A Bloodless Bullfight -- FPC sermon excerpt

I almost lost my life to a bull.

Or, to be more accurate, a bull almost prevented me from having a life.

When my father was a boy, he and a friend were walking through a field outside of town. They came across a bull, and started to tease him.

Researchers say that the brains of boys don’t fully develop until age 25.

The bull began to chase them, and they ran for a fence. My father and his friend just made it through the fence before the bull was able to mow them down.

If my father had fallen, I might not be here.

When faced with that charging bull, my father had a classic “fight or flight reaction.” He chose to run, and his flight saved his life. But in other situations, we know that we want to fight. When confronted by an evildoer, we feel an intense desire to lash out, draw first blood, put the offender down. We want nothing more than to save ourselves, save our spouse, save our children, save our friends.

When the danger is more emotional than physical, I’d argue that the response is still the same — you want the offender to bleed. The guy who broke your heart. The boss who fired you. The woman who betrayed you.

Pow! First blood. Down they go.

This dance with danger has been going on for centuries in the bullrings of the Latin world. Bullfighting is a spectacle in which a picador on a horse begins the fight by spearing the bull’s neck, then bandilleros place darts in the bull’s back, and finally the matador enters the ring and uses his cape to dance with the bull before he kills it with a sword.

It’s not a sport. It’s a blood-soaked spectacle.

Fans say that “bullfighting is an intricate brush with death for both the bull and the bullfighter.” So writes Edward Lewine in Hemispheres Magazine (February 2010). It is a crucible that reveals the fearlessness of an animal and the bravery of a man.

Whether the bull gores the matador or the matador stabs the bull, one thing is certain: There will be blood.

Unless, of course, the event is a bloodless bullfight.

When I was in Las Vegas a year ago, a discovered a new attraction, one in which men face bulls without the spears, darts, and swords of traditional bullfighting. The natural fight or flight reaction is still present, as is the very real danger of a pair of horns on top of a thousand-pound bull. But there is no “death in the afternoon,” as Ernest Hemingway described it.

In place of stabbing the bull with a sword, the matador kills the bull symbolically, by hitting Velcro patches glued to the bull’s back.

Call it a kinder, gentler, brush with death.

No one knows if bloodless bullfighting has a future, but everyone sees it as a radical departure from the gory spectacle of the past. In much the same way, Jesus reinvented the blood sports of his day when he looked at the tradition of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and issued a new set of guidelines, “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile” (Matthew 5:38-41).

In a world accustomed to an eye for an eye, this is a whole new way of responding to attack. To the natural reactions of fight and flight, Jesus adds a third response: Love.

Yes, love. A truly courageous love.

Free to Fall -- FPC sermon excerpt

Why was Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords shot in the head last month?

"Maybe it was fate.” That’s what her husband Mark Kelly said at the recent National Prayer Breakfast. He thinks that the tragedy may have happened for a reason, and he hopes that some good will come out of it.

But exactly what is fate? People talk about it, but are not always very clear about it. If you believe in fate, you believe that supernatural powers determine the events of the world. You accept that you have no real choices to make in life. You live according to your destiny, and then you die.

It’s no surprise that “fate” is the root of the words “fatalism” and “fatality.”

Next month, a movie about fate will be coming out. Called “The Adjustment Bureau,” it raises some fascinating questions about the limits of human freedom. “Life is a series of events,” says the movie trailer. “All happened according to plan …. Their plan.”

Whose plan, you might ask?

The Adjustment Bureau’s.

Matt Damon plays a candidate for the Senate from New York, who has a chance meeting with Emily Blunt, which sparks a romance. This is not what is supposed to happen in his life, however, and suddenly a group of mysterious men from The Adjustment Bureau step in to put him back on track. Damon rejects them, and he and Blunt begin to run for their lives.

“We are the people who make sure things happen according to plan,” says one of the members of The Adjustment Bureau. “We monitor the entire world.” These master manipulators show Damon a book with the plan for his life, and tell him that they are determined to use their considerable power to keep him on track.

“You can’t outrun your fate,” says another one to Damon.

Or can you?

The film raises questions of how much freedom we have, and whether or not there are unseen forces controlling and manipulating our lives.

Similar questions are raised by the second and third chapters of the Book of Genesis, in the story of the garden of Eden. “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it,” says Genesis. “And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die’” (2:15-17).

One the one hand, God appears to be like a member of The Adjustment Bureau in his placing of the man in the garden. God is a supernatural force, exerting control over the first human being.

But on the other hand, God gives the man considerable freedom, saying that he may “freely eat of every tree of the garden” … except one. The man can make a range of choices about what he will eat within the lush and fruitful abundance of the garden. Only one tree is off limits: “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” That tree will lead to death for the man. But even though it is prohibited to him, he is given the power to choose it.

The man is free to fall.

God of the Snowflakes -- FPC sermon excerpt

Wilson Alwyn Bentley was flaky.

But not in a bad way.

He lived in Vermont, and was fascinated by snow. Loving it so much, he found a way to put snowflakes on black velvet and photograph them, testing the belief that no two are exactly the same. He photographed and published over 5,000 individual snowflakes, and you can see his work today at the Bentley Snow Crystal Collection of the Buffalo Museum of Science.

Because of his obsession, Bentley was given a nickname — “Snowflake.”

No surprise there.

Bentley examined snowflakes under a microscope and discovered that they were all miracles of beauty. “Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated,” he wrote. “When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.”

Looking at the Bentley Snow Crystal Collection, an observer named Morgan Meis found that he was especially fond of snowflake number 892. Roughly stellar in category, this one is a bit irregular — its top left arm does not have a cap like the other five.

Irregular, but beautiful.

I don’t think that Wilson Alwyn Bentley is the only person who should be given the nickname “Snowflake” — we all should. Each of us is a miracle of beauty, a masterpiece of design, and no one design is ever repeated. Are we irregular? Of course! I am, and you are, too. All kinds of irregularities — mental, emotional, spiritual, physical. Just look at my face! We are irregular human beings but are still miracles of beauty, shaped in utter uniqueness by a loving and creative Creator.

Our Lord is the God of the snowflakes.

Psalm 27 begins with the words, “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (v. 1). If we are, in fact, God’s snowflakes — precious, unique, and transient — then we need a Lord to save us and act as a stronghold for us. Otherwise, we are going to melt, disappear, and be lost forever.