ON SILENCING THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH, USA - AN OPEN LETTER TO THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION

To the Anglican Communion:

My heart was saddened when the primates of Anglican Communion decided to silence the voice of the Episcopal Church in the United States on matters involving doctrine and polity for three years because the Episcopal Church changed its Canon to permit the marriage of same-sex couples in its churches. Click here to read the Primate's Statement

This imposed ban on the Episcopal Church strikes me as an ill thought act of desperation which unfortunately led the primates of the Communion to abandon its tradition of holding diversity in tension and seeking the middle way.

I understand the idea of same-sex marriages in some parts of the world is beyond comprehension; that its acceptance by the primates of the churches in those areas would risk political and social backlash.

What I don't understand are the primates from those areas who have actually advocated for the criminalization of homosexual individuals, who have backed the imprisonment and the execution of human beings simply because of their sexual identity.

If the treatment of LGBTQ individuals within the Communion was not a concern before the Episcopal Church raised such concerns or, if by the primates' statement, they think they are giving themselves a break from such discussions, they are mistaken and tremendously wrong.  It now has become the main issue facing the Communion, and it will require the principled approach of using scripture, tradition, and reason to pave the way to resolution.

SCRIPTURE

Scripture is helpful in identifying the questions that the primates should be asking instead of looking at scripture, the Holy Bible, as if it were an answer book. In a recent post that I wrote on Christianity, I touched upon problem solving from a Christian perspective. (Click here).

The question is does scripture give us anything to reference that would help identify the perceived problem some have regarding homosexuality beyond saying that homosexuality is the problem?

I contend that it does and by someone who actually dealt with sexual identity issues within the early church, a personage no less than the apostle Paul.

The sexual identity issue that Paul dealt with was the question of whether an uncircumcised gentile male could be fully received into the body of Christ without having to be converted, changed (circumcised); to become Jewish in order to be considered acceptable to God prior to being baptized and recognized as a member of the Church.

Some might say, "Wait a minute!  Circumcision and same-sex marriage/homosexuality are not the same thing.  Circumcision is not a sexual identity issue.  Besides Paul speaks negatively about men and women having 'unnatural desires' for their own gender."

In my opinion, they are very comparable and Paul's treatment of the circumcision issue is applicable to the gender identity and same-sex marriage issues of today.

If you want to pursue a fuller understanding of same-sex marriage and of scripture on the topic of same-sex relationships, click, here and here.

To summarize what I have already written on the subjects:

1.  The Holy Bible does not define marriage in any prescriptive manner (legal definition).

2.  At best, any comment related to marriage in scripture is purely that, commentary,
     nothing more.

3. The Levitical law prohibiting male homosexuality was one amongst a number of prohibited
     sexual acts related to temple worship.

4. While Paul discouraged what he saw as immoral lifestyles which included male prostitution
    and homosexuality (αρσενοκοιται) among a host of other immoral lifestyles
    (adultery, drunkenness,thievery, greed, etc.), he did not exclude homosexuals or any of the
    others from being Christian.  "For such were some of you..." 1Corinthians 6:11

5. The New Testament talks about marriage in terms of honoring, loving, and being committed
    to the other which is applicable to any such committed relationship between two people.

6. Things change over time. We have a better understanding and new perspectives about
     innumerable things, including race, homosexuality and marriage, and the fragility of all life
     on this planet.

That same-sex marriage is never addressed in the Bible does not permit one to utilize the scant, contextual references regarding same-sex relationships in the Bible to denigrate, in the name of God, those who are gay and lesbian and who desire life-giving, committed relationships that reflect the love of God in Christ

Jesus does not address homosexuality or homosexual relationships. This omission, alone, speaks loudly and gives space and standing to other things that Jesus said regarding our human interactions and the treatment of others.

With regard to marriage (understood in context of the question posed to Jesus about a man divorcing his wife), Jesus' point was in honoring the commitment made in marriage as a loving, life-giving, and lifelong relationship between a man and a woman, rather than making a law about marriage being between one man and one woman.

Paul certainly saw the Gospel of Christ crossing every barrier known to the people of his time.

Faith in Jesus as the Christ was, in Paul's opinion, all that was needful for salvation. Paul's radical understanding of faith in the faithfulness, the hopefulness, and the love of God as found in Jesus; surpassed any legal mandate or test that one could think of as standing in the way of God's unmerited grace.  Faith in Jesus as the risen Christ, for Paul, is the only measure by which one is deemed justified in the eyes of God.

This is something many churches agree with, but then, through their mountains of doctrines and dogmas, their traditions of form and structure as opposed to the deeper traditions of function and substance, render it so conditional as to make it irrelevant.

I find it ironic that sexual identity, once again, is at the center of defining what is meant by God's unmerited grace.  Paul sums up unmerited grace in his Epistle to the Galatians:

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:27&28

There is a saying in the LGBTQ movement that paraphrases what Paul said, "Love knows no gender."

God is love, and God's love is not based on gender, race, religion, species, planetary system, solar system, galaxy or universe. "Neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus." Romans 8:39.

How then has the mote of sexual identity become such the beam, such an obstacle, in the eyes of some Christians?

TRADITION

The previous quotation from Galatians brings me to the issue of tradition, "For as many of you have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ."  The sacrament of Holy Baptism is one of the church's oldest traditions.

To my mind none of the interrogatories associated with baptism ask about one's sexual identity. There is no sexual test to becoming a Christian - that was done away with during Paul's time.

There is no way of knowing when the mark of Christ is placed on one received in baptism, someone declared and embraced as one of God's own, whether that person is or will grow up to be homosexual, bisexual, transgendered, queer, or heterosexual.

