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.”

* * * * * * * * * *

 

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.

                  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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.

* * * * * * * * * *



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.

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH

   

                       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.

SAVING CHRISTIANITY

This may seem like an odd topic for a post.  To some Christians this idea may strike them as offensive, to non-Christians it may be considered pointless.  I can imagine a large number of Christians who believe that Christianity is eternal and in no need of being saved and a large number of non-Christians who feel life and the world might be better without it.

As I have said in past posts (click here and here), religions as something we humans have created. Religions emerge from a void in our understanding which is expressed in the perennial question, "Why?"

For instance:  Why do we exist?  Why did something that happened happen?  Why is there evil?

The reality is we don't let such questions hang, we give them answers, and with those answers come derivative meanings applied to other existential crises that continue to invoke the perennial question and it's sequential questions,  how, what, and who.

That religions emerged from our collective attempts at understanding ourselves and the world in which we live over the eons is what makes us the religious animals we have evolved into, addicted to the pursuit of finding answers to impossible questions.

Evidence of this can be found in all theistic literature.  For example, in the Judeo-Christian scriptures we read of Abraham's and Sarah's questioning laugh at hearing Sarah would bear a child at her old age, of Moses' questioning who was sending him to free the Israelites, of Mary's question regarding how she would give birth as a virgin, and of Jesus' question on the cross regarding why he was forsaken.

New religions evolve from older religions as new existential questions arise.  As I have mentioned before, science is itself a religious exercise seeking to find answers to impossible questions in order to fill the void in understanding our reality.

IS CHRISTIANITY WORTH SAVING?

It is -

But if Christianity is going to survive, it needs to evolve. Some might ask what it is being saved from.

The answer to that question is simply saving it from itself, from its own meltdown.  Christianity is in a fractured state that is increasingly fractal in scope with new denominations popping up every time a group of Christians within a group of Christians disagree about something they can't or don't want to resolve.

Demagoguery is rampant on the ever twigging-out evangelical stage where personalities can loom larger than God for a moment. When they pass on or more likely become exposed as the fraudulent individuals they are, their followers either find another larger than life personality to cling to for awhile or join the unaffiliated Nones.  A few might trickle back into a mainline denomination.

The Church of Personality is a difficult fix.

In fact, the more twigged-out an evangelical type church becomes the less it becomes recognizable as Christian in a substantive sense.

The Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and mainline Protestant churches are in the best position to save Christianity. They have stood the test of time and have, for the most part, avoided The Church of Personality. Their ability to do so, however, is hindered by their traditions of form and structure and a shared reluctance to speak honestly to those sitting in their pews for fear of losing members. There are, however, some within these denominations who are being honest, but there is a need by all mainline churches to redefine themselves both in terms of substance and function in an effort to present an honest theology to their members and the world.

When  speaking of a change in theological substance, I'm not talking about creating new theologies, ex nihlo, but rather looking deeply into the theological traditions that already exist on which to build fresh theological perspectives; ones that seek common ground and a shared theological language when addressing  the issues of the day.

I believe such perspectives exist, but they are likely buried beneath a mound of doctrinal baggage that has accumulated over the centuries or has been sublimated by ecclesial form and structure.  The other challenge is that most people seated in a church pew are largely ill informed about Christianity in general, especially those who attend doctrinally biased, navel gazing Bible studies.

I think it is safe to say that most Christians do not possess a critical understanding of Christianity.  Most view the Holy Bible as words given by God rather than words about God. Most have been indoctrinated not to question it, to just to believe it even though they struggle with understanding it.

A critical understanding of Christianity is essential to its salvation.  People of the Book should avoid becoming people by the book, at all costs. This is particularly difficult for book-based religions. So let's examine the difference between "of" and "by" the book as it applies to Christianity.

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK

A good place to start is with using Richard Hooker's three-legged stool regarding ecclesial polity as a model.  Hooker's masterful work is a chore to get through and my intent here is not to attempt to explain it but simply use his metaphor to present my thoughts on this subject.

