Luke 1

My favorite part of all the parts of the Christmas stories in the bible...

These two couldn't have been any different if they had tried. Though related by marriage, you’d think that Mary and Zechariah have little use for each other.

Zechariah, the priest, is an important man in the political and religious life of his people.

Mary is “poor relation,” a simple, back water cousin who’s enchanted with Zechariah’s wife and the trappings of the big city, who celebrates her cousin’s good fortune and tolerates the “airs” Zechariah seems to emit everywhere he goes.

It seems as if Mary and Zechariah are night and day, oil and water, fire and ice.

She’s poor; he’s wealthy.

She’s so very young; he’s very old (“getting on in years” is Luke’s gentle way of talking about it).

She’s an insignificant, undervalued girl (females weren’t on top of many social heaps there and then); he’s a high-profile, public arena guy who, at least in his own mind and the minds of his close friends, is quite indispensable.

They’re as different as different could be – still, in the story that Luke tells, they are there when the curtain comes up on the drama of the incarnation of God’s love in time in the person of God’s long Promised One.

Look at how differently they respond to the messages that come to them from God. Prominent, religious, important Zechariah hesitates, stumbles, argues, cajoles – he doubts and questions the wisdom and the purpose of God, to say nothing of his uneasiness, fear, and sense of impropriety at the notion that he and his long-barren Elizabeth could be parents at the same time they are approaching their dotage. Never mind the great things Gabriel says their new boy has in store. Never mind the mind and will of God that transcends history and moves in ways too marvelous for our minds to always comprehend. Never mind that for Elizabeth, at least in cultural terms, a child will be a blessing, for barren women are even less valued than young virginal ones in those ridiculous times. Never mind how anyone else would benefit from this great gift of a son. All that matters to Zechariah is that his life of importance and comfort will be disrupted. Old Zechariah just doesn’t think it’s fair that he’s going to be burdened with this gift of God’s Providence. “How shall I know this?” he demands of his messenger, who then strikes Zechariah dumb, as if to say, “if a priest (of all people) can’t be open to the message of God for all people, then maybe he ought not speak!” Unless Zechariah can come to grips with the reality of God’s goodness, God’s graciousness, Zechariah will never utter another word. So here’s old Zechariah, too caught up with himself and his importance and his comfort and the way things are and been able to believe that God is ready with a song of good news of great joy for all the people. Poor, ancient, dumb-struck holy man Zechariah, condemned to silence for his inability and unwillingness to see past what has always been.

Later, same chapter, same angel, pretty similar message, different recipient. Gabriel tells Mary she’s pregnant, and after a brief moment of confusion because this announced pregnancy doesn’t happen the way pregnancies happen, Mary does not resist the angel’s message; instead of fighting it, she simply offers her self : “Here am I, the servant of the Lord: let it be with me according to your word.” Mary, with nothing to tie her down, no conflicting investments of money, time, or prestige, responds in way that seems unimaginable for an unwed mother in her time and place.

A glorious thing happens when Mary offers her self, and the baby in Elizabeth’s womb jumps for joy – Mary sings a song. (Get it? Recalcitrant, resistive, stubborn Zechariah is struck dumb – open, welcoming, embracing Mary sings.) In the face of what most would call a bleak condition, in the apparent poverty of her life, in the hustled, harried confusion of her recent past, Mary embraces God’s gift and sings a song of praise. In the midst of all that seems to be wrong with life and with the world, Mary sings a song praising God for what will happen to her. Mary sings a new song of good news of great joy, and Zechariah sits dumb-struck in the temple.

Without a whole lot of reflection at first blush, if asked who we were most like, Mary or Zechariah, we would likely say “Mary” because that is who we would rather be – open and receptive to the good news, ready to embrace how God’s working among us and to leap and sing for joy. But I think that you and I know that you and I are mostly more like Zechariah, dumb-struck at the risky, blind leaps of faith to which God calls us every day of our lives. And that’s too bad, because there is so much we miss, sitting alone in the dark, dumb struck.

But this part of the story doesn't end there. The time comes for Zechariah’s son to be born, and he is. On the 8^th day of his little life, when the rite of circumcision is to be performed and child is to be named, people in Zechariah’s family get all exercised because Elizabeth doesn’t want to use the old family name. She insists that her son be given a new name – like when Sarah, the old barren wife of father Abraham named her son “laughter (“Yitzak,” “Isaac”) because she had laughed at the prospect of giving birth at her advanced age. Or like with Hannah, the old, barren woman who gave birth to the first great prophet, named her son “listen to God” (“Shem uel” , “Samuel”) because listening to God is a prophet’s primary job. Elizabeth, the old, barren woman who gives them this gift of a son, insists that her boy be named “God is gracious” (“John”). The argument rages until somehow Zechariah gets someone to hand him a writing tablet, on which, from his silence, his nine-month exile from the realm of talking, Zechariah affirms what God wanted him to affirm from the beginning. He scribbles “His name is ‘John,’” following orders to be sure, but also as if to say “the son born to me in my old age is a gracious gift from a gracious God.”

And then another marvelous thing happens; at that moment, Zechariah’s tongue is freed, and that first thing that comes out of his mouth is (you guessed it!) a song reminiscent of the song of Elizabeth’s young cousin. Mary sings the Magnificat, and Zechariah sings a Benedictus. So the one who took the blind lead of faith and the one who was frightened speechless of the jump both begin the story by singing songs of good news of great joy for all the people.

Just like the angels do only 9 verses later.

Reminder...

We will not meet on the 4th Tuesday in December (December 22nd), but will meet in January on Tuesday, January 26th at 6:30 PM in Room 1

Borrowed Air -- For Thanksgiving

In preparation for Thanksgiving a week from today, I have Thomas Troeger's homage to the old hymnThis is My Father's World running through my head. In his poem, Troeger, who is the J. Edward and Ruth Cox Lantz Professor of Christian Communication at Yale Divinity School and an ordained clergy person in both the Presbyterian and Episcopal Churches, centers of the "nature" theme of Maltbie Babcock's poem (the guy who wrote This Is My Father's World), while at the same time recalling James 1:17, a pretty perfect text, as far as I'm concerned, for Thanksgiving: "Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of light."

Try this:

Sing a verse of This is My Father's World in your head (or out loud if you want!), and then sing Troeger's poem Borrowed Air" to the same melody, and see if it doesn't evoke something more than turkey and football (both good things!) for this Thanksgiving.

This is my Father's world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres
This is my Father's world, I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees and skies and seas, His hands the wonders wrought.

Each breath is borrowed air, not ours to keep and own;
And all our breaths as one declare what wisdom long has known.
To live is to receive and answer back with praise
To what our minds cannot conceive, the Source of all our days.

The sea flows in our veins, the dust of stars is spun
To form the coiled encoded skeins by which our cells are run.
To live is to receive and answer back with praise
To what our minds cannot conceive, the Source of all our days.

From earth and sea and dust arise yet greater things,
The wonders born of love and trust, a grateful heart that sings.
To live is to receive and answer back with praise
To what our minds cannot conceive, the Source of all our days.

And when our death draws near and tries to dim our song,
Our parting prayers will make it clear to whom we still belong.
To live is to receive and answer back with praise
To what our minds cannot conceive, the Source of all our days

(Borrowed Air (C) 2002, Oxford University Press)

From a Different Angle

Delwin Brown is dean emeritus of Pacific School of Religion and former professor of Christian Theology at Iliff School of Theology. A Methodist layperson and the author of many books and articles, Brown published What Does a Progressive Christian Believe? just last year. In a chapter that deals with evil and suffering that he titles "Sin: Failing and Hiding" Brown summarizes the discussion with these bullet points:

• Modern discussions of sin have not been very useful. Sin-talk has been anti-world, anti-sex, anti-female, anti-pleasure, and opposed to equality and self-affirmation, just to mention a few of its drawbacks.

• In classical Christian theology, sin takes two forms, pride and sensuality. Already our hackles are raised! We are all very supportive of pride, and why should anyone think sensuality is a sin?

• By "pride" the tradition meant excessive self-regard in relation to others, assuming for oneself more than that which one is entitled. ""Sensuality" meant the opposite failure, thinking of oneself less highly than one ought to think.

• Viewed in terms of the two great commandments, sin is loving too much or loving too little any part of the inter-connected web of life, from God to all of those whom God loves and in whom God is incarnate.

• The more insightful Christian traditions ask, "Why is our failure to love as we ought so persistent and pervasive?" The answer it gives has to do with self-deceptions, hiding the truth from ourselves.

