Therefore we proclaim the mystery of faith:
Christ has died,
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again.
from the Book of Common Prayer
One of the biggest struggles some Christians have is being able to differentiate between the teachings of Jesus and the teachings about Jesus. This is an important distinction that Christians need to be very clear about if Christianity is to remain relevant.
There also appears to be a disturbing ambivalence amongst a number of ordained clergy and some theologians about this. The ambivalence that I am talking about is in regard to whether or not it matters if the person in pew understands the difference between literal and metaphorical interpretations of scripture.
JONAH
Let's consider the story of Jonah for a moment. Some will say it doesn't matter whether people in the pew know it as an allegorical story intended to help the people of Judah in the 6th century BCE understand God's acceptance of all people, especially those considered to be less pure Jewish in their midst at a time when there was a movement by some to purge the land of Judah and Judaism of anyone not considered to be 100% pure Jew. [Does this sound familiar?] It's a warning to those who think they know God's will, who think they know better than God, who, in their foolish arrogance, try to correct God's thinking.
Some scholars are content with the notion that as long as they get the general message, there's no need to worry whether someone in the pew insists that Jonah was actually swallowed by a large fish (a whale by deduction) and lived for three days in its gastric juices with virtually no breathable air only to be spit out at the place he was destined by God to go to, Nineveh (Israel's hated and feared enemy). The story tells us that Jonah was chosen by God to prosephy to the hated people of Nineveh their impending doom for the unbelievable purpose of providing them the opportunity to repent and being saved.
This was the last thing Jonah wanted to happen, the last place on earth he wanted to go to, the last thing he wanted to be known for doing; so much so, that he was on the run and willing to die rather than to participate in what he considered a goofy, ill-thought plan, even if it was God's plan.
Jonah is a story about what happens when people lose faith and try to take matters into their own hands. God is faithful in and through all creation. Everything acts in accord with God's faithfulness. The only choice Jonah gave himself in this story was to be the miserable wretch he was throughout the ego trip he was on.
The fish is a metaphor for Jonah's ego that arrives at the precise moment when Jonah, at the height of his arrogance, thinks he has offended God so much so that his stubbornness finally has defeated God's plan to offer Nineveh a chance to be spared by being thrown into the sea and drowned. The stormy sea he asks these foreigner to throw him into is a metaphor for the turbulence of his self pity and Jonah finds himself swallowed by his own ego in whose own juices his is allowed to stew for awhile. Jonah is stubborn, but his stubbornness is no match to God's patience, and in the end Jonah delivers God's message and Nineveh, much to Jonah's consternation, is spared.
Clergy and biblical scholars who are ambivalent about such matters do not comprehend that literal belief in the improbable distorts understanding of the possible. The story of Jonah is as relevant today as it was when it was written, unless someone is foolish enough to consign it to historical fact. The same is true when it comes to the teachings of Jesus and the teachings about Jesus.
AN IMPOSSIBLE QUESTION
For the most part the teachings of Jesus are straightforward and reflect teachings found in the Hebrew scriptures. Jesus clearly used allegory and metaphor in his teachings. We know these as his parables. What most do not know is that the Gospels also use metaphor in a real time manner when talking about Jesus as a means to portray the unitive incarnation of God and humankind in the person of Jesus as the Christ.
What Jesus brought new to the religious understanding of his time and place was the concept that every individual is a uniquely rendered child of God, like himself. That Jesus understood he had an intimate, familial relationship with God as his father is central to what he taught and how he taught.
This beloved teaching of Jesus, however, left a void in the understanding of his followers as to how he came to this unique, radical relationship with God. It raised deep theological questions that was expressed in Mary's question, "How can this be?" Such questions would not be left alone. They needed a tangible answer, no matter how improbable.
