Clerk: Next.
Christian: Hi. Uh...I don't know if I'm in the right place. You see...
Clerk: Do you have your paperwork?
Christian: Uh...yes! This right here. I'm not sure if I completely filled it out right. I'm not even sure what a CI-83 form is...
Clerk: Compassion Index Form 83.
Christian: What exactly is this place?
Clerk: We're here to make sure you don't help the wrong people in the wrong way.
I wonder if he was tired or angry when Jesus spoke of casting fire upon the earth. He sounds fed up. It's one of those moments when he makes us uncomfortable. When he reminds us that he is not just the smiling, laughing guy sitting with the kids and holding a fluffy lamb. Even that first statement shows that I'm trying to make some sort of excuse for him. "Surely something was bothering Jesus." We're quick to make the teacher more palatable.
The heat of the words cannot be ignored. Not here where there is a church on every corner. If you stacked them up they would touch the sky. But the words from God scorch the earth. Sacrifices and offerings can be traded for hymns, praise songs, and tithes.
And I could write a song
A hundred miles long
Well, that's where I belong
And you belong with me
-"Swallowed in the Sea" by Coldplay
Unless it's a parody, I probably could not write a song a hundred miles long. But if I wrote down everything that Elizabeth Anne Cox means to me, it would run to Nashville and back a thousand times.
Have you ever been stuck? I don't mean like just stuck in traffic. I mean spiritually, emotionally, existentially frozen in place (which, now that I think about it, there are actually times that feeling has coincided with being stuck in traffic). It is The Worst. In fact, it completely rejiggers your conception of what The Worst is. The problem is not so much in the situation. On paper this listlessness is not as bad as having your arm cut off in a freak chainsaw accident. Yet that internal recognition that something is off and things won't click into place no matter how hard you try; that feeling is pretty awful.
God, we today are not Hosea's Israel
We were not in Egypt
We do not have Baals
But we feel the sting in the prophet's words
You call and we wander
I still remember the pang of guilt when I bought my first "secular" album. I didn't grow up in a fundamentalist household, but I held myself to a high standard. In retrospect, it's funny. The Joshua Tree has more spiritual content than many of the Christian albums with which I grew up. But as I purchased that CD from my local Best Buy, I felt like I had crossed the Rubicon. I did not realize that I would find God on the other side.
Is it possible to love a bus stop bench? At the very least, I feel great affection towards one in particular. I wrote about this bench a couple of of years back. It's located near Belmont University in Nashville. I see it whenever I go for a run while visiting town. The thing I love is the graffiti on the back of the bench. Several years ago, someone sprayed the jubilant message, "Hello New World!" Seeing that always made me smile. It gave me a thread of hope. Is it possible to love a bus stop bench? If so, I have loved that bench.
Alright, so who here knows what prostitution is? Anybody? What about sex? Maybe we should start there. Yes, it's how babies are made. Okay so a prostitute is a person who gets paid to have sex. What? No, not so she can have babies. Well, the prostitute in our story does have babies, but we haven't gotten there yet. But prostitutes theoretically don't make good husbands and wives because if they're still active in their job then they are having sex with other people and they should really only be having sex with you. You with me? No? It's okay.
29 seconds. That's about all we could take of He Who Shall Not Be Named's acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination. Desiring to be informed, I did read the text of the address. It was something. To me, the King of Ludicrous Line Mountain was the candidate's brazen claim, "I alone can fix it."
