Author: robertalanrife

I have spent the better part of my life as a professional musician. Primarily, that has meant the fun and challenging world of church music. Most recently, I have transitioned out of my role as worship and music director for Yakima Covenant Church, Yakima, Washington to global service in Edinburgh, Scotland. I'm a singer-songwriter, liturgist, poet, and writer. I love words. I love to read them. I love to write them. Most of all, I love the many intersections, like a sacramental tapestry, of life, liturgy, literature, the arts, and spiritual formation...oh, and I love haggis.

Going Down? pt. 3-ish

On By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Words...always wordsLeave a comment

Through days of grey made achingly longer just trying to survive there came an increasing intuition about something. In fact, an audible voice (or, if not, something that makes for a better story) stated quite simply, “you’re on the wrong med.” I know, I also thought it a rather banal thing for God to say after all that much more grandiose fare we read in the Bible. Anyway, the growing sense that something was chemically askew had been a recurring thought for months, even years before, but was quickly squelched in favor of my ongoing survival. A truly shitty present had to be better than some unknown, possibly shittier future.

This time was different. The absolute clarity of the idea penetrated my consciousness with a keenness and confidence that demanded my attention. I quite simply, quit. Even the emotional anguish that followed quickly on the heels of this decision I was never once tempted to think that I had made a mistake.

Instead, my tumultuous and tortured mind drifted to cries of desperation. And, in some cases, well, most actually, they were aimed at God. If I had been tormented with “I don’t give a damn” attitude before, it now chimed in with “I don’t give a flying f**k. I don’t care that I don’t give a flying f**k. I don’t care that I don’t care that I don’t give a flying f**k. I don’t care that my readers are subjected to three f**ks, OK, four f**ks…five in a row.” I wondered, perhaps for the first time ever, whether I would ever feel “normal” again. I began to despair even of life. If this was the best it could offer, I wasn’t particularly interested.

It was in such a sorry state of mind that, on Thursday morning, April 29th, 2010 I determined that the best I would be able to manage for work that day would be to climb a 20-foot scaffold and fix the church speakers. For me, it was a day in infamy.

As luck would have it we blew out the horns in not one but both of our church speakers a few weeks earlier at our annual Celtic Praise service. Thank you. Thank you very much. I, too, am proud of this accomplishment. About three weeks later, replacement parts in hand, I climbed our hastily thrown together scaffolding. It was already Thursday, I was very tired and yearned for an uneventful Friday, my Sabbath. When it comes to the unsexy jobs of music ministry, this tops the list, unless you consider cleaning mouse excrement out of organ pipes. As a result, the line up of volunteers eager to assist was…non-existent.

I could add white-hot self-pity and anger to my already fragile emotional palette. I’d love to call it righteous indignation, but apparently God is standing right behind me. I unhappily engaged in the awkward and dangerous process of dismantling our scaffolding just to set it up from scratch a mere 4 steps higher from the sanctuary floor to the chancel; a process I was doing unsupervised over lunch hour…

Going Down? continued

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Concurrent with these disturbing developments making sport of me was a total inability to quit smoking. This has been, on and off, a monkey on my back for many years. Cigarettes had always provided a nice smoke screen (did you see what I did there? Pun intended) for anything actually changing in my life. As anyone knows who has ever been caught in addiction, once attempts to quit become conscious, the noose of said addiction tightens around our metaphorical necks in direct proportion to our efforts toward freedom. It chokes us with annoying reminders of our perceived need for it and then partners with guilt, which in turn collude together with self-loathing; a disturbingly lethal combination of intimidating foes. They all but guarantee an unsuccessful struggle ending in defeat, garnishing one’s cataclysmic sense of self-loathing with the constant reminder of failure.

Smokers are a strange animal indeed. We are a restless lot always on the lookout for any possibility to feed the beast within screaming for the next drag. It affects concentration, goal setting, patience, self-love, self-confidence, relationships – everything. Eventually, everything is built around it. Planning when to “grab a smoke” becomes an all-engrossing pursuit. The most humiliating part of this scenario for me was that my family was completely unaware of my struggle. And I was not about to add insult to injury in revealing yet another issue I couldn’t seem to find victory over.