THE IMPROBABLE ANSWER
What Jesus's Judaic followers had available to them were the Hebrew Scriptures in which there was terminology and prophetic context that provided an explanation about Jesus's origin as God's Son. They were also surrounded and immersed in Greek culture that had a mythic mindset in which credibility was given to the notion of divine parentage of someone like the messiah, a king, or the Roman emperor; language that found its way into our understanding of the Christ; as in, Christ the King.
What is important to remember is that in Jesus's teachings (the teachings we can be fairly certain were Jesus's) he invited his listeners to consider themselves as having the same relationship with God as his. The prime example of this is found in the prayer he taught his disciples, The "Our Father" or "The Lord's Prayer."
The synoptic gospels of the New Testament represent an amalgam of teachings; the teachings of Jesus and the teachings about Jesus. In answering the question how Jesus came to see himself as God's Son each of these three gospels treats it differently. The earliest gospel, the Gospel of Mark treats it as a revelation that occurs during Jesus's baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist. In the Gospel of Matthew, it is Joseph who is given a dream in which the angel Gabriel explains Jesus's divine parentage to him and instructs Joseph how to deal with the situation.. The most detailed explanation is found in the Gospel of Luke in which Mary is visited in real time by Gabriel who provides Mary with a direct answer to her (and our) questions "How" and "Why."
The Gospel of John is a mystical work devoted to teachings about Jesus, replete with allegorical stories, such as the Wedding at Cana, and Nicodemus's meeting with Jesus during the darkness of night. In John, it is John the Baptist who makes it clear who Jesus is as the foretold by prophets, after John goes to great lengths in establishing Jesus as Word (God's creative force) made flesh. Throughout the Gospel of John impossible questions are posed to Jesus by those who approach him. In response, Jesus offers them improbable answers - the stuff of mystic myth; the aim of which is to get at truth, revealed in Pilate's final question to Jesus, "What is truth?" John's point being, "Pilate, your looking at it." In essence, John's message to the Christian Church is that in contemplating Jesus as the Christ we find truth.
MYSTERY
Mystery is a word I am very cautious with. Yet, mystery abounds. Life, itself, is mysterious. In many ways, we are wrapped in mystery, but we tend not to notice as we go about our daily lives.
Jesus's birth, resurrection, and ascension are considered a mystery on two levels. There is no factual frame of reference for the type of Jesus's birth, his resurrection, or his ascension as described in the gospels. If these accounts are taken literally, they are mysterious in the sense of being incomprehensible, but if seen as mythic mystery they become an invitation to probe for hidden meanings like in the story of Jonah.
The purpose of mystery in theism is to offer us a lens by which to examine the abstruse. Mystery addresses topics or concepts difficult to explain without the aid of metaphor or allegory. Mystery presented as allegory, metaphor, and myth allows us to digest or internalize the improbable answers to our impossible questions.
In this regard, mystery welcomes us into a greater reality, a reality in which all is inter-related as opposed to the mundane reality in which we find ourselves separated, if not isolated, from each other. Mystery opens us to the unitive power that is God.
Mystical work; such as, "The Gospel of John," "The Cloud of Unknowing," "Revelations of Divine Love," Interior Castles," "The Dark Night of the Soul," and others are largely allegorical and suggest a path to knowing that transcends the realm of ideological belief and fact; a way of contemplating, a pathway to faith.
FAITH
Faith is, itself, a mysterious force that every human has. As a species we would be immobilized without it. In Christianity, faith is largely treated as synonymous with belief. I do not treat them that way. They are connected but not synonymous. Belief is an intellectual function. Faith is a motivational function.
The Letter of James in the New Testament makes the case for this important distinction; that faith without works (that doesn't motivate) is dead. In other words just believing one has faith doesn't mean a thing if your not being motivated to do something by it, to participate in the creative activity of God in redeeming/restoring the world.
Every human possesses a deep repository of faith; a driving force that enables us intelligent beings to do things that the skeptical, self-serving side of our intelligence might prevent us from doing (Jonah being a prime example).
