Relevant Magazine

I discovered a magazine that I'm sure many of you are already familiar with, It's called Relevant. The sub-title is - God. Life. Progressive Culture. I've been checking them out at the library recently when the musical artist on the front cover strikes my interest. They've had The Kings of Leon, Wilco, and Jack White on the front just to name a few. I dig it so much because I'm into that music, but when I start reading the articles they are just so, well..... relevant. Its also nice to flip through a magazine and not see scantly-clothed women right next to the article I'm trying to enjoy. I could ramble on about the magazine for days but instead I'll leave you with something that knocked me on my rear-end. Here's the link... Gluttony

If you wish to finish the article I'm going to type the rest out. That link only has the first half (I'm sure for copyright issues) so here is the rest.

* Again, the following is the remainder of the article that can be read by clicking the Gluttony link above.

Fragrance
Every building associated with my wedding has been gutted or leveled. The church where we were married is now a daycare. The city removed our reception hall and built an ice rink in its place. The university we attended bought my wife's home and made it a parking lot. Everything about our world that day has been torn down and replaced with something else. It's a telling picture of what happens in marriage. When we marry, we enter a new life. Our old life was meaningful and valuable, but it gets taken apart and united with another. The two truly do become one. My moods become her moods, my dreams become her dreams, my keys become her keys. Marriage is a total union. When we unite with our beloved, we become something fundamentally different.

The Scriptures use marriage as a picture of our relationship to God. Jesus referred to himself as a bridegroom, and His ministry is likened to a wedding feast filled with new wine, where no one fasts. One of the Bible's last images is of a wedding where the faithful have made themselves ready and are united to God forever in the age to come.

When Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is at hand, we should read this as, "The wedding has commenced." Empty humanity is being fundamentally reconnected with God. People from all over the world are entering the chapel halls, and all four Gospel writers tell a similar story to show what the wedding looks like.

Three days before Jesus' death, a young woman named Mary pulled our her only treasure and broke it at his feet. The jar filled with very expensive perfume had been her mother's. It was the last thing she had to remember her by. It may have been her grandmother's, perhaps even her great-grandmother's. The jar was her ancestry, and she had probably hoped to give it to a daughter of her own.

More than anything else, the jar was her future. It held the precious perfume, representing Mary's ability to gain a husband. Without the jar, she would have to live with her brother for the rest of her years. Without it, she would become an object of mockery at gatherings. Her lack of a husband would ring loudly in her mind as she entered the synagogue or observed celebrations and holidays alone. Without the jar and its contents, no one would see her as beautiful. No one would desire her. We might say that in the jar were Mary's identity, her status and all her hopes of being united to a good man.

The house was full when Mary entered. Her brother Lazarus, was reclining at the table with Jesus. The disciples sat with one another, excited about the festival and the impending revolution. Mary approached Jesus, and as she looked into His eyes, she broke the jar, pouring the precious perfume over his head. The party hushed as the room filled with the exquisite fragrance. Mary then let down her hair - shaming herself, her brother and her family - and began wiping Jesus' feet with the oils. Everyone watched. No one approved.

One man spoke for all, calling the act a waste. But Jesus silenced them. "Leave her alone. She has done a beautiful thing to me. She has prepared my body for burial." His words pierced the gathering - not because of the rebuke but because everyone believed Jesus would soon take the throne of Israel.

But Mary seemed to know what everyone else did not. The man who had done so much for her would soon die, and her knowledge made the gift even more profound. By breaking the jar, Mary wrote our her future as one consisting of a life of poverty, scorn, and loneliness. She chose to die for the sake of the soon-to-be-dead man before her. But the jar, which represented her future union with a good man, fulfilled its true purpose. In dying to herself, Mary was united to Christ.

Christ means "anointed one," and it was in this act of total self-giving love that the anointing took place. Mary's anointing of Jesus was not done by mere holy oils; the anointing of Jesus was done with an object fully representing the whole life of one who loved Jesus

The picture is one of Jesus and His church. This picture is one of the life of heaven - humanity united to God.

When Jesus said, "Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," this is the image He had in mind. Whereas the gluttonous unite themselves to what will ultimately kill them, the persecuted, having been united to Christ, give up even what they need for the sake of their beloved. Those who are persecuted are blessed with union with God for they experience the hardship of a lover.



Eden was union with god, but Adam and Eve sought divorce. Through the cross, Jesus restored Eden's beauty and initiated anew proposal to everyone to be wed again.

Pride longs for applause, but gluttony needs to be a diva. Envy covets what other have, but gluttony counts every insignificant detail. It is not enough to be slothful; gluttony abandons virtue in excess. Gluttony is salt when the greedy taste their spoils. One million dollars isn't enough; it must be 10 million. Five-year-old wine isn't good enough; it must be 15 years old. Lust wants another woman; gluttony wants them all. Wrath wants revenge; gluttony wants the infliction of it to be creatively painful. At its most demonic, gluttony amplifies the other sins, enhancing their self-destructive power.

The question of gluttony and the persecuted is a question of marriage. What am I united to? What will I give everything for? The glutton's answer comes through addictive behaviors. Though we may say our first love is for God or for a set of human beings, our actions tell the real story. The glutton sells her soul for another hit, another car, another round of trivial pleasures, a forbidden fruit. The persecuted, on the other hand, gives even what she needs for the sake of her lover.

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul ends his brilliant painting of love with this: "For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith , hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love" (TNIV).

The love Paul described is the love shared between Jesus and his church.

We live in the time of trials, where we may be and often are forsaken by those we care about. We may loose friends and what we need for the sake of Jesus, but we also hear a distantly familiar voice: Do you believe? Do you commit? Do you unite? And soon, like the blind who see the face of their beloved for the first time, we will enter life where we are united with God forever.

-Jeff Cook is the author of Seven: The Deadly Sins of the Beatitudes
He teaches philosophy at the University of Northern Colorado

I'll follow up in a later blog about the impact the article the had on me and maybe I'll hear a little bit from some of you out there... in blog reader world - or something like that.

-Trey