Prayer becomes especially strange in such circumstances. Praying in the light of an ongoing, persistent issue such as an addiction is a bit like sitting naked on the subway happily reading the paper oblivious to the fact that you have completely lost touch with the obvious. Do I forge ahead with this prayer despite the fact that the whole time I can’t get out of my head the simple fact that I am, simultaneously, considering when and where to have my next cigarette? The elephant in the living room sits cross-legged looking over his spectacles at the ridiculous charade unfolding before him and chuckling to himself, amused at my unwillingness to look up and acknowledge his presence.

It should come as no surprise that the name most often given to the enemy of the good, the true and the beautiful is Satan, which translated means, the accuser. When someone is already in personal combat mode, engaged in guerilla warfare with some overpowering issue, the icing on the cake for such an enemy is to convince such a one that their circumstances will never change, thus paralyzing them into false belief. The result is hopelessness. The torturer knows all too well that the deepest wounds are inflicted not on the body but in the mind. Once the spirit is broken, collapse, control and collusion follow quickly after…

Going down?…Reflections of the fall

On By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Words...always words4 Comments

April 29, 2010. For me, a day in infamy. Before I begin a more thorough reveal of my travail, here is the short version. I fell off a 20 ft. scaffold and bounced off a cement floor breaking my pelvis and shattering my left arm in so doing. Perhaps in my earlier years when I was lithe and daring, I would have been more willing to do such things for the inevitable showering of praise from my peers. This was anything but willing, lithe or daring. It was jarring and rather horrifying at first; later, embarrassing; still later, a blessing. Stay with me as I begin to share the tale of woe and the surprising blessings of pain.

In rather dizzying drama, 2010 will be forever my “year of the fall.” However, neither the event itself, nor the injuries sustained, the post-event healing or even the post-recovery return to work are the central, defining landmarks of last year. The deeper discoveries have been far more significant.

I begin.

I feel normal. How I got there is rather less than normal. For the better part of my adult life I have exhibited some particularly vexing emotional demons. Far too easily have I slipped from a relatively safe emotional perch into some quagmire of baffling darkness. This is usually accompanied by generous helpings of self-loathing and profound lack of self-confidence. Where many people might look at new challenges as potential opportunities for advancement or growth, I’ve wilted before them in abject fear and unexplainable trepidation.

Yes, I know, what a catch.

Coping mechanisms for this travail have too often included a host of self-destructive behaviors, which have provided a welcome respite in euphoric escapism but did little in advancing me anywhere close to something one might call “normal.” Besides, as a favorite singer-songwriter, Bruce Cockburn quips, “the trouble with normal is it always gets worse.” Good, I’ll avoid it altogether. It is as though I relish living life at the periphery of sanity, swimming in a sea of anguish and self-pity. Actual contentment seemed to be the proverbial carrot dangling from a string before my nose, just out of reach, but plainly visible. It has often been the emotional equivalent of the Chinese water torture.

Albeit fewer than I’d like, in more lucid moments, I’ve at least had sufficient clarity to see my lack of clarity. My combination of DNA, personality wrinkles, emotional disparities and psychological proclivities have too often conspired against me, leaving me a heap of human plasticine. In my groping after the perceived safety of quick fixes this plasticine mess has found all the wrong sculptors. I end up shaped more like a phallic symbol than anything more usable to anybody. Well, actually…oh, never mind. That is, of course, unless I consider further screwing myself to be “usable” in any redemptive sense.

More recently, of the numerous challenges, any one of which could be blamed for exacerbating this dizzying array of dysfunctions, I began to hear God’s voice. To hear God’s voice through a haze of old mental tapes playing, the poorest self-memory ever and the latest chemical concoction for emotional tranquility is truly miraculous. Let’s admit, God’s ridiculous insistence on pestering us with grace is rather impressive.

I noticed (a word I don’t generally associate well with) a deeper than normal malaise; something mostly dealt with by a daily dose of ADD meds. Around the time of the second of two online courses I was taking in Spiritual Direction, I drooped into a level of complacency, which drooped still further in mind-numbing apathy that bordered on despair. It was the spiritual equivalent of shrugging one’s shoulders before punting the cat through the screen door…

Help and thanks

On By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, liturgy, sacramental living, spiritual formation, worship1 Comment

Gracious God, in our crazy, fast-paced world, we lift up our eyes to you whose throne is in the heavens but whose feet have walked among us here on earth.  And, Lord, our simple, stuttered prayers can be condensed into two words:  “help” and “thanks”.