Losing faith is a serious condition, not only spiritually, it is also detrimental to our mental and physical well-being. Losing faith renders a person overtly skeptical about things in general and deprives such individuals of the ability to enjoy life.
If faith is not restored, self preservation and an obsession to control every aspect of life becomes evident. When the futility of this task becomes evident; that we control very little in what takes place in our lives, depression sets in and the focus on self preservation and controlling one's mundane life is no longer tenable.
Unless faith can be re- awakened controlling one's death becomes the only control switch left. Faith is an essential element in human life.
GOD IS FAITHFUL
When Christianity talks about the mystery of faith it is tied to an understanding of God's active participation in our welfare, in our very being. Our faith mirrors God's faith. The formal expression of this within liturgical worship is found in the Eucharistic prayer mentioned at the beginning of this post. It is positioned to be said at the unitive highpoint of this liturgy in which we figuratively jump into communion with Christ Jesus's, God's, continual redeeming act.
Christ presents Jesus as the Everyman (every person) in this prayer. Christ is the unitive metaphor of humankind and the active force that is God combined as symbolized in recalling the story of Jesus's suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension during the Eucharistic prayer.
The "sacrifice" of Jesus is, in essence our own, not merely for us, but more importantly with us. It is, in very dramatic and graphic terms, the sacrifice, the offering up, of our individual, egotistical selves in the faith (the active involvement) of being interrelated to all creation, being part of everyone, being part of everything that has been, that is, and that will ever be, as belonging to that Being in which we live, move, and have our being.
ALL IS ONE IN CHRIST JESUS
We cannot separate ourselves from the Christ Jesus concept. Everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike are part of Christ Jesus. This is the meaning of Christ died for all (2 Cor. 5:14). This is the mystery of the faith that motivates us to participate in redeeming, in restoring, our world and reconciling us to our true selves as uniquely rendered Children of God.
With Christ Jesus our egotistical selves are freely given up - "Not my will...". With Christ Jesus we are brought to new life, a new perspective of who we are. With Christ Jesus we are engaged in God's ever being, with God's ever coming into our lives, again and again.
Christ Jesus is the manifested conjugation of the Verb that God is; past, present and ever-becoming. This is the Mystery of Faith.
Until next time, stay faithful.
There also appears to be a disturbing ambivalence amongst a number of ordained clergy and some theologians about this. The ambivalence that I am talking about is in regard to whether or not it matters if the person in pew understands the difference between literal and metaphorical interpretations of scripture.
JONAH
Let's consider the story of Jonah for a moment. Some will say it doesn't matter whether people in the pew know it as an allegorical story intended to help the people of Judah in the 6th century BCE understand God's acceptance of all people, especially those considered to be less pure Jewish in their midst at a time when there was a movement by some to purge the land of Judah and Judaism of anyone not considered to be 100% pure Jew. [Does this sound familiar?] It's a warning to those who think they know God's will, who think they know better than God, who, in their foolish arrogance, try to correct God's thinking.
Some scholars are content with the notion that as long as they get the general message, there's no need to worry whether someone in the pew insists that Jonah was actually swallowed by a large fish (a whale by deduction) and lived for three days in its gastric juices with virtually no breathable air only to be spit out at the place he was destined by God to go to, Nineveh (Israel's hated and feared enemy). The story tells us that Jonah was chosen by God to prosephy to the hated people of Nineveh their impending doom for the unbelievable purpose of providing them the opportunity to repent and being saved.
This was the last thing Jonah wanted to happen, the last place on earth he wanted to go to, the last thing he wanted to be known for doing; so much so, that he was on the run and willing to die rather than to participate in what he considered a goofy, ill-thought plan, even if it was God's plan.
Jonah is a story about what happens when people lose faith and try to take matters into their own hands. God is faithful in and through all creation. Everything acts in accord with God's faithfulness. The only choice Jonah gave himself in this story was to be the miserable wretch he was throughout the ego trip he was on.