To my knowledge there is no litmus test or requirement for receiving the body and blood of Christ. These are the two oldest traditions specific to the Christian Church. None have been more enduring, and no other sacraments supersede them.  These are the greatest signs and symbols of God's grace the Church is entrusted with and they are meant to offered to all just as Christ died for all.

They are the sign and symbol of God's embrace of us as individuals and as members of the body of Christ.  They set aside any sense of qualification our limited minds can conceive that could separate one or any from God's love - "nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus."

The sacrament of marriage is at best an amalgam of historical and social conditioning, mixed with the church's understanding it as a symbol of Christ's love for his church  -  "And in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free man, no male or female."

That the issue of same-sex marriage has never been addressed before does not mean that concept of marriage has never changed or evolved.  It has throughout the ages.  The union of same-sex couples in marriage does not diminish the bonds matrimony, does not diminish its sacredness, and does not diminish its being a symbol of Christ's love for his Church.  Nothing has changed about marriage in that regard.  As a sacrament it is open to all, just as Baptism and Holy Communion are open to all.

REASON

What frequently seems so reasoned and reasonable at the time can prove to be anything but.  For example, take Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin.  When Caiaphas declared it was better that one person, Jesus, die rather than the many, to preserve the status quo rather than risk a massacre, it made immense sense.  He had good reason to base that on.  He knew what the Romans were capable of doing, what they had done before, and what they would do again if what Jesus said or did would cause a raucous in the Temple precinct.

In like manner, it seems reasonable to calm the waters that are stirring in the Anglican Communion by silencing a relatively small fraction of  the Communion, who seemingly break the rules by ordaining an openly gay bishop in a committed relationship, electing the first female primate, and permitting same-sex marriages to be performed.   Better to silence them for three years than to risk a massive walkout by other, much larger groups within the Communion.

The parallels between Jesus's trial, his resurrection on the third day and the decision to ban the Episcopal Church from active participation in the Communion by imposing a three year period of silence is hard to ignore.  Carrying this "coincidental" comparison to its conclusion could lead one to think that the Episcopal Church is poised for a resurrection.

The Episcopal Church in the United States is a responsive and responsible church in the face of a changing world, a world of changing perspectives and better understanding.

It has demonstrated a realization that amongst its membership are LGBTQ individuals who are committed to Christ and his Church, who are loved by God and who bear God's image as everyone else does. There are also same-sex couples who are committed to Christ and who seek to live in recognized committed loving  relationships within the bonds of marriage, who desire nothing more than to grow in their love for one another, to live in peace, and contribute to wellbeing of their churches and society.

The Episcopal Church is responsible and responsive to the Gospel of Christ and to what our presiding bishop, Michael Curry, calls the Jesus Movement; the ongoing ministry of Jesus left to his mystical body, the Church.

The Episcopal Church in the United States gets what so many other Christian denominations don't get; the wide embrace of God's grace and unconditional love - Not that God's grace for all is something new.  It has always been there, but rather that our limited, linear minds take time to wrap themselves around the limitless grace and unconditional love God has for every single person that has ever lived, lives today, and will live in the future. 

That some within the Body of Christ are seeing the amazing fullness of God's grace and unconditional love is something to rejoice, not silence. It may take time for others to get there, and I firmly believe they will, but the road may be long an arduous for them.  Trying to silence those who are further down the road in seeing God's Kingdom in our midst, who are in the midst of celebrating the fullness of God's grace will not stop the fullness of that Kingdom, that grace from emerging for all.

I'm not sure what three years of silencing the Episcopal Church's voice in the Anglican Communion is supposed to do.  If it was designed to cause the Episcopal Church to change its overwhelmingly supported stance on being fully inclusive by permitting same-sex marriages, that seems very unlikely.

I do not understand how silencing one member of the Communion holds the Communion together when, in essence, what is now holding it together is the willingness of the Episcopal Church to hold it together by staying.  I am mindful as I write this of today's Epistle reading from 1 Corinthian's 12.

What the  primates' statement has demonstrated, to me, is how insecure, tenuous, and fear-based the primates and by extension the Communion is.  A three year hiatus from having to function in the Communion may prove to be a blessing to the Episcopal Church. It has other work to do here at home, and throughout the world. If it cannot do so in the name of the Anglican Communion so be it, but the Episcopal Church has a far greater obligation to continue the ministry of Christ here in the United States and throughout the world than it has to the primates of the Communion.

A FINAL OBSERVATION

God's Spirit cannot be bound by dogma, doctrine, or the leather bindings of any holy book. The Communion and any ecclesiastical body that thinks the Spirit of God is bound by such things suffers from a form of idolatry, bible-blindness. The Word of God is alive and God's Spirit moves like the wind and it stirs the waters that heals the brokenness within our world.  Churches so often are the least apt to feel the direction of God's Spirit, and so often perturbed by waters that stir change, rejuvenation, and new perspectives in their midst.

When a church closes its windows and doors to wind of the Spirit and tries to ignore the stirring  of the waters in its midst, the Spirit completes its purpose through other means.  It did so in the Republic of Ireland (Click here) by moving a majority of its citizens to approve same-sex marriage.   It did so in the United States through the decision made by its Supreme Court (Click here). God's Spirit is not bound by religion, politics, bricks and mortar, or by leather bindings.

God's Spirit is on the move to invite the least considered, the ignored, the dismissed, the unwelcomed to the feast.  It does not take much imagination to know who is being invited.  All that is necessary to find out who is on the invite list is to poll one's mind to find who is the least, the ignored, the dismissed, the unwelcomed in one's life and there one has it; God's invite list.   

The Episcopal Church gets this. Its numbers may have dwindled. It may be shunned by members of the Communion, ridiculed by other Christian denominations for being morally lax in its practice of inclusion, but it is faithful in carrying out the ministry of Christ, and its doors are always open to all who seek a home in God, its windows are wide-open to God's Spirit, and it cherishes jumping in and getting wet by the stirring waters of rejuvenating change.

