A Religion of Impossibilities?

Google Image

Pigs Fly. People walk on walls. Catfish play the trumpet. All among things that are impossible, most would agree.

Then there are the theoretical or apparent impossibilities. World Peace. Democrats and Republicans seeing eye to eye. TV shows with no advertising or fees.

And then, the really heavy stuff that people of faith profess. Jesus’ resurrection, humanity’s eternal destiny, God becoming a human. Many people would place these in the same category as flying pigs. I wouldn’t.

Isaiah Takes the Cake?

The Judeo-Christian tradition has a long history of believing in apparent impossibilities. Perhaps the prophet Isaiah takes the cake. Yearning for a new king in the idealized tradition of King David, the prophet engages in a bit of poetry.

“Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat; the calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them.”

(Actually, I’ve seen videos of lions lying down with young prey, apparently confused about prey that doesn’t run.)

Not to be outdone, the Christian Bible includes stories about unexplained cures of people with serious illness; of people being raised from the dead; about a “human” walking on water and about that same person rising from the dead.

Google Image
But for me, among the most impossible – and for many most difficult to believe – is that God became a human being, what is known in religious circles as the Incarnation, literally, the in-fleshment. That’s why one of Jesus’ traditional titles is Emmanuel, a Hebrew word meaning “God with us.”

Despite our society’s fascination with elaborate and brightly lit Christmas decorations and extravagant gift-giving, the Incarnation is what makes Christmas, Christmas (the old English word for “Christ’s Mass.”)

We’re talking about the deity that is responsible for the creation of the universe - and for the “impossible” formation through millions of centuries of atoms and molecules and DNA, ringworms, queen bees, sunshine and rain, the deity who has always been and always will be, the one who can see into our hearts  - becoming a mere human being.

The phrase from Jesus in Matthew’s gospel comes to mind: “With … God all things are possible.”

Christianity still professes “impossible” things.

The Eucharistic prayer – the long prayer recited by the priest after the presentation of the gifts, or offertory – of a recent weekend liturgy, starts with this beautiful petition:

Dissension and Discord

“It is truly right and just that we should give you thanks and praise, O God, almighty Father, for all you do in this world, through our Lord Jesus Christ. For though the human race is divided by dissension and discord, yet we know that by testing us you change our hearts to prepare them for reconciliation.

“Even more, by your Spirit you move human hearts that enemies may speak to each other again, adversaries may join hands, and peoples seek to meet together. By the working of your power, it comes about, O Lord, that hatred is overcome by love, gives way to forgiveness, and discord is changed to mutual respect.”

Christianity, and some other faiths, is a religion of “impossibilities.” Some would say that’s what makes it foolish. But I believe faith should, and does, make optimists of all of us, always providing hope and "impossible" targets to aim for.

And there’s no greater “impossibility” to celebrate than Christmas, the feast of God becoming human.

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Gospel of The Little Prince

Image
  Attention all those concerned only with “matters of great consequence:” Is it possible that you’ve become someone you didn’t want to be, having strayed far from the innocence and simplicity of childhood? That’s the main question asked in The Little Prince, which Netflix, the streaming video service, has added to its repertoire of movies and TV shows. Though not a big fan of animated flicks, I was a big fan of the book, The Little Prince, back in the 1970s when it became extremely popular in the U.S. It was first published in French and English in New York in 1943 as a novella by French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery , who disappeared while piloting a Free French Army plane the following year over the Mediterranean Sea. Nearly Two Million Copies “The novella is the fourth most-translated book in the world and was voted the best book of the 20th century in France,” says Wikipedia. “Translated into more than 250 language...
Read more

‘Spiritual but Not Religious,’ Revisited

Image
Google Image I’ve expressed several times in these blogs my skepticism about declarations by some of our contemporaries that they are “spiritual but not religious.” Much of the skepticism results from the false dichotomy this entails, as if the spiritual and religious are mutually exclusive. Spirituality, after all, is the whole point of being religious. With the exception of some forms of Buddhism, all the major religions aim to bring people closer to God, who is “spiritual.” St. Paul, among the earliest leaders of Christianity, wrote that he is imparting a teaching “not taught by human wisdom but taught by the spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit.” But Daniel Horan, Franciscan priest, theologian and author, wrote in a recent edition of the National Catholic Reporter: “What if our starting point in thinking about what it means to be a person in communion with God, oneself and the world was not reduced to external expressions of institutional belo...
Read more

Clinging to Archie Bunker's God

Image
Google Image Archie Bunker, the character masterfully played by the late Carroll O’Conner in the 1970s TV comedy “All in the Family,” had his own take on the traditional Christian doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible. “God don’t make no mistakes,” declared Archie. “That’s how he got to be God.” For those too young to remember Archie, who in 2005 was listed as number 1 on Bravo's 100 Greatest TV Characters, Wikipedia says Bunker was characterized by his bigotry towards “… blacks, Hispanics, "Commies," gays, hippies, Jews, Asians, Catholics, "women's libbers," and Polish-Americans….” Bunker was presented as a Christian, however, and “… often misquotes the Bible. He takes pride in being religious, although he rarely attends church services ….” An Anonymous Contributor Sister Mary Matilda, my eighth grade teacher, would accuse me of being uncharitable but I imagine that an anonymous contributor to a recent newspaper column is an “Archie Bunke...
Read more