The fish is a metaphor for Jonah's ego that arrives at the precise moment when Jonah, at the height of his arrogance, thinks he has offended God so much so that his stubbornness finally has defeated God's plan to offer Nineveh a chance to be spared by being thrown into the sea and drowned. The stormy sea he asks these foreigner to throw him into is a metaphor for the turbulence of his self pity and Jonah finds himself swallowed by his own ego in whose own juices his is allowed to stew for awhile. Jonah is stubborn, but his stubbornness is no match to God's patience, and in the end Jonah delivers God's message and Nineveh, much to Jonah's consternation, is spared.
Clergy and biblical scholars who are ambivalent about such matters do not comprehend that literal belief in the improbable distorts understanding of the possible. The story of Jonah is as relevant today as it was when it was written, unless someone is foolish enough to consign it to historical fact. The same is true when it comes to the teachings of Jesus and the teachings about Jesus.
AN IMPOSSIBLE QUESTION
For the most part the teachings of Jesus are straightforward and reflect teachings found in the Hebrew scriptures. Jesus clearly used allegory and metaphor in his teachings. We know these as his parables. What most do not know is that the Gospels also use metaphor in a real time manner when talking about Jesus as a means to portray the unitive incarnation of God and humankind in the person of Jesus as the Christ.
What Jesus brought new to the religious understanding of his time and place was the concept that every individual is a uniquely rendered child of God, like himself. That Jesus understood he had an intimate, familial relationship with God as his father is central to what he taught and how he taught.
This beloved teaching of Jesus, however, left a void in the understanding of his followers as to how he came to this unique, radical relationship with God. It raised deep theological questions that was expressed in Mary's question, "How can this be?" Such questions would not be left alone. They needed a tangible answer, no matter how improbable.
THE IMPROBABLE ANSWER
What Jesus's Judaic followers had available to them were the Hebrew Scriptures in which there was terminology and prophetic context that provided an explanation about Jesus's origin as God's Son. They were also surrounded and immersed in Greek culture that had a mythic mindset in which credibility was given to the notion of divine parentage of someone like the messiah, a king, or the Roman emperor; language that found its way into our understanding of the Christ; as in, Christ the King.
What is important to remember is that in Jesus's teachings (the teachings we can be fairly certain were Jesus's) he invited his listeners to consider themselves as having the same relationship with God as his. The prime example of this is found in the prayer he taught his disciples, The "Our Father" or "The Lord's Prayer."
The synoptic gospels of the New Testament represent an amalgam of teachings; the teachings of Jesus and the teachings about Jesus. In answering the question how Jesus came to see himself as God's Son each of these three gospels treats it differently. The earliest gospel, the Gospel of Mark treats it as a revelation that occurs during Jesus's baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist. In the Gospel of Matthew, it is Joseph who is given a dream in which the angel Gabriel explains Jesus's divine parentage to him and instructs Joseph how to deal with the situation.. The most detailed explanation is found in the Gospel of Luke in which Mary is visited in real time by Gabriel who provides Mary with a direct answer to her (and our) questions "How" and "Why."
The Gospel of John is a mystical work devoted to teachings about Jesus, replete with allegorical stories, such as the Wedding at Cana, and Nicodemus's meeting with Jesus during the darkness of night. In John, it is John the Baptist who makes it clear who Jesus is as the foretold by prophets, after John goes to great lengths in establishing Jesus as Word (God's creative force) made flesh. Throughout the Gospel of John impossible questions are posed to Jesus by those who approach him. In response, Jesus offers them improbable answers - the stuff of mystic myth; the aim of which is to get at truth, revealed in Pilate's final question to Jesus, "What is truth?" John's point being, "Pilate, your looking at it." In essence, John's message to the Christian Church is that in contemplating Jesus as the Christ we find truth.