Scripture

Properly understood, scripture is a collection of varied writings and literary types. They were written in different time periods, some of which addressed issues of the day in which they were written or reflect past incidences that were part of a much older oral tradition. Scripture is also a repository of wisdom. All of these writings speak of the relationship between human kind and God and how that relationship shapes our relationships with one another.

The Holy Bible cannot be fully appreciated in the breadth of its scope as the "Word of God." Rather, it is best grasped as words about our these relationships as seen through a lens focused on a particular tribe of people, the Israelites.  Christian scriptures simply opens this lens on the world stage. As such, scripture acts a viewfinder, a lens for looking at our world and framing the questions we should ask rather than looking at it for the answers.

Tradition

Hooker's three pronged approach to ecclesial polity reminds us that tradition refines our inquiries in any theological discourse.  My interpretation of this approach is that while scripture is foundational to Christianity, tradition is the repository of Christianity's collective wisdom that results from a distillation of scripture and experience, guided by what Christians identify as the work of the Holy Spirit, the active Wisdom of God, in the endeavor to search the pathways through the problems faced throughout our history as a means of finding a pathway through a current situation. Tradition, in this sense, is not about form or structure.  Tradition is about function and substance.

Reason

Reason is essential in staying clear of becoming people by the book.  To begin with, reason needs to be placed in the sequential framework that reflects Jesus' circular understanding of process (the first coming last and the last becoming first). Using this as a model places scripture, the first amongst sources, secondary to reason as the needed awareness to access scripture and tradition in seeking solutions.

Reason is what we bring to the table, our God-evolved analytic and intuitive minds. Once we have properly identified the question (scripture), we can access the collective wisdom (tradition) to determine if there are functional or substantive solutions that apply, but in the final analysis, given all that has been discerned, it is up to our informed and wisdom-guided minds to decide; to add to the collective wisdom, to allow the Word to live in a new and meaningful ways, which may then reach beyond the reasoning logic of the time in ways we could not have predicted, that reveal the mind of God.

In this way Christians maintain the nomen of being "People of the Book."  People of the Book are engaged in the alchemy of turning questions into wise solutions.

PEOPLE BY THE BOOK

People by the Book don't like questions.  Their answers to any perceived problem is to go directly to the Book and get the answer even if the situation of the day has no relation to the situation addressed over two thousand years ago.

The concept of Biblical inerrancy has rendered the Holy Bible both inaccessible and unassailable. The result is a form of Bible idolatry or Bible blindness, treating the Bible as God's direct communique on how to solve any problem or seeing every human event as directly related to something (largely prohibited) in the Bible.

One can see examples of this, particularly in the United States, where bible passages are taken out of context and displayed on protest placards as the solution to uncritically examined situations, a sign of those who are People by the Book.

When faced with a perceived existential crises, there is a tendency for many people to seek definitive, quick fix solutions.  They are attracted to displays of power, either in the form of someone who promises to keep the "bad people" away or someone who appeals to the sense of God's power and righteous judgment, who will lay waste His creation; punishing the many unrighteous in order to save the righteous few as a means to make a new creative order.

This us not the fatherly God of Jesus's teachings.

This is the God of fascism.

This form of nihilistic righteousness has been slowly eroding the function and substance of Christianity since its inception.   Unfortunately, it hasn't been until recently that some within Christianity are seeing the effects of its own meltdown.

Perhaps a better question is whether Christianity can be saved.

Yes!

SO...  HOW?

In a word, honesty.  It is only in being honest that Christianity will have any relevancy, any ability to heal our war torn world.

Truthfulness is in rare supply because it has been associated over the centuries as meaning right belief.

This needs to be undone quickly. There is a desperate need for people to be able to differentiate between belief and faith and facts and truths.

For instance, we need to understand that what one believes has no actual impact on what is apart from one's own reaction to those personal beliefs. As Christians we are prompted to walk by faith, not by sight (not by our ideological beliefs).

