THE MYTHIC JESUS - AN INTRODUCTION

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.  Through him all things were made.  For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven:  by the power of the Holy Spirit  he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,  and was made man.  For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.  On the third day he rose again  in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.  He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.    

The second article of the Nicene Creed

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Nothing encapsulates the mythic portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth better than the second article of the Nicene creed.  Jesus of Nazareth, the eldest son of Joseph and Mary, would be totally missing from one's awareness if one was not familiar with the Synoptic Gospels of the New Testament.  The Jesus of the Nicene Creed is the Jesus portrayed in the Gospel of John where Jesus is described as the Word Incarnate and the only-begotten Son of God.   Throughout the past eighteen centuries, the vast majority of Christians have been saying this creed as if it is an irrefutable fact.  The fact is that very little of the second article is fact.

What is likely to be factual is that Jesus had a mother named Mary and that Jesus was crucified on the order of Pontius Pilate, died, and was buried.  Beyond that, everything else is a matter of what people believe about Jesus based on teachings passed along through the centuries.  Setting aside the likely, leaves what can be identified as the myth based teachings about Jesus; namely, that Jesus is the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, of one Being with Father.  Through him all things were made.  For us and for our salvation he come down from heaven, by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary. (After being dead and buried for two days) he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.  He will come again in glory to judge the living and dead and his kingdom will have no end.

Before proceeding further, I need to be clear by what I mean by myth.  What identifies a story as a myth is a lack of provability as a story that can be replicated as a fact.  That does not mean that myths are lies.  On the contrary, myths are used to expose truths for which there is little to no concrete evidential data or proof to support them.  Mythic truths are distilled and established into archetypal stories that offer meaning and context to the experiences we encounter.  All myths serve that purpose.

If you are a Christian, you are probably aware that there is a bias against the notion that myths exist in the scriptures of the Holy Bible.  This is due in part to both the First and the Second Letters to Timothy, where myths are said to be clever lies.  There is also a history of insisting that stories about Jesus are factual in spite of their lack of provability or possessing an ability to be replicated.  As a result the mythic stories about Jesus are taught as either concrete facts or as mysteries of faith.  I would suggest that mystery is a term used to bypass the notion of myth.  Whereas myths are stories told to bring meaning and understanding, mystery is a term used within Christianity to claim something is beyond comprehension and therefore must be accepted as a matter of faith without question.  

Personally, I prefer mythic explanations over unexplainable mysteries.  Faith is not enhanced by defining something as unexplainable that must be believed if there exists the possibility of a  mythic explanation.  The irony of things deemed to be a mystery in Christianity is that they are often connected to the mythic stories about Jesus. 

The myths of ancient Greece and Roman have influenced Western culture as they are archetypal stories that help us identify why we are the way we are and what we frequently struggle with as humans.   The same could be said of the myths found in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.  That they are not used in the way ancient Greek and Roman myths are used is due to the religions which are based on them insisting that they are not myths but are factual events.  This was probably true of the the Ancient Greek and Roman myths at the height of their polytheistic religious views.   The irony is when the ancient religions were supplanted in the late Roman Empire by Christianity their myths remained as guide into to the human psyche.  

The mythic imagination is evident throughout both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.  What makes the Holy Bible unique is its blend of the mundane and the mythic.  Jesus as an itinerant rabbi who interpreted the scriptures of Judaism in new and meaningful ways possessed a mythic imagination as evidenced by his use of parables, which he used to enhance the meaning of what he was preaching.  The authors of the Gospels used their mythic imaginations to give context and meaning not only to Jesus's teachings, but also and more importantly, to his life and death.  

The question then becomes, what are the mythic stories of Jesus?  The following is a cursory list of stories in the Gospels that are myths or contain mythic elements.  

MYTHIC STORIES

1. The virgin birth of Jesus 

2. Jesus Baptism in the Jordan 

3. Jesus' temptations in the wilderness

4. The feeding of the four and five thousand 

5.  Jesus walking on water 

6.  The story of the Transfiguration 

7. Jesus calming the stormy Sea of Galilee 

8.  The resurrection and ascension of Jesus 

9.  The Gospel of John  

This list may be strike some as shocking as it contains some of the most important "events" found in the Gospels; particularly, the story of Jesus birth, resurrection, and ascension, which are all central to Christian belief and teachings.  I've included in this list the entire Gospel of John, which I have explained in other posts is a work of theology, but John also employees and engages a mythic imagination regarding Jesus.  I left some questionably mythic stories out such as the raising of Jarius' daughter, the raising of widow's son from Nain or the casting out of demons from the Gerasene demoniac and other healings as these are events that have possible factual explanations and are not trying to convey a meaning beyond Jesus being a healer.  

In the posts that will follow this one I will address each of these mythic stories.

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm     

  

ON READING THE HOLY BIBLE - Some Thoughts.

I have often thought, if offered the opportunity, how I would teach a class on The Holy Bible to a diverse group of Christians, non-christians, agnostics, and atheists.  It might easier to teach a class primarily consisting of non-christians, agnostics, and atheists simply because they would be more likely to approach such a class with a questioning and healthy skepticism which would allow for a critical, open-minded approach to its content.   Before one can study the Bible, one has to know how to read and identify its diverse literary styles. 

For Christians this could be a struggle who are given to understand it as a cohesive narrative about God.  Most Christians read the Bible through the doctrinal and dogmatic lens of the denomination they belong to.  Bible studies conducted in any number of churches rarely spend time talking about how to read the scriptures they are studying.  As such, Christians will vary on how they understand the Bible.  

If one believes The Holy Bible is God's Word one is likely to revere it as inviolable, directly inspired by God, and inerrant to the extent that it not only purveys God's truth but is also historically factual; that what it says happened has happened and what it say will happen will.   The problem with this perspective is the Holy Bible, itself, demonstrates through the narrative of its prophetic history that people rarely understand or accept what God is saying through the prophets and, in that sense, the Holy Bible becomes a narrative about how we humans react to prophetic insights about ourselves in relation to God and our frequent reluctance to embrace and understand them. 