• Sin is not simply the failure to love properly. It is that failure, accompanied by the pretense that we have loved as we should. We hide our failure, even from ourselves!

• The doctrine of "original sin" is not a denial of human goodness, and it is not about sex. It is about layers of evil -- racism, sexism, consumerism, egotism, etc. --structured into our existence. We begin our lives in the midst of these.

• Christian tradition "suspects" that we rather happily acquiesce to the evil structures in which we find ourselves. Our failings build into unjust and self-serving structures....and we find them to be quite comfortable!

from Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe? A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious (New York: Seabury Books, 2008).

Evil, Suffering, and A Loving God

The theme of our November conversation will be one about these irreconcilable things that people of faith struggle with all the time. For me, there is no one who has addressed the dilemma more clearly (even if he offers absolutely no satisfactory answer) than Frederick Buechner. From his little book Wishful Thinking:

God is all powerful.
God is all good.
Terrible things happen

You can reconcile any two of these propositions with each other, but you can’t reconcile all three. The problem of evil is perhaps the greatest single problem for religious faith.

There are numerous theological and philosophical attempts to solve it, but when it comes down to the reality of evil itself, they are none of them worth very much. When a child is raped and tortured, the parents are not apt to take much comfort from the explanation (better than most) that since God wants us to love him, we must be free to love and thus to rape and murder a child if we take a notion to.

Christian Science solves the problem of evil by saying that it does not exist except as an illusion of mortal mind. Buddhism solves in terms of reincarnation and an inexorable law of cause and effect whereby the raped child is merely reaping the consequences of evil deeds it committed in another life.

Christianity, on the other hand, ultimately offers no theoretical solution at all. It merely points to the cross and says that, practically speaking, there is no evil so dark and so obscene – not even this – but that God can turn it to good.

The Power of Intention

From two popular thinkers/writers...

First. psychologist/spiritual director/NPR-pledge-time-television host Wayne Dyer talks about “the power of intention,” defining intention as something that emanates from God, something that more traditional theology calls “the will of God.”

Second, Peruvian Carlos Castaneda, in the voice of his fictional Yaqui shaman Don Juan, writes:

In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which the shamans call intent[ion], and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to inten[ion] by a connecting link.

I wonder if it is safe for us to assume that we are living a life in consonance, in sync, with “intention” when we find ourselves embracing and visualizing creativity and kindness and love and beauty and growth and plenty and openness to newness.

If that’s the case, then “sin” might well be described as being “closed off,” separated, quarantined, and isolated from creativity and kindness and love and beauty and growth and plenty and openness to newness, reminiscent of how Martin Luther described the essence of sin: "das Herz drehte ganz sich innen auf sich” – "the heart all curved in on itself.”.

Rather than looking at faithfulness as following a list of inviolable rules, the suggestion is that a life that follows Jesus not because it has to but because it wants to will be one that turns its attention and its intention, away from itself and toward others. That life will be the life that is most rewarding and most “in rhythm” with the “intention,” or the “will” of God.

It seems to me that so much of the stories of Jesus in the Gospels are all about two affirmations about the “power of intention” that are peculiar to Jesus and his followers. The first is that even though Jesus, and if Jesus, then God, forgives us and loves us, Jesus, and if Jesus, God, has very lofty expectations for those of us who want to follow him. One of those lofty expectations is that we will live not solely or even primarily for our own good, but also and most of all for others. Another is that, even though Jesus, and if Jesus, then God, forgives us and loves us, Jesus, and if Jesus, then God, holds us accountable, and that there are consequences for our behavior.

But maybe not at all like Dante’s Inferno or eternal punishment or anything of the sort, but consequences here and now. The consequences of being “all turned in on ourselves,” and away from “the power of intention,” – our callousness toward the needs of others, our insensitivity to the most vulnerable among us, our automatic embrace of officially sanctioned violence as the best tool for solving disputes among groups of people, tribes, nations, our inability to let go of “the fears that long have bound us,” our continuing insistence that there are different “kinds” of people and some are better and some are worse and some are loved more by God and some are despised – all of that is its own punishment. The bottom line is that when we insist on being “all turned in ourselves” it is impossible for us to approach what God intends for us. Turned inward, toward isolation, our lives are diminished, our relationship with God becomes nostalgic and imaginary and non-existent, and we deny the unity that the power of intention assumes.

God and Dog, by Wendy Francisco

Think Luke 15.

Oh, go ahead, look it up, and read those three parables, especially the last one.

No, no one is saying that God is a dog (go to http://www.godanddog.org/ and look in the left hand frame for the link "The thought behind the God and dog lyrics). It's just another parable. And while it's not likely to be a staple of some divinity school curriculum, I like it any way, particularly the lines:

"They would stay with me all day, I'm the one who walks away.
But both of them just wait for me, And dance at my return with glee."

and

"And in my human frailty, I can't match their love for me."

Agape, Jesus, and Church

It is pretty clear, at least to me. that Jesus never imagines anything that resembles at all what today we call “church.” Except for three quick “bleeps,” Jesus never even says “church,” and when he does, he probably only means something like “your neighbors.” That’s what the Greek word the New Testament uses for “church,” “ecclesia,” means when it shows up in places other than the New Testament, and it shows up in the Gospels only in Matthew when Jesus tells Peter that he’s the “Rock” on which he’ll build his “ecclesia” and when Jesus tells his followers that when there’s a dispute among them to take it to the “ecclesia.”

But Jesus in the Gospels says nothing about church. No institutional guidebook. No “best practices” handbook. Nothing about structure or discipline or clergy or lay or fund-raising or ministry or pastoral care or youth or outreach or denominations. Jesus never files an annual report, officiates at a funeral, performs a wedding, makes a hospital visit, intuitively responds to some unreported need, or brings covered dishes for a potluck. Jesus never envisions a Sunday School, a Woman’s Fellowship, a church bowling league, a church choir, a capital fund drive, or an entire academic discipline called “church architecture.” Jesus never sits on a committee, creates a budget, fills out a pledge card, or leads a stewardship drive.

In the Gospels Jesus tells us nothing at all about “church,” and people struggling to be faithful to what Jesus teaches need to lighten up a little bit about our notions that we are most closely in line with God’s plan for church. The truth is that we people struggling to be faithful to what Jesus teaches have been making this whole church thing up out of whole cloth ever since the first Monday after the first Easter.

Except for one thing. Though Jesus tells us nothing about church, Jesus models a faithful life of agape, a life that always finds itself giving itself away. Jesus invites his disciples and all within earshot and, across the ages, he invites you and me to join him in living this agape life. What Jesus imagines and models is an agape community, gathered not so much to meet its own needs, but to find ever more creative ways to give it self, to give ourselves, away.

And that’s it. That’s all Jesus gives us about church. No rules, guidelines or “if you’re going to be a church, then you’re going to have to do thus and so.” Just the imagination and modeling of an agape life, of a community formed so that it can gratefully give itself away.

Is God Love?

Spoiler alert! The Gospel text for this Sunday is the story of the rich young man who comes to Jesus asking what he needs for eternal life. Before Jesus delivers the punchline that is clearly both truthful and at the same time emotionally devastating to the young man, Mark says this simple, and simply profound, thing about Jesus: "Jesus, looking at him, loved him."

Near the end of his fascinating survey titled The Evolution of God, Robert Wright talks about the nature of this love, and suggests a simple mental exercise when trying to answer the question "Is God Love?

Love, you might say is, is the apotheosis of the moral imagination; it can foster the most intimate identification with the other, the most intense appreciation of the moral worth of the other.

Sometimes love, in the course of leading to this moral truth, fosters more mundane truths. Suppose you are a parent and you (a) watch someone else's toddler misbehave, and then (b) watch your own toddler do the same. Your predicted reactions, respectively, are (a) "what a brat!" and (b) "That's what happens when she skips her nap." Now (b) is often a correct explanation whereas (a) -- the "brat reaction -- isn't even an explanation. So, in this case, love leads toward truth. So too when a parent sees her child show off and concludes that the grandstanding is grounded in insecurity....Love at its best brings a truer apprehension of the other, an empathetic understanding that converges on the moral truth of respect, even reverence, for the other...

Though we can no more conceive of God than we can conceive of an electron, believers can ascribe properties to God, somewhat at physicists ascribe properties to electrons. One of the more plausible such properties is love. And maybe, in this light, the argument for God is strengthened by love's organic association with truth -- by the fact, indeed that at times these two properties almost blend into one. You might say that love and truth are two primary manifestations of divinity in which we can partake, and that by partaking in them we become truer manifestations of the divine.