Our presiding bishop spoke eloquently about the primates decision, our commitment to be patient and remain in the Communion, and our commitment to further the ministry of Jesus.

I pray that Episcopal Church stays strong in its commitment to serve all people in the name of Christ; that it will continue to be moved by the wind of God's Holy Spirit, and that it continues to splash about in the stirring waters that revive our souls and heals the brokenness of our world

I also pray that this breakdown will lead to a building up and a resurrection moment for the Anglican Communion; that its primates may find the strength to fully open its doors to let all who seek a home in God,  to open wide its windows to let the winds of God's Spirit guide them, and to cherish the stirrings of the waters that will ultimately heal those who commit to jumping in and getting wet.

+ In Jesus name +

Norman Wright,
Member of the Episcopal Church, United States

The Third Sunday after Epiphany, 2016

FAITH BEYOND BELIEF

In several of my last posts, I've used the phrase "faith beyond belief."  While I think its meaning intuitive for most, especially those who have been following my posts, I've thought I might go a little deeper into discussing what I mean by it as it relates to Christian practice and theology.

As I've pointed out faith and belief are largely understood as synonymous terms in the English translations of the  Greek word πίστις (pistis) as used in the New Testament.  The difficulty in translating the Greek word for faith, πίστις, is that faith is strictly understood as a noun in English, whereas in Greek it also has a verb form which has no exact equivalent in English.  The closest verb form found in English as a form of "to faith" or be faithful is to believe.  

As linguists would probably tell us, there is no such thing as completely synonymous words. Each word is nuanced; has its own feel.  Novelists, playwrights, and poets get this sense of feeling that words possess.

PAUL AND FAITH BEYOND BELIEF

The person who best gets this sense of the feeling words conveyed in the New Testament is the apostle Paul.  Paul's struggle with his newfound source of "faith" leads himself to explore what it means.  As a result, faith figures prominently in Paul's understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus as the Christ. Paul provides a subtle distinction between our understanding of faith and belief as used today.

It was an experience that became Paul's access point to understanding faith. That experience, a vision of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus as an act of God, rendered him blind to the world he thought he knew so well; a world shaped by the ideological beliefs he possessed which were based on a concrete understanding of Judaism.

What Paul also possessed was faith. Beyond his ideological beliefs, residing deep within Paul (and residing deep within all of us) is a repository of faith that is, in part, the active image of God that we are.  The vision of Paul's, this act of God's grace, as Paul would come to understand it, was a religion-shattering moment that shook him to his core.

Paul was an intellectual who came to understand that there is more to being human than mere intellect, something that transcended mere human belief; something that resides in the heart rather than the mind of man, something that actively synchronizes one's acts with God's acts.  He called this something faith.

For example, let's examine Romans 10: 6-10:

"But the righteousness based on faith (πίστεως) says Do not say in your heart, “Who will ascend into heaven? (that, is to bring Christ down) 

Or,” Who will descend into the abyss?” (That is to bring Christ up from the dead.)

But what does it say? The word is near you, on your lips  and in your heart [that is the word of faith (πίστεως) which we preach];

because, if you confess with your lips that  Jesus is Lord, and believe ( πίστευσης) in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For man believes (πίστευεται) with his heart and is so justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved.

 [Revised Standard Version (RSV), Division of Christion Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America 1946].

My purpose in quoting this section of Romans is twofold. First I'm using it to demonstrate the verb-like manner in which faith is used in Greek, but not in English. The problem is that believing and belief have more than one connotation and defining the affective property of faith as believing in English gives it a different feel than it has in Greek.

To believe in something is not the same as being motivated by faith to do something.  In modern usage believing is very subjective and more associated with perception and opinion than with trusting without seeing or without having an opinion prior to apprehension, which brings me to my second reason for quoting this section. Faith, as used by Paul, is not a stagnant something, but a dynamic force.

This section of Paul's epistle can be easily construed to mean that all that is necessary for personal salvation is to say that one has faith in the Lord Jesus.  Paul's seemingly minimalistic approach to faith belies the impact it has on our lives, but Paul's point is that saying Jesus is Lord is motivated as result of faith.  You can't say it from the heart unless it resides in one's being.  To put this into an English context, faith, understood as a belief, does not necessarily cause us to act unless faith motivates us to act.

The distinction between faith as an affective element, causing one to act, and faith as intellectual assent to an ideological belief proved to be problematic in the early Christian Church, as well. It proved problematic for the church at Corinth, for example.

I don't see Paul as personally having this problem, but I can see where it became one amongst those who took Paul's enthusiastic embrace of God's free gift of grace through faith as all that is needed for one's salvation and running with it.

JAMES AND FAITH BEYOND BELIEF

Fortunately, the writer of the Epistle of James (attributed to Jesus's biological brother and leader of the Church in Jerusalem) picks up on the problem of seeing faith treated simply as a thing to possess (like a belief) as being sufficient for one's personal salvation that requires nothing from us than just to say we have it.  

James points out in very clear language that if we are to continue the ministry of Jesus, the work of Christ in "saving" the world, restoring it, faith has to produce actions, faith must be active; something we do:

“What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but not works?  Can his faith save him?

If a brother or sister is ill clad and in lack of daily food,

and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled, “ without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit?

So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.”  "Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.”  James 2: 14-18

[Revised Standard Version (RSV), Division of Christion Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America 1946].

I have often found the Epistle of James most helpful in understanding the early Christian mind regarding faith.  The Epistle of James appears antithetical to what Paul is saying in his Epistle to the Romans, but if one takes a closer look at James and compares it to Paul’s example of Abraham in Romans as an illustration of how faith in Christ changes perspective and motivates us in all of life, one has a better appreciation for both Paul and James. 

