MBS Newsletter
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: 2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9
Love’s hungriest impulse is the want to know, about the object of one’s affection, all that can be possibly known.
This is no less true of a Christian’s love for the Savior. We devour what little there is available of his biography, absorbing the birth, reveling in the three years between his baptism and death, the time which encompassed his ministry.
At times, this seems not enough. We find ourselves wanting to know him in the years now lost to us, too—to see the Jesus who was a babe, who grew into a child, who became a man.
We love what we know of him and hate that we don’t know more. It’s one of the absurdities of love, particularly this love; no matter how intense our yearning, that time is effectively “lost” to the living. Though, still, we’d love to walk beside him.
To meet him some morning in Nazareth, in the days, maybe, before he was surrounded by a crowd, before his time was dominated by mysteries and miracles. To get to him before the transfiguration (Mark 9). To shake the hand of the child who would come to save the world, then, now and forever.
We can’t bridge time, of course, so the want remains only that. We understand, if regretfully, that it must.
Still, perhaps we sometimes mention the want, explicitly or tacitly, in our prayer. “I love you, God, but wish I knew more of you.” The “but” is no sin, certainly; all who love wish, sometimes, to blur the boundary between themselves and they who they love. All want to become as much a part of the other as the other has become integral to them.
I can see no flaw in voicing this. It seems, in fact, a natural development in the love which a human being feels for their god.
It seems that honesty precludes pretending it could be otherwise.
I thought about this frequently over the past week, both in considering our readings from scripture, which are overwhelmed by awesome acts of revelation, and in watching one long story in the news. The story concerned Hamza Kashgari, a twenty-three year old Saudi reporter who, for tweeting about his love for his prophet, a love so terrible it sometimes came to feel ambivalent, was this week deported to face trial and probable death.
Because he said “I love you, but.” Because his nation doesn’t consider the utterance of this truth to be holy. Instead, it’s been called an abomination, so widely I was amazed; and more than a few have asked for his head.
Hamza Kashgari’s prophet is not my prophet. In my eyes, he was only a man. In Hamza’s tradition, he was the greatest prophet in history, the most concrete actualization of God’s love for humanity.
I hope I am not remiss in saying that, even so, a man of unparalleled greatness is still just human before God.
In which case, I have done my own beloved, Jesus, a greater disservice than Hamza did his prophet; I have said, to no mere mortal, “I love you, but!” In my humanity, I have craved knowledge beyond that I have already been gifted. I have been human, though doing so in faith.
In which case, I suspect we all are more presumptuous toward our God than this twenty-three year old was toward his prophet.
Yet no one calls for our head.
Hamza’s story fills me with despair. It reminds me that there are still parts of the world wherein thought is not supposed to involve itself with faith, wherein “being religious” means falling in line with what people in power have said of religion. There are parts of the world which call themselves religious, but where tyranny and oppression dominate, and free speech is a laughable thought.
And so Hamza’s story also reminds me that I have been graced. Because here, I can pray in whatever manner I wish, however loudly I wish, and can even venture to pique my God by doing so. I can be brazen in faith. I can give my passions over to it. We are blessed: we all can.
In a roundabout way, Hamza’s story gave me reason to hope, even in a melancholy manner; though so much of the planet is dark territory for the faithful, there remain places in which the religious will remains free.
I’ll set aside time this week to look toward God, in Jesus’s transfigured glory, and set aside my questions in favor of praise. And I’ll ask that Jesus intercede on Hamza’s behalf, will hope for a miracle—that those who repress the voices of Hamza, so many other faithful beings, will realize that no prophet is honored by arbitrarily and cruelly punishing followers.
I’ll wait for God to once again call the light out of the darkness (2 Corinthians 4:6). I know that only Christ can. (Even without knowing him in those thirty years: we always know that Jesus can.)
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To learn more about Hamza Kashgari, go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamza_Kashgari
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2012/feb/15/saudi-jo...
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/17/a-fatal-tweet/
Images borrowed from:
http://img.ibtimes.com/www/data/images/full/2012/02/09/229135-twitter-pr...
http://www.tomie.com/being_an_artist/new_paintings/Jpegs/young_jesus.jpg