The  Bible establishes the ineffable nature of God; that one cannot imagine God, much less, figure out God or make an image of God in stone or in words.  The ineffable nature of God is something Christianity has largely shoved aside in the New Testament through the auspices of the Gospel of John where Jesus states that if a true Christian "knows" Jesus then they know God, because Jesus and his "Father,"God, are one.  This is a major point of divergence between what Christians consider the Old and New Testaments as, in the Old Testament, God is ineffable, but in the New Testament Christians see God in the face and being of Jesus. The result is that Jesus eventually became understood as the second person in the tripartite God of the 4th century creeds.  [I have and will continue to offer a different understanding of Jesus of Nazareth that I believe is more consistent with the Holy Bible as a whole.]

To read the Holy Bible critically and from a fresh perspective, most Bible-reading Christians will have to let go of the indoctrinated lens they have been reading the scriptures through since their time in Sunday school or catechism classes.  The difficulty indoctrinated readers will face is becoming comfortable with questioning what they are reading.  From personal experience I can attest to the difficulty one has in picking up details of the Biblical narrative that are easily glossed over because they have been and are largely ignored in the Bible classes one has attended or the sermons one has heard. 

For many Christian; especially, Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, and Pentecostalist, the Bible is approached as something to be believed as literal fact.  Another approach is to read the Bible as a seeker of truths regarding God and humanity's relationship with God.  A third approach is to read and study the Bible as one would any other form of literature, which means being able to identify the type of literature one is reading, as the Bible contains a diverse amount of literary types.  The term, Bible, is by definition a collection of books and writings on related topics.  In that sense, the Holy Bible is unique amongst the literary holy books of the world's religions.  This third approach is what I believe is necessary to fully appreciate what the Bible has to offer. 

TRANSLATING A TRANSLATION

Having a good translation is important.   When obtaining a Bible, one must be able to differentiate between a translation and a paraphrased or amplified Bible which will present a biased theological or doctrinal viewpoint.  For English readers of the Bible, the King James Version, the Revised Standard Version, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, and The New Jerusalem Bible are helpful.  I have found the King James version to be the most reliable when I find discrepancies between other translations.  Every language in which the Bible is translated from its original Greek and Hebrew sources will encounter running into difficulties trying to capture the flavor of the original texts.

One of the difficulties with studying the New Testament, for example, is that it was originally written in Greek.  Greek was not the language Jesus spoke.  Jesus spoke Aramaic.   Languages are extremely nuanced  and in many cases it is difficult to translate an original comment or thought precisely into another language.  The Synoptic Gospels are largely a translation of a translation of the Aramaic language Jesus spoke into Greek and through the additional filter of peoples' memory of what Jesus said and taught.  Since Jesus never wrote anything down, the authors of the New Testament had to rely on their sense of Greek terminology that best captured Jesus' use of his native Aramaic.   

It is always wise to keep the problem of accurate translating in mind when studying the Bible.  As such, we should have a healthy sense of curiosity when it comes to what we are reading; particularly, if something one reads doesn't make sense after reading different translations of a  passage.  The probability is that it reflects a difficulty in translation. That would be a good time to research the original language on-line or through a lexicon to see if there exists other ways to translate a particular passage.

IT'S LITERALLY LITERATURE

For the past two hundred years, most Christians have been taught to treat the Holy Bible as the literal Word of God.  In fact, many mainline Christian denominations, even those who don't take a literal view of the Holy Bible, like to end a Scripture reading with the words, "The Word of the Lord" to which the congregation is prompted to respond with, "Thanks be to God."  Viewing the Holy Bible as the inspired Word of God can cause a listener or reader to become wary about questioning something one does not understand or that sounds a bit off.  To obtain a fuller appreciation of the Holy Bible is to read it literarily, as literature, in order to grasp a fuller meaning of what one is reading.  

The Holy Bible contains a variety of literary types; such as, full-blown metaphorical stories and myths, historical and legendary narratives, poetry, prophetic writings, wisdom literature and apostolic letters.   Certain books of the Bible contain multiple literary types.  It is inadvisable to ascribe anything written in the Holy Bible as literally being God's Word, as God's Word, as described in the Bible, is the very creative force of God and cannot be seen or heard in its purity.  It is the idea of God that is the inspiration that guided humans to write the Bible that, however, does not mean what is written within its pages reflects direct dictation from God.  The Bible is completely written through an intuited and inspired human perspective.    

IS IT ALLEGORICAL, EDITORIAL, METAPHORICAL, OR  MYTHICAL?

By and large most Christian readers tend to avoid identifying whether something is a myth or an editorial comment (something non-christian readers are likely to have a problem with).  Biblical literalist are particularly obstructed by their literal understanding of the Bible when they take editorial comments and myths to be fact.   Nevertheless, it is of utmost importance that one is able to identify allegory, metaphor, myth, and editorial comments in Scripture.  

It is also important to have a historical understanding of the times and culture in which the various "books" of the Bible were written.  Much of the Bible was written in times different from the time in which the events described took place.  As such, they often reflect an interpretation of an event placed in a past time based on the perception of the times in which such an event was being written about.  

It is important to keep in mind that while an historical understanding of when something in the Bible was written may seem unimportant to some (as they consider the Bible history in its own right) the Holy Bible's purpose is not to provide an accurate, unbiased, historical account of events that took place since the dawn of time.  It can, at times, be very biased about certain subjects that may conflict with a more unbiased perspective today.  

Editorial comments like, "Jesus said this" or "did this to fulfill what was written in the scriptures" are editorial comments.  Editorial comments of any kind are always biased comments forwarding a particular agenda the writer or author is promoting.  When encountering an editorial comment, try avoiding the conclusion the writer or author is offering and see if there is another reason why Jesus or anyone else in scripture did something that merited an editorial explanation.  If you can think of one, stick with that understanding for a while to see if it holds up.