Then again, you might not say that. The point is that you wouldn't have to be crazy to say it.
(from Robert Wright, The Evolution of God, 2009)

Restoring Relationships Requires Relinquishing Righteous Rigidity

Over and over and over again in the Gospels Jesus hints, cajoles, teases, lectures, and otherwise encourages his followers to grasp one simple, but simply confounding basic premise:

to be able to love we have to have a sense of being forgiven.

In order for me to accept you as you are, I need to realize that God accepts me in my imperfection and brokenness. When we are so rigid about our perceptions of righteousness, no matter how in tune those perceptions may be with our covenantal history as Christians, we are quite unlikely to believe that God is anymore tolerant of us than we are of others. The most common misreading of Jesus has always been a misreading of God’s love as something that is earned by rigidly righteous behavior; the irony is that Jesus spends his entire ministry among us telling us that God’s love is poured out in spite of and because of our propensity for imperfection and brokenness, and not as “compensation” for “correct living.”

To be even more blunt about it, it may just be that those of us who are so rigid about our righteousness are simply deceiving ourselves; psychoanalysts will contend that rigidity comes not from an inability to deal with the “deviant” behavior of others, but from a refusal to recognize that even the most righteous among us harbor thoughts and fantasies that we would never admit to because they are so unrighteous.

The nagging sense of urgency we feel about some things in our lives has been explained, confronted, analyzed, dissected, overhauled, bemoaned, and celebrated, but it has never left us. Even the most arrogant among us are accompanied by a sense of dread that has been called insecurity, or a lack of sense of self-worth, or a fear or death, or the immaturity or fallenness of humanity, and no amount of psychotherapy or Tony Robbins or Dale Carnegie or “correct theology” or libraries full of self-help books seems able to shake it. So we become rigid about our righteousness, effectively denying to ourselves and anybody else that we are, too, are broken and in need of repair. We find all that hard to admit, so we find it difficult to believe that others whose are seem less concerned than we about the correctness of things deserve forgiveness.

We talk about this a lot with one another. Jesus' focus on forgiveness is not primarily about the person being forgiven, but for the one doing the forgiving. About whom do you carry that ancient anger? What ancient hurt do you carry around, do you revisit on at least a daily basis? What great things could you do with all the emotional and spiritual and physical energy you have invested in nurturing those angers and hurts? What if you and I would think of those great things instead of worrying about whether or not we let someone off the hook? Jesus' focus on forgiveness is not primarily about the person being forgiven, but for the one doing the forgiving.

So it kind of follows that when we are so rigid about our righteousness that we cannot be open to the notion that God forgives broken ones, even broken ones like us, we are also unable to share God’s love in any meaningful way. Though we may do all the “righteous things” connected with what loving people “ought” to do, we’ll still be utterly incapable of understanding a love that gives itself away.

And if we don't get our imaginations wrapped around the idea that we are indeed forgiven, and therefore can't get past our own notions of righteous rigidity, we often find ourselves unwilling to forgive, unwilling to be forgiven, wondering how all those others got all the goodies of life, and how we’ve been left standing with nothing more than our uneasy smugness.

On Seeking Security Rather Than Truth

In his weekly, free, e-mail question and answer post, John Shelby Spong responds to a lengthy question from a man from Norway, that wonders why the church, and especially clergy types in the church, are often so resistant to new insights and ideas. Among the things Bishop Spong says (the emphases are mine:

"We need to understand the role organized religion plays in the lives of most people. It is part of the human security system. Most people seek security, not truth, in their religious pilgrimage. The trouble with security is that it never lasts. In the words of the poet James Russell Lowell, "Time makes ancient good uncouth." Yet we continue to make idols out of yesterday's consensus. This is true in science, as Niels Bohr discovered when Albert Einstein could not embrace quantum weirdness. It is true in politics and was quite visible when both the Roosevelt revolution on the left and the Reagan revolution on the right disturbed the status quo. It is also true in religion when we constantly define religious truth as unchanging, infallible, inerrant or external. It is the nature of self-conscious human life to be insecure. Religion, when it seeks security or peace of mind, is actually violating our humanity. So religion and religious leaders will always be conservative, resistant to change and highly critical of those who have new insights or who walk to the beat of a different drummer.


As we mentioned in previous posts, Bishop Spong publishes a free weekly e-mail newsletter, as well as another online weekly reflection on one topic or another that you have to pay for to get. You may view them and subscribe to them by going to http://www.johnshelbyspong.com/. If you want the free e-mail newsletter, be careful to follow the instructions and links carefully to get the free stuff instead of the paid subscription.

Pop Quiz

Joerg Rieger is Professor of Constructive Theology at Perkins School of Theology. In the early summer issue of The Progressive Christian, he presents a reflection on"power and religion" in the form of a multiple choice quiz. Rieger seems to suggest that when important questions about "what would Jesus do?" are rephrased as something like "what would Jesus be doing right now given the choice?" the whole enterprise gets more challenging and interesting. He says that multiple answers are possible in some cases, and not in others. For each question, he offers a hint from the Gospels.

What are Jesus’ interests?
1. Attends the annual meeting of American liturgists.
2. Attends the annual meeting of American Working Class Studies and take the side of workers.
3. Attends a self-help workshop.
4. Attends an inspirational seminar for investors.

Matthew 25: 31-46

What is Jesus’ view on economics?
1. Supports the free market economy, because “capitalism is here to stay” (Margaret Thatcher).
2. Addresses economic inequalities by promoting welfare.
3. Promotes an economy in which each is treated according to their needs and abilities.
4. Only shows interest in economic matters that affect the church.
Matthew 20: 1-16

What does Jesus think about human rights?
1. Declares the primacy of property rights.
2. Supports the rights of “the least of these” against the rights of the status quo.
3. Rejects the idea of rights altogether since they are “modern liberal inventions” (according to some contemporary ethicists and theologians).
Luke 13: 10-17

What is Jesus’ view on worship?
1. Seeks alternative power and truth wherever it can be found and “worships in spirit and truth.”
2. Worships with hands raised up in the air.
3. Worships sitting in a pew.
4. Makes sure never to miss the one hour on Sunday morning since this is the main event that connects us to God.
John 4: 23; Mark 7: 1-8

What does Jesus think about politics?
1. Votes Republican because of family values.
2. Votes Democrat because of a concern for welfare and health care.
3. Votes, but keeps working for the “kingdom of God and its justice,” which is neither owned by Democrats or Republicans.
4. Doesn’t vote because heaven is more important than earth.
5. Leaves the business of politics to the First Person of the Trinity who enjoys power play.
Matthew 6:33; Mark 3: 31-35

What does Jesus think about culture?
1. Prefers highbrow because this is where people truly care about culture.
2. Prefers lowbrow because it is livelier and more fun.
3. Prefers cultural expressions that follow the beat of a different drummer and dares to be different, rather than aiming at popularity or sales figures.
4. Goes with current opinion about what’s cool so as to be more relevant and to attract more followers.
Mark 12: 38-40

How does Jesus feel about religion?
1. Defends religion in general because it is human nature.
2. Rejects religion because it is too human.
3. Prefers theism because we need an omnipotent universal deity in order to save “Western Civilization.”
4. Evaluates religion according to what difference it makes in real life and whether or not it contributes to the kingdom of God.
Luke 4: 16-21

(From The Progressive Christian, Volume 183, Issue 4, p. 21-22)

"If God is For Us..." (Notes on the end of Romans 8)

Fear not.

The New Testament's most consistent invitation is "Fear Not." Sometimes it's translated "Do not be afraid."

If the TV coverage of the health care debate isn't enough to convince you that we live in fear, maybe the massive e-mails suggesting that our entire western civilization is tanking because Muslims are having more babies than white Europeans might. We are always being encouraged to be afraid... of reactionaries or communists, of fundamentalists or atheists, of identity theft or depressive personal isolation, of countless other things

In his book Lifesigns Father Henri Nouwen wrote:

We are a fearful people...It often seems that fear has invaded every part of our being to such a degree that we no longer know what a life without our fear would feel like...There always seems to be something to fear: something within us or around us, something close or far away, something visible or invisible, something in ourselves, in others, or in God. There never seems to be a totally fear-free moment.

Echoing Nouwen, Lewis Thomas:

We are,perhaps uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still.

