What about American playwright Samuel Beckett?  In all his plays, Beckett constantly repeated a single theme:  there is no meaning.  It's a dark, cold, and impersonal world.

     Is this true?  Emotionally, it can certainly seem that way at times.  If there is no reason for this world to exist, if there is no reason why we are here, then however grand our life might be, it ultimately means very little.

     For Beckett, this didn't seem to matter.  In his "Happy Days," Beckett presents only two characters, Winnie and Willie.  Winnie is buried in dirt up to her waist; Willie crawls around on all fours.  As the play proceeds, Winnie talks, talks nearly constantly, to Willie.  She talks of everyday things and how blessed she feels to be alive:  she has Willie.  Willie rarely responds.

     By the end of the play, Winnie is buried in dirt up to her neck.  Willie is still only able to crawl.  Yet she continues to insist that these are happy days.  And we, the audience, are left to wonder why.

     But that's life:  living for something that never happens.

    Yet in a world absent of point, what else is there to do?

    Nothing:  when transcendence is gone, we are, too.

     As follow up to my post two days ago, I write about something which some might argue is even more discomfiting or controversial:  gender.  Why?  Isn't gender intrinsic to being a human being?  Isn't gender part and parcel of who we are?

    The reality is of course far more complex.  Nonetheless, I struggle to see how gender has become a dividing line of belief, religiously and politically, and how one's view of gender has become a litmus test for one's allegiance to "acceptable" values or "reasonable" ways of viewing certain religious documents.

    Do not we have more important things on which to focus?

    Sure, as a Christian, I believe in the truth and worth of the biblical revelation.  Indeed, I'm willing to stake my life on it.  But I'm loathe to make my understanding of it an absolute for everyone, and I wrestle, frequently, with using it to tell people they are not who they believe themselves to be.

    Yes, I recognize, once more, that the reality is far more complex.  Yet this is all the more reason to tread carefully and not turn issues of gender into political or spiritual footballs.

    Gender is much more profound than that.

     Those who follow international news are likely aware of the conflict currently roiling the nation of Sudan.  It's a debacle, really, a fight between two powerful generals to control the direction of the nation.  Some years in the making, and fueled in no small part by various other Western and Asian powers, this battle has brought immense pain to this impoverished nation.

    As in any war, the people who suffer the most are those who are not fighting:  the civilians.  Already burdened with the twin pillars of poor farm land and economic poverty, Sudan's civilians are caught in the crossfire of two egos, two military people who seem to see the world as a struggle between black and white and nothing more.

    Pray for Sudan.  Pray that its people will find relief from this fighting.  Pray that the generals will come to their senses and abandon this futile military posturing.  Life is more important than aggrandizing power.

    And liberty is not power but reason, point, and civility.

     Should teaching make people uncomfortable?  In some parts of the U.S. today, many people seem to think not.  A number of states have passed or are attempting to pass laws that prohibit public school teachers from teaching anything, particularly subjects having to do with ethnicity or gender, which might make anyone listening "uncomfortable" or which might cause anyone to experience "discomfort."

    Last month, as I was leading a student group on a tour of various cities in Central Europe, I had a conversation in Berlin with a retired university professor.  A child of the Cold War as well as a scholar of the Holocaust, he told me that when he hears people complain that some teaching makes students uncomfortable, "it sends shivers up and down my spine."  With good reason.  Most Americans have not lived through a dictatorship in which a powerful central government sets out to control everything that schools should teach and that, further, penalizes with severe prison sentences or death any teacher who dares violate the informational strictures stipulated by the state.  Most Americans do not know what it is like to have an impersonal entity regulate what they can think, do, and say.

    But this retired professor knows.  He's studied it, he's lived it.  If teaching only mandates or reinforces what people already believe or know, is it really teaching?

    If teaching doesn't make people uncomfortable, it's not doing what it's supposed to do:  enlighten the mind and deepen the heart.

    We grow through what makes us question who we are.

    A few days ago, Ramadan ended.  Its final night (Eid al-Fitr) remembers the night that, centuries ago, the prophet Mohammad is said to have received the first of the divine revelations which would eventually become the Qur'an.  It is a night in which God visited and manifested himself to his human creation in a way, as Muslims see it, he had not done so before.  It is a night of divine unfolding, a night in which the distant and unknowable God expressed himself in ways his human creation could understand.

     Ramadan reminds us that whether we believe it or not, God speaks.  God speaks through nature, God speaks through image, and God speaks through word.  Life is the speech of God.

     How much more remarkable do I therefore find the apostle John's understanding of Word, which he articulated several centuries before Mohammad walked upon the earth.  Not only does God communicate himself through the written word (which Jew, Muslim, and Christian alike confirm), but he communicates himself by showing us, directly and visibly in the person of Jesus, who he most deeply is.