The Bible offers a unique account of our evolving relationship with God and one another. One can trace an evolving understanding of God; from a god who is personal, family god, like the God of Abraham to the God above all other gods and from a mountain top God to the God of all creation.  To that end, it relies on allegory, editorial comments, metaphor, and myth to discuss such truths it attempts to reveal.  

UNDERSTANDING THE HOLY BIBLE IN LIGHT OF THE TIMES IN WHICH WE LIVE

The Holy Bible, like all literature, is written from an anthropocentric perspective. The ineffablility of God is countered by imbuing the creative force we call God with human traits to make God relatable to our human experiences, thus God is depicted at times as being good, angry, vengeful, compassionate, remorseful, caring, forgiving, patient, faithful, etc., just as we humans are.  Yet the ineffable nature of God is underscored at various points within scripture to keep us mindful that what we describe as God is beyond human description and comprehension.    

The Holy Bible depicts and promotes an evolving understanding of God as it addresses the human experience in the light of God's being in each and every age through its narrative, whether it is the telling of historical events, its myths, its allegories and metaphors.  In turn, the events of each and every age offer a new perspective to what is written in its pages.  These perspectives are part of the process of an ever-evolving understanding of God and human nature.  It is this sense of an ever-evolving understanding of God that maintains The Holy Bible's relevancy in each age because each and every age brings new understanding of it garnered from our accumulative experiences that are encountered in the times in which we live.  

As such, the Bible, allows us to examine the human experience set against the paradox of the ineffable.  Trying to pin down God, even within the pages of Scripture, is an ever-elusive undertaking.  God is whatever God is or God will be what God will be as Moses discovered in the allegorical mythic story of his encounter with a burning bush that was not consumed by its fire.  On the other hand, we humans, with all of our abilities and disabilities, potential creativity and destructiveness, and our strengths and our weaknesses, are on full display set against the consistent paradox of God in whose being we experience our being. 

As with any well-written pieces of literature, there is a timelessness to the Holy Bible.   It has  maintained its relatability because of its applicability to the human experience of God on which it is based.  A question this raises is how each age has influenced an understanding of the Holy Bible.  As some will note, one can find anything or something within the Bible to justify the current behaviors or reactions to human behaviors or our time.    

We live in a much different age than when the books of the Bible were written.  Today, we know more about our historical and scientific beginnings than at any other time in history.  As in the relatively recent past of the last two or three centuries, there has been push-back by Christian denominations against the discoveries in both history and science that conflict, not so much with the scriptures of the Bible themselves, as with the traditional doctrines and dogma that theologians and doctors of the Church have derived from their understanding of scripture. 

The Church as a whole, as I have describe in past posts, continues to struggle with how to deal with long-standing doctrinal positions that are increasingly challenged by recent discoveries in history and science.  For example, where do the discoveries of lost Gospels and other Christian writings find a place within the discussion of Christian faith?  Do we continue to ignore them or do we study them and consider their value in understanding the Christian experience?  

What of the increasing number of scientific discoveries regarding the universe in which we live which seemingly contradict the Biblical accounts of past events?  What about the progress made in scientific technology and medicine; such as, the potential use of AI and nuclear fusion?   What impact does such discoveries have on our understanding of Bible as opposed to what impact that Bible has on our views of them?  Have we learned anything from past regarding the Church's persecution of those whose discoveries, thoughts, theories were seen as a threat to the Christian faith; such as, those made by Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin?

Currently, within the United States, there is a persecution of literature itself with the banning of certain books in schools and public libraries, a mere step away from actual public book burnings; all in an effort to erase certain aspects of modern history on the ironic premise of keeping children from being indoctrinated and traumatized by indoctrinating them as to what literature they and their parents should consider dangerous.  Given the literature and rhetoric found in the Holy Bible, it is remarkable that it hasn't been banned.  Given the current political temperature regarding literature as a whole, it is important for readers and students of the Holy Bible to maintain an open and skeptical mind regarding its depiction of our relationships to each other in the light of an ineffable God whose only applicable description is not that of a noun (a thing, in and of, or unto itself) but a loving, enlightening, and creating verb, BEINGNESS, that sees only the goodness of that which is created.

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm 

RECLAIMING JESUS' HUMANITY

Perhaps the worst things that happened to Jesus’ legacy is that we Christians turned him into a god as in the second person of the Triune God.  

That may strike Christians as being totally heretical, but I ask that you bear with me.  What Christianity is largely based on is what others have said about Jesus throughout the centuries, beginning with the First Century.  As I have said in recent posts, Jesus understood as “true man and true God” is true only to the extent that such a claim can be made about all of us; in that, according to Genesis, all of us are created in the image of God.  To that extent Jesus is no more or no less divine in nature than the rest of us.   As I have mention in many homilies and posts, what is true about Jesus is true about us and what is true about us is true about Jesus. 

The idea that Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God is rooted in polytheism, where gods and goddesses were know to have sexual intercourse with mortals and produced demigods who could eventually aspire to being worshiped as immortal gods and goddesses.  In Jesus' case this became even more convoluted as Jesus is the product of a supposedly sexless encounter with the spirit of God "overshadowing" a virgin who remains a virgin when giving birth to Jesus.  As a one-off birth, this is not a miracle, but rather an asexual fantasy. This is not to say that God's spirit wasn't active in Jesus' birth because the spirit of God by having breathed the first humans to life in the creation myth is active in every birth - what is true for Jesus... .  