We simply, as a species, must have this capacity in order to survive, and here is where theistic religion can be helpful, if it strives to be honest.  In the case of Christianity, this must start by engaging in a critical examination of its most foundational teachings about Jesus's birth, life, death, resurrection and differentiating them from what is likely to be Jesus's actual teachings.

No theistic religion can afford to persist in insisting that improbable events serve as answers to impossible questions.

To this end every religion must embrace the concept of myth as an essential element within their theologies. I realize this notion flies in the face of most monotheistic religions who take issue with the concept of mythology, especially as applicable to their particular branch of monotheism.

All theistic religions have their "personalities" that became larger than any other humans, who are viewed as synonymous with God or reverenced as God's right hand envoy. This is understandable. It is hard to relate to an imageless divinity that is so pervasive and yet intimate with us. We imbue God with an avatar-like, human personality we can readily relate to.

Imbuing such personalities with divine traits or imbuing God with human traits is the stuff that myths are made of.

No single person can or should be placed above any other human being in this regard; including Jesus, Mary, Mohammed, Moses, Elijah, or Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha). All of them have been subjected to a mythological makeover in order to personify God or give God a personality we can relate to.

Only God is holy (other) and no single person compares, none. Collectively, however, we reflect the creative activity that is God, we are all, each and every person a uniquely rendered incarnation of God and we need to start wrapping our brains around that concept and the concept  that God is a verb, not a noun, not a thing. God purely IS and is always Being or Becoming.

In this respect Judaism has a head start, because Judaism has had to be honest about its existence and it's faith beyond any belief in order to survive. Its insistence on prohibiting the making of an image to represent God underscores that we, the collective we, are the only image needed to understand God. Being able to wrap our minds around that would give us a totally new understanding of our world and who we humans are.

No other religion has encountered repeated existential crises and survived as has Judaism.  In the process it has had to ask a lot of questions that were shaped by the Hebrew scriptures and the experiences they encountered throughout their history.  These question and debates between their scholars resulted in texts that reflect the cumulative wisdom in texts such as the Talmud and Midrash.

Christianity must adopt such a questioning and discerning process. We must ingest and digest the teachings of Jesus who raised the value of every individual human being to that of being a uniquely rendered child of God (a deeper sense of being made in the image of God) as opposed to being mired and tied to the teachings about Jesus being God's only begotten Son (originally, I suspect, a somewhat subversive teaching  meant to poke the imperial cult of the Roman emperor being that and which then became codified as a central tenant of orthodox Christianity during the Council of Nicea in 325 CE).

In addition, Christianity must change its theological emphasis from the next world in order to save this world, to redeem and restore it to the intended glory of its creator, as must all theistic religions do in their theologies.  What happens after this life must simply be left in God's hands.

Christianity must focus on bringing what Jesus called the Kingdom of God, the peaceable kingdom, to fruition in tangible ways. Doing so is the only means by which Christianity will have any relevancy; any ability to save itself, any ability to help save the world we currently live in.


Until next time, stay faithful.


P.S. In my next posts I will begin examining the evolution of Christianity, starting with, "The Mystery of Faith."

A TALE OF TWO CHURCHES

In Part I of my posts on "WHY I GO TO CHURCH," I mentioned attending two church services on Sundays.  The reality is I attend two different Episcopal churches on any given Sunday. The first is the Episcopal church my family attends, Christ Episcopal Church in Yankton, South Dakota and the second church I attend is thirteen hundred miles away in New York City, Trinity Wall Street, which offers videos of all of its worship services and much more.

CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH



I've already talked about how we came to be members of this small congregation.  Christ Church as we call it, has about one hundred members.  If forty of them show up on any given  service, it's a good day.  Christ Church, like many Episcopal churches in this country is a historical church.  It is the first church to be established in the Dakota Territory back in 1861 and has been conducting regular worship service in its current edifice since 1882.   Check out its website: http://christepiscopalchurchyankton.com/

The church building has been well cared for and its historical and original architecture well maintained. It is particularly known for its unique, eclectic stained glass windows.  The structure was made from locally queried chalkstone which was then covered with locally made red bricks.  The interior has a ceiling of dark pine or walnut wood, the floors of light oak.  All the furniture, pews, and woodwork were locally made from pine by a local craftsman.

