Eucharist vs. The Lizard Brain

Typically, we think of hibernation as something that occurs only in the winter. As a more-or-less acclimated Phoenician, I can say that something akin to hibernation occurs in Phoenix not in the bleary cold of winter but rather in the blistering heat of summer. The mercury level rises; my energy level falls. It is difficult to be motivated when it's 106 degrees on the morning commute to work, 100 degrees when it's time to go to bed, and 116 degrees at points between.

Exhibit 1. Lizard, with Lizard Brain.

I believe this is the reason that many things go on hiatus during Phoenix summers. We go into a self-preserving, energy conservation mode. Work. Hydrate. Eat. Sleep. Work. Olympics. Eat. Sleep. As my friend Mary says, the primal ‘lizard brain’ takes over and all our energies and efforts are redirected to mere survival. The priority has to be to maintaining essential life support systems. The non-essentials can wait until later. But what is the most essential? In my experience, there is a danger in this hibernation: as I strip my life down to the bare essentials and let that ‘lizard brain’ direct me on autopilot, it’s all too easy for me to neglect what is truly essential.

Consider this example: One of the highlights of my week is the Thursday evening Eucharist at our church. This brief time to gather for worship, fellowship, exhortation, and edification is something I look forward to each week. I look forward to it even though attending means battling cross-town traffic after an exhausting day towards the end of an exhausting week of work. Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I am always surprised by the way that God uses that time to renew me, to change me, and to breathe new life into me.

Exhibit 2. Eucharist.

Our weekly Eucharist was on hiatus for the month of July. Last week it began again, and while I sincerely planned to attend, I ended up working late and ended up not going. In retrospect, my work would have been accomplished just as well the next morning (probably better), and I would have been happier and healthier had I prioritized worship first. Thursday rolled around again, as it is wont to do), and once again I was tempted to work late. After all, there’s so much at work that demands my attention, and it can give me such a sense of satisfaction to see all my tasks completed. Even more tempting was the thought of simply heading home to relax. Surely it would be understandable if I want to just hibernate at home until it cools off (sometime in October or so).

I had perfectly reasonable excuses not to go to Eucharist. Instead, I battled traffic, spent a few moments collecting my thoughts, and then had a meaningful experience worshiping along with a few others who had also braved the heat. In the midst of this humble, simple, intimate worship service, God was present to bless, to speak, to heal.

I suspect that there is a an important lesson in this: when we are stressed by external factors, when we feel taxed beyond our limit, there is strong tendency to retreat, retract, hibernate, to let the ‘lizard brain’ take control just to get us through until circumstances change. Perhaps sometimes there is no alternative but to put our heads down, drink lots of water, and focus on the bare essentials of survival. But I for one am tempted to take that route more often that is necessary. When I am stressed and tempted to retreat, I need to remind myself and be reminded by others that my retreat should be into the presence of God and into the gathered community of those who worship Him.

This doesn’t seem to be a profound lesson. Quite simple, really. Most of the important lessons in my life have been simple. If it’s like most, it is probably a lesson I have even learned before, and it may well be one I must learn again.

A Resolution

Resolved: not to make any grandiose (and vain) resolutions that I will post a remarkable, significant entry to my blog each day.

That being said, I have come to the conclusion that I must find an outlet for pent-up creative energies. Not to mention a way to mollify to those who incessantly prod me to write.

This blog may amount to nothing more than a haphazard travelogue of my intellectual meanderings. But follow at your own risk: sometimes meanderings are but the start of pilgrimages.

Lee

P.S. Also, this might be a fun place to show off all the big words I know.

Christians Wrong About Heaven, Says Bishop

I thought some of you might be interested in this recent interview with NT Wright in Time. He's talking about the sometimes unbiblical views Christians have of eternal life. I think does a good job expressing why it is important for us to be more careful in the ways we talk about eternity. When I was a young believer, I remember being taken quite off guard when I first learned that the Bible didn't teach a hellenistic (or gnostic) divide wherein the eternal soul was good and the physical body was evil. I just assumed that was true Christian doctrine and that being saved meant that instead of going to hell, Christians would be in an amorphous disembodied state for eternity. At that time I hadn't heard any teaching to the contrary that gave a clearer picture of what the Bible actually teaches. And you know what, it really does matter: when we're sloppy in talking about this doctrine it isn't harmless. It can have serious negative consequences in how we view our stewardship of our own bodies and of our surroundings. Moreover, it is much easier for us to look forward to and long for an eternal state which isn't either completely undefined or simply mis-defined.