If it were an asexual miracle Jesus could not be a true human.  Theoretically he may have acquired the physical features of a human through Mary's genes, but he essentially would have been  a divine being, more so than the demigods of ancient Greece.  This divine Jesus is portrayed in the Gospel of John as taking on our physical nature without really being one of us.  That Jesus is nothing like the rest of us humans.  On the other hand, Jesus as portrayed in the Synoptic Gospels (SG) of Matthew, Mark and Luke is someone who is human and easier to relate to, if one ignores the editorial commentary regarding his divine parentage.  

As I have noted in a previous post, the editorial comments in Matthew and Luke  miss the point of Jesus being a direct descendant of King David.  Jesus could not have been considered an heir of David if Joseph, his "so-called father" in Luke 3:23, was not his biological father or if, according to Matthew 1:25, Joseph refrained from any sexual encounters with Mary until after she had given birth to Jesus.  Such editorial comments were inserted to promote the idea that Jesus was the biological Son of God, an utterly nonsensical notion that detracts the value of Jesus' teachings, which are the essential Gospel message.  

This is largely the result of the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospel of John where there is no mention of Jesus being baptized or being led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted.  Rather, Jesus is depicted as omniscient; as  knowing what is about to happen before it happens. Even the crucifixion is depicted as knowing act, stripped of it human horror by Jesus' super-human willingness to accomplish his purpose, in John, of atoning for the sins we were and are supposedly incapable of doing.  In John, Jesus crucifixion amounts to a disrobing Jesus of his human flesh and taking on a divine physicality that retains the imprints of human wounds - the trophies of his divine love for his creation. 

The 11th century Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm, wrote a treatise on why "God became a human" which solidified the teaching that Jesus was the only truly begotten offspring of God, contrary to everything else scripture says about the rest of us humans and Jesus' own teaching in the SG.  At best the Gospel of John is speculative theology about Jesus aimed at comforting Jewish Christians who were being thrown out of the synagogues after the Fall of Jerusalem because they were preaching about Jesus.  At worst, it is a fictional fantasy meant to accomplish the same purpose.     

So much of Christianity is shaped by the Gospel of John that we can't read the other Gospels without seeing them through its lens as the last word about Jesus in the canonical New Testament.  Christians love the Gospel of John because it is written for them and about them without giving much thought to its darker side, the immediate condemnation of those who don't believe Jesus as the only-begotten Son of God.   The idea that Jesus is the eternally creative Word of God that brought all things into being, in essence, makes Jesus God, which is precisely the point of the Gospel of John is making at the expense of other possibilities.  

The creeds do nothing to change that analysis, no matter how many times they insist that Jesus is true God and true man.  That mankind is created in the image of God does not mean that humans are God, even though some, throughout history, have believed themselves to be, and at times have acted as if they were God.  The belief that Jesus is God is increasingly becoming a problematic issue for mainline Christian churches that continue to insist that Jesus was sent to earth to become a sacrifice to atone for the sins of humankind.  More and more Christians are finding the idea of God sacrificing his own son a barbaric notion; that a loving God and father would never do such a thing.  Certainly this is not how Jesus understood God, in spite of the New Testament writers' attempts at suggesting that Jesus was sent to be a sacrifice.

The idea or fact that Jesus was no more and no less, like the rest of us, purely human has long been treated and suppressed as a heresy by mainline Christian churches for close to eighteen hundred years. Personally, I suspect that this is being re-evaluated by theologians and biblical scholars in mainline churches.  The problem they face is how to present this without causing a major walkout of those who have been indoctrinated from the moment of their baptisms to believe that Jesus is God, a belief that has defined Christianity for two thousand years.   

Being an Episcopalian, where the creeds are said almost every service, I haven't been saying them for some time.   During this past Lenten season, I've noticed that the Gospel of John, although read, was not being used as text for sermons in major cathedrals here in the US or in the UK.  Rather it was the prophets the clergy opted to preach on.  I sense there is a general discomfort with the Gospel of John and as there is with the creeds.  Our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry commented on the Nicene Creed during a sermon at Trinity Wall Street on September 12, 202, "I love the Nicene creed.  I don't understand everything, but I love it."  

What our beloved Presiding Bishop underscored in his comment is the problem mainline denominations have; an attraction to tradition over reason in the face of a looming theological crisis.  He also stressed in his comments a fear that he and other clergy have in moving too fast in the direction of challenging long held beliefs that are entrenched in the beliefs of most people sitting in the pews of their churches.  The Nicene Creed is an eighteen hundred year old document written to define the Christian God in order to bring universal order amongst Christians in Constantine's empire who were quickly becoming the dominant religious group within Roman empire.  

As a whole, the Christian Creeds are rather vacuous in both meaning and application and yet they remain the central pillar around which the oldest mainline denominations conduct their worship services and guide their theological discourse.  Christianity, more than ever, is faced with a renewed challenge regarding the essential question Jesus posed to his disciples about himself that was never fully answered, apart from the editorialized account in Matthew where Peter declared that Jesus was the Messiah, the son of the living God.  Despite being praised by Jesus for being inspired to make such a statement (although not highly praised in Luke and Mark), who is Jesus has re-emerged as the essential theological question for Christians in the 21st century. 

As such, one can appreciate and understand people two thousand years ago thinking of Jesus as being a god-like spotless sacrifice to atone for the sins of humanity, who was born of godly human woman, Mary and thus the divine Son of God.  Being a mere mortal was not going to make a dent in the mindset of the cosmopolitan world of the Roman Empire where the meaning of Jesus was up against and endless array of mono and polytheistic religions deeply rooted in the the idea of the divine.  To get any part of Jesus' message across he simply couldn't remain a man from Nazareth in Galilee, he had to be more; a Messiah. Eventually he had to be more than that. He had to be God and so his followers declared him to be that and it would take and Roman emperor, Constantine, to set that belief in stone through his calling the first ecumenical council in 325 at Nicea.

