Retro Satana

Retro Satana. Get behind me, Satan.

I was seven, maybe eight when I was taught how to rebuke Satan.

Perhaps my teacher meant that I should tell spiritual attackers to get behind me in the name of Christ. But at that age I heard and believed that any attacker should be addressed such. I believed with the passion of a child who wanted to understand the world.

Thankfully no one tried to do me physical harm while I still believed that rebuking Satan was a better defense than running.

For many years I understood the passage in Mark 8 where Jesus says to Peter, "Get behind me, satan," in that context. A rule to follow. An example of how to handle danger. A Jesus-approved response.

When I was a little older I considered the passage anew. By then I had relationships I valued with those in authority over me. I was horrified for Peter. I couldn't understand why his concern for his beloved teacher was so violently rejected.

And Jesus's response sounded like a violent rejection. "Get behind me," read an awful lot like "get out of my way" or  even "get out of my sight." I could just see Jesus's face turn hard with disgust as he spoke. Then there was that cutting epithet of "Satan."

But this passage isn't what I thought at eight or even at eighteen.

Peter kneeling before Jesus

You see Peter had just announced his belief in Jesus as the Messiah. This side of the cross it's easy to think Peter is retracting here. As if at his first belief he understood all that was coming, but changes his mind when he actually hears it. The tradition of my youth even suggested that Peter was briefly possessed.

Peter is speaking out of concern or his beloved teacher. Yet this isn't concern like "have a snack, Jesus." No, Jesus has just announced the way of his work is through suffering death. Peter says, "Don't talk like that." Jesus says, "Get behind me, satan."

I don't know for certain what Jesus was getting at with the "satan" epithet, but I do know it wasn't the idea of Satan I grew up with.

How do I know?

Well, Jesus was a Jew. Obvious, I know but so easy to forget when we are trying to understand his words and parables. A Jew talking to Jews. They wouldn't have had a pointy-tailed being in mind.

The oldest reference to "satan" in the Hebrew scriptures is in the book of Job and is actually "the accuser."  The prosecutor. A title, not a name. A role in the court of the Almighty. Not a being vying for power with God. 

So Jesus isn't call Peter an evil being, but what about that "get behind me business"?

What has Peter said that's worthy of this response?

Mosaic of:  (L)  the divine visitors promising a child to Abraham & Sarah (R) Abraham & Issac

One of the great benefits of the lectionary is that passages like this aren't read alone. Gospel passages are interpreted alongside Jewish history. This passage is paired with Genesis 17 where Abraham is promised offspring from his wife Sarah. They laugh. They fall on their faces laughing at what God has said. Then they try to make God's promise true.

You see Abraham is nearly one hundred "as good as dead," and Sarah has been barren her whole life and is now post-menopause. They cannot imagine how the promised end (offspring like the stars) can come through the way described--through people like them. People lacking in everything they thought required.

So they try other means.

Of course we know what happens after they've tried other means. After they've forced Haggar, a slave woman, to have a child by Abraham. After she bears a son and relationships get really messy, then the unimaginable happens. Sarah has a son by Abraham.

That's what I think is going on with Peter here. He can't imagine the messiah coming to glory by way of suffering death. "Surely not," he says. This is unimaginable. We will find another way. This can't really mean your death, Jesus.

That's when Jesus says his famous line.

I'm told that "get behind me" here is the same Greek phrase used when Jesus first calls Peter. It makes sense -- to follow is to get behind. "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men" might read "get behind me and I will make you fishers of men."

This deeply changed my understanding of the passage.

Jesus is calling Peter to follow him again -- just as he did by the Sea of Galilee. Peter has been following Jesus physically. He's tried to follow Jesus mentally too. Peter even came to believe in Jesus as the messiah. But then he had his own understanding of what being messiah would mean.

He can't imagine how the promised end can come from death.

So Jesus calls him back. Calls him from the role of accuser or tempter back to the turning of his heart toward God. Calls him back to all he has learned about the ways God works.

Get behind me, satan.

Follow me, accuser.

Follow me and see what unimaginable will come to pass.

Vapor, Vapor says the Teacher

I grew up Fundamentalist.

Growing up Fundamentalist meant growing up reading a lot of the Bible. Sad? Read the Bible. Happy? Read the Bible. Confused about love or life or the Bible? Read the Bible.

As a teenager and young adult I read at least one Psalm or Proverb everyday. I liked these books. They fit how I understood the Bible.  I didn't read a lot of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes didn't fit. After all, an instruction manual shouldn't say one thing was good and then say it was "Vapor of vapor." (Ecc. 1:2)

This meant that when I sat down to read Ecclesiastes this week I had read the book fewer than five times.

Honestly, I was afraid.

What if even now Ecclesiastes came up as a giant question mark to me? What would I do if I read a book of scripture and couldn't conjure even a weak purpose behind it? 

Last week I was pondering what to make of a remembrance of decay. This week Ecclesiastes called me to rejoice in the remembrance of death. Yes, I said rejoice in the remembrance of death.

Death in Ecclesiastes is especially hard. It doesn't have the familiar hand holds I've long used for death. No resurrection. No life after death. No promise that the time of death is in God's plan for a greater good. According to the teacher, there is no action, no memory, not even praise of God after death.