    John showed us that although as Ramadan affirms, we do well to treasure the words of God, we come to know God most fully when we see him face to face.

    And everyone can know him.

      Today is Earth Day!  Established in 1970, Earth Day is a day on which we think anew about the wonder and fragility of the tiny globe on which we spin through this vast, vast cosmos. Earth Day is a call to attend to the ecological balance of the world.

    Many, however, deride Earth Day.  The reasons for their rejection are various:  religious, political, and economic.  And more.

     

    Perhaps Earth Day opponents should learn from the Greek mythological character Narcissus. So obsessed was Narcissus with his own image reflected in a stream, he bent down to look.  Enraptured, he continued to look, getting closer and closer until he put his head in the water and drowned.
    

    We are living in a world which we in no way made and in which we will in no way control fully.  We are only human.  If we think otherwise, the world will drown us, metaphorically and, perhaps actually, too, in the effects of our ecological follies.  We will lose everything God has given to us.
    

    As the psalmist writes, "The earth is the Lord's and all within it" (Psalm 24:1).  Let's use our gift responsibly.

      This year, due to the rhythms of the Jewish calendar, Passover and Easter (and Ramadan) occur only a few days apart from each other.  As you may know, Passover remembers and commemorates how many centuries past God liberated the Hebrews from a four hundred year captivity in Egypt, delivering them, eventually, into the promised land.  To remember, around the world, millions of Jewish families gathered for the seder meal, the meal whose various components point to the elements of captivity and liberation.  The structure of the seder has not changed since Moses instituted it over three millennia ago.  Passover is central to the Jewish tradition.

     When Moses laid out the instructions for Passover, he specified that it begin with the sacrifice of a lamb, a lamb whose blood would be spread on the doorposts of every Hebrew home in Egypt.  When God subsequently executed his final judgment on Egypt and its enslavement of the Hebrews, he "passed over" the homes on which a lamb's blood had been placed.
      

    Now, however, Passover and Ramadan have been eclipsed.  Though they remain critically important in any spiritual perspective, the weight of their point has been overwhelmed by an event few could foresee:  the Resurrection.

    New Testament scholar N. T. Wright characterizes the resurrection as "the life after life after death."  We all die.  And if, as Passover, Ramadan, and Easter remind us, there is existence after death, what remains to know is what this life looks like.

    And that's the point.  Death is far more than what we in this life suppose it to be.

    It's new life.

    If you have read any of the biblical narratives about the trial and death of Jesus, you are likely familiar with the account of the thief on the cross.  As Luke tells it, both of the two men crucified with Jesus were hurling insults at him.  After a time, however, one of them comes to see things differently.

    "This man," he tells the other thief, "has done nothing wrong.  He is suffering unjustly.  But we are not.  We deserve our punishment."  Then turning to Jesus, he says, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

    "Today," Jesus replies, "you shall be with me in Paradise."

    It's a glorious promise.  The thief's present pain, body as well as soul, will this day, this very day, be totally vanquished.  He can look forward to a profoundly marvelous future.

    Let's think about this thief's faith.  He knew about Jesus, he knew about Jesus' deeds.  He knew that Jesus had told his audiences that he was bringing a kingdom to earth.  It was not until the thief hung on the cross, however, and saw Jesus crucified that he came to realize, fully, the nature of this kingdom.  He saw that Jesus' promised kingdom is not one of material gain, but one of spirit and soul.

    And that, as we today remember Good Friday, is the point.  We remember the darkness, we ponder the pain.  Yet we also realize that in the abject powerlessness of the cross is the deeper message to our hearts.  We will not find ourselves through might and power but rather through humility and grace.

    We need more than ourselves to be whole.

    Today is Maundy Thursday.  It's a day to think about service.  Throughout his earthly life, Jesus told people that he had come as a servant.  He had not come to judge, he had not come to condemn; he had come to serve.  Jesus had come to serve his creation.  At the Last Supper (the event which Maundy Thursday commemorates), Jesus made clear that he was readying himself to give himself, to give his body, heart, and soul for the good of those whom he had made.  Even as the final hours of his life loomed, Jesus emphasized that he had come to serve.  His welfare was the last thing on his mind.

    Whether we believe in Jesus or not, we can learn from his example.  The world hardly needs more arrogant leaders.  The planet will do just fine without its rulers constantly striving to dominate one another.  When we, literally or metaphorically, wash one another's feet, as Jesus did at the Last Supper, we affirm the value of our fellow human beings.  We tell our fellow travelers that we regard them as more important than ourselves.  We state to the world that working to sustain everyone is greater than working to sustain oneself only.
    We let go of what we want for the good of others.
    

    Consider what you have, ponder what you have been given.  And sacrifice.  Give up your wonder, let go of your grace in order to create more of them for your neighbor. Make him/her more important than you.
    

    And see how you--and the world--changes.