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To say that Jesus is purely human may sound like simple solution to who Jesus is, but it is not as simple as it sounds because we are not simple as that sounds.  Being human is anything but simple.  We are complex creatures who, for the most part, have little appreciation for the gray areas of life.  We want to know.  Not only do we want to know, but we also want to be certain about what we know.  For the most part we humans have little tolerance for paradox.  We tend towards discrimination and differentiation as a way to navigate through the paradoxical conundrums we create and find ourselves in.  

Jesus was a unique human being as portrayed in the SG; selfless to a fault, patient, loving, inspirational and intuitive with an uncanny compassion for those living on the fringe of society.  He was loved deeply and was deeply loved by those who knew and followed him; so much so, that Flavius Josephus, in his account of the Fall of Jerusalem noted that the followers of Jesus living in Jerusalem at the time loved him.   

What was so unique about Jesus is that he showed us what is so unique about us.  That each of us is a child of God, capable of loving everyone we meet, forgiving the wrongs done to us, and to be a healing presence to those who are suffering.  Jesus felt God in his very being, but that doesn't mean he claimed to be God.   

We too carry the image and being-ness of God in our being.  The intimacy Jesus felt with God is not beyond any of us feeling such intimacy.  The point of Jesus being called God's beloved son in whom God was well pleased was not to keep such good news to himself but to be awakened to the truth that every person Jesus would meet was a child of God just like him.   This is embodied in his proclamation of the Kingdom of God being at hand, to awaken to a reality of God  that encompassed and subsummed the reality of our making. 

According to the SG, Jesus intended to redeem this sense of being children of God in his fellow Jews and to proclaim that the Kingdom of God was not something to wait for, but rather that they were, in the midst of God's Kingdom, even though Judah was being occupied by the imperial army of Rome.  For Jesus, the Kingdom of God was something that has existed since the dawn of time.  "The Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" was an undoubtedly familiar Psalm (42: 1-2) to Jesus.  When Jesus talked of repentance because the Kingdom of God was at hand, he was asking people to wake up to what is present already and to reach out and grab it.  The reality of the transient world of our making is only a small shadow compared to the cosmos of God's creating.  

In the world of our making, things rarely are what they seem to be.  Jesus attempted to alleviate the sense of panic we often feel when it comes to the problems we face.  He did this by setting an example for us to emulate in our lives.  He advanced the Golden Rule to its highest level - the love of one's enemies.   Goodness and mercy outweighed bitterness and vengeance.  While Jesus did not answer all the question or solve all our problems, he provided us with an ethical template to address them, which has yet to be fully implemented.

The closest humans, after Jesus' time, ever came to collectively implementing the teachings of Jesus was in the peaceful protests started by Mahatma Gandhi,  Martin Luther King Jr, and the Peace and Reconciliation Movement headed by Desmond Tutu in the Union South Africa.  It took two thousand years for Jesus' teachings to bear some evidence of it truthfulness.  What didn't free India, promoted the civil rights of Black in the United States, or healed the racial wounds in South Africa was telling people that Jesus died for their sins.  Rather it was taking to heart Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom of God; whose only directive  is to love God by loving that which God loves. and the the path to realize this love is to enact justice through peaceful means and patient persistence, seeking opportunities to forgive, practice humility, and show mercy. 

Jesus lives through his teachings.  If the resurrection story means anything beyond the possibility, if not the probability, that there is more to life than this life, it is that it demonstrates that importance of Jesus' life-giving teaching in this life.  

Our understanding of what theistic religion refers to as God is always evolving as we learn more of the macrocosm and the microcosm of the cosmos we are part of.  While the tribalism of nationalism continues to threaten our existence as a species, Jesus' teachings and ethical approach to life serves as a guide to seeing beyond the mere moral values and barriers we create in God's name, in order to allow us to embrace the one and only judgment God has made regarding what God from the very beginning created, that it was very good.  That we are "very good" and "well-pleasing" in God's sight is something difficult to grasp when much of the evidence in our daily lives argues against that judgment, but that eternal judgment, made at the Alpha of time resonates through time to the Omega of time.    

Jesus, as depicted in the Synoptic Gospels, understood that.  It was what allowed him to approach lepers, the foreigner, and the social outcasts of his day.  It is what exposed the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of his day and our day.  Reclaiming Jesus' humanity is vital to understanding the Gospel message, the Good News that God sees our goodness even when we don't; that we can live into being the children of God called us to be just as Jesus lived into being the son God called him to be.

In future posts, we will examine the importance of this totally human Jesus which is a gleaned from the Gospels.

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm   

 

 

THE POINT ABOUT US

WHAT IS THE POINT ABOUT US?

Perhaps the most perplexing questions we are faced with concerns who we are and discerning the purpose of our lives on this speck of dust floating through the vastness of the universe.  

 What about us?  Why are we here at all?  What's the point of our being?

* * *

We cannot give a definitive answer as to why we exist any easier than we can answer questions regarding the existence of God.  In the  unanswerability of such questions, however, is the connection between God and us.  As such, the history of our being is the history of God's being.  

That may sound as if we humans invented God, but that would be missing the point entirely because there is a point at which our ontological questions have no point, where the question as to our existence simple becomes  the question of "What is the point of us?

This interconnectivity between the existence of God and we humans is referenced in the Psalms, "For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?"  (Psalm 6:5) and "Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave?or thy faithfulness in destruction?" (Psalm 88:11).   The point of these questions is to posit the question, "If we don't exist, does it matter if God exists?"  

I am sure this is an uncomfortable question to many religious people because the answer is clearly "No."   It doesn't matter.   If we don't exist, then God or a creative force by some other name does not matter as the Psalmists clearly points out.  So the point of our existence is, in part, to proclaim the existence of God and places some importance on our being.  Our being is the proof of a creative force unimaginably bigger than the sum of us or the sum of an ever expanding creation

* * *  

The only way religion has been able to express this truth is through its mythic imagination telling our story with God from an imaginative outside perspective. This imaginative perspective is not make-believe, but rather a perspective garnered from our collective life experiences within the world of our making which extend back to our prehistory that prompted our ancestors to find meaning and purpose in them in order to orient ourselves to world in which we live.  Without these stories we have difficulty understanding who we are and why we do the things we do.  They help explain our experiences to this day. 