I wonder if the Jungians and Paul Tillich weren't right about fear. Tillich said that all fear came down to fear of non-being. The Jungians say that every fear is a fear of death. Both argue that no matter how hard we try, we cannot escape that kind of "existential anxiety."

Which brings us to what I think (not everybody thinks this, but I do) is the most important paragraph in all of Paul's letters. Though Paul would never say "existential anxiety" (the word "existential" wasn't even made up until the 20th century), he seems to know that "fear and trembling" that we just can't seem to shake. He tries to address these most often non-rational anxieties with a rational argument that might not always convince, but can, to use Tillich's metaphor, "here and there, now and then" can comfort and maybe inspire to move beyond them without ever being completely free of them...

What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us...Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril of sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What Does the Bible Say About ...?

In their neat little book, The Bible Tells Me So: Uses and Abuses of Holy Scripture, Jim Hill and Rand Cheadle try to argue that ideologues and provocateurs of every ilk have always used the Bible as a "proof-text" for their political, moral, or philosophical positions. They cite literally dozens of themes, ranging from slavery to pacifism to demonstrate that people on every side of every issue have appropriated and accommodated the Bible to "authorize" and explain their point of view.

Of course, they are correct. But they leave the most basic question unanswered:

"What does the Bible really say about issue X, or Y, or Z?

For almost all the issues, the answer is, "not much." In order to get a sense of how a biblical writer might respond to, say, an inquiry about a woman's proper role in family, church, and society, you'd have to cobble together a wide range of opinions, stories, anecdotes and admonitions, and depending on whether you were already an ardent feminist or a stolid traditionalist, you'd be thrilled or appalled by what you found.

But the way we generally tend to do it is just the opposite. We are already the ardent feminist or the stolid traditionalist (take any issue and think up people on opposite ends for complementary metaphors), and we appropriate what we like and dismiss, or worse, explain away what we don't like.

For example, there is no denying that during the millennium and a half that material was being collected, edited, and canonized into what we now call the Bible, the world in which all that collecting, editing and canonizing was being done was a patriarchal word. It is ludicrous to deny that, but many do. It is similarly absurd to say that God simply had these or other intentions for these old texts, so it only goes to follow that some rotten so-and-so or some group of rotten so-and-so's got hold of the texts the way God intended them to be and out and out changed them for the sole purpose of perpetuating a misogynous patriarchy, or any other thing that we now find offensive or difficult.

It comes down, at least for me, to whom you choose to listen when you read the Bible. If the Bible says one thing one place about issue x, y, or z, to whom do you choose to listen? Who is most authoritative? The oldest text? Moses? The prophets? Paul? Jesus?

For me, the answer is Jesus. Yes, I know that there is controversy and discussion about what Jesus really said, or maybe said, or maybe didn't say, and I think that conversation is crucial. All that being said, believing that there are few if any uniform "positions" about virtually everything except loving God and caring for the broken, lost, and poor, focusing on what the Bible says Jesus says has been the most helpful thing for me, at least as far as personal ethics and behavior are concerned.

Historical Context

John Dominic Crossan likes to say that "if we can get the first century right (the time of Jesus and the disciples and Paul), we'll get the 21st century right." It kind of goes to follow that for us to get the first century right, we ought to have a sense of its historical context. Hence this compilation, which at worst may bore you to tears, but at best might help set some of that context. Most of the dates are pretty solid, though there is some scholarly conversation about the precision of some of them. This is close enough, I think, for our purposes.

Call the timeline "Earliest Christianity in its Roman Context," or anything else you'd like to call it.

BCE
753 Traditional date for the founding of the village of Rome

74 Herod the Great is born

64 Pompey captures Jerusalem

63 (or when Rome was just under 700 years old, 2.5 times as old as the USA) Octavian is born, and adopted by his uncle, Julius Caesar

58 The First Triumverate is formed by Pompey, Crassus, and Julius Caesar

49 Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, Ptolemy queen of Egypt, conceive a child. Two years later, Cleopatra moves into Julius Caesar’s estate in Rome

45 Julius Caesar defeats Pompey and becomes the first dictator of Rome.

44 Julius Caesar is assassinated (by order of the Roman Senate). The Second Triumverate of Octavian, Lepidus, and Octavian's brother-in-law, Marc Antony, takes charge of the dispersed Roman military machine. Antipater (Herod’s father) sends money to Rome to help support the assassination and overthrow

43 Antipater is poisoned by “locals,” power struggle in Palestine ensues

42 Marc Antony hooks up with Cleopatra, Julius Caesar's old flame. They move in together, combine their armies and navies, and eventually flee to Egypt.

37 Herod the Great begins his “reign;” called “King,” he is, actually, like his father, a “regent” Ruler, put in office and kept there by the Roman authorities. Herod oversees the most successful government supported construction efforts in that region since the pyramids

33 The triumvirate dissolves; Lepidus is disgraced and forced from office, and Antony and Octavian become enemies.

31 Octavian defeats Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium. Octavian is named Caesar, and takes the name Augustus, and begins the longest reign of any Roman before or since, a 45 year span known ironically as the Pax Romana

30 While under siege from forces loyal to Octavian, Antony, mistakenly believing that Cleopatra had already committed suicide, falls on his own sword. Followers take Antony to Cleopatra’s hiding place, where, according to legend, he dies in Cleopatra’s arms, who soon after actually does commit suicide.

6 (5? 4?) Jesus of Nazareth is born (how is it that Jesus is born “BC”? Most likely a calendar fluke from the time of Pope Gregory centuries later)

4 Herod the Great dies


CE
6 (7? 8?) Saul (who later becomes Paul) is born

14 Caesar Augustus dies. Monuments to him at his tomb and elsewhere, constructed during the last years of his life celebrate the “Gospel” of his life, and declare him to be, among other things, Divine, the Son of God, God, God from God, Prince of Peace, Lord, Redeemer, and Savior of the World. Tiberius, Augustus’ stepson, becomes emperor.

26 (27?) Jesus of Nazareth begins his public ministry. Pontius Pilate becomes Prefect of Judea

29 (30?) Jesus is executed


32 – 37 Paul moves from being a “persecutor” of Jewish followers of Jesus to a follower of Jesus. Paul’s own letters suggest a gradual transformation (hence the date range) while Luke, in the book of Acts, describes a more immediate transformation

36 Pontius Pilate is removed from his office in Judea

37 Gaius, also known as Caligula, becomes emperor

41 Claudius becomes emperor

48 The “Apostolic Assembly” described in Acts and mentioned by Paul takes place in Jerusalem

49 Paul lives for a year in Corinth. Claudius expels all Jews (including Jewish Christians) from the city of Rome.

51 Paul’s earliest surviving letter, I Thessalonians, is written

52 Paul begins a 3-year stay in Ephesus.

54 Paul writes a small portion of what we know call “II Corinthians” (6:14-7:1). Nero becomes emperor when Claudius dies, and opens the way to welcome Jews (including Jewish Christians) back into the city.

55-56 The rest of what we now call II Corinthians and the letters compiled into what we now call I Corinthians, are written. Paul travels to Macedonia and Achaia

56 Paul’s letter to the Romans is written. In the spring, Paul returns to Jerusalem and is arrested.

58 The letter to the Galatians is written. Paul is imprisoned in different cities, and eventually
ends up in Rome

59 Letters to the Philippians and to Philemon are written.

62 Paul is executed in Rome. Earliest possible date for I Peter.

64 Nero “fiddles while Rome burns,” and much of the city is destroyed. Tradition holds that both Peter and Paul are executed as part of the government’s response.

66 The letter to the Colossians is most likely written. A long and bloody series of revolts erupt in Judea

68 The letter to the Ephesians is most likely written

69 Called the “Year of the 4 Emperors”. Nero and others are expelled from Rome by Vespasian, who becomes emperor, transferring power to a new imperial family

70 The temple in Jerusalem is destroyed, and Jews are expelled from Palestine. Also the earliest possible date for the Gospel of Mark

79 Mount Vesuvius erupts. Vespasian dies, Titus becomes emperor

80 The earliest possible date for the Gospel of Matthew. Approximate date for letter to the Hebrews

81 Titus dies, Domitian becomes emperor

85 (90?) The earliest possible date for the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts

90 Approximate date for James, II Peter, and Jude. First Christian bishop of Rome takes office

95 (100?) Earliest possible date for I John, II John, and III John

96 Nerva becomes emperor

98 Trajan becomes emperor

105 (110?) The Gospel of John is written

110 The Revelation is written

117 Hadrian becomes emperor

128 (130) Earliest probable dates for I and II Timothy, Titus

132 Three year revolt in Jerusalem begins when Rome builds a colony and a temple in Jerusalem

What's In a Name (or Title)?