Thanks that when we awoke this morning, You were there waiting for us.

Thanks for showing us what love was intended to be.

Thanks for taking the first step in bringing a broken world and our own sin-filled hearts back to you.

Thanks for the fact that the same grace that brought us to you in the first place is the very grace in which we learn to live.

Thanks for the promise that those who sow in tears will reap in joy.

Thanks for our loved ones-that we arise to see their faces each day.

Thanks for the beautiful surroundings in which we find ourselves.

Thanks for food on our tables, a roof over our heads and clothes on our backs.

Thanks that no experience either good or bad is ever wasted in your economy-we are assured of your work in us in spite of circumstances.

Thanks for the fact that we can quiet our hearts before you and bring every joy and pain before a God who hears and empathizes with our weakness.

Thanks most of all for the Holy Spirit, your great gift to us who brings the risen Christ to abide in our hearts and fellowship with us.

Help us, forgive us Lord, that when we awoke this morning and you called out to us we ignored you for what seemed like more pressing needs.

Help us, Lord, when we crowd you out of our lives with the meaninglessness of sin.

Help us, forgive us Lord, when we turn our eyes away from that which is eternal to dust and metal and wood.

Help us, Lord, when, in weariness we turn to stop-gap measures to shore up our strength when we could turn to the all-powerful God who lives within.

Help us, Lord, to remember you when opportunities arise to defend your name and your cause.

Help us, Lord, to love you above all things so that we can hide you in our hearts and find in you all the treasures of heaven and earth.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you in the power of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever.

Amen

To sing or not to sing

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Walking the boardwalk on a sunny, summer evening in a seaside tourist town – alone – feels a little like bicycling with one petal or being the only kid at the school dance who never has a dance partner. Places like this – Seaside, Oregon ironically, are meant to be shared. It’s not that one cannot enjoyably breath in the heady, highly sensory ocean ethos of such places on one’s own. I’ve done it many times before. An introvert by nature, I rather bask in the relative repose easily gleanable from such experiences. No, it’s quite simply the much deeper joy of cackling like friendly chickens over a reciprocated love.

There’s just something unnamable, almost intangible, in shared experiences like these. To be with others you know and who know you sprinkles a delight and sweetness on the top that magnifies the joy exponentially. C.S Lewis knew this well and alludes to it in the Four Loves. One’s love for someone or thing amplifies in the sharing thereof. The mutuality of “yeah, I get it” is one of life’s greatest gifts. It is, I suppose, a function of our naturally communal human nature. To share is natural when we love something and find it difficult to articulate to ourselves alone.

Either because I am indecisive when it comes to choosing hobbies or because I am not in possession of anything close to a reasonable ability to say ‘no’ to anything remotely interesting, I have a host of varied spheres in which I have lived, moved and shared. One such world is the reason for my brief sojourn to this little Pacific paradise. I am attending a weeklong workshop for choral conductors.

I have had a profound appreciation for the choral tradition and its sublime repertoire my whole life. I recall with some reverie singing in the St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church youth choir as a young elementary school kid. Although a right pain in the ass to the conductor I am forever grateful for her patience in opening the door to music I could never fully describe.

Similar to the annoying guy forever showing pictures of his kids on the subway, I am left with another thing I love to share (foist really) at every opportunity. Even then at around eleven years old I was equally intrigued with Henry Purcell, Johannes Brahms and Palestrina as I was with Simon and Garfunkel, Elvis Presley or Rush. My piano teacher at the time thought it commendable. My parents thought it quaint. To the older kids at school it forever sealed my fate as the tall, geeky brown-noser who perhaps fancied himself a cut above the rest.

Turned up noses meant nothing however as the first notes of some a cappella chamber choir began to nip at the edges of my soul, expanding it to be singed by the burning beauty of voices shared in common cause. For those who have yet to be entranced by such beauty, caught in the choral clutches of grace to which you are a contributor, I pray one day you find it even as I have. We’ll have one more thing whose beauty grows more in the sharing.