The church was designed in a traditional Anglican cruciform structure, including a wooden reredos separating the choir from the church's nave.  The church can seat one hundred fifty people.  All the wood and soft colors provide the church with a particularly warm and inviting ambience.

This church also possesses a aural beauty.  It's original pipe organ was an Odell organ that was replaced in 1959 with a five rank Moeller pipe organ.  The original seventeen ornate façade pipes of the Odell organ still embellish the organ chamber.  The organ's console was recently upgraded to a solid state, fiber optic system, that has resulted in a much better use of the organ's five ranks. The organ has both warm and majestic tonal qualities that render it suitable for Anglican hymnody and liturgical music.

The Church also was gifted with a 1920's Steinway Piano four years ago that has been kept in excellent playing condition and I try to play it at some point in every Eucharist service.

I've taken time to describe this church in order to give you a sense that this is a very beautiful place to worship, pray, and to meditate in.  It's an honor and privilege to be this congregation's organist and music director.  The challenge of such a beautiful place, however, is to not get too caught up in the physical or aural beauty or its historical significance which is easy to do.

This church has a sense of itself that comes with being around for so long.  This can be a strength, but it can also be a weakness if that sense turns into a club mentality.   Like many Episcopal congregations, Christ Church is a mix composed of old moneyed families, well-educated professionals  of various types who are active in the community and the state along with poorer families. Our diocese is over fifty percent Native American who represent some of the poorest people in our state and in our nation, and our congregation reflects this to a lesser degree than the diocese as a whole.

After joining this congregation, I became aware that I was, in many ways, more Anglican in my liturgical and musical tastes than they were.  In fact, I was somewhat dismayed and disappointed that they obviously did not know their church's own musical heritage or all that interested in getting to know it.  Their tastes in hymnody were very Midwestern protestant.  I have been able to slowly change this since being their organist for the past sixteen years.

After a nasty kerfuffle over placement of the Steinway piano, related to a demonstrative intransigence on the part of those who refused to remove several "historical" and largely unused pews to accommodate its greater functionality in worship services and which intransigence was the obvious result of what happens when worship of a church's beauty and its past gets in the way of the church's function and purpose in the present, we left the church.  I won't go into the details, but the result was when we returned, others left.  It was a messy time and churches can be messy places.  Hopefully, those who left will rethink their leaving also and come back.

As a result of all that bother, I believe our little congregation has become a more open and inviting place. We have become more contemplative; having a Centering Prayer group that meets weekly, a weekly meditation group that studies and practices Buddhists meditation, and an early Sunday morning service called Serenity which uses meditation and contemplative prayer, along with lectio divina, a monastic contemplative practice to discern the meaning of a passage from scripture.

We practice open communion, in which everyone present is invited to partake.  We have practioners of healing touch who are available once a month during one of our Eucharistic services to pray for and over people who approach them.  We are an inclusive congregation in an area where churches tend to be far more conservative, even some Episcopal churches.  We are in many ways a true community church. People who attend our Centering Prayer, meditation groups, and Serenity services are members of other churches who don't have what we offer or who clearly identify as being "Nones."

This little congregation has a big heart that struggles to keep its head above water and from going under financially or going by the wayside as a result of aging out. We have a very active sense of lay ministry in our church in addition to our non-stipend deacon and our priest who decided to go part time in order to help the congregation financially.

In many ways Christ Church represents the challenges most rural communities are facing, dwindling congregations and financial resources, along with clergy shortages. These challenges, however, afford churches opportunities that they did not see before.  In order for any church to survive it needs to have an informed laity involved in active ministry, and this little congregation gets that.

I think Christ Church is developing a renewed sense of self that is based on the teachings and ministry of Jesus in the light of other traditions.  It's developing a sense of inner beauty that comes with being contemplative, open-minded, and open-hearted.  It is the place where I take my responsibility and culpability in being a Christian seriously in my service to this congregation as it's minister of music and a member of its worship team.