At the core of the argument that our Living the Questions scholars make about the radical nature of the earliest Christian movement is this notion: Roman authorities in the time of Jesus saw as a probable and potentially potent threat, any claim of authority that seemed to deviate from the authority and power of the emperor. And because the followers of Jesus, beginning with the Apostle Paul (remember, Paul is dead for almost a decade by the time the earliest "Gospel" is written) and running through the next couple centuries, described Jesus with the same language as the Romans described particularly Augustus, but to some degree, all of the emperors from Augustus through at least Hadrian (about 170 years worth of emperors), the followers of Jesus were almost by definition seen as threats to the rule of law.

Augustus, who was born 6 decades before Jesus and died while Jesus was a teenager, had these things written on his tombs and monuments. The titles of the pieces were "The Acts of Augustus (compare to what Luke called the second half of his writing, "The Acts of the Apostles") and they said they were carved in stone (literally) to share the "Gospel" or "good news" (the same word used for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) of the mighty deeds of the Emperor, who was said to have been born of a virgin mother and sired by a Roman god, and who was called Divine, the Son of God, God, very God from very God, Prince of Peace, Lord, Redeemer, and Savior of the World. All these names, these titles which seem second nature to 2 millenia worth of Christians were all first used for Augustus especially, but also for virtually all of the other emperors in the first couple of centuries of the Christian movement.

By taking on those names, those titles, it's pretty easy to imagine why the Roman authorities saw at least the earliest Christian communities as seditious and trouble makers, and why for so long, at least when times were troubled, individuals and individual communities of Christians were seen as defiant, oppositional, and enemies of the state.

Paul and the Surprising Diversity of the Earliest Churches

Four years ago I spent a few days with a group of people studying with John Dominic Crossan, focussed on the work of the apostle Paul. We talked a lot about much of what Crossan talks about in our Living the Questions videos, but in greater depth and detail.

For me, the most revealing new learning came from work that Crossan did with archeologist Jonathan Reed, detailed in two different books, Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts, and In Search of Paul: How Jesus' Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom. These books offer fascinating details about the actual historical sites associated with the earliest Christian communities including this one.

Outside of Palestine itself, in the "diaspora," or "dispersion," synagogues from the middle first century, many of which served as primary gathering places for the teachings of Jesus to be shared, often listed the names of those who contributed to the construction of the buildings on pillars and walls. Crossan and Reed conclude that a careful look at the names suggests that only about 50% of them were Jewish by birth, 3 or 4% were converts to Judaism, and 46 to 47% of were people called "God-worshippers," Gentiles who had not fully or formally converted to Judaism, but who met regularly and worshipped in the synagogues. The author of the Gospel of Luke, Crossan contends, was one of these "God-worshippers," as were many of those the Apostle Paul led to call themselves "Christians."

This suggests two things to me. First, the often bitter struggle between Paul's approach to following Jesus and the Jerusalem Church's approach, is likely about much more than whether a new Jesus follower, in order to be a true follower, had to become a Jew first, and may be a continuation of the purity arguments that Jesus had with the Pharisees and others.

Second, all this suggests that the earliest Christian communities, at least outside Jerusalem, were more diverse, more cosmopolitan, less poverty-stricken, less primitively superstitious, less dogmatic, and less exclusionary that we had previously believed.

Just for fun (and maybe for further edification)

I'm in New Orleans on Mission Trip with our Youth Community, and our groups are heading back to the University of New Orleans after their very hot Wednesday. Quickly, while they're wandering in and getting cleaned up, I thought I might try to direct any of you to a "just for fun" quiz that, when you complete it, will provide you with a pretty comprehensive outline of the conclusions(so far) of the scholars who have worked together on the "Jesus Seminar."

Go to www.westarinstitute.org . At the upper left of your screen you'll see a graphic about the Jesus Seminar. Just below it will be a link inviting you to take a biblical literacy quiz. Click it, take the quiz (it's not tough -- even I did pretty well!), check your results, and then keep clicking to find a really thorough summary of this group's conclusions about all manner of things.

Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time

Marcus Borg is one of the primary contributors to our on-going Living the Questions conversations; much of what he shares in those conversations is outlined in in his very compact little book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith. As he tries to answer the question "What Manner of Man was Jesus?" Borg suggests, these "impressions" of Jesus...

"Jesus' verbal gifts were remarkable. His language was most often metaphorical, poetic, and imaginative, filled with memorable short sayings and compelling short stories. He was clearly exceptionally intelligent...In contemporary terms, he was gifted as both a right-brain and left-brain thinker...

"He used dramatic public actions. He ate meals with untouchables, which not only generated criticism but also symbolized his alternative vision of human community... There was a radical social and political edge to his mission and activity. He challenged the social order of his day and indicted the elites who dominated it. He had a clever tongue, which could playfully or sarcastically indict the powerful and proper...

"He was a remarkable healer: more healing stories are told about him than about anybody else in the Jewish tradition...There must have been something quite compelling about him. He also attracted enemies, especially among the rich and powerful.

"And finally, he was young, his life was sort, and his public activity was brief. He lived only into his early thirties, and his public activity lasted perhaps as little as a year (according to the synoptic gospels) or as much as three or four years (according to John). The founders of the worlds' other major religious traditions lived long lives and were active for decades. It is exceptional that so much came forth from such a brief life.
(from Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith, p. 30-31)

The Book of Jesus

Ten or twelve years ago Calvin Miller edited a volume he titled The Book of Jesus: A Treasury of the Greatest Stories and Writings about Christ. The book doesn't pretend to be a scholarly argument and has no real interpretive agenda; rather it is a collection of pieces ranging from "one-liners" to fairly complete essays and reflections from about 200 different contributors. Some date to the earliest days of the church (for example, the Gospels and the Roman/Jewish historian, Josephus), others from the Conciliar Age (eg. Augustine and Anselm), and still others from the rest of the centuries "CE". Some of the writers are the "usual suspects" for such a volume, (the aforementioned, the reformers, contemporary or nearly contemporary voices like Fred Buechner, Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, Eugene Peterson, Henri Nouwen, Desmond Tutu), while others are surprising because they were or are not Christians (like Gandhi and Sholem Asch) or because you wouldn't expect them to have anything to say about the subject (like Charles Dickens or Christopher Columbus.)

The volume makes no great or profound argument about Jesus, but it does provide a wide range of diverse voices that have given voice to how a pretty remarkable group of people. They range from things that claim to be historical accounts (like Josephus: "...about this time lived Jesus, a wiseman, if it is proper to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, -- a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him many of the Jews and many of the Greeks"), to contemplative poetry (like Thomas Merton's The Flight into Egypt -- "Go Child of God, upon the singing desert, Where, with eyes of lame, The roaring lion keeps thy road from harm"), to comedic retellings of parables (like Robert Farrar Capon take on the laborers in the vineyard -- "There was a man who owned a vineyard. His operation was not on the scale of E&J Gallo, but it was quite respectable: let's put him in the Robert Mondovi class....").

We have a couple of copies floating around here if any of you want to borrow it. Again, no profound conclusions, just lots of info from lots of people.

Living, Working, Thinking, Growing in the Gray Area

Marilyn McEntyre is a fellow at the Gaede Institute for the Liberal Arts at Westmont College who writes in the June, 2009 edition of Sojourners Magazine" an article she titles, "How to Read the Bible (Hint: The Gray Area is Holy Ground). Her discussion focuses not so much on the content of the biblical narratives, poems, speeches, songs, letters and visions, but on our approach to them. "How we read," she suggests, is immensely consequential."

McEntyre asserts that three basic questions are "useful" in approaching scripture, as well as other things written and read: (1) What does this text invite you to do? (2) What does this text require of you? (3) What will this text not let you do?

This is a wonderfully rich little article that I would encourage you all to read in its entirety. You can read it online at:
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0906&article=how-to-read-the-bible

If "double-clicking" this link doesn't work for you, you can copy and paste it into your browser.

