees.  Now life has moved on. 

But what did we learn from it? 

I for one reflected on John Calvin and specifically Calvin’s third use of the law.  (Alas, I fear I may be the only one inspired to think about Calvin. I told the distinguished Calvin scholar Dr. I. John Hesselink that I was going to write about the NFL referee imbroglio and John Calvin and he looked at me like I’d suggested we fly to Mars for the weekend.)

 You remember the three uses of the law, don’t you?  Use number one is to convict us of our sinfulness and need for salvation.  Number two is as a deterrent to those who have no regard for rectitude and justice.  In other words, contemplating the punishment may prevent someone from sin.  Third is as a guide to righteous living for those in whom the Spirit already reigns.

 But for all three to work, you have to believe there is a judge.  You have to believe someone is watching. 

 Which is exactly what went wrong with the NFL.  The NFL turned into a cross between the Lord of the Flies and every single day of junior high when we had a substitute teacher.  The players believed no one was watching.  So rather than use the rule book as a guide to righteous living, players did anything and everything they could get away with.  Holding, chop blocking, head slapping, pushing, biting, tripping and every other imaginable means of giving someone the business were happening on every play.

 The old joke about football is that a foreign visitor who watched the players huddle and then slam into each other told his host, “This game combines the two worst elements of American society -- violence and committee meetings.”  Add lawlessness to that list.  This isn’t golf where players call fouls on themselves.  Football without the rules was unwatchable.  I longed for Dirty Harry, John Wayne, George Patton, Wyatt Earp, Rambo and Chuck Norris to arrive and clean things up. I know I’m not the only one who thought that – when the real referees returned they were given standing ovations!

 You may be surprised by a standing ovation for some middle-aged guys in zebra shirts, but I was more astonished by my own craving for law and order. Here’s a true confession: although you wouldn’t know to look at me because of my youthful visage and tremendous vigor, I turned 54 the other day. I am a Baby Boomer, raised on Vietnam and Watergate.  We Boomers are the generation that gave the world the song, “I fight authority, authority always wins.”  I have always disliked “the man.”  Even now, when I’ve come to realize I am “the man,” I still dislike him.  I haven’t been attracted to the military since I got over my GI Joe doll thing when I was eleven years old.  I shy away from the police.  When my kids were in elementary school I had to come to grips with the fact that I was afraid of the principal, even though she was 15 years younger than me. 

 I’ve been generationally predisposed to having a hard time with verses like Psalm 119:97, which says, “Oh how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.”  I never thought I loved God’s law.  I loved God’s grace, but not the law.  The law is for legalists and Pharisees and Fundamentalists. 

 And now, thanks to the NFL, I see clearly that the law is for me, too.  Calvin knew what he was talking about.

 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

 Amen to that. Welcome back, law and order. I'm happy to see you.

Dad was Born in Mexico

“Dad was born in Mexico.”

It’s been a few weeks, but that line, from Mitt Romney’s speech at last month’s Republican Convention, made me sit up and take notice like I do every morning after the third push of the snooze button.  Nothing is said by accident in a major candidate’s convention speech and I wondered why Mitt told us that curious fact about his father George.

Consider this: according to a Pew Research Center study, 50,000 Hispanic young people reach voting age in the United States every month.  That is a staggering statistic and the sleeping giant in American politics.  The majority is on its way to becoming the minority.

“Dad was born in Mexico.” 

I believe I’ve put my finger on why Mitt told us that, but you may also wonder why Dad was born in Mexico in the first place.  The answer is Mormonism, not Mexican heritage.  George Romney’s grandparents were polygamists who fled to Mexico to avoid prosecution in the United States.  I don’t think that should have any bearing on the current presidential election, but I find the existence of Mormon colonies in Mexico a fascinating and little-known piece of American religious and cultural history.  The whole episode raises very relevant questions about the boundaries of tolerance and religious freedom, offshoots of which play out every day in our world.

“Dad was born in Mexico.”

I’m old enough to remember when Dad ran for President in 1968.  The question of whether or not George Romney was constitutionally eligible to be President was never legally resolved.  (There is irony there given the suspicion about where Barack Obama was born.) George Romney’s campaign self-destructed after he said he had been “brainwashed” about the Vietnam War, causing him to famously quip, “My campaign was like a mini-skirt, short and revealing.”

Dad originally rose to prominence as leader of the upstart car company American Motors (who remembers the Gremlin, Pacer, or Rambler?  Can I get a shout out for the Javelin?).  He bet on small cars in a big car world. Later he became Governor of Michigan.  After his unsuccessful run for the presidency, he was appointed to Richard Nixon’s cabinet as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, a position he eventually quit after concluding Nixon didn’t care about housing or urban development.  Romney the father got in trouble for his candid truth-telling, and there is reason to believe Romney the son has learned great lessons from that. 

But let me tell you about me and George. When I was six years old or so I was staying with my grandparents in Lansing and my grandmother said we had to go pick up my grandfather (who was employed by the State of Michigan) at the airport.  We didn’t go to the commercial part of the airport but to the area where private planes landed, and we were allowed to walk right up to the side of the plane on the runway.  The door opened and the men inside invited me to climb in.  I wound up sitting on the lap of my grandfather’s boss, George Romney, and was so impressed by the episode I later told my parents I had met “Government Romney.”  I also grew up knowing I was somehow related to Government Romney.  On the other side of my family, my grandmother’s cousin married George Romney’s cousin, which, my grandmother once said, is how the Latter Day Saints got into our family.  Not that the rest of us were affected religiously, but my cousin is named after George Romney’s cousin’s wife.

All of this ran through my head within moments of Mitt saying, “Dad was born in Mexico,” and now, having revealed my close ties and familial relations to the Republican standard bearer, all I can say is that if Cousin Mitt takes the prize this November I’ll be waiting for a couple of friends and family tickets to an inaugural ball.  I know you think that sounds ridiculous, but the truth is that if somehow George had pulled off the miraculous in 1968 members of my family really would have been invited to an inaugural ball or two -- and the rest of us would have had a candid moderate Republican president opposed to the Vietnam War and in favor of urban development.  On top of that, we all would have been spared the agony of Watergate. What a difference an election makes.