Cast in theism these mythic stories tells us that the life we experience is the life that proceeds from God's kenotic creativity; of God expending self to expand SELF.  While God is unlike us, we are connected to God by and through God's kenotic creativity; God's desire to be and, in particular,  God's desire to be known.  In most religions this desire to be known is associated with the human emotion of  love.  

For example, "God is love," is Christianity 's  fundamental creed.  To feel unloved, is to feel a profound absence, a hole in one's being that will seek something to fill its void.  The absence of love in one's life is the loss of connection with God who nevertheless continues to love the one feeling unloved because we are of God and God is love.

* * *

The truth is we matter to God, regardless of who one is, what one does, or what one fails to do.   This  truth is something that transcends our sense of justice within the world of our making.  There are times that I feel we, as a whole, are striving to value every human being's worth as something we humans can accomplish on our own.   Seeking to value every human being and every form of life we encounter  is not a "Christian" endeavor but rather a human endeavor that is present in almost every religious and non-religious ideology.  It hearkens back to what I have written earlier blogs on the primary impulse of religion (of bringing us together in shared beliefs) is the fundamental realization that we need each other.  

In the world of our making, however, the ability to differentiate has caused us to see the most subtle nuances in an other as a barrier to this value of every living thing.  This is particularly challenging in the differences we see in our fellow human beings.  In Abrahamic monotheism,  this nuance is captured in the mythic story of Adam and Eve, our first parents who differentiate themselves based on sexual appearances.  

In my reading of this story, I do not find a "fall" from God's grace but rather a fuller engagement with it.  Gifted with the ability to choose, we opted to know good and evil like God,  Since we cannot know as God knows, we were summarily tasked in our dualistic understanding of good and evil to  make a world of our own amidst the diverse world of God's creating.  Our story from that moment onward is a story of dealing with the paradox of God's being and God's creation.  

Where we see dark and light, good and evil, God only sees light and the goodness of the creation God loves.  Where we see difference, God sees none.   Difference makes no difference in the light and love of God.  What we perceive as paradox in the world of our making is the sign of God's presence in it; that Oneness and Singularity from which all things proceed and dwell in.  

* * *

Ours is a struggle with the temporality of our existence and the limitations which hinder our ability to experience the ultimate fulfillment of what we seek in our creative endeavors.  Nothing symbolizes this than the monumental structures we leave behind us to serve as a reminder to those who follow us that we made a difference in the world of our making and that they stand upon our shoulders and, at the very least, owe us recognition.  We are haunted by our perceptions; that whatever knowledge we possess will never be enough; that our ending will be much as our beginning, an emergence into the nothingness from which we were born.  

* * *

The point of our being is to be alive; to give, in the short span of our existence, acknowledgment of the God we seek to know in full.   God's delight in us is never-ending even though we cannot comprehend it or understand the paradoxical love of God.  The point of our existence is to engage the love that brought us into being; to be that love in the world of our making; to love ourselves, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and, paradoxically, love that which we find unlovable, our enemies. 

* * *

The point about us is that we matter to God, otherwise we would not be here.  God needs us to need God; to give recognition to the giver of life whose desire to be is expressed in our being.  Understanding our being is central to understanding God's being.  

We are not God, yet God shines through us.  God is evident in us as we are contained in and sustained through the being of God.  We proceeded from God's kenotic desire to be; to expend self to expand SELF.  We are, in part, that SELF of God expressed in and throughout the entirety of God's creation.  

In the shortness of our life-span, we give evidence of the plentitude of God's creating grace.  At the end of this transitory life, one can only hope that the life force of one's life, the totality of one's soulfulness returns the one who made us living souls.  We were made of love, made to love, and it is hoped that this love will return to LOVE, to God.

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

ONE PLANET, TWO WORLDS

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.  And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.   Genesis 1: 1-5

GOD

As I have mentioned in other posts, God is a kenotic action; God (BEING-NESS) expending self in order to expand self.  Theologically speaking, God is the Singularity (God is One) from whom or from which all creation came into being.  To put it into the language of Act 17: 28, God is that being in which we live and move and have our being.  

Given that expansive understanding of "God," we human "earthlings" have difficulty understanding our  place in its immensity.  While it is no longer difficult for most to accept that the Earth is not the center of the universe,  it remains difficult to avoid thinking of ourselves as the crowning achievement of God's creation.  

IN THE BEGINNING

If one is talking about the need of Christianity to have a Copernican type of revolution, a revolution that orientates us to a right perspective of our relationship to God and our place in the Universe, one must start at the beginning. The five verses quoted above from Genesis 1 is the starting point we are given in the Holy Bible.   It is important that one does not gloss over them but pays particular attention to them.   To begin with one must understand that the canvas of scriptures paints a picture of us in relation to our Creator via the intimate brush strokes of individual stories within the framework of a particular story of an interrelated people referred as the Chosen People by which to depict our true nature as being embodied in that Being through which and in which we exist.   

Remarkably, the creation story in Genesis intuitively depicts an evolutionary process.  It confirms that there is a process to creation which, in Genesis story,  began with the conception  (the idea) of heaven and earth.   The term "In the beginning" (an a priori a sense of time)  the proto-earth or the idea of earth is conceived as a formless and void of any particular meaning.  According to Genesis, measurable time doesn't occur before light is separated from darkness by which to measure earth-time in terms of its having days and nights.  Broadly speaking it also hints at the temporal nature of our known universe.  

A point before time begs the question of whether such a point is eternal.  What does "in the beginning" tell us about God?  Did God exist before the beginning or does "In the beginning" denote an ever-present nowness of God's potential (or creative force) in which there is no sense of linear time, no measurable dimension of being?  