TRINITY WALL STREET



 

I mentioned in my earlier posts that being an organist has led me out of and into churches.  Trinity Wall Street in New York City is one of those churches.  The reason I and my family became acquainted with Trinity Wall Street is because Christ Episcopal Church was in the process of upgrading its organ and I was tasked with looking into several options regarding this process.  One of the options was replacing or supplementing the current pipe organ with a digitally voiced organ or a digital voicing component to enhance the current pipe organ we have.

In the process of doing some research on-line about digitally voiced church organs, I ran across the fact that Trinity has such an organ as a result of  the event of 9/11in which the debris that fell from the twins towers covered Trinity, which is located nearby. The tremendous amount of dust rendered Trinity's Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ unusable and necessitated a quick replacement which came in the form of their current digital organ built by Marshall Ogletree Associates, Inc. 

Since we were headed to New York to visit our youngest daughter, my wife and I decided to go to Trinity to check out the organ.  I knew of Trinity, but had never visited it until a warm summer day in 2012.   I believe we attended their 9:00 AM service.  We arrived early and the choir made up of the men of their choir was rehearsing shortly after we arrived.  Being in Trinity reminded us of being the cathedrals we visited in England.

I had my misgivings about digital organs because there is a certain feel or sound-feeling one gets from real pipe organs, but I also have a digital keyboard at my home that I love and I have played digital organs before and know that this is an area that is getting better and better at voice sampling and reproducing actual pipe organ voices. I wasn't disappointed with Trinity's organ, but that wasn't what caught my attention. 

What caught my attention was the warmth of the people, the mix of people, the friendliness and a sense of welcome that pervaded the place.  At the time, Trinity was the focus of protests against Wall Street and the church made it known that they were not behind the perceived corruption that was being protested, but Trinity has its own properties and was deeded land by the English monarchy in 1696 and owns some very prime real estate in the area.

Regardless of the protestors, the service that we participated in was not only beautiful, but moving.  We had the pleasure of hearing one of the best preachers I've heard that Sunday, their pastoral care priest, Dr. Mark Buzetti-Jones, and since that time I have listened to other wonderful preachers and priests who serve this unique congregation. 

There is a sense of inclusion at Trinity that I have not felt elsewhere.  It's a place of color, of all colors, Black, White, Yellow, Brown, you name it is there.  There are straight people and gay people, old people, young people, rich people, not so rich people, middle class people, and poor people.  People living in lush apartments and people living on the street.  It's a church on the move; literally.  People come in an out of the church during the service and the service continues amidst any distractions.   

Above all it is a church, a congregation with a sense of purpose and a sense of responsibility and culpability about being Christian.  It takes being Christian seriously and it speaks truth to power in a way that other congregations don't.  It's not afraid to openly talk in a homily or sermon about the issues of the day and goes far beyond preaching to study those issues in ongoing seminars, inviting experts in various fields to come to their church and present what they have to offer, to better inform their congregation and anyone interested.  Many of these sessions are videoed and archived on their website, https://www.trinitywallstreet.org/. 

I fell in love with Trinity, and when I found out that their services are videoed, I became a regular viewer.  My daughters fell in love with Trinity also.  They may not be regular church goers, but when our oldest daughter visits our youngest, Trinity is on the agenda as a place to go.  Their music ministry is outstanding and deeply awe-inspiring, from choral selections to organ preludes, postludes, and improvisations. The beauty of worship is clearly evident in this place.

Undoubtedly, Trinity is a church with the financial means to carry out a number of ministries.  It doesn't deny that.  It is a giving church in so many ways, locally, nationally, and internationally.  It feeds the hungry with weekly meals and is constructing housing in its neighborhood to help address the homeless population in the New York. It is quite obvious that beside their extensive ordained clergy resources, there is a very active and involved lay ministry.

I look forward to watching the videos of the weekly services every Sunday, after attending Christ Episcopal.  When one is an organist or worship leader during a Sunday morning service, one doesn't fully worship in the way one does when sitting in a pew.

