Gnashing of Teeth

“Gnashing of teeth” has frightened me since I was a child. To be cast out “into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” as Jesus is quoted in Matthew 8:12, is terrifying. “Gnashing of teeth” occurs six times in Matthew and once in Luke, according to the footnotes in my Oxford Annotated NRSV.

I am re-reading Jesus’ words during my morning prayers, admittedly looking for comfort and inspiration as well as challenge. But these words were a sobering slap in the face the morning I write this. It reminded me of the monster god I’ve written of before, the one perhaps the global majority of Christians fear.

The contexts of the phrase sometimes include a “furnace of fire” or a “cutting in pieces” of an individual, and they are always about those who assumed they belonged as heirs of God’s kingdom or of God’s household. One seems anti-Semitic and others directed toward the self-righteous of any faith, the spiritually privileged. One is directed at a clearly abusive person, another at a mere under-achiever, and one has simply failed to wear the right garment. The fashion police would love that one!

I understand that prophets like Jesus used hyperbole, so you must cut off any body part that causes you to sin, and (I’ve been told) his Aramaic tongue did not include comparatives like “more,” so you must hate mother and father to love Jesus. That’s how I’ve dealt with Jesus’ harsher sayings in the past.

So why stumble on “gnashing of teeth” this morning?

Again, my footnote explained: “Gnashing of teeth, an indication of sharp pain or vexation.”

As someone who has ground his teeth in his sleep when anxious or clenched my teeth in anger or grit my teeth in frustration or metaphorically bit my tongue rather than weaponize it, the phrase absolutely incarnates sharp pain or vexation.

And I realize I’ve been “there” many times, that is, someplace outside of the kingdom of Jesus’ influence, outside of God’s commonwealth.

Though all these things are natural and necessary in the everyday world, the commonwealth of God is a place beyond anxiety, anger, frustration, and vitriol—and few there be that find it, to use another Jesus phrase.

So my fear of “gnashing of teeth” is a fear of what happens everyday for me as I face the news or traffic or people or schedules or the internet or health issues or—well, you get my drift. Gnashing of teeth is our contemporary lifestyle.

As much as I can let go of this in prayer, contemplation, kindliness, cooperation, activism and service, the closer I am to the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus followed his “gnashing of teeth” imagery by telling his petitioner, “Go; let it be done for you according to your faith.” And the loved one the soldier was asking for “was healed in that hour,” according to Matthew 6:13.

But I somehow also believe that God is to be found in our gnashing of teeth.

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Copyright © 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Jesus, the Biggest Loser

Today I have allowed a mysterious stranger (not unlike the one Mark Twain wrote about) to pen this post, one who wants to remain uncharacteristically anonymous. For balance, however, I have followed this screed with creed.

Anyone who gets crucified is a loser. Someone who can’t save himself cannot possibly save the world. He certainly shouldn’t have his name on so many buildings.

Jesus, you hung around with losers. You could’ve had the best seat in the house and hung out with winners, but you preferred people I wouldn’t even spit at.

And your speeches are all for losers. The meek inherit the earth? Ha! Love your enemies? Gimme a break! Go the extra mile? On whose dime? If someone sues you for your cloak, give your coat as well? That’s only if you can’t afford a good lawyer or a creative accountant.

Blessed are the poor? What were you smokin’? Theirs is the kingdom of heaven? Sounds like welfare and entitlements to me! Woe to you who are rich? That’s the line of those income inequality guys.

Anyone who gains the whole world is a winner in my book, not a loser!

Your best speechwriter was John, who made grand claims on your behalf, but John lived almost a century too late. Boy, I’d love to get my hands on those lost gospels—maybe they’d show you up for what you were.

Jesus, ya shoulda listened to me in the wilderness! Tell people stones are bread! Keep doing and saying spectacular things to get noticed! Worship anything that gives you power!

Now, a lot of your followers have taken my advice, and are doing quite well, much better than you. That’s the power of positive thinking, speaking in superlatives, and telling people what they want to hear. In truth, many of your followers are embarrassed by you and by your weak, socialist ways. They want a winner, that’s why they declare you king, when you and I both know you’re only the king of losers.

Telling people they need to change their ways is a downer. Challenging them on those they exclude or mistreat or judge is not the way to win friends and influence people. And telling ‘em to be compassionate, like God—haven’t you read the Bible? Wrathful and jealous, ready with the fire and brimstone and Tweets, giving ‘em hell!  I incarnate that God better than you!

Now I gotta admit the Resurrection was a good deception. Makes people believe that you were really successful, that what you taught was right, even eternal. But we both know the truth, don’t we? Your life and your words no longer live and have not changed the world for the better. Where is this kingdom of heaven you promised? Looks like I’m not the only one pretending to be a messiah.

Give it up, Jesus! You’re fired!

So this contributor doesn’t have the last word, I’d like to provide an excerpt from Paul Ramsey’s Basic Christian Ethics (1950), a text I read in college, followed by a scripture from Philippians: 

Ordinarily it is supposed that the way to obtain a more and more perfect conception of the divine nature is to add on as much power as possible, as much impeccable self-sufficiency, as much imperturbable sovereignty, as much unqualified majesty. …

However, from a Christian point of view it is possible to think of God too highly, for Christ reverses all we expect Highness to be; the God who put him forward is one whose “grace” is only his mercy and forgiveness. Of him we cannot think too lowly. …

Such radical reversal of ordinary conceptions of the divine nature follows from the basic conviction that Christ is clue to knowledge of God. Christianity does not say, “Behold the Christ, half-God, half-man, Behold glorious strength thinly disguised, Behold Superman in a business suit, Behold the majestic God you know already in a peasant’s tunic.”