The Gift of the Ordinary

On By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, liturgy, sacramental living, spiritual formation, worship3 Comments

Since graduating from Spring Arbor University two months ago my soul has been afflicted with a deep and annoying restlessness. I suppose one could chock it up to a famine of soul following a three-year feast – like standing alone in a banquet hall, glasses and plates strewn about hinting at that which had gone before but now lacking the music and the guests. Perhaps it hints at the profound relief from the constant and insistent requirements of completing assignments. Might it even be a spiritual acedia (the monastics called this the “noon-day demon;” a spiritual laissez faire) finally having its way with me after being held at bay for so long? Is it biological? Chemical? Indigestion?

Whatever it is I wish it would make a speedy exit from my interior life. It seems to me that happiness (however we define the term) and comfort, the very things I am so often grasping after are actually enemies to the spiritual fervor I crave. Apparently, I do best under adverse circumstances. Crap.

It is an interesting coincidence that the liturgical calendar places us in ‘ordinary time.’ What I both love and hate about that is the external imposition of a chronos in which to learn kairos. It is an outward reality giving us the framework in which to sow the seeds of grace toward our growth in salvation. To add further complexity, this has converged with our unnecessarily long summer schedule when routines are challenged and stretched beyond recognition.

I tend to fall apart in these periods. Faithfulness is sometimes most difficult when all is well and such faithfulness goes unnoticed one way or the other. When we have nothing to gain from faithfulness is the precise moment when it is most crucial. For me, now is that time.

There is mystery in the idea of ordinary time. While everything around us may show little or no daily change there emerges within us the slow, almost imperceptible greenery of spiritual life. There is nothing ordinary in the growth of living things. It is as miraculous as it is beautiful. It is also slow enough as to render moment-by-moment changes impossible yet mysterious enough that to look away for a single day is to miss the biological sweatshop that has invisibly produced a most magnificent result.

Something comes to mind as I reflect upon this. We gain little by staring at ourselves, craning our necks and squinting our eyes to see our own growth. Such endeavors inevitably result in discouragement or even cynicism. Keeping our eyes fixed on the long-term process of growth and marveling at it is that which yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness and with it, our most abiding joy. Someone once said that we’re always frustrated by how little we accomplish in a day and how much we accomplish in ten years. That is the gift of ordinary time. It forces our eyes up to the sky instead of buried in the soil. Sun in the eyes is always a better option than dirt up the nose.

Together on the journey, Rob

John the Baptizer, part 4: On the baptism of Jesus

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In the Bible, prophets (people who do what John does) proclaim and preach. They provoke and convict. They encourage and condemn. They cajole and comfort, all with whatever tools are given them for that task. It usually amounts to powerful words of exhortation to a people either hurting or hurting someone else. In Jeremiah’s case it meant a lot of rather unnecessarily embarrassing antics that included wearing loincloths, ox yokes, smashing clay pots. For Isaiah it meant walking around stripped and barefoot for three years. Ezekiel was instructed to lay on his side for over a year. In Ezekiel’s case it meant and chomping on a scroll that, although sweet to the taste, made his stomach turn and laying on his side for over a year. With Hosea it required marrying a prostitute, that one girl his parents refused to let into the yard. It promised him a life of knowing winks from the unrighteous and huffs from the self-righteous.

Yet, what was John’s weapon of choice? Baptism. What a strange way to reveal a person’s intentions. Only a God of utter mystery with a lot of secrets would conjure this up. Unlike other rites of passage like fancy handshakes, drinking a yard of ale or running with the bulls, baptism is hardly manly or even especially daring in and of itself. It is, however, anything but neat and tidy and forces dry, respectable people to become soggy, vulnerable ones. As a former Baptist, now Presbyterian, I have seen baptism from more than one angle and I can safely say that, regardless of dunk or sprinkle, lake or font, bathtub or teacup, baptism is an odd practice at best. It has that weird insiders only feel about it like those funny Shriner hats, holy underwear or cryptic Freemasons chant.

It is surprising to me just how clear a picture John had not only of his ministry but of Jesus’ ministry as well. John’s baptism was rather like the promissory note that hinted at the banquet to come. It was like the paper wedding invitation before the personal one from the bridegroom’s own lips or perhaps like the ticket to the concert yet to begin. Although John was rather more than mere ticket-taker, he was fully aware of his preparatory role in this strange unfolding of much anticipated but little understood events.