The Stories We've Come to Believe About Ourselves

Thomas Harris and the old "Transactional Analysis" school of psychotherapy used to talk about the "tapes" we play in our heads, reminders of both positive and negative things we think we have learned about ourselves. The "TA" folks talked about the voices of parents and teachers and mentors and ancient friends and enemies that continually insinuate themselves into our own self understanding. Theologians and scholars focused on religion (no, they are not always the same thing -- more on that another time.) don't talk about "tapes;" they talk about "myth." In this context, "myth" does not refer to something "fictional." Theologian and author Thomas Moore explains:

..."myth" doesn't mean falsehood; it refers to the the narrative that gives us an imagination of self and life, allowing us to live meaningfully and purposefully. A life-defining myth is not usually conscious to the people who are living it...We just assume our myth is mere fact, and our explanations for things the simple truth. We don't usually reflect deeply enough to understand that the world we see all around us is highly filtered by the myth in which we believe. (Thomas Moore, "Religion," in Imagine: What America Could Be in the 21st Century, Marianne Williamson, editor, p. 299)

We have cultural, national, and personal "myths," "stories we have come to believe about ourselves." Regarding your personal journey, what is "the story you have come to believe about yourself?" Not only the "biographical data" details about where you were born, where you grew up, what you did/do for a living, who you married, who you divorced, the number and names of your kids and grandkids, but also the "screenplay" that plays in your head as you watch yourself living your life. What are those core principles around which you almost unconsciously organize your life? Not only the "noble" stuff, but the secret, not-so-pretty, uncomfortable stuff that you'd just as soon not fess up to. Who are the people who have shaped you into the person you are? Not only the loved ones and mentors and teachers and models, but the ones who have betrayed, hurt, disappointed and abandoned you. How do those principles, those people, along with your "biography," continue to act as "filters" through which you view and understand the world?

Paradise Outgrown

Rabbi Harold Kushner (not the Rabbi Lawrence Kushner about whom we wrote a month ago, but , rather, the Rabbi Kushner famous for When Bad Things Happen To Good People) has written half a dozen or so very helpful little books. In one of them, How Good Do We Have to Be? this Rabbi Kushner suggests a completely different kind of reading of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

You know the story itself without looking – God tells Adam and Eve that they can have anything in the garden, except that they are not allowed to eat fruit (Genesis never says “apple,” by the way) from one tree, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Well, this serpent seduces Eve, Eve eats some of the forbidden fruit, gets Adam to eat some, too, and all hell breaks loose. Suddenly, they both realize they are naked and create the first ever foliage-based fashion statement so they can cover their boy and girl parts. And then, that evening when God is taking God’s nighttime stroll in the garden, Adam and Eve hide. But God, being God and all, finds them, and they start spinning excuses and blaming each other and whatever else comes to mind. And then God punishes them and tosses them out of the garden, and burdens them with the hard realities of life – work, desire, pain, childbirth, aging, and the prospect of death.

And you know without thinking about it the classical response to this old story; all sorts of goofy stuff have become essentially articles of faith for entirely too many. A priori, women are to be regarded as sources of evil, vessels of sin and seduction. No matter what, this tradition says, disobedience and sin are carved into our genetic code (well, maybe not carved into our genetic code, because then they’d have to admit there was something to science and all that). God wants us to be perfect, but because of Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience, and because of what God does to Adam and Eve afterward, we can never be perfect. And when we are less than perfect, God will punish us. Talk about your “lose-lose” situation!

In How Good Do We Have to Be? Rabbi Kushner dismisses this traditional interpretation by first understanding the story as being “true” without being “historical.” And then he suggests that John Milton and others missed the point of the story. It is not about “Paradise Lost.” It is about “Paradise Outgrown.” “I see Eve,” he says, “as being terribly brave as she eats the fruit. She is not frivolous, disobedient or easily seduced, as later interpreters have insisted on describing her. She is boldly crossing the boundary into the unknown, venturing to discover what lies beyond the limits of animal existence, and reaching back to bring Adam after her…. Eve has given her descendants more than existence; she has given us life”

Rabbi Kushner argues in his very gentle, very sardonic way, that the act of eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the commitment to the complexity of human existence and that, because of this complexity, God simply would never expect perfection from us. He says that may of the things we have traditionally called “punishment” – work, desire, pain, childbirth, aging, and even death – are actually gifts of being truly and completely who we are supposed to be: “Work, intimacy, parenthood, a sense of mortality, the knowledge of good and evil – aren’t those precisely the things that separate us from the animal kingdom? Those are the sources of creativity, the things that make us human. They may be painful, but it is the sort of pain that leads to growth.”

And then he goes on to say that religion should not be “the carping voice of condemnation telling us that the normal is sinful and the well-intentioned mistake is an unforgivable transgression that will damn us forever.” Instead he says that it should be something like “the voice that says, ‘ I will guide you through this minefield of difficult choices, sharing with you the insights and experiences of the greatest souls of the past, I will offer you comfort and forgiveness when you are troubled by the painful choices you made.’”

Two things. One, from John Dominic Crossan who says this about the importance of knowing the original context of the Gospels: “ I am convinced that when we get the first century (that is when Jesus lived and the Gospels were written), we will get the 21st century right." Two, from the remarkable professor of world religions Mircea Eliade, who always argued that the purpose of creation stories in any culture has to do with what he called regressus ad originem, or "returning to the origins" to remind the culture of who they were/are intended to be. How would it change how we see ourselves if we could embrace Rabbi Kushner’s notion that the stories of the Garden of Eden had more to do with moving from animal to human, from infantilism to adulthood, than the angry, wrathful, fear-laden interpretations many of us were taught were the “God’s honest truth?”

Spring, Creation Stories, Albert Eintstein and Chief Seattle

FINALLY it seems to be spring! That, and the fact that our next face-to-face discussion on May 26th will focus on "Stories of Creation," has reminded me of things written by two very different, very great men.

The first is from Albert Einstein, who was arguing in 1945 (25 years before the first "Earth Day," so the argument can be made that he was a little in front of the curve) that caring for the created order was not a pleasant option but an absolute necessity:

"A human being is part of the whole called by us 'universe,' a part limited in time and space. The human being experiences him[or her]self, his [or her] thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his [or her] consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

The second, from Chief Seattle, in a letter to President Franklin Pierce in 1854, urging a different perspective on western expansion:

"We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes whatever land he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his father’s grave behind, and he does not care. He kidnaps the earth from his children. He does not care. His fathers’ graves and his children’s birthright are forgotten. He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind a desert…

"You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of our grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we would have taught our children that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. If they spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.

"One thing we know, which the white man may one day discover – our God is the same God. You may think now that you own him as you wish to own the land; but you cannot. God is the God of all creation, and God’s compassion is equal for the red and the white. This earth is precious to God, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator. The white, too, shall pass, perhaps sooner than all the other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste."

I think, I hope, we are finally starting to get it.

Tikkun Olam

The Mishnah is the first important collection of the works of rabbinic Judaism, and dates to the 200's of the Common Era. It is a profound and complicated, highly studied and debated and beloved collection of insights and debates that date all the way back to the destruction of the Temple in 70 of the Common Era. The Mishnah is the first place where the phrase (and the concept) of tikkun olam (Hebrew for "healing" or "repairing the world") appears in written form. Since then tikkun olam refers to the idea that among the tasks of the faithful if the repairing of our broken world. In modern times tikkun olam has become largely synonymous with the notion of social action and the pursuit of social justice.

In the 1500's, Rabbi Issac Luria was perhaps the most energized and widely followed teacher of Kabbalah, a term identified with a wide range of Jewish mystical practices (see press stories of Kabbalah's resurgence among celebrities). He talked about tikkun olam this way...

God formed the world by forming vessels of light to hold the Divine Light. But as God poured the Light into the vessels, the vessels were not able to contain it, and they shattered, and tumbled down throughout all creation. Thus, this world consists of an infinite number of shards of the original vessels that still have trapped sparks of the Divine Light. The great and noble task of humanity has to do with helping God free and unite this imprisoned and scattered Light, and, in the process, restoring the shattered world.

Do I think that Rabbi Isaac expected his students (or us) to consider take that teaching "literally?" Of course not. Do I think his imagery can help us get our imaginations around the notion of a very widespread Divine Presence occupying the same "reality" as a hurting and broken world?

You bet.

John Shelby Spong

Sprinkled throughout our Living the Questions" conversations is input from Bishop John Shelby Spong,. Here's how "his people" describe him and his work:

John Shelbly Spong,whose books have sold more than a million copies, was bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark for 24 years before his retirement in 2001. His admirers acclaim him as a teaching bishop who makes contemporary theology accessible to the ordinary layperson — he's considered the champion of an inclusive faith by many, both inside and outside the Christian church. In one of his recent books, The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Discover the God of Love (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2005), this visionary thinker seeks to introduce readers to a proper way to engage the holy book of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

A committed Christian who has spent a lifetime studying the Bible and whose life has been deeply shaped by it, Bishop Spong says he was not interested in Bible bashing. "I come to this interpretive task not as an enemy of Christianity," he says. "I am not even a disillusioned former Christian, as some of my scholar-friends identify themselves. I am a believer who knows and loves the Bible deeply. But I also recognize that parts of it have been used to undergird prejudices and to mask violence."