Instead the New Testament proclaims, “Behold weakness, Behold divinity divine enough to abandon divinity, Behold majesty secure enough to proceed un-majestically, Behold strength strong enough to become weakness, goodness good enough to be unmindful of its own reputation, Behold love plenteous enough to give and take not again.” 

Philippians 2:4-8: 

Let each of you look not to your own interests,

But to the interests of others.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

Who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross.

Related post: The Leader I’d Like to Have

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Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Forgiveness, Fruitfulness, and Fun

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A student in a weekend course on Henri Nouwen that I taught for the Spiritual Formation Program of Columbia Seminary here in Atlanta last year divided her final paper—to be about her own spiritual journey in relation to the material presented—into forgiveness, fruitfulness, and fun. Commending the excellence of her paper, I wrote that I might borrow her divisions (though not her content) as a fresh framework for my talk on Henri for Newport Presbyterian Church in the Seattle area this past January.

Since then I’ve realized that this framework is not dependent on my “channeling Henri,” as much as I enjoy talking about my late professor, his books, and our friendship.  It is, in fact, a good framework for the spiritual life.

Forgiveness is about letting go of the past—past hurts, grievances, failures, mistakes, disappointments, even opponents. Forgiveness may also transform the past into a fertile present if we grow from those experiences. But letting go of the past may also mean leaving behind successes, achievements, possessions—anything that prevents us from being fully present.

Fruitfulness is about letting go of the future—resisting dependence on results, expectations, hopes, even fears and more, realizing that the fruit our lives ultimately bear, perhaps beyond our lifetime,  is a gracious gift, as implied by the metaphor. We plant the seeds, we tend the plant, but we can’t control the outcome.

Fun is living in the moment: attentive, mindful, spontaneous, open, coming to our senses, unassuming but hopeful, playful as well as fulfilling. Only by letting go of both the past and the future can we live in the moment, whether playing with our children or pets, volunteering for a shelter or a just cause, playing the piano or painting a scene, to give a few examples. Yes, we have a history, and yes, we have a future. But we can’t let them distract us from the everlasting present. Past and future do best when they inform and inspire our present rather than restrict or restrain it.

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Just now—the “present” in which I am writing this—I realize that letting go of both past and future to be fully present is found in this central proclamation of Jesus and the movement he began.

To repent is to let go of all the baggage that prevents our entrance into God’s realm: good stuff, bad stuff, and all stuff in between, including detailed expectations and speculations as to what the commonwealth of God might be. Sometimes the “baggage” is not our own, but that of others laid on us or in front of us, blocking our welcome. And sometimes the baggage is what we’ve achieved—as they say, “victims of our own success.”

The kingdom of heaven is “at hand,” in the present moment, but it is also the fulfillment, the “fruit” of both past and future inspiring, “seeding” the present.

What’s “fun” is the knowing twinkle in the eye of the present, the contented smile in the heart of the moment, the reassuring touch of God-with-us.  

God knows we need more fun in our lives.

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Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Gandhi Died Today

Today I read a few of the final entries of The Gandhi Reader (ed. Homer A. Jack) about Mahatma Gandhi’s death. And I cried as if I were there.

I’ve been re-reading passages regarding Gandhi’s belief that non-violent direct action could have challenged Hitler or even atomic bombs, just as it brought British colonialism to an end in India and Pakistan; his concern about Europe’s anti-semitism as well as the establishment of a state of Israel in Palestine; his encounter with the African American preacher and civil rights leader Howard Thurman and his wife; and his multiple fastings to stop the bloodshed among Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs. Whatever you make of his ideas, his compassion is unquestionable, even in death.

I have visited the site in India where his body was cremated. In college I occasionally meditated and studied on the peaceful grounds of the Self Realization Fellowship in southern California’s Pacific Palisades, where some of his ashes are interred in a World Peace Memorial (pictured above) near a “wall-less temple.”   

The Richard Attenborough film Gandhi was released the week before I went to India on a Fordham University religious studies tour. I managed to see it twice before I left, and so, on my first day wandering the neighborhood of our hotel in New Dehli on my own, I discovered Birla House, his last residence, and the garden behind, where he led prayers and met his death. Now a museum, I visited his small room at the rear of the house and followed his final steps in the garden, footprints cast in bronze.

As sacramentals of the visit, I purchased three sets of companion posters, one with Gandhi’s photo and another with a quote of his, two of which I gave to close friends, the Yale historian John Boswell, who contributed so much to the history of gay people in the church; and the other to Linda Culbertson, currently the executive of Pacific Presbytery, with whom I had seen the movie. My friend George Lynch framed my set for my home office, and they serve as a constant reminder of Gandhi’s self-less perseverance to empower “the poorest and the weakest.”

Dr. Thurman asked Gandhi how to train people in the “difficult art” of Ahimsa, non-violence, to which Gandhi replied, “There is no royal road, except through living the creed in your life which must be a living sermon.  … Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and everything else shall be added unto you. The Kingdom of Heaven is Ahimsa.”

Gandhi died today, and still he lives, offering his darshan, the joy of his spiritual presence, to all who read his words and remember his deeds. 

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Suggested uses: personal reflection, contemporary readings in worship, conversation starters in classes.  This ministry is entirely funded by your donations.