Heavenly Father you gave your son that whoever believes in His name inherit eternal life. Help our disbelief in the midst of things that we cannot understand. Grant us your grace that we may trust in you when faith is the hardest act of all. Amen.
My wife and I, recently, went to the movie "Life of Pi." It was an excellent movie and equally excellent book that posed some good theological questions. Especially good for people living in a post modernist age.
The "Life of Pi" is told by Pi a man from India to an author. It tells the tale of Pi's life starting in India and stretching to the present day. As a young man Pi was born into a Hindu family and he was satisfied with that spirituality until he experienced a conversion to Catholicism at about 13. Then a little while later he, also, embraces Islam. Spiritually he sees no conflict in practicing these three religions as he finds something useful in each.
In time Pi's life is caught up in the broad swipes of catastrophic events which start with his father deciding to move the family from India because of an economic downturn that has made it impossible to continue running the zoo his family has run in a hotel garden. During the journey the rest of the family is lost at sea as the ship they are on sinks in a storm. In the telling of the tale Pi finds himself on a lone lifeboat stranded with an orangutang, a zebra, and Robert Parker, a Bengal Tiger. The struggle for survival that follows is an amazing journey of the miraculous and Pi's will to live and ingenuity. In the end after months of days at sea. Pi and Robert Parker are the only two survivors that reach the Mexican coast.
Continuing his story Pi is visited by two Japanese lawyers for the shipping company who are seeking to determine liability for the the sinking of the company's ship. It becomes clear that the tell ing of the story at sea with all of its astonishing twists and turns has been the telling to these two men. They are in complete disbelief and say it must have been different and cannot have happened that way. Pi then tells them another much more mundane version about the life without the animals and instead only his mother, an injured sailor and the cruel and evil cook from the ship with him. The cook had killed the sailor and Pi's mother in a tale that included cannibalism and the harshest of inhuman threats and behavior. This tale is equally unacceptable and even more horrid to the lawyers. Realizing that Pi does not have any answers to their issues of liability as to "why" the ship sank they prepare to leave but before they go one asks Pi which of the stories was true. Pi's response is "Which did you like better, which do you want to believe?"
President Obama attended the community memorial service for the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings on Sunday evening. Participating in the program were representatives from various communities of faith and religion ranging from Roman Catholic to Baha'i. The diversity of traditions was broad from Roman Catholic to Protestant, Episcopal to Baptist, Judaism to Islam, B'Hai and Unitarian, and philosophies from the most liberal to most conservative. All these came together as a single community religious and secular with local, state and federal governments, including President Obama. All from the highest to the lowest intentionally seated on the floor of the auditorium to emphasize the equality of all in this tragedy.
Like Pi all these individuals and these traditions each attempt to grasp and to share their own understanding of the human story and its connection to what many call the sacred and divine. Despite their differences and the story each has come to embrace as defining of life and its greatest questions they accepted an equality in the face of tragedy that not one could have conceived imminent and taken action to stop. All experienced the fragileness of life and the power of loss. They were all touched by the humanity of finiteness.
In world of finite human beings can we make room for the events of Sandy Hook, or more accurately the events following the tragedy of Sandy Hook, to define our public life together of people of different faiths and different stories. Can we allow for the possibility our own faith story can be strengthened by hearing and valuing the story of others. The story of 3.3 million Hindu gods does not change the orthodoxy of my Christianity under the Lutheran Confessions. Being Lutheran is who I am all the way to my inner most core. Simply said the Lutheran telling of the story of Christ and how it speaks to life and shapes me and my living work is a story I can tell. To you. To others.
I believe in the authority of scripture and that it is all true. Not always in a literal reading of the surface of the Bible words, but more true than either history or metaphor. Often it is hard work to dig and to sort out the meanings of texts 2000+ years old and to make sure that authority is used wisely and rightly in the telling of the story. And when that story becomes others' story, too, I celebrate. I celebrate when they risk baptizing infants not knowing how and where the child's story will grow. I celebrate when we come together eating and drinking simple gifts of bread and wine believing it is the fullness of God's body and blood because Jesus says it is so. I celebrate it when I annoint the sick with oil and when I speak the promises of God to the dying. Is my life so filled and shaped by my story that it becomes compelling to you.
The last question is do I believe enough in my story to allow you to have your story, too? Or must my proselytizing and sharing the story be at the expense of your story. The question is not whether I agree with your story but can I at least allow it to be yours.
Pi found power in three different stories each of which and all of which informed and shaped his life and gave him strength and awe in the face of the struggles and uncertainty of life. I am not that sophisticated, I am a simply Lutheran preacher but I, too, have my story.