As a side note to James’s comments on faith, I find it interesting that there have been some theologians throughout history, such as the reformer, Martin Luther, who considered removing James from the canon of scripture because it appears so antithetical to Pauline theology.  In Luther’s defense, I would say that, given the emphasis on indulgences (the type one could buy to fund church projects) during his day as way to earn safe passage to heaven and the fact that the majority of people of his day felt about as doomed as he did prior to rediscovering Pauline theology, one can understand how this became an issue. 

The problem that Luther and others had/have with James, however, is not a case of works vs. faith, or, as the Lutherans are apt to phrase it, the failure of "works righteousness" vs. God’s "unmerited grace" but rather salvation theology as a whole which pits work and faith against each other. James and Paul are both right regarding the affective property of faith (as a verb) to change and motivate lives in the service of God.

THE AFFECTIVE ELEMENTS

One of the clear markers of Pauline scripture is his consistent reference of what I have been referring to as the affective elements, faith, hope, and love.  In every epistle that can be attributed to Paul, these three elements are mentioned or implicated as properties of God and as properties of those "in Christ;" as in God is faithful, God is hopeful, God is love and as those who live or walk in faith, hope, and love.

I identify them as affective in that they are active in motivating one to do something, to essentially be.  There is a verb-like sense to all three of them, to act from faith (to trust in doing without knowing an outcome), to hope, and to love.

Significantly, in Romans Paul differentiates between belief and faith in his discussion of the law. Paul begins with a discussion of Abraham's faith and how Abraham had faith before the law was established during the time of Moses.  What Paul is getting at in this discussion is that faith was pre-existent before the law; that one could be considered faithful without having intellectually subscribe to ideologies that he associates as being the law.  

The ideological belief being questioned by Paul, in this case, is the belief that in order to be considered righteous; right with God and a follower of Jesus, one had to become a Jew, meaning a gentile male had to be circumcised.  Circumcision was an issue, if not the issue, for the early church, and Paul put great of effort into changIng it as a requirement.

Paul argued that faith (the act of trusting in God's unmerited Grace) not the intellectual submission to a belief as represented by the "law" accounts for what is righteousness in God's eyes.  He demonstrates that faith is pre-existent; that faith is a property of being or, at the very least, a property of human beings.

Paul goes so far as to say that those who act in faith become doers of righteousness (doing right towards others) - fulfill the requirements of the law whether they are circumcised or not.  In other words, those who live in faith beyond belief are those who live in the hope and in the love of God, regardless of any ideological belief that would say otherwise.

For Paul, the law, by itself, can occlude one's vision of God; that there is something fundamental at work that brings an awareness of God, that brings one to Christ beyond what can be believed.  Paul, however, is quick to point out that faith doesn't negate the law (the relevance of one's beliefs or the acquired wisdom of religious beliefs), it deepens it as something one must live. 

Life is the testing ground of all beliefs.  If what one believes is not applicable to one's personal life, is used only to criticize others, does not not lead to personal acceptance (faith in one's being), hope, and love  for one's self and the world, such a belief is antithetical to one's existence and is in opposition to the will and the creative activity of God.

FAITH BEYOND BELIEF IN THE FIRST CENTURY

Paul's epistles declare that the floodgates of God's grace have been opened upon the world.  The first disciples and followers of Jesus couldn't see around the religion that they and Jesus were part of.   It took an educated Pharisee, Paul, to see the implications of what Jesus's message and ministry was about. It took faith form him to apply it.  In Jesus, Paul saw and experienced the faith, hope, and love of God which extended far beyond the confines of any single culture and religion.

Paul's use of the affective elements throughout his epistles is effective in bringing us a deeper understanding of what God initiated in Jesus's ministry.  Jesus's ministry was all about living in the faith, the hope, and the love of God; that our faith, our hope, and our love is nothing more than images of what God has invested in us; of what God does in and through us.

Faith in Jesus as the Christ is not a matter of simple believing, as a mental assent to a theological premise. Faith in Jesus as the Christ is experiential, a matter of living life, as Paul did, from the center of one's heart, from the love of God experienced as Christ, as a child of God. 

FAITH BEYOND BELIEF IN THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY

In the twenty-first century there is a need for Christians to broaden the application of faith to those outside of Christianity.  Paul started something that was never fully completed; just as Jesus started something that was never fully completed.  This sense of incompletion is essential to human progress and creativity.  I see incompletion (at least on this side of life) as something God is intentional about.  Bear with me on this:

There is a pragmatism to Christianity that is frequently watered down as a result of salvation theology.  I can accept that God will save everyone in the long run of cosmological history, because everything already is in God.  In essence nothing ever can be lost in that Being in which we move, live, and have our being.

The problem is we live in a world, in a physical life-span,  that is very limited in what we can conceive of or perceive.  As smart as we humans are, we are linear-based creatures who, for all practical purposes, live in flatland world of limited dimensions.  We truly see things, as Paul says, through a dark glass. 

The pragmatism that is watered down in Christianity is that salvation based theology tends to make us ignore the world in which we live in.  It says outright that this world is so messed up nothing good can come of it or be made of it in the present time; in the time we live.  This understanding of our world has been in effect for the last two millennia.  Ironically, salvation theology argues against the need for humans to progress and to be creative; the hallmarks of God's breathed image within us.

Do we need help in restoring the world, in saving the world?   

Absolutely,  and I believe God is there to help us on our way in the work of restoring this minute corner of creation.  It may require a religious-shattering experience that shakes us from our religious complacency to see with the eyes of faith beyond the beliefs we have concretized over the centuries and which have numbed us to the needs of our fellow humans, our fellow creatures, and to the earth as a whole.  