Imagine if you will the first chair violinist from the New York Philharmonic approaching Homer Simpson and asking him to restring his violin. Better yet, imagine the Pope asking you to offer the New Year’s Eve homily. If ever there were a time to feel both baffled and horrified it would be then. This must have been the case for John as the one he had spent his entire deprived life preparing to introduce; the Lord of heaven and earth approaches him, asking to be baptized.

For my part, I would be excitedly fumbling for my cell phone in my soaking wet camel hair dungarees in order to fire off the quickest mass text to my sure-to-be-impressed friends of my good fortune. Man, would this look good on a résumé and the guys at the office would have first round rights for some time to come.

But John was a well-formed, humble man who knew his place. This request made of him wasn’t flattering as much as it was shocking; puzzling at the very least. Jesus had just asked him, calmly, to do for him what John had just shouted at the Pharisees and others to do: “be baptized for the remission of sins” to the end that they “bring forth fruit worthy of repentance.” This was something others did in preparation for him and something not applicable or even sensible for Jesus to do.

But there it is. Jesus enters the water where John is standing, looks him square in the eyes and requests as much. In keeping with John’s character, he questions the request with a nervous quip about his own suitability. Jesus, always ready with an enigmatic, oft ambiguous, but always life changing statement, replies simply, “let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

I end here because, quite simply, to imagine for one minute that I could render up any better interpretation of Jesus’ remarks here than others far more educated and astute than I have done would be the height of pretense. Besides, it gives me something more to write at some other time.

Of life, love and bagpipes

On By robertalanrifeIn Words...always words2 Comments

I am a Highland Bagpipe player or piper in street talk. It is an instrument with which I have had a love-hate relationship for almost forty years now. For the longest time I wondered what might have gone through my parents’ minds when, at eight years of age, I loudly proclaimed my overweening desire to begin lessons immediately. That is, until I mused lately on the fact that both of my sons are rock drummers. I’m sure that bears at least some resemblance.

Perhaps not.

The Great Highland Bagpipe (GHB) as it is called by the musicology muck-a-mucks is an instrument uniquely designed to be heard. A perfect wake-the-dead alarm, they have been used for centuries to alert clans of forthcoming gatherings, oncoming battles and soon coming dignitaries. A piper on a hill is not just a cliché or quaint tourist post card. It does in fact typify much of bagpipe history. Moreover, as either clever tactic or cruel joke (depending upon whether one is a piper or not), the bagpipes were always the first line of defense in any conflagration. Apparently, troop commanders figured they could simultaneously amuse, entertain and confuse their enemy with a burly, red-haired, stumpy man in a dress, himself attacking the weapon of choice and tossing note after screaming note at them as a monkey flinging musical feces.

Like an octopus missing some legs the GHB consists of three drones – a bass and two tenors; a blowpipe through which ample air must pass into the bag acting as reservoir for this purpose, and a chanter that accommodates fingers eager to surprise the world with music both raunchy and wild, pristine and sweet. Heard under a best-case scenario in which all of the varied factors of its engineering converge successfully and wielded by someone with a modicum of experience lassoing them into submission, it is undoubtedly the most mystically beautiful thing I’ve yet heard. However, the usual encounter of the average passerby is a rather less than desirable auditory experience not unlike a grumpy orangutan humping an unsuspecting cat on the rush-hour freeway after a losing football game. That said, I confess such a description as that which I have yet to see.

Yet, it is what many might actually prefer when they hear this baffling instrument. It is, under any circumstances, an instrument that, like a crying baby on an airline, demands center stage. It is a sound that captured me even as a boy of seven years old. I well recall my first visceral experience with the bagpipe.

I grew up in a tiny bungalow in Calgary, Alberta the adopted son of a brewery worker and his house-wife, my mother. As I, along with my younger brother and sister, continued to grow, it became abundantly apparent that our consistent brushing of shoulders would only lead to inner-family disaster. My father set about building me a bedroom in our not-quite-finished basement. For some fifteen years to follow it would be my sanctuary – my monastery and the place where I found music, booze, girls (don’t mention that to my parents, they only know about the previous two) and ultimately salvation.