In Genesis, time has a starting point and therefore our scriptures talk about its ending point.  From its starting point to its ending point time is conceived as a linear measurement of both past and future. One could say that time measures anticipatory decay; as in, the past giving way to a future whose presence  quickly becomes the past, as each present moment instantaneously dissolves into a past that no longer exists as it gives way to the future in a nanosecond.  

One may ask why this is important.  Its importance is that  the world in which we currently live, what I refer to as the world of our making, is undergirded by an incomprehensible cosmic now, a constant that has no past or future but is briefly recognizable in the brevity of a present moment.   It is against that incomprehensible constant backdrop that the world of God's creation proceeds including the world of our making which resides on this specific speck of dust called Earth. 

OUR PLANET HOME

Earth is called "Earth" because that is what we call the skin of our planet home in any number of languages. We know today that life on earth has existed for a long time.  Relatively speaking, human life, is the new kid on the block.  We literally stand on the remains of distant,  one-time living worlds that are part of God's ongoing creation that goes as far back as when the first single cells plants and animals emerged from the chemical soup that this planet produced and housed. 

It is from that primal soup that we humans eventually evolved or as Genesis describes as being made in the image of God.  In essence we are cognitively aware that we embody the both the physical and animating force of God's creation.  For most of human history the Earth was understood to stand at the center of God's creation and humankind was understood to be the pinnacle of the animated life on it. The Sun, Moon, and Star all revolved around us.   

This notion of centrality, both of place and being, remain intact in the human psyche.  Even though science has long ago proven that our planet is not the center of our solar system and much less the center of the universe, we humans largely continue to consider ourselves as the pinnacle of God's creation and Earth its brightest gem.   This will remain true until such time there is proof of intelligent life beyond the Earth and even if that were the case such intelligent life will have to demonstrate to a more advanced intellect than we humans before we will lose the idea of our centrality.

For the present, we are the only known planet on which intelligent life exists, which brings us to the concept of a world.  The word "World" has many meanings.   Generally, it refers to various domains of human interest; such as, the world of animals, the world of plants, the world of sports, the world of business, and so on.  For the purpose of this post, as noted throughout this blog, the term world is used to describe two perspectives of life on this planet; the world as God's creation and the world  of our making.  

THE WORLD OF GOD'S CREATING

"... in the place where the beginning is, there the end will be."  -The Gospel of Thomas*

 

In the Gospel of Thomas the above teaching of Jesus is in response to his disciples asking what will happen to them at their ending.  Thomas does not give the reader any sense of the context in which their enquiry is made.  We do not know if it is reference to the Last Judgment, which seems implied, or whether it is about the end of life.  

Unlike the canonical Gospels, the Gospel of Thomas directs them to go back to the beginning, to Genesis to find what they are looking for.  In other word, to know one's ending, one must know one's beginning.  The open ended aspect of this teaching of Jesus is what makes the Gospel of Thomas so intriguing.

The world of God's creating is the structural foundation upon which the world of our making rests.  The world of making is like the earthy skin of our planet.  It is a surface covering of something more substantial and foundational.

If we consider the two creation myths of Genesis; the creation of the Cosmos, the Earth, and all the living creatures on the Earth found in Genesis 1 and the formation of humankind in Genesis 2 in the Garden of Eden, we should come away with the understanding that Eden is more than a geographical place, it is a metaphor for the world of God's creating, a world that exists along side of and beyond the world our mythical first parents were tasked with creating as they were cast from this garden state.   

It is the world of God's creating that God judged as being very good.   As the Gospel of Thomas points out if you want to know our ending, go back the beginning because that primal judgment of God's creation is God's final judgment of it.  Eden is the term I use as a synonym or metaphor for world of God's creating, what Jesus referred to as the Kingdom of God. 

All of us have our roots in Eden.  It is motherland of our being.   It is the metaphorical home we long for, the Kingdom of God that Jesus said is at hand.  

* "A New New Testament: A Bible for the Twenty-First Century" (Copyright 2013, Hal Taussig. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, New York, New York.).   

THE WORLD OF OUR MAKING

"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my Words shall not pass away" - The Synoptic Gospels

The world of our making is (for the lack of a better word) a byproduct of the world of God's creating.  The world of God's creating is foundational to the world of our making.  The world of our making could not possibly exist without it.  

That being said, there is, in a manner of speaking, a world of difference between these worlds; in that, we differentiate in the world of our making.  We are obsessed with differences.  Please understand that by differentiation, I am not being critical of seeing differences but  acknowledging them as a fact of life in the world of our making.  Our ability to differentiate, like most everything else we do in our world has both good and bad aspects; hence, the mythic story of Adam and Eve being dispelled from Eden.  Knowing difference helps us to be imaginative, how things compliment and contrast each other.  According to Abrahamic religions it is an aspect of being made in the image of God.  We could not be artists of every kind, builders, inventors, idealists, etc, without the ability to differentiate.  

This ability to differentiate, of course, has an evil side.  It seems for every good thing we humans do, there is an evil aspect that can be derived from it.  In the realm of God, differentiation does not exist.  Light and dark are both alike to God, our Scriptures says Psalm 139:12.   In Matthew 5:45, Jesus points out that rain falls on both the righteous and the unrighteous.  In the world of God's creating good and evil, righteousness and unrighteousness are non-issues.   Difference makes no difference to God.   Difference is clearly a human issue.  We cannot escape difference in the world of our making.  It proceeds from our ability to make choices.  In order to chose, one must have the ability to differentiate.

In the world of our making, this non-difference between that which appears and feels different is understood as paradox; when two contradictory things or points of view come into play simultaneously.   Paradox is considered a sign of God's presence, the sign of Christ which will be discussed in later posts.  In contemplative circles, paradox is embraced as non-dualism; that is, achieving or striving for a sense of equanimity about all things and seeing the interconnection between all things created and the Creator.  