Time

We're taking a break from the study of John's gospel (which we have been working through for more than a year) and spending the next 6 weeks in the book of Titus. John's message on Titus 1:1-4 today was particularly excellent. He was emphasizing the distinction between chronos (as the seasonal, ebb-and-flow perception of time) and kairos (as a critical moment, an in-breaking of God or a moment of realization that something significant has just or is about to occur).

John was describing our experience of chronos as being primarily a function of our observation of sequential movement. A 24-hour day represents one rotation of the earth on its axis; a 365 1/4
-day year the full rotation of the earth in its orbit around the sun. Days, Seasons, Years, Eras, Epochs, all find their markings in our perception of motion.

So this fuels the resurgence of a question I've been kicking around for about 20 years now: Is time (in the chronos sense) a thing? Is time anything? If time is our perception, our making sense, our attempt to accommodate and understand the sequence of movements macroscopic and microscopic, then are we perceiving something tangible which really is? Or are we merely putting the tangible motions into a sequential framework so we can describe it and conceive of it?

If time is not itself a thing, if it is merely our perception of actual things, then in what sense can we ever say that we are 'in time' or that God the Creator is 'outside of time'? Even if time is something, from where do we get the idea that it is something which is localized or spatial, something which one can be either inside or outside?

Is the statement commonly repeated in pop-theology that because God is infinite and eternal, that because he is the Creator of space and matter and all that is, that he is therefore outside of time a true statement? or even a helpful one? If time is perception and not a thing in itself, then the best we could say is that God's perception is infinite whereas ours is limited: our perception has a beginning but no end, while his perception has neither beginning nor end.

I apologize for getting so cosmological here. I'm pretty sure that no one else cares about this. But do any of you have thoughts on this?

How would you explain the verbal overlap between passages in Matthew and Luke not found in Mark?

I would explain the verbal overlap between passages in Matthew and Luke which are absent from Mark as follows: Matthew and Luke both made use of another source to which Mark either did not have access or chose not to utilize.[1] This explanation is in line with the 4-Source Hypothesis. This additional source, now lost to us, is commonly referred to as “Q” for the German quelle (“source”). This collection of Jesus traditions was not necessarily a written document but may have simply been a set of familiar teachings which were part of the oral traditions about Jesus circulated in the early Church. Matthew and Luke sometimes have sections of this source material in the same order with a high degree verbal overlap. Other times they share the source material but use it in different places in their presentation.

Because of the length and precision in some of these instances of verbal overlap, it seems probable that there may have been a written source to which Matthew and Luke had access, though it is possible that it was common oral tradition which they both incorporated. Just as the verbal parallels between Mark and the other two Synoptics suggests a literary dependence, so too the verbal parallels between Matthew and Luke which are not found in Mark suggests that they both were dependent on an additional shared source.

For example, in the case of the Temptation narrative preserved in Mark 1:12-13 // Matthew 4:1-11 // Luke 4:1-13, Mark gives the temptation only the briefest mention, whereas Matthew and Luke devote quite a bit of space in presenting more fully the exchange between Jesus and Satan. Matthew and Luke are very similar in their presentations (in fact, nearly half of their wording overlaps), although they do place the temptations in a different order. Since Mark includes none of the extra material it is plausible that Luke and Matthew are relying on some other source to which they had access in common.

There are many other instances in which Matthew and Luke display verbal overlap in describing traditions which are not preserved in Mark. When Jesus teaches the people concerning John the Baptist in Matthew 11:2-29 // Luke 7:18-35, both accounts report His teaching with a great deal of overlap. While some have argued that this overlap results from either Matthew depending on Luke or Luke depending on Matthew, the slight variation in the specific wording and details suggests to me that both were relying on a third source independent of one another.

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[1]Yes, Brian: utilize. UTILIZE!