Advancing Pauline theology beyond the confines of Christian religion, one can easily see that whether one believes or disbelieve in the Christian message as codified in its voluminous doctrine sand dogmas or in an out-there-other God becomes a moot point.  The pragmatism of Christianity, which I feel is applicable to all of our problems and in all of our endeavors to solve them in the present, is to become workers in the faith, in the hope, and in the love that is God even if one does not like calling such things that because, ultimately, God is a verb -  is that which was, is, and will be. 

What Paul, James, and Jesus reveal is that the God concept is an inward process connected to our abilities to act out of faith, hope, love.  These are the elements of God.  These are also the elements found at center of every human heart, even those hearts clouded by evil deeds.

These are what presents in us the image of God to the world.

Until next time, stay faithful

THE BAPTISM OF JESUS - A sermon

[NOTE:  This is the sermon I delivered at Christ Episcopal Church in Yankton, South Dakota, on January 11, 2015.  I thought it would be appropriate to my continuing discussion on Christianity and the move towards religious singularity.]

Praying in the words of the Psalmist:

May the Lord give strength to his people.

May the Lord give his people the blessing of peace.

+ In Jesus’ name +

Welcome to Epiphany!!  The season of Light, The season of Illumination – The season of Revelation – The season of Transfiguration! The season in which to contemplate the wondrous love of God!

Today we also commemorate the Baptism of Jesus.  So I want to use this opportunity, to examine the Sacrament of Baptism in in the light of Jesus’s baptism.

In the Gospel of Mark this is where the story of Jesus begins, at his baptism, and with the words “You are my son, my beloved, with you I am well pleased” ringing in his ears the story continues as Jesus is sent/driven by the Spirit into the wilderness; that place of temptation, testing, and trial.

What I would draw our attention to is that these words of our heavenly Father are said to Jesus before he enters the wilderness, before he enters his ministry, before he is tempted, tested, and tried; not after he resisted temptation, passed the tests and the trials.  They were said before. 

Why? Because Jesus succeeding in all these things was a foregone conclusion? 

I don’t think so.  

Jesus could have failed.  That was definitely in the realm of possibilities. 

What I believe happened is that when Jesus submitted himself to God in baptism and heard the voice of God declaring him to be his son, Jesus was enabled, emboldened, and en-spirited – inspired to go into the wilderness of life, to find himself, to find his true Father, our true Father, and from there to minister to others, to do the will of God; knowing the faith God had in him. 

Baptism in this sense is not so much about our faith in God as it is a declaration of God’s faith in us.

We are all God’s children, Christian and non-Christian alike; baptized and unbaptized alike. We all bear the image of God. We are all loved by God. We are all the face of God in the world and God has a role for all of us to play in it.

Baptism is God’s graced blessing on us as individuals, God’s open declaration of his faith in us as his daughters and sons.  Baptism is one’s initiation into the ministry of Jesus, one’s entry into the very life of Christ, receiving the same Spirit that descended upon Jesus at his. Baptism is being sent by that Spirit into the wilderness of life as a member of Christ’s resurrected body in the world, the Church.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if after a person is baptized the officiant looks the person in the eye, whatever the person’s age and declares, “You are God’s daughter, you are God’s son, God’s beloved.  In you God is well-pleased.” Those words should be ringing in our ears of our hearts as we enter the wilderness of life, as we enter the wilderness of Jesus’ ministry.  These words should be ringing in our ears right now. 

God has faith in each and every one of us to carry out the ministry left for us by Jesus. In the Gospel of John, (John 14:12 to be exact) Jesus says this:

“I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing.  He (anyone) who has faith in me will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

Think about that for a moment.  We’re capable of doing greater things than Jesus. But the statement begs the question of faithfulness.  How faithful are we in our commitment to continue the work Jesus left for us to do as individuals and as a community of faith, as a congregation? 

Like Jesus we are driven by God’s Spirit into the wilderness, into the wilderness of life to minister in the various capacities given us by God’s grace, as individuals and as a congregation.  Is it a given that we will succeed?  I don’t think so.

People of faith can lose faith. People who love God can lose their trust in God and so can churches. Churches close every year.  They dwindle to nothingness for various reasons – some because of demographic changes – but probably more often than not; more than we’d like to admit, it is because the light has gone out and the Holy Spirit moves on.

As a congregation, as a family of faith, we are continually faced with all sorts of issues; all the things that can disrupt, tempt, test, and try us in this wilderness, but in this wilderness, like Jesus, we can find ourselves, find out who we are, and what we are made of, and we can encounter God’s ministering angels along the way.  It’s up to us to allow ourselves to be driven by the Spirit.  It’s up to us to engage in the ministry that Jesus left.

God has faith in us, but do we have the courage of faith, the force of faith to do the work of Jesus, to enter fully into his life, into his ministry to work towards its completion? 

When it comes to this ministry we have Jesus for our model. So let’s take a quick review:

Jesus prayed.  He prayed a lot.  When everybody else was done with their day, Jesus would go off meditate and pray – for hours. Praying sounds simple enough, but it takes commitment.

Jesus was compassionate - quick to forgive without being asked.

Jesus was kind – all were welcome. Jesus was fully present to every person who came to him. He felt their touch, he heard their lone voice in the crowd, and expressed amazement at God’s presence in their lives.

Jesus was a healer; a healer of the soul, a healer of the mind, and a healer of the body.

 Jesus was a feeder.  He fed the hungry with physical and spiritual food and he embraced the outcast, the humble, the poor and the weak.  

Jesus was a preacher, a teacher, and a story teller.

Jesus didn’t hold his punches either.  He was quick to challenge the entitled, quick to expose religious arrogance and hypocrisy. 

Most of all Jesus was faithful to his calling – completely trusting in his Father’s, in our Father’s, faithfulness, to the very end.  And this all started with his baptism, and it all continues with us in ours. 

