“Ok, everybody, I want to meet you in the living room for a conference immediately!” I stomped into the house huffing and in a rage.
“We are in here already dear, in the living room. Why don’t you just take your boots off and come in?” Linda said.
“I am just so ticked off at you guys,” I said as I stripped my boots off and stormed into the living room. Everybody was assembled there. “Everybody” consisted of wife Linda, grandson Jacob and dog Addy. They all looked at me quizzically and somewhat strangely, expressions I am used to seeing on my family’s faces as they look at me.
“My goodness dear, you do look an awful mess. Please don’t sit on anything and I think you should leave as soon as possible,” said Linda.
“Who took Addy for her walk this morning?” I demanded.
“Gee, I did, Grandpa,” said Jacob.
“Did she do her business off our lot and down the road like she is supposed to?” I said, getting fully into my role as interrogator.
“Yes, I think so, Grandpa,” replied Jacob.
“You think so, or you know so? Did you see her?” I was fuming and walking around in ever decreasing circles.
“Oh for crying out loud, give the boy a break,” said Linda. “What do you expect, pictures?”
“No, I expect everyone around here to do their job,” I said. “That’s all I expect. Is it asking to much?”
“Whatever has got you in such a temper dear?” asked Linda. “And how did you ever get like that?” She was pointing at me and her Norwegian blue eyes were beginning to crinkle at the edges.
“Well, I was weed – whacking down by the lake with my brand new Stihl weed whacker, really going to town with all that amazing new power. I decided to extend the yard a bit by weed – whacking some of the long grass on the lakeshore. Unbeknownst to me, hidden nicely in the two – foot – high grass, Addy had laid one of her best specimens, a mounded up hot steamer like I have seldom seen. I weed whacked the top half of it right off and before I could do anything about it, the weed whacker took the pile of doggy – do and whirled it all over the place; all over my brand new weed whacker and all over me. That mound of fresh poop literally exploded. I have doggy – do in my ears, in my hair, all over my glasses; look, I even got a bunch of the stuff in my mouth.” I stuck out my brown – tinged tongue for effect.
“My goodness dear, as hard as it is for a preacher, you really ought to learn to work with your mouth shut.”
Linda was laughing out loud now, she and Jacob both. I am not sure, but I swear Addy was wearing a Labrador grin. What could I do? I stormed outside, ripped off my clothes and left them in a stinking pile on the deck and stormed back through the mirth – filled living room into the bathroom. I still don’t see the humour.
I may not see the humour, but I am not a total shmoo. I have learned the lesson from Dogpatch. The lesson is that it’s all about perspective. From where Linda and Jacob sat (quite possibly Addy, too, but I will give her the benefit of the doubt), to see the one who likes to consider himself the king of the cave covered in canine crap caused by his own carelessness could be considered comical. From my perspective, not so much.
Perspective is incredibly important, especially in reading the Bible. A good example of this is in reading the parables of Jesus. Take for example Jesus’ parable: “Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast” (Luke 5:34 – 35, NIV).
To me, read from my perspective as a disciple of Jesus living after the ascension, this seems like such a heavy and depressing allegorical teaching leading to a heavy and depressing kind of religion. But that’s the wrong perspective. The parable is told in the middle of a party at the tax collector Levi’s house. The super religious Pharisees who are grumbling around the door are questioning why Jesus is even there. The disciples at the party with Jesus are probably wondering why they are there as well. Surely they ought to be fasting and praying instead? To which Jesus offers a verbal cartoon. It’s meant to be a ridiculously funny corrective.
Can’t you just picture it? Everyone at a Jewish wedding is feasting with celebration for a whole week while the bride and bridegroom are still there. And suddenly there is this guy running around the tables of food and wine and happy faces saying, “No no; no food; no party; put it all away; it’s fast time; everybody fast and pray.”
From a first – century Jewish perspective, you wouldn’t fast at a wedding when the bridegroom is still with you any more than you would party at his funeral. When the bridegroom has left with his bride at the end of the week, then fasting and praying could be appropriate. Regarding fasting and praying as it applies to your faith, at least get the timing right.
Please be clear, and this is the main picture in the cartoon parable, in the face of the austere, legalistic, penitential, serious old – time religion of the Pharisees, Jesus comes to bring a new thing, a new kind of faith practice, one where celebration with joy is just as religiously correct as fasting with prayer. The new thing, this faith of Jesus, is a celebratory faith or as Tony Campolo so crassly puts it, “the kingdom of God is a party.”
A world that is filled with so much sadness and mourning and seriousness and heaviness needs to hear this. A world that has pressed upon it so many religious expressions, many disguising themselves as Christian, that are filled with austere, legalistic, penitential, excluding kinds of practices needs to hear about a faith that is inclusive and grounded upon celebrating something.