Not disheartening enough yet? The teacher goes on to say that not even memory will remain of those who die. No memory of the wicked. No memory of the righteous. (e.g. Ecclesiastes 1:11)

That hurts.

But when I open up to what is being said something changes. When I read Ecclesiastes this week I wasn't depressed. No, I read the remembrance of death and was encouraged.

Hang on with me while I try to explain.

You see, I'm a perfectionist. No, really. I want to be able to know what it is you want from me and fulfill that wish--all before you even voice it and making it look effortless. I'll leave it to your imagination then how much more I've acted that way towards God.

So Ecclesiastes?

Perfectionism has some good to it, but it also causes pressure. Anything short of the ideal becomes utter failure. There is an awful pressure to choose, to say, to do the perfectly apt thing the first time. It is crippling.

For years I have not written long-form for fear of the first draft. Why fear? Because the first draft would not be the final draft. I could not bear to write something imperfect and so I chose to hide instead of live.

It's in that moment that the Teacher encourages me.

It is in this moment that hearing that both the wise and foolish alike die frees me from fear of failure. Either way I will die. But this voice says, "Yes, you will die so live well. Enjoy what comes from the hand of God and know that it will not always be what you deserve."

Once that would have sounded fatalist to me. Once that would have seemed like selling God short. But not this reading. Not this Lent.

According to the Teacher, Ecclesiastes is a search for wisdom and understanding. The book has different voices, poetry, and proverbs--confusing proverbs.

In all those voices, in those confusing proverbs the Teacher reminds us that we are creatures of God. Like the animals we will return to dust, like them we were made. Like them we should enjoy the gifts that God sends--rain and light, harvest and sleep, work and knowledge, beauty and love.

Taking wisdom from the simplicity of animals after whole books like Proverbs seems odd. Yet it is not so great a stretch when we remember Psalm 148. That every created thing from moon and stars to insects praises the Lord in being what it was made to be.

So often we are not like the animals. In our desire for perfection or in our fatalism we forget to live. Instead of enjoying the good work and the good food, we try to "feed on the wind." (Ecc. 2:11)
 
I cannot help but hear this as freedom. Freedom to love God and do good.  Not out of fear of punishment or hope of reward, but for love of God. Freedom to enjoy the gifts of God and help those in need. Not in despair or striving against God's order, but because we were made to do so.


Why waste this "one wild and precious life" in crippling fear of messing up or reckless abandon into evil when you can live with an open heart?

Thoughts on Dust

"Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."

That's what the priest says on Ash Wednesday as he or she takes the ashes from the previous year's palms used on Palm Sunday, mixes them with oil and traces a cross on your forehead.

What exactly is one supposed to make of a remembrance of decay? It's a grim remembrance and I at least remember it all day when I find soot on my fingers and sleeves. As much as I hate to admit it, my first thoughts on the phrase are fearful. Once I believed that the God of the Bible was one who would control people by fear. Fear of punishment, fear of hell, fear of being ungrateful, fear of disappointing.

But I don't believe that now. So what am I to make of this remembrance now?

I don't know. As Carrie Newcomer sings, "I don't know what happens when people die." And that's what this dust to dust thing is about---death, right? I don't like not knowing. Surely there is a solid answer and I ought to know it.

Yes, there are many who would offer me solid answers with so much certainty that my unknowing would seem intentional. And I suppose it is. You see I tried certain answers. I liked certain answers. I liked the power they gave me to avoid the fear of uncertainty, the power to dismiss mystery. But the God of the Bible is a God of mystery. A God who says "I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things" (Isaiah 45:7) is a God who challenges my easy, comfortable answers.

This is not where I planned to be in my twenties. No, I was trained to be a woman of the church. A woman of a specific church. I expected to be teaching by this age in a school and in a church. These days it seems that what I know is not so readily taught.

These days I have to admit that I am dead. The I who believed uncomplicated truths, the I who believed she had found the Truth before living a quarter of a century. She is dead. Sometimes I still mourn for her and grieve for the life she would have lived.

But someone new is being born. She too is me. As Thumbelina who grew from a tiny barley corn, she grows from the seeds of truth planted deep in the dust within. The dust of the dead I.

Lent is about examining the things that keep us from drawing near to God. Lent is about admitting death, decay, sin, and error. Lent is about waiting in the desert, the wilderness, the sacred dark to see what it is of that dead thing we will find resurrected with Christ.

How easy it is for me to think of the Christian life as static or changing only in the ways I want. But we live in cycles of death and new life. God makes us from the dust of the earth and then we find our dreams, our ideals, our understanding, our selves dim and return to the dust. Not to the dust of futility, but the dust of dependence. For as dust we are moulded by the Creator again. As dust to attempt to reform myself is to remain dead. But it is to remain dead to God who would make me again in Imago Dei.

"Almighty and ever living God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create in us new and contrite hearts..." --Book of Common Prayer; collect for Ash Wednesday

"Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."

Remember and do not fear, for the same God who made you once will make you again and again with a new and contrite heart.

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In the past I've tried keeping Lent by fasting and abstaining, but those are only one form of discipline. This year I'll be adding things back into my life--devotions and remembrances in keeping a holy Lent.

Below is a phone* wallpaper I made to help myself in this remembrance. It is here for you to use if you too would find a reminder helpful in keeping a Holy Lent.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

*The image is designed to fit perfectly on an Iphone 5 lock screen, but will work on other devices.