MYSTERY
Mystery is a word I am very cautious with. Yet, mystery abounds. Life, itself, is mysterious. In many ways, we are wrapped in mystery, but we tend not to notice as we go about our daily lives.
Jesus's birth, resurrection, and ascension are considered a mystery on two levels. There is no factual frame of reference for the type of Jesus's birth, his resurrection, or his ascension as described in the gospels. If these accounts are taken literally, they are mysterious in the sense of being incomprehensible, but if seen as mythic mystery they become an invitation to probe for hidden meanings like in the story of Jonah.
The purpose of mystery in theism is to offer us a lens by which to examine the abstruse. Mystery addresses topics or concepts difficult to explain without the aid of metaphor or allegory. Mystery presented as allegory, metaphor, and myth allows us to digest or internalize the improbable answers to our impossible questions.
In this regard, mystery welcomes us into a greater reality, a reality in which all is inter-related as opposed to the mundane reality in which we find ourselves separated, if not isolated, from each other. Mystery opens us to the unitive power that is God.
FAITH
Faith is, itself, a mysterious force that every human has. As a species we would be immobilized without it. In Christianity, faith is largely treated as synonymous with belief. I do not treat them that way. They are connected but not synonymous. Belief is an intellectual function. Faith is a motivational function.
The Letter of James in the New Testament makes the case for this important distinction; that faith without works (that doesn't motivate) is dead. In other words just believing one has faith doesn't mean a thing if your not being motivated to do something by it, to participate in the creative activity of God in redeeming/restoring the world.
Every human possesses a deep repository of faith; a driving force that enables us intelligent beings to do things that the skeptical, self-serving side of our intelligence might prevent us from doing (Jonah being a prime example).
Losing faith is a serious condition, not only spiritually, it is also detrimental to our mental and physical well-being. Losing faith renders a person overtly skeptical about things in general and deprives such individuals of the ability to enjoy life.
If faith is not restored, self preservation and an obsession to control every aspect of life becomes evident. When the futility of this task becomes evident; that we control very little in what takes place in our lives, depression sets in and the focus on self preservation and controlling one's mundane life is no longer tenable.
Unless faith can be re- awakened controlling one's death becomes the only control switch left. Faith is an essential element in human life.
GOD IS FAITHFUL
When Christianity talks about the mystery of faith it is tied to an understanding of God's active participation in our welfare, in our very being. Our faith mirrors God's faith. The formal expression of this within liturgical worship is found in the Eucharistic prayer mentioned at the beginning of this post. It is positioned to be said at the unitive highpoint of this liturgy in which we figuratively jump into communion with Christ Jesus's, God's, continual redeeming act.
Christ presents Jesus as the Everyman (every person) in this prayer. Christ is the unitive metaphor of humankind and the active force that is God combined as symbolized in recalling the story of Jesus's suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension during the Eucharistic prayer.
The "sacrifice" of Jesus is, in essence our own, not merely for us, but more importantly with us. It is, in very dramatic and graphic terms, the sacrifice, the offering up, of our individual, egotistical selves in the faith (the active involvement) of being interrelated to all creation, being part of everyone, being part of everything that has been, that is, and that will ever be, as belonging to that Being in which we live, move, and have our being.
ALL IS ONE IN CHRIST JESUS
We cannot separate ourselves from the Christ Jesus concept. Everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike are part of Christ Jesus. This is the meaning of Christ died for all (2 Cor. 5:14). This is the mystery of the faith that motivates us to participate in redeeming, in restoring, our world and reconciling us to our true selves as uniquely rendered Children of God.
With Christ Jesus our egotistical selves are freely given up - "Not my will...". With Christ Jesus we are brought to new life, a new perspective of who we are. With Christ Jesus we are engaged in God's ever being, with God's ever coming into our lives, again and again.
Christ Jesus is the manifested conjugation of the Verb that God is; past, present and ever-becoming. This is the Mystery of Faith.
Until next time, stay faithful.
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