In the past Fr. Jim (the  rector of Christ Episcopal Church) has asked us during this season if we are having any epiphanies.  In contemplating today’s gospel, I would like to share one.  I don’t know if it qualifies as epiphany so much that it is a suggestion: 

In this church we pray for the needs of others and we commemorate birthdays and anniversaries, which are all good, but as a congregation we made a vow, a commitment at every baptism to support each person in their new life in Christ.  We offer the newly baptized a candle and suggest that they light it on the anniversary of their baptism.

I don’t know how many of us actually remember the date on which we were baptized much less remember to light a candle, if we received one at the time.  Maybe it is we, the church who should be lighting the candles.

Isn’t it part of this church’s, this congregation’s responsibility to remind us that we are loved by God; That God has placed his faith in us to continue the ministry of Jesus and bring the light of Christ with us on our journey through life?  Isn’t it part of this church’s, this congregation’s responsibility, to discern what our ministries are and to offer prayers and support in completing the ministry entrusted to us by Jesus?

To those ends I would suggest lighting a candle on a Sunday like today as a way of reminding us of our collective responsibility towards each other and of our individual responsibility to take up the ministry of Jesus, to be the light of Christ, the face God in the world; to be mindful of the words whispered into the ears of our hearts by God at our baptisms:

“You are my daughter.  You are my son, my beloved.  In you I am well pleased.”

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Until next time, stay faithful.

 

THE INCARNATION

     In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God... 

     All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made...

     And the Word was made flesh... .

    

                                                               from the Gospel of John

The Gospel of John is an esoteric work written primarily for Christians to ponder their relation to God through Jesus as the Christ.  It is pivotal in understanding Christian theology, particularly, Christology.  It was written to present truths about Jesus that are larger than words can express.  As such, it was not intended to be taken as literal fact, but rather as allegory and metaphor.

What John does is to take the notion of God as a verb, the spoken and speaking Word,  and has God paradoxically speaking the God-concept into becoming a being within our linear existence.  In other words, God as that being in which we live and have being, becomes, within the context of our being, one of us as an individual, as being within his own being-ness at a particular time and place within human history.

The incarnation story is not germane to Christianity.  Every religion has within it the concept of the enfleshed divinity.

In Judaism, for example, the original incarnation story is found in Genesis 1 and 2.

From Genesis 1 we find:

"And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our own likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.   So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female created he them."

From Genesis 2 we find:

But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.  And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

All of these stories are allegorical. Each is filled with God's love and a tenderness that they defy further explanation.

No words, apart from allegory and metaphor, can describe the immense beauty and the intimacy of our own evolving creation as God's crowning opus on Earth, as God's presence amongst us; as God's presence within us.

This is the Mystery of the Incarnation.

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THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE INCARNATION

In pondering the immensity of it all we are assisted by various scriptures.  For Christians, we have stories about Jesus recorded in the New Testament.  As you shall see they are extremely diverse in their presentation of the incarnation.

The Gospel of Luke

The most familiar story of the incarnation is  found in the Gospel of Luke.  It is, of course, an allegorical story, meant to get us to probe and contemplate its applications.

Luke begins by introducing us to two women, Elizabeth and her much younger cousin, Mary.  There is connection between these two women as mothers of a foretold prophet, John the Baptizer and the mother of the Christ, Jesus, and two other women, Sarah, the mother of a nation, and Eve, the mother of the human race, whose stories are recorded in the book of Genesis.

Luke's story is a mirror reflection of the stories of Sarah and Eve in the way that mirrors reflect left as right and right as left:

In Genesis, the birth of Isaac was received with no small amount of skepticism by both Abraham and Sarah who thought it some kind of joke due to Sarah's age. In Luke, upon hearing  that his aging wife, Elizabeth would conceive, Zechariah is literally rendered speechless because of his skepticism until John is born, but Elizabeth accepts the news and laughs for joy.

In Genesis, when Eve receives God's warning about not eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she doesn't take it seriously and readily believes the reasoning of the serpent and eats what is forbidden and is told by God that she shall bear children in pain.  In Luke, Mary, upon hearing news that she will bear God's Son, receives it in faith and is filled with joy at Jesus's conception and birth.

It is as if Luke's account of these two births was intended to cancel out Eve's lack of faith and Sarah's skepticism and to engage the listener or reader into letting go of mundane reasoning and enter the realm of Divine wisdom and faithfulness.

Luke spares no allegorical or poetic expense in getting across that God is waging a grassroots campaign to redeem the world by depicting God's direct involvement in human affairs as righting the human failures of the past.

To that end, Luke presents the incarnation as a linear story of mythic proportions; in that,  God impregnates a young virgin in order to directly participate in redeeming his own creation. To the modern ear this sounds more than a little bizarre, but it wouldn't have at the time it was written. 

So in this mythic story, Luke has to get these Galileans, Mary and Joseph, from Nazareth to Bethlehem, David's home town to ensure a direct connection with prophecy and the Davidic line; to render it consistent with the Hebrew scriptures.  He does this by tying the story to a census supposedly ordered by the Roman Emperor, Augustus, which requires Joseph to return to the place of his birth.  It's a spurious situation at best, but it's gets Joseph and Mary where they need to be to be in time for Jesus to be born where he needed to be born at in Luke's mind.

At the same time, Luke ensures that we understand the humility that God endures for our sake by having God's incarnate self, Jesus, born in a barn and whose crib was a feeding trough. To top it off, this wondrous birth is announced, not to the halls of power, but to unkempt, lowly shepherds in the darkness of night.

In presenting the incarnation this way, Luke, as all the gospels do, turn the notion of power and glory upside down.  That which looks strong is weak, and that which appears weak is strong.  In Luke we see the strength of faith beyond belief in Elizabeth's, Mary's, and the shepherds' receptivity of God's improbable answer to the impossible situational they were living in.

