Franklin's kite-lightning experiment changed things as we have seen over the last two posts. What I would like to offer here are some possible implications for those people who are followers of Jesus or a church leader. Perhaps by looking at this past event we might discover some lessons for our current cultural moment.
What does this make possible? That is a question that often goes unasked and thus unexplored. Yet we have heard stories that illustrate the asking of this question. We have heard stories about people who have overcome all kinds of physical and mental challenges. Often because they explored what was possible. If their legs did not work, they explored the use of their arms. If their eyes did not work, they examined the use of their hands and ears. When people have experienced failures in life many found new life in exploring what opportunities that failure created. Perhaps a chance to start over. Maybe it gave them a renewed sense of purpose. It alerted them to a method that did not work yet pointed to a new method that worked terrifically.
When it was discovered that lightning had a scientific explanation that did not mean that it explained away God. It offered an opportunity to learn and explore more deeply who God is and how God interacts with this world. Instead, many Christians held their ground around their comfort zone understanding of God. It was a missed opportunity.
"There are so many things you can learn about, but you'll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut," writes Dr. Seuss in the book I Can Read With My Eyes Shut. One of the implications that this story might teach us is to reclaim the mysteriousness of life with God. Living in our disenchanted world often (not always) deduces faith, God and life down to some “rational” or scientific understanding. Rather than revel in mystery we reduce Christianity, God or faith to a list of dos and don’ts. The Bible, a source of wisdom and narratives to savor, becomes a pastel self-help book filled with heartfelt good advice, absolutely without teeth.
Since the time of Franklin many church leaders have been guilty of grinding scripture to a pulp beneath their scrutiny. Many Bible studies and Sunday messages analyze each word of the Bible to ensure our theological understanding is without blemish. We crave certainty. As a result, faith feels only as certain as our certainty and in doing so we limit our understanding of God and ourselves. What many folks missed in Franklin’s time is the same thing being missed by many currently. An opportunity. Opportunities every day in the middle of all the mundane to allow for a little mystery. A moment to wonder about God and faith and how those things interact.
William Stringfellow, in his book A Private and Public Faith, writes, “In other words, the most notorious, plain, and victorious truth of God is that God participates in our history - even yours and mine. Our history - all our anxieties - have become the scene of His presence and the matter of his care. We are safe. We are free. Wherever we turn we shall discover that God is already there. Therefore, wherever it be, fear not, be thankful, rejoice, and boast of God.”
Many church leaders across America right now are worried about the lack of young people in church, a lack of budget funds and a lack of the church's influence in society. All of these concerns miss asking the question: what does this make possible? Just like in Franklin’s time the opportunity to explore ways to express God’s concern for his world and the people in that world is still available. Instead, many church leaders remain in their comfort zone thinking focused on culture wars and attendance figures and missing opportunities.
Perhaps the greatest loss for followers of Jesus, since the time of Franklin, is the opportunity to simply imagine and wonder about ways to manifest God’s loving presence. We just can’t imagine that the so-called “real spiritual stuff” is happening all around us all the time. We figure that the “real spiritual stuff” is happening somewhere else to other people instead of all around us. It seems that so often in my life and maybe in your life that we just lack the imagination to consider all the “spiritual stuff” that is happening right in our daily lives.
“People who’ve had any genuine spiritual experience always know that they don’t know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind.” ― Richard Rohr
Another implication for our time is to remember where history is headed. Perhaps you have heard the phrase “history is just one &@$ thing after another.” It sure seems that way. Especially with 24-hour news that fills our lives with a constant stream of fear about one impending disaster after another. Yet if you are a follower of Jesus then history is not “just one thing after another.” History is headed somewhere. For thousands of years Christians have confessed that the resurrection of Jesus started something. The resurrection of Jesus wasn’t the end of God’s story but a sign. A sign that God had started a project of merging heaven and earth.
Followers of Jesus believe that history is headed for a moment in which God will put the world right. It is hard to see the world being put right with all the horrible things happening around us. There is much that has been written about our fractured world. Yet light often seems to shine through the fractures. It is hard to see any light when the focus is often placed on threatening features in our world. Like in Franklin’s time, some people only see threats. For some Christians they only see threats to Christianity.
There have been a host of things over the centuries that have been considered threats to Christianity. Rome, communism, socialism, science, technology, CRT and a host of other potential threats. Across history there are many hammers that have broken against the anvil that is Christianity. From Nero to Communism . . . Christianity has survived. In Franklin’s time it was the lightning rod. Today some Christians are finding themselves surrounded by all kinds of threats. They look around and feel like they are living in an alternate universe. They feel unnerved about living in a country that seemed to have shared their values to not sharing their values at all. It concerns them.
In all of this worry about supposed threats to Christianity it becomes easy to get distracted. It makes it difficult to participate in God’s mission of bringing heaven to earth in the here and now. It becomes more interesting to try and ward off all the threats. Yet history is headed somewhere. And followers of Jesus get to participate in God’s mission.
“The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it…What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it…). They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom.” ― N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
The saying goes “you find what you are looking for” holds true. If you are looking for how terrible people are towards one another, you will find it. If you are looking for all the ways that the world is falling apart, you will find it. If you are looking for threats to Christianity, you will find them by the truck load. From this view the world and world history are one mistake away from a total meltdown. Yet that misses out on God’s good creation and all the good that is around us all the time. My hope is that my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ might look around in their daily lives and wonder . . . How do we participate in God’s Kingdom in and through our mundane daily activities?
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