A visiting lecturer at Harvard and at universities and churches worldwide, Bishop Spong delivers more than 200 public lectures each year to standing-room-only crowds. His bestselling books include Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, A New Christianity for a New World, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, and Here I Stand.
Bishop Spong's extensive media appearances include a profile segment on 60 Minutes as well as appearances on Good Morning America, Fox News Live, Politically Incorrect, Larry King Live, The O'Reilly Factor, William F. Buckley's Firing Line, and Extra. Bishop Spong and his wife, Christine Mary Spong, have five children and six grandchildren. They live in New Jersey.

Bishop Spong publishes a free weekly e-mail newsletter, as well as another online weekly reflection on one topic or another that you have to pay for to get. You may view them and subscribe to them by going to http://www.johnshelbyspong.com/. If you want the free e-mail newsletter, be careful to follow the instructions and links carefully to get the free stuff instead of the paid subscription.

I don't completely agree with every conclusion Bishop Spong comes to, but I do agree with most of them, and I do think that his voice is an important one in our on-going conversation.

Shuffling the Deck

I'm writing from Tower Hill Camp, where our two confirmation classes and some members of our High School Youth Community have headed off to the Warren Dunes, leaving me alone with my thoughts. Part of what happens on this retreat is that members of our 2nd year group work hard at writing "statements of faith." We push them to try to think "theologically" (kind of like the theme of our next gathering on April 28th), and to articulate some of what they think and feel about what most of us would call "religious" ideas.

In a lecture he called "An Ocean of God: The Innerconnectedness of all Being," Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, in response to a question about the vitality and viability of the world’s great religions, suggests:

“Imagine that there are an arbitrarily finite number of great religious ideas:
o you gotta worry about what happens when you die…
o you gotta worry about how to make atonement…
o you gotta worry about experiencing love…
o you gotta be aware of the presence of the Creator…
…fill in the list of holy ideas that every religion should have.

“[Now, for the sake of discussion,] let’s say there are 52 of them, 52, like a deck of cards. All religions are playing with a full deck. They all have all the cards. The only real difference among the religions, in my hunch,” posits Rabbi Kushner, “is the way the deck is stacked.

“If you are an orthodox Christian,” he continues, “the first card is perhaps you’re guilty and you’re going to need a lot of help right away. Jews have that card, too,” Kushner jokes, “it comes up at number 10. For Jews the top card is, What does God want now?’ Christians have that card in there, too, somewhere.”

It seems to me that you and I in our day and time and place have all those things at our disposal, that we, too, are playing with a full deck of great religious ideas. Our card game has fewer rules than some others, and, in our game, sometimes the rules change as the nature of the game and the participants in the game change, and the game itself changes to reflect and embrace new participants, rather than forcing new participants into rigid rules that reflect the realities of another day and time and place. I think our great theological task has always been to determine how that deck of great religious ideas is to be stacked. If pressed I'd argue that Jesus' instruction to “love your neighbor as yourself" is the "card" that should sit at the top of our "deck."

If the Gospels are any indication, Jesus spent very little time and energy engaging in great theological debate. While in conversation with scholars and religious bureaucrats, they talked about ancient traditions and rules and regulations, and Jesus talked about attitude and behavior. In the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, someone presses him to be more precise than “Love your neighbor as yourself” by asking the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Rather than citing chapter and verse, Jesus tells a story that reflects attitude and behavior. A man on the Jericho road is mugged, beaten left for dead. A public official and a religious muckety-muck pass by the victim, and, for one reason or another leave him there in his suffering. Then a man deemed “unworthy,” a man labeled “outcast” because of the accident of his birth happens by, binds up the victim, carts him off to a place where he can be cared for, and arranges to pay for any future care the victim may need.

“Who was a neighbor to that poor man?” Jesus asks, already knowing there is only one answer, and knowing that they know there is only one answer, and knowing that the theological debate intended to justify their relatively cold and distant and superior attitude. When they mumble, “The man who helped him,” Jesus simply says, “Go and do likewise.”

So, it seems to me, Jesus suggests that the top card in the deck may well be “love your neighbor as yourself…go and do likewise."

More Multilingual (sort of)

Science. Evolution. Calculus. Physics. Quantum Mechanics.
God. Religion. Miracles, Theology. Philosophy.

The common opinion in our culture seems to be that these two lists are mutually exclusive, that they contradict each other, that you can't make a case for the one of the lists without denying the insight, wisdom, and potential of the other. Needless to say, I think that common opinion is off the mark.

In later editions of his classic book Creation Versus Chaos, renowned Biblical scholar Bernard Anderson talks about religious language and scientific language, and suggests that all our squabbles about incompatibility between the lists is that we try to make the two languages say the same thing about whatever issue is at hand. He says:

Religious language cannot be converted into scientific language any more than poetry can be reduced to prose. .. Scientific language...can hardly be equated with religious language that deals with who the Creator is and what the Creator's intent is. Nevertheless, these languages intersect at points of common cosmological interest. Therefore, when the scientist and the theologian meet, neither should claim to be "king of the mountain." They should be able to enter into dialogue as friends who stand humbly before the mysteries of creation.

In short, Anderson argues what Fermi Lab/University of Chicago physicist Leon Lederman and what the ancient mystics of every culture and religion and faith have long suggested, that the differences between the so-called "objective" stuff like our first list and the more "subjective" stuff like the second have to do more with language and metaphor than with the nature or goal of the pursuit. Theoretical physicists and mathematicians who convincingly postulate the origins of a still growing universe seek the same truth as the hospital chaplain who quietly listens as a family aches through the agony of waiting for someone they love to die. A "unified theory" eludes "objective" observers as cleverly as a decent proof for the existence of God has always eluded philosophers and theologians. The only real difference is vocabulary and symbol-sets.

Anderson suggests that we all are engaged in a quest to come to some understanding about three intertwined mysteries, the mystery of originations (where did it all come from?), the mystery of order (how does it all hold together and make sense?), and the mystery of the emergence of life (where did we come from? why are we here?). All of us search for a Great Unknown which we, at some level, think we already know a little bit.

The mathematicians and physicists and chemists and biologists and historians and sociologists and psychologists and philosophers and theologians exhaust the "toolboxes" of their disciplines and are still left with the nagging questions of creation and order and purpose. On better days these questions don't nag so much because we are somehow satisfied with our place in the order of things, and credit good luck, random chance, or the grace of God. On not-so-better days, they nag with persistence, and we're so unhappy with our place in the order of things, and we blame things like misfortune, wrong place at the wrong time, shallow gene pool, or the judgment of, or worse, abandonment by God (Psalm 22).

No matter the discipline, we discover that the homework load stays pretty substantial if we choose to keep on questioning. And there comes a time, as Thomas Aquinas suggested almost 800 years ago, when language, metaphor, commonly held knowledge is inadequate to describe an experience or phenomenon. Then and there we all find our ideas and theories and postulates coming up a bit short.

Multilingual

Last week, I spent a week of vacation working for Peggy's company. I've done this every year for the last 15 or 16 years. Her company manages a trade show for people who do trade shows, and part of the experience is a certification program for people in the industry. That program includes a pretty broad range of classes and seminars for trade show folks, and my job is to get seminar materials are where they are supposed to be when they are supposed to be there, to make that room sets are correct, and that the seminar presenters are happy with everything before they begin.

One day a group of students from Northern Arizona University joined us for a "behind the scenes" look at how the show and program come together, and the small group that was with me included a freshman from China, a sophomore from China by way of a university in the Netherlands, and 3 others from the Netherlands, all of whom found their way to NAU as part of one international studies program or another.

We started talking about the different languages they all spoke. All of these young people were fluent in more languages than I; one of them, 19 years old, is working on her 5th language! We had an extensive conversation about how really knowing another language opens up different ways for us to perceive things, and more comprehensive understanding of other cultures and worldviews. Knowing different ways to say things, and to think about and through things, we agreed, made our worldviews more inclusive.