Luke helps us ponder God's incarnate presence in our midst by providing us with some of the most memorable poetic texts in Christianity:

1.  Elizabeth's verbal reaction to seeing Mary which forms the text of the, "Ave Maria,"

2. Mary's contemplative canticle known as the "Magnificat,

3.  Zechariah's contemplative canticle, "Benedictus Dominus Deus," and

4. the canticle of angels when announcing the birth of Jesus to the shepherds, "Gloria in excelsis Deo."

 All of these texts are regularly used in liturgical worship settings . It is these texts, within the linear mythic setting of Luke's narrative of Jesus's birth, that we are invited to contemplate what God is up to in becoming one with us and what God is motivating us to do as God continuing, incarnate presence in the world today.

The Gospel of Matthew

Matthew's gospel presents a storyline about Jesus's birth that is more cryptic than Luke's. In the first chapter, Matthew traces Jesus's ancestry from Abraham to David, David to the Babylonian exile, from the exile to Joseph to establish a prophetic link to the past, even though, a Matthew points out Jesus's birth is caused by God's Holy Spirit without any involvement on Joseph's part.

Unlike Luke, Matthew starts his narrative by placing the Holy Family in Bethlehem as their original home and he has to find a way to get them to Galilee to fulfill the prophecy about Jesus being called a Nazarene.  This undoubtedly influenced Matthew's mythic storyline, as Luke having to get them from Galilee to Bethlehem influenced his storyline.

Both Matthew and Luke offers us two different genealogies of Jesus.  Matthew makes a point of letting us know that there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David and fourteen generations from David to the Babylonian captivity, and fourteen generations from the time of the exile to Jesus.

Mere coincidental trivia on the part of Matthew?

Not at all. In Matthew, numerology and astrology play an important role in his configuration for proving Jesus to be the promised Messiah, the Christ. There are three sets of fourteen.  The number three is the number of Divine love and creativity represented by the planet is Venus, the Morning Star.  The number fourteen is made up of two sets of seven, the number of completion and perfection. Combined we have the number forty-two representing a multiplication of the six days of creation and the perfection attained on the seventh day, all of which points to Jesus being the perfected creation as God most beloved son; God's own in-dwelling presence amongst us.

By contrast, Luke provides the genealogy of Jesus after his baptism by John the Baptist, almost as an afterthought. Luke's approach begins with Jesus's "thought to be father," Joseph, and goes all the way back to Adam as God's first son.  An interesting twist that is consistent with Luke's attempt to portray the incarnation story of Jesus as a correcting narrative to undo the perceived wrongs of the past.

Matthew gives Joseph the odd role of being Jesus's father without ever having sexual relations with Mary.  Both Matthew and Luke make a point of mentioning this in their accounts. The point I believe they were trying to make was that Jesus was not the product of lust or any process other than the pure love of God for all of humanity.  This was also important in their theological view as the means to establish Jesus as the purely conceived sacrificial Lamb of God who was destined to take away the sins of the world. 

In Matthew, Jesus is portrayed as being a threat to those who abuse power, like Herod the Great who figures prominently in Matthew's account. To that end, Matthew tells us the story of the three kings or wise men who, in their astrological observations and charting, identify a star that leads them to a divine king who they seek to worship. When they approach Herod's court to inquire where they may find such a newborn king after, Herod's has his scribes search the scriptures and they determine that such a king was foretold to be born in Bethlehem. The three kings depart  and being led by the star (what becomes later identified in Christian hymnody as the Morning Star, Venus) they find the place where Jesus is and offer him their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Matthew tells us that Herod, fearful of being overthrown by this newborn king,  plotted to kill all male children in that area two years and younger.  Joseph, being warned in a dream, takes Jesus and Mary and they escape to Egypt.  As with Luke, Matthew connects the incarnation story to the prophecies found in the Hebrew scriptures. 

Throughout Matthew's account Joseph is constantly being warned in his dreams on what to do and where to go. In the end, one of Joseph's dreams leads to take Jesus and Mary to Nazareth in Galilee. All the dreaming on the part of Joseph in Matthew is reflective of another dream-prone Joseph found in Genesis. I believe this to be more than mere coincidence. Matthew is engaging his audience in the story by reminding them of the story of Joseph in Genesis as a frame of reference for how God's purpose is met.

 Matthew portrays the incarnation story of Jesus's birth as a cosmic event that brought the stars of heaven and the logic of earth together to this one place and one time that would be the undoing of the corruption of power that is referenced by bringing Herod into the story.

Matthew and Luke are the only two Gospels found in the Christian Bible that provide any details about Jesus's birth. They're the only two places in the entire New Testament where one hears mention of the roles played by Mary and Joseph in explaining the incarnation.  Both of these gospels attempt to answer the impossible question of how did Jesus become the Son of God in manner consistent with mythic mindset of the day in combination with reference to the Hebrew scriptures.

The Gospel of Mark

The Gospel of Mark does not provide an account of Jesus's birth at all. The incarnational status of Jesus as the Son of God is a matter of revelation that took place at his baptism by John in the Jordan river.  Mark's gospel begins by quoting Isaiah's prophecy about a voice in the wilderness, John the Baptist, and quickly moves to the baptism of Jesus and God's declaration that Jesus is God's Son.

In other words, Jesus is named, claimed, and appointed as God's Son, an approach that was more in keeping with the Jewish mindset of the time, but would have done little to satisfy the Greek mindset of the expanding early church that was increasingly gentile and cosmopolitan in composition.