The spring before my eighth birthday I moved in. Kismet. I was also sick as a dog. My parents in true devoted fashion brought me hot soup, books (I’m a total nerd) and best of all, a TV to help wile away the hours spent in sniffly, coughing boredom. Changing channels one afternoon I happened upon a presentation of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, an annual display of pomp, circumstance, bright lights, booming cannons and bagpipes – lots of bagpipes. It is filmed live at Edinburgh Castle. From the very first sound I was hooked. I cried through the entire thing, later asking my parents if I could learn to do what I had just seen but thought I had dreamed.

A love affair had begun.

Still considering John the Baptizer (Matthew 3:1-20, pt. 3)

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Matthew 3:1-12, pt. 3

For a guy who had spent his entire life hanging out with nature’s ruffians – a life closely mirroring that of Grizzly Adams or Gollum of Lord of the Rings fame – John was surprisingly adept at political repartée. He had little to prove and even less to lose. He was barely dressed for one thing; hardly presentable as a suitable dinner guest. It did, however, allow him, deftly and with nimble turn of phrase, to jostle and joust with the religious muck-a-mucks in ways that would have had my mouth duly soap-scrubbed as a youngster!

One wonders if this is the reason why Jesus so often insists upon his followers’ disavowal of worldly wealth in favor of the relative mobility and freedom promised by possession of little. Unencumbered by the often unwelcome and burdensome responsibilities of consumptive living, Jesus’ disciples are then free to move in and out of places, conversations and situations requiring the touch of God. Then they, like John, can float easily into unknown territory rife with uncertainty and even danger in bringing the prophetic but healing message of the gospel. Then they, like John, can speak truth in love without fear of reprisal in the way of property loss, theft, or impounded vehicles. Then they, like John, can spend significantly less time and resources on appearance, entertainment, security or insurance.

John the Baptizer as he came to be known is best understood as our very first Desert Father. Before Abba Antony of Egypt was John of Judea. As the Jewish leadership walked the sharp edge of a knife wobbling between capitulating to Rome’s insidious charms, including her deadly Pax Romana, or throwing in their lot with Zealot revolutionaries, the spiritual malaise left in the wake made for thirsty, disillusioned souls. Many of these stood ripe and ready for the kind of radical removal from Roman rot John enfleshed. Say Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw of John: “He invited people from the centers of civilization to the desert, to the margins, to find God. All of Rome’s dreams were made irrelevant as he ate locusts and made his clothes from camel skin. And folks didn’t go to the desert simply to escape the world; they went to the desert to save the world” (Jesus for President, ©2008 by the Simple Way, pg. 78).

Rome: just another empire claiming a unique place in history – special, gifted, envisioned, blessed by “god” and triumphing over “evil.” To fall under her spell was only too easy given the awful alternatives. Many succumbed only to sell their souls to the prevailing militarized political reality that appeared sparkly and dizzyingly arrayed in the best the ancient world had to offer. She was the newest version of Babylon.

Hence, when John comes, preaching a bold message of repentance on the margins of the empire, its allure was complete. He spoke freely, unfettered by the weight of Roman economic detritus, inviting all who heard to come and take a dip with him in the Jordan. How mythical. How transcendent. How authentic. He offered a new way to think about life and how we live it together. “People went to the wilderness to get Rome out of them, purging themselves of empire and seeing the world stripped of the fabrications of civilization” (Jesus for President, pg. 78). Is it any wonder Herod was at once fascinated and fearful of one whose life of freedom from the fears of a warmongering empire preached so loudly to so many?

Matthew 3:13-17

John’s weapon of choice: Baptism. What a strange way to reveal a person’s intentions. Only a God of utter mystery with a lot of secrets would conjure this up. Anything but neat and tidy, baptism forces dry, respectable people to become soggy, vulnerable people. As a former Baptist, now Presbyterian, I have seen baptism from more than one angle and I can safely say that, regardless of dunk or sprinkle, lake or font, bathtub or teacup, baptism is an odd practice at best.

It is surprising to me just how clear a picture John had not only of his ministry but of Jesus’ ministry as well. John’s baptism was rather like the promissory note that hinted at the banquet to come. It was like the wedding invitation on paper before the personal invitation from the bridegroom’s own lips or perhaps like the ticket to the concert yet to begin. Although John was rather more than mere ticket-taker, he was fully aware of his preparatory role in this strange unfolding of much anticipated but little understood events…(wait for the final segment yet to come).