We are, I think, frequently seduced by the idea that there is only one "correct" way to look at things -- politics, economics, God stuff. Part of our journeying together is the attempt to allow ourselves (or maybe to push ourselves) to learn new "languages" and think about all of those "correct" things in different and challenging ways.

The Bible Tells Me So

The Bible Tells Me So: Uses and Abuses of Holy Scripture by Jim Hill and Rand Cheadle was published a dozen years ago. In a nutshell, their thesis is that ideologues and provocateurs of every ilk have always used the Bible as a "proof-text" for their political, moral, or philosophical positions. They city dozens of themes ranging from slavery to pacifism to demonstrate that people on every side of every issue have attempted to appropriate the Bible to help both authorize and explain their point of view. And, of course, they are correct.

But they leave the most basic question unanswered, probably because there is no real way to answer it. That question? What does the Bible really say about issue x, y, and z?

For most every issues the answer is "not much." In order to get a sense of how a biblical writer might respond, say, to an inquiry about a woman's proper role in family and society, you would have to collage together a wide range of opinions, stories, anecdotes and admonitions, and depending on whether you were Rush Limbaugh or Nancy Pelosi, you would be thrilled or appalled by what you found. But our approach is most often just the opposite. We are already either Limbaugh or Pelosi or somewhere between on the spectrum, and we appropriate what we like and dismiss, or worse, try to explain away what we don't like. For example, there is no denying that during the millennium and a half that biblical materials were being collected, edited, translated and canonized (great comment, Steven!), the world, particularly in the west, was a patriarchal world. To deny that is ludicrous, but many do.

So who do we listen to when it comes to all these different strands and threads and attitudes in the Bible? When the Bible can't seem to agree with itself, which voice to we believe to be most authoritative? Paul? The prophets? Moses? Jesus?

For me, the answer is Jesus. And, of course, much of what is attributed to Jesus is the work of editors and the like, but that's why the work of the people we're studying with on this journey is so important. Focusing on the Jesus part (Becky, the whole "red-letter" thing) seems to be the most dependable to me as far as ethics and community and personal behavior are concerned.

Top Ten Things

The next time our group gathers face to face (Tuesday, March 24^th, 6:30 – 8 PM in Room 1 at First Church of Lombard) the focus of the presentation will be, essentially, on a different set of “lenses” through which we look at and relate to scripture. Some of us around the table have been working at this with uneven success for a long, long time.

5 or 6 years ago I led a 5 week bible study I called The Top 10 Things You Should Know About Reading, Understanding, and Finding Meaning in the Bible, making it very apparent that I do not have an alternate career path as a headline writer. The idea for the study was that we would shamelessly steal David Letterman’s signature bit, and over the 5 weeks we would “countdown” a “Top Ten List” of thing those of us who want to take the bible seriously without taking it literally could keep in mind to help us with that endeavor. Remember, this is all my stuff, titrated down from who knows how many teachers and books and lectures and papers and random ideas. That means, it is where I have “settled” on this stuff at this stage in my “journey,” and that the more I think about it as time goes along, the more likely the possibility that I will continue to change my mind a little here and there. Here, summarized and with only a little commentary is that list.

10. Even the newest material in the Bible is very, very, very old.

The “newest” material in the Bible (the very late pieces of the New Testament) are 1,875 years old (give or take a decade, and the oldest is more than 3,000 years old. And when you think of the utter lack of communication technology one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five years ago (doesn’t it seem longer when you “spell out” the numbers?), particularly when compared to the present, it isn’t all that tough to imagine that the material there as being “normative” without necessarily being “historical.”

9. You can’t make an apple taste like a T-Bone, and won’t “get” the Bible when you try to make it be something it’s not.

There are all sorts of things we say the Bible is out of respect or deference to it that become quite challenging when and if we look at them closely. We get into trouble when we try to make an apple taste like a T-Bone, when we try to make the Bible be something it’s not. Five pairs of “is/is not” things about the Bible, at least as I am continuing to learn it

The Bible is a collection of 66 books written by different authors, mostly about their experiences of or their ancestors’ memories of “the Holy” (God). The Bible is not a single book written from only one perspective that tells only one point of view about God.

The Bible is a source that describes how ancient people thought about the important things in their lives. The Bible is not a “science book” with objective, dependent on reliable data descriptions of unfathomable phenomena.

The Bible is a collection of writings, letters, stories, songs, and memories that span more than 2,000 years. The Bible is not a “history book” that describes in chronological order the historical details about the events it describes.

The Bible is a source that reveals how faithful people in antiquity responded to what they perceived to be God’s will for their lives in their day and time. The Bibl is not a “law and rule book” designed to instruct people how to act and think in every possible imaginable circumstance.

The Bible is what faithful people have come to call “God’s Word” because it is among our most important and revealing tools helping us understand how God relates to us, and vice-versa, The Bible is not the only possible way God can communicate God’s will to faithful people, nor the only source of God’s comfort, guidance, and strength.

8. Everything in the Bible came from someone, somewhere – nothing in the Bible simply “appeared” in a vacuum.

There is not one thing in the Bible that wasn’t created, remembered, written, and then treasured in one context or another. That context is everything. The greater our understanding of the context of any given piece, the deeper our understanding of what is being communicated

7. Always ask this question: “Why is this (story/song/memory/et.al.) in the Bible?

The material in the Bible is certainly not the only remaining literature from that 2,300 year period during which the Bible was compiled and then canonized. So it’s important to ask not only why any given text is remembered and treasured enough to “make the cut” for the Bible, but also to ask who was doing the remembering and treasuring and arguing for its inclusion.

6. Songs are songs, stories are stories, memories are memories, visions are visions; things make much more sense when we know what they are.

Material in the Bible always makes more sense when we let it speak for itself, and not try to turn it into something it’s not (I know this sounds a lot like number 9 above, but this is more about individual texts than about the Bible as a whole). Example one: biblical prophets were not so much “fortune tellers” as they were people of discernment. Their poetry is not so much “predictive” as it is “indicative,” meaning that rarely if ever are the visions Nostradamus-like prognostications, and that their “timbre” is more like a riff on “logical consequences” (“Thus says the Lord: if you keep up this nonsense, things will not end well for you” rather than “Thus says the Lord: on the 3^rd of April 2010, your favorite baseball team will begin an undefeated season.”) . Example two: the Apocalypse of John (the Book of Revelation) is not at all a prediction of end times, but rather a dramatic and symbolic portrayal of the evil and corruption of empire gone mad, the paralysis of faithful people, and the ever-present love of God. Example three: Jesus’ parable of the last judgment in Matthew 25: 31-46 (sheep and goats, right and left hand, paradise and punishment, caring for the least of these). It is a parable, a story to make a point not so much about how the Son of Man in all his glory will be given barnyard duty, but the kind of attention, intention, and response expected of those who claim to be followers. Things are much clearer when we accept them for what they are.

5. Repetition = importance

When the Bible says something again and again and again, and then says it again, it is probably a pretty big deal.

4. The Bible was originally written in either Hebrew (Old Testament) or Greek (New Testament), and every translation in every other language has its own “agenda.”

There are over 500 different English translations or paraphrases of the Bible. Were I a better linguist and student of antiquity, even the translation I came up with be colored by my theological, philosophical, sociological and ideological biases. That’s why the “best” translations are done by teams of learned scholars who are in relatively constant dialogue during the translating process. I most consistently use the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible because I respect the scholarship of its teams of translators. Still, even with my limited knowledge of the original languages, I find words and phrases that I would have most certainly translated differently. If you want an interesting discussion of biblical translations, visit Rev. Ken Collins’ website at http://www.kencollins.com/.

3. A “critical” approach to Bible reading doesn’t mean you’re “picking the Bible apart;” it means you’re being thoughtful and reflective and open to new learning about something you think you have always known.

“Critical” as in “developing a critique,” as in “reading for understanding,” or as in “reading to learn something new about the piece or about yourself or both. Not “critical” as in “you never fold the towels the way I want you to fold the towels.”

2. Not everything written, said, or taught about the Bible, even if it sells well, actually “gets it.”

Bookstores, libraries, universities are loaded with all sorts of things written about the Bible. And some of the most literate, well-written stuff misses all the important stuff. If it doesn’t take great notice of context, if it declares that every English word you read is inerrant, if it doesn’t invite you into further conversation with and exploration of the text, then the piece, no matter how attractive, well-written, or famously endorsed on the back cover, simply doesn’t get it.

1. What’s “holy” about the “Holy Bible” is not the book itself, but the God it reveals and remembers and teaches.

Enough said.