The Gospel of John

In contrast to Mark, the Gospel of John would have great appeal to the emerging Christian church in the Hellenized Roman Empire, particularly, after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.  It is in the Gospel of John that the concept of Christ in Christianity is differentiated from the Messiah of Judaism.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus is not just the Messiah, as a son of God, but is declared to be the Only-begotten Son of God in John 1:18, 3:16, and 3:18.  Apart from this term being used in the Epistle to the Hebrews once, Hebrews 11:17, the only other place Jesus is referred to as the Only-begotten Son of God in the New Testament outside of the Gospel of John is in The First Epistle of John 4:9.  In total, there only five places in the Holy Bible that refers to Jesus as the Only-begotten Son of God.

The fact that this became an article within the creeds is remarkable. As a side-note, Jesus being mentioned as the Only-begotten the Letter to the Hebrews tends to place the Epistle to the Hebrews more in keeping with Johannine theology than with Pauline or Petrine theology regarding Jesus.

After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, Johannine theology rewrites the concept and trajectory of Judaic Messianism in strictly Christ-oriented terms.  Its combination of Greek thought and Hebrew scriptures renders Jesus synonymous with God, not as the Judaic Messiah but rather as the Cosmic Christ through whom all things came into being.  In essence, the first chapter of the Gospel of John is a complete makeover of the Genesis creation story.

This is what makes the Gospel of John the esoteric work it is when answering the question how Jesus came to understand God as his father.  In spite of its esoteric style, John provides some insights not only into Jesus's relationship to God as God's Son, but also into our relationship to God as God's  children.

The trick is (and it is tricky business) not to take John literally. In my opinion, any literal interpretation of John renders it totally meaningless.   In order to make John relevant today, one must ignore its anti-Jewish rhetoric.  By doing so, one can distill from this gospel a beautiful unitive message about how Jesus, in becoming the Christ, pulls everyone, including Jews, into a unitive relationship with God as Father of all and Father to all.

What the Gospel of John offers is an expansive understanding of humanity's incarnate likeness of God if one side-steps Jesus being described as God's only begotten Son.  The reality is that descriptor of Jesus does not enhance our understanding of Jesus as the Christ in the 21st Century.  It undoubtedly had great appeal at the beginning of the 2nd century when declaring Jesus as being the only person to be God's Son was a subversive jab at imperial dictum that described every Roman emperor being the Son of God.

If one understands where John is coming from in his declaring Christ to be the only begotten Son of God as product of the time, the Christ concept is easier to expand beyond confines of a particular theistic religion, Christianity, and makes it applicable to everyone.  Jesus as the Christ then becomes the everyman figure all can relate to.


The Incarnation and Paul

Paul's epistles have a lot in common with the Gospel of Mark; in that, there is no mention of Jesus's birth, no mention of Mary, no mention of Joseph, no angels, no shepherds, and no wise men in any of Paul's writings.  In fact, Paul does not specifically mention Jesus's baptism by John the Baptist. Baptism is mentioned as a Christian rite, but there is no reference to it being connected to Jesus's baptism by John. When baptism is brought up by Paul, it is in reference to Jesus's death and resurrection.

Paul refers to Jesus as God's Son, but never refers to Jesus as God's Only-begotten Son. The reality is that in the letters scholars believe were most likely authored by Paul, like his epistle to the Romans, Paul speaks a great deal about the children of God as being those who have faith in God through Jesus as the Christ.

Paul also speaks of Jesus almost exclusively as the Christ, not only as the Jewish Messiah, the promised one who would redeem Israel, but extends the notion of Christ as the Savior, the Redeemer of the world. Like Luke, Paul sees Jesus as the Christ being the correcting agent who repeals the errors of God's first son, Adam, by being obedient to God the Father, even unto death. The result, for Paul, is that all who have faith in Jesus as the Christ is a child of God.

Paul's concept of the incarnation is an evolutionary leap from the Judaic mindset he was raised and educated in.  Having said that, however, it would be a grave mistake to say that Paul abandon Judaism. The fact is, according to Paul, he felt himself to be more grounded in his Judaism after receiving his revelation of Jesus.  If anything, Paul expands his understanding of Judaism in Christ Jesus to the entire world, "For there is neither Jew nor Greek, freeman or slave, male or female for you are all one in Christ" (Gal. 3:28).  Paul embraces the concept that everyone is a child of God.  Faith is key to Paul's theological perspective of the incarnation. It is through faith beyond ideological belief that becomes the means of seeing God for Paul and of seeing ourselves as children of God.

Paul describes himself as one untimely born (1Cor. 15:8), meaning that he never knew Jesus apart from the revelatory experience he had on the road to Damascus.  Paul sees himself as child of God strictly as a result of his faith in God, a faith that existed prior to the revelation he received, a faith that led him to becoming blind to what he believed prior to that experience so that faith in Christ alone would lead to him to understand himself to be a child of God, a brother of Christ, and one with all through Christ.

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The story of the Incarnation is not just one story.  In this twenty-first century, it is important to read these accounts with an open mind and heart.  In many ways, I find explanations as to how Jesus came to understand himself as a child of God less necessary today, much in the way it did not seem necessary for Mark or Paul to offer one.  Nevertheless, the mythic and cosmic accounts found in the gospels of Matthew, Luke and John offer us much to meditate on.  These mythic and somewhat esoteric tales offer us pathways to contemplate our own beings as an incarnations of God, as found in the first incarnational stories of Genesis.  Jesus, as an everyman concept, points us to the truth that if you want to see the Father, look in the mirror, or better yet, take a quick but deep look at everyone you meet and you will see a manifestation of God the Father, a manifestation of one's self.

This is not an easy task.  The fact is we don't often like what we see in others, but, like reading the Gospel of John, we are prompted to side-step the obvious flaws and to look past the temporal image of what it means to be human - to look deep, very deep to find the Self that resides in all our selves.

Until next time, stay faithful.