Of snakes and ladders: a lectio on Matthew 3:1-12, pt. 2

On By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, sacramental living, spiritual formation2 Comments

Matthew 3:1-12, pt. 2

As a boy growing up in the Canadian province of Alberta it was a common summer occurrence for me to visit my cousin, Lance, in the rattlesnake infested prairie city of Medicine Hat. The two things I readily recall about this place were the extreme summer heat and copious amounts of snakes and bugs. It had all the makings of a Texas panhandle, Canadian style. Sometimes Lance and I would spend all day snooping around in a local swamp for tiny frogs we would stuff into plastic bags and even our pockets to use as food for his sundry pet snakes.

Snakes make for hours of macabre afternoon fun for young boys. The other neighborhood kids thought us especially daring as they observed our coolly maniacal method of placing live (well, mostly) frog bait into the glass snake enclosure and watch the even more diabolical process of a bull snake swallowing them whole. The unsuspecting frog instantly became one with the body of the snake as it slowly ingested, without chewing of any kind, the poor little bugger. Lance told me that the snake could live for weeks on that one amphibious morsel.

Lance and I would take his twin Garter snakes, wrap them around the handlebars of our bikes and ride through the neighborhood hoping to attract praise for our daring and courage. However, for how cool this was, something snakes are not is a guarantee of fully comfortable parental units or girl-attractors. The latter would scatter at our approach with throaty screams of horror. The former, specifically Moms, were aghast to discover frog guts in the washing machine after running our pants, frogs still in the pockets, through the wash cycle.

With these pictures in mind I must admit to more than a modicum of surprise in John’s choice of descriptor for the religious leader looky-Lous as they came out to spy on the strange goings on surrounding this desert hermit. With precious little concern for their high position or mind-your-manners politeness my parents would have insisted upon, he barks at them, branding them a “brood of vipers.” Far from the rather mundane characteristics of a bull or garter snake, by comparison vipers are insidious creatures. They are remarkably fast and poisonous possessive of hollow fangs and a mouth that can open almost 180 degrees. They paralyze their victims with both of these advantages and then proceed to swallow them whole. They enjoy the further benefit of special eye-slits that allow them to see in any light and make them particularly ominous at any time of day. Finally, the term “viper” derives from a pair of Latin words, vivo for “I live” and pario, “I give birth.” Vipers do not lay eggs like most reptiles. They give birth to live babies. Delightful.

Hence, as John sees the approach of Pharisees and Sadducees among the unwitting crowd he accuses them of being those who quickly poison others around them with a brand of teaching designed to paralyze them, denying freedom and life, and which draws them to their ultimate, slow demise. They stalk at night, the time when people have their defenses down and are most vulnerable, pouncing with the full weight of their religious machinery and, without the protective mechanisms of time and deeper consideration, give birth to more like them.

Only someone as unencumbered by the comforts of civilized life, “normal” food, regular bathing, nice breath and otherwise polite appearance would dare to be so disrespectful of their authority as John. He had nothing to lose for he had nothing. As such he was free to reveal the darkly sinister reality of their voyeuristic presence among those hungry souls of simpler pedigree coming to be baptized, freed from the weight that bound them. John’s modus operandi was hardly “gaining friends and winning influence.” Yet, that is exactly what he did despite the lack of bleached white teeth and dress-for-success power tie.

John’s ministry wasn’t an end in itself. It was preparatory. Had the gospel message ended here we would have had simply another Old Testament style prophet who proclaimed a return to the Law and obedience to it. The message and the preparation would have been one and the same. No, John is arming us for something. He is pushing people into the murky Jordan for more than good fireplace mantle photo opportunities or a short-term conscience cleanse. John was in the repentance business. He had spent his entire life, withdrawn from polite society, preparing for this moment. He had nothing to lose, literally. He would let nothing stand in the way of his ministry; certainly not these do-gooder pretender-monkeys whose idea of religious life included dividing up mint, dill and cumin like lines of cocaine with at-the-ready noses in the air all the while flinging theological feces at each other and worse, at us.

I’ve watched snakes being snakes. Cousin Lance and I could say a thing or two about John’s indictments here…I think I get his point.