I like the way that Trinity does not edit their videos.   They are well done, but they show the service as is; with any hiccup or mistake that might occur.  It makes it all so real and family-like for me because being an organist I understand hiccups.

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Trinity reminds me of Christ Episcopal Church.   They are a family, just as Christ Church is.  I'm not naïve about churches.  Like a family there is always a certain amount of tension and drama in the works.  People walking out, slamming doors and people coming back in.  I should know.  I'm one of them.

Like families, you don't get to choose who's a member, but you do have a responsibility to love those who are part of your family even when there are times you can't stand to be in the same room with each other. Then there are those moments when you fully get why you're part of this messy family; that you are needed and that you need the other members of the family.  Churches are very much like that if they are truly loving places.

I wanted to present this post as way of giving some of my readers a little more background on where I'm coming from.  I think this may be important in discussing the concept of religious singularity.  What I've said here, I have no doubt that people in other churches and in other theistic religions can attest to; the sense of family that is derived from their places of worship.

Since I am a Christian, I will talk about my religious experiences and my thoughts about Christian practices in a way that will hopefully resonate with those of other theistic religions.

I believe there is a thread of commonality that is universal to all theistic religions, but is often ignored in order to preserve a sense of identity.  My purpose in talking about religious singularity is not remove anyone's religious identity, but rather show a way of speaking a common language without forfeiting identity.

Until next time, stay faithful

WHY I GO TO CHURCH - Part II

In my previous post, I discussed my sense of culpability and responsibility as a Christian as major reasons for attending church. This may need further explanation. As I mentioned in my post on the "Unaffiliated Nones," I could easily see myself becoming unaffiliated, and find myself, periodically, on the fringe of being one.  The simple fact is it would be easy to become unaffiliated, to go it alone.  At least theoretically, it would be easy.

LEAVING A CHURCH

I get why people leave their churches. Most leave because staying frequently feels like fighting a losing battle.  In some Christian denominations that is understandable, but Christianity is much larger than one's local church, one's denomination or brand of Christianity.

For instance, when I left the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, I did so from, amongst other things, a recognition that I wasn't the Lutheran I thought I was.  I recognized that I could not change what I saw as wrong in their practice of "closed" or "close" communion, for instance, which functionally prohibits other baptized Christians from taking communion in their congregations much the same way Roman Catholic churches do.  This pietistic practice offended my sensibility of what I believed was Jesus' intent and purpose during the Last Supper.

It was one of many things I could neither change nor accept within that denomination.  To stay any longer would have resulted in my feeling miserable and inwardly hypocritical.  Do not misunderstand me.  I do not hate or dislike Lutherans or the Missouri Synod brand of Lutheranism.  I have many friends in that church. In fact being raised and having attempted to enter into its ordained ministry taught me a great deal about myself and the church. I also began to understand that there are paths of understanding that are just as valid if not more so than being a Lutheran or even being a Christian.

While in the Missouri Synod, I studied eastern religions and read works by Thich Nhat Hanh.  To be honest when I did this I sometimes felt like a closet heretic.  It was rather exciting, in the sense one gets from enjoying forbidden fruit.  It was also liberating, but I had to keep it to myself.  Sharing what I learned from what I was reading would have been met with disdain from some in my church and risked being put on a prayer chain by others.  Nevertheless, I am grateful for what Lutheranism gave me.

In some way, I felt guided to leave. It would take their rejection of me as their lead organist and choir director to make me realize I needed to move on. I needed a shove to get me out of the door.  The reality was there wasn't room for me or my young family to grow there.  I couldn't change what happened and I couldn't change them.  I realized that I did not need to try, but could change what church my family attended, one that resonated with us, one that had room to grow in, and for a while we floated on the tranquil waters of a local United Methodist church where I served as their organist. We remained technically unaffiliated until we decided to become members of another denomination.  The truth is I could have become Methodist, but we missed a more liturgical worship setting, which we found in the Episcopal Church.