So tell me. What story do you believe? Which makes your life better?
My wife and I, recently, went to the movie "Life of Pi." It was an excellent movie and equally excellent book that posed some good theological questions. Especially good for people living in a post modernist age.
The "Life of Pi" is told by Pi a man from India to an author. It tells the tale of Pi's life starting in India and stretching to the present day. As a young man Pi was born into a Hindu family and he was satisfied with that spirituality until he experienced a conversion to Catholicism at about 13. Then a little while later he, also, embraces Islam. Spiritually he sees no conflict in practicing these three religions as he finds something useful in each.
In time Pi's life is caught up in the broad swipes of catastrophic events which start with his father deciding to move the family from India because of an economic downturn that has made it impossible to continue running the zoo his family has run in a hotel garden. During the journey the rest of the family is lost at sea as the ship they are on sinks in a storm. In the telling of the tale Pi finds himself on a lone lifeboat stranded with an orangutang, a zebra, and Robert Parker, a Bengal Tiger. The struggle for survival that follows is an amazing journey of the miraculous and Pi's will to live and ingenuity. In the end after months of days at sea. Pi and Robert Parker are the only two survivors that reach the Mexican coast.
Continuing his story Pi is visited by two Japanese lawyers for the shipping company who are seeking to determine liability for the the sinking of the company's ship. It becomes clear that the tell ing of the story at sea with all of its astonishing twists and turns has been the telling to these two men. They are in complete disbelief and say it must have been different and cannot have happened that way. Pi then tells them another much more mundane version about the life without the animals and instead only his mother, an injured sailor and the cruel and evil cook from the ship with him. The cook had killed the sailor and Pi's mother in a tale that included cannibalism and the harshest of inhuman threats and behavior. This tale is equally unacceptable and even more horrid to the lawyers. Realizing that Pi does not have any answers to their issues of liability as to "why" the ship sank they prepare to leave but before they go one asks Pi which of the stories was true. Pi's response is "Which did you like better, which do you want to believe?"
President Obama attended the community memorial service for the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings on Sunday evening. Participating in the program were representatives from various communities of faith and religion ranging from Roman Catholic to Baha'i. The diversity of traditions was broad from Roman Catholic to Protestant, Episcopal to Baptist, Judaism to Islam, B'Hai and Unitarian, and philosophies from the most liberal to most conservative. All these came together as a single community religious and secular with local, state and federal governments, including President Obama. All from the highest to the lowest intentionally seated on the floor of the auditorium to emphasize the equality of all in this tragedy.
Like Pi all these individuals and these traditions each attempt to grasp and to share their own understanding of the human story and its connection to what many call the sacred and divine. Despite their differences and the story each has come to embrace as defining of life and its greatest questions they accepted an equality in the face of tragedy that not one could have conceived imminent and taken action to stop. All experienced the fragileness of life and the power of loss. They were all touched by the humanity of finiteness.
In world of finite human beings can we make room for the events of Sandy Hook, or more accurately the events following the tragedy of Sandy Hook, to define our public life together of people of different faiths and different stories. Can we allow for the possibility our own faith story can be strengthened by hearing and valuing the story of others. The story of 3.3 million Hindu gods does not change the orthodoxy of my Christianity under the Lutheran Confessions. Being Lutheran is who I am all the way to my inner most core. Simply said the Lutheran telling of the story of Christ and how it speaks to life and shapes me and my living work is a story I can tell. To you. To others.
I believe in the authority of scripture and that it is all true. Not always in a literal reading of the surface of the Bible words, but more true than either history or metaphor. Often it is hard work to dig and to sort out the meanings of texts 2000+ years old and to make sure that authority is used wisely and rightly in the telling of the story. And when that story becomes others' story, too, I celebrate. I celebrate when they risk baptizing infants not knowing how and where the child's story will grow. I celebrate when we come together eating and drinking simple gifts of bread and wine believing it is the fullness of God's body and blood because Jesus says it is so. I celebrate it when I annoint the sick with oil and when I speak the promises of God to the dying. Is my life so filled and shaped by my story that it becomes compelling to you.
The last question is do I believe enough in my story to allow you to have your story, too? Or must my proselytizing and sharing the story be at the expense of your story. The question is not whether I agree with your story but can I at least allow it to be yours.
Pi found power in three different stories each of which and all of which informed and shaped his life and gave him strength and awe in the face of the struggles and uncertainty of life. I am not that sophisticated, I am a simply Lutheran preacher but I, too, have my story.
So tell me. What story do you believe? Which makes your life better?
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