FINDING A CHURCH

Becoming an Episcopalian was like breathing fresh air. After awhile, being a Missouri Synod Lutheran seemed like nothing more then a preparatory course for becoming Episcopalian.  Without knowing it, I was raised on the liturgy found in the Episcopal Church's Book of Common Prayer, which was almost adopted verbatim by the Missouri Synod with regard to its Holy Communion liturgy, including most of its collects (prayers). It was an easy transition and an easy fit.  We didn't jump in right away.  It took some time. 

We had a Lutheran friend who had joined this church before us.  We started attending their Lenten Services, something we were use to in the Lutheran Church, but which wasn't being offered in the Methodist Church.  I was intrigued because the Lenten Services were said services.  During these services an English gentleman, who came to this part of the world to be a headmaster at  Native American school for girls, was giving the homily in which he talked about the Holy Land, Palestine he called it, as he was serving in the British Army at the time.  The simplicity and intentionality of those services appealed to me.  I was worshiping without having to do something.  I didn't realize how much I missed just sitting in a pew and taking things in. 

What ended getting us there were simple invitations.  People in the pew behind us, saying, "Think about joining us," and one dear lady who grabbed my arm on the way out of the church door whispering in my ear, "Come."  That's all, just come.  The simplicity and directness spoke to my heart and that is when we started going to this little Episcopal church.

Richard Hooker

The other attraction in becoming an Episcopalian, for me, was learning about Richard Hooker's paradigm for Anglicanism's theological structure: Scripture, Tradition, and Reason.

Although Hooker placed scripture above all else, he understood the need for correcting the inevitable wrongs that would occur in church polity through the guidance by the Holy Spirit and reason.   Reason was the air that stirred my spirit.  That we have a say in the religion we are a part of was church-shattering to say the least for me.  This concept gave me the freedom to think openly, and at the same time, it also made me feel responsible for my thoughts.

Blaming God for any stupid acts done by Christians was no longer an option.  Whether Hooker intended it or not, he made Christians responsible and culpable for what Christianity does and he carefully (a particular necessity in the 16th century) guides Christians to use reason to find solutions within the parameters of scripture and tradition.

Let me be very clear, I don't go to church to be a pew critic or to be its resident skeptic.  In addition, I don't go to church to earn myself a place in heaven, and I don't go to church to become more Bible-smart.

THE REASONS I GO

Rather I go to church because of a deep connection with the source of all being that I feel there, a connection which is beyond any belief or skepticism residing within me.  I recognize that source as the Self beyond self, God.

I go to church to be inspired in a number of ways: through prayer, through the liturgy, the readings, the homilies, and the sacraments.

I go to commune, along with my fellow human beings, in a "thin place" where we take a mere sliver of time to encounter a deeper sense of the Self we all are part of.

I go to Church to care, to join my heart, my spiritual center, with other hearts in communion with the heart of all that is.

I go to church to embrace and be embraced by a deep sense of being loved and to be loving.

I go to church to heal (through my music) and be healed by the beauty of worship.

I go to church to forgive a broken world and offer it absolution in the simple act of eating bread and drinking wine as the broken body and poured out blood of Christ; to be one with Christ who forgives all.

I go to church to let go: to accept what is and to strengthen my faith to meet what will be without the drama of insisting anything has to fit my scheme of things.

I go to church to remind myself of the inner peace that is available to all.

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To be honest, I don't always think of why I go to church every time I'm in church.  Rather I can say these things truthfully by stepping back and looking at what it is that motivates me to go to church at any given moment. Some reasons may be more prevalent at times than others.   I also realize what motivates me may not motivate others.  Others may well come up with different reasons that motivate them.

Like all major theistic religions, Christianity is vast in scope and has many different types of homes, places of worship, under its umbrella.

Churches should be there for everybody, but reality is that some aren't. I know the little church I attend is and most Episcopal churches are.  I also know there are other churches of various denominations that are open and welcoming to anyone who enters their doors regardless of who they are or where they're at in their life's journey; churches willing to share their most holy moments without reservation. That's the way it should be; that's the way of Christ, and that's why I go to church.

Until next time, stay faithful.