In the world of our making, however, paradox is perplexing.   That opposing elements or entities can be at play at the same time disrupts our sense of certainty; in particular,  the certainty that there are absolute truths that are unchangeable within the world of our making.   Most of us fail to understand or refuse to understand that our sense of difference is a product of our making; a product of the choices we have made since the beginning of our history. 

Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom of God is at hand, which is to say that the world of God's creating is present within the world of our making.  As Paul reminds us, however,  we see it as if looking through a dark lens.  What, for the time being, preoccupies us is the illusionary surface world we have made that occludes the immensity of God's kenotic Being.

The world of God's creating is the "cosmic now" of God, the cosmic center of all that is.  A center that knows no boundary or as the hymns, John Mason wrote of God in the 17th century, "Thou art a sea without a shore, a sun without a sphere, Thy time is now and evermore, Thy place is everywhere." That is the world of God's creating the kenotic world of God expending self in order to expand self, the unbounded center of all things.

The earth and the world of our making are only a minuscule part of the world of God's creating; a part that is a temporary manifestation of God's creative expansiveness.  The heaven and earth we know is merely an experience with impermanence.  Death is a necessary facet of life within time.  

Mass and energy may always exist in the Cosmic Now of God, but how it is manifested; how God is expressed or manifested through it is subject to what God told Moses, "I am that I am;"in other words, "I will be what I will be." God is undefinable as a being as God is BEING.  Christians take note:  God cannot be differentiated or given a specific image that we shape either through the imagery of matter or the limitation of  our language.  We can only express our imaginative depictions and thoughts of God, but such imaginative depictions and thoughts are simply that and nothing more. We cannot not comprehend the fullness of God in or through the world of our making.

In the world of our making we have power, but our power is limited by the ability to differentiate.  As such we only have the power to make and the power to destroy.  This dichotomous, either/or ability, is manifest in our many achievements and in our many wars.  As great and tremendous such power is in the world of our making, it does not compare to paradoxical power of God.  We do not have nor can we ever possess the creative power of God that both expends and expands simultaneously.  

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

 

SET ABLAZE - A Homily

This homily was delivered at Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton, South Dakota on Sunday, August 14, 2022.

* * * 

Luke 12:49-56

Jesus said, "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 

From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:  father against son and son against father, mother against daughter
and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."

He also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, `It is going to rain'; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, `There will be scorching heat'; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?" 

(the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA)

* * *

 In the Name of our loving God.  Amen.

We’re not as familiar with the Jesus depicted in this reading - a Jesus who is not peacemaker - a Jesus who causes division.

Christianity has a tendency to distort the image of Jesus; in that, it downplays his being a human like us.  We say Jesus is true man and true God, but let’s face it, of the two descriptions, the one people have been banking on for the past 1800 years is Jesus as true God.  It’s time we reorient ourselves to the true man of that credal equivocation in order to properly understand the power of the Gospels in our lives, because what is true for Jesus is true for us.  He is one of us and we need to be one with him.

* * *

During Jesus’ ministry, the Gospels make it clear he struggled with getting his message about the Kingdom of God across to people. Jesus encountered the difficulties all prophets encounter when speaking truth to those who don’t want to hear it and opening our eyes to the ignored obvious taking place around us. Perhaps the best description of Jesus, the man, is the one the early Church found in the writings of the prophet Isaiah:

He grew up as a tender shoot in a harsh environment.  There was nothing majestic about him; nothing about his appearance that would attract attention.   He was rejected by most.  He experienced suffering and understood grief.  He was despised as someone who didn’t count.  (Isaiah 53:2b-3, paraphrased)

Jesus was not the auburn haired, nordic type we see depicted in paintings and stained glass windows. The Jesus of Jesus’ day would have looked more like the Palestinian of today.  At times, the Gospels depict him looking unkempt from being pressed by the throngs seeking to be healed and looking crazed when passionately preaching about the Kingdom of God;  At one point his mother and brothers even planned an intervention to prevent him from making and spectacle of himself.  What attracted people to Jesus was his passion for healing the incurable, forgiving the unforgivable, and loving the unloveable - his human touch.

* * *

  

What was a day in the life of this man Jesus like?  Luke 11 and 12 record one day in the life of Jesus’ ministry, the day from which this reading is taken.

 

After teaching his disciples how to pray, Jesus healed a man rendered mute by what was believed to be a demon.  As a result, Jesus was accused of being able to do so because he was in league with the prince of demons, Beelzebub.

Then he was invited to dine at the house of a Pharisee.  Jesus, in state of fatigue and hunger, headed straight to the table without performing the usual washing up ritual before eating which his offended his host.Then there was the man who wanted to use Jesus as his personal agent to Bible-thump his brother into sharing an inheritance he felt entitled to.  It is no wonder that Jesus would take off in the middle of the night to get away from it all and  seek the solace of the night’s silence and pray.

* * *

Jesus was a suspected troublemaker in his day; a threat to the status quo, not only by the religious authorities of his day, but also to the Romans who were all too ready to crucify anyone causing trouble. People were divided over Jesus because they didn’t know what to make of him.  We’re still divided over Jesus.  

Conducting an online search regarding how many Christian denominations exist today, I found there are 45,000 different Christian denominations worldwide. In the US, there are 200 Christian denominations, but If one asks how many non-denominational Christian churches there are in the US alone, the answer, as of 2012, is over 84,000. What I see dividing Christians are the various teachings we have about Jesus; teachings that have largely dispensed with the teachings of Jesus.

Understanding Jesus as one of us prompts us to take a closer look at his teachings, which are vital in dealing with the world of today.  Unless we are immersed in the fiery baptism of Jesus’ passionate ministry and his love for all that God loves, we really can’t claim to know Jesus because we haven’t carried on his work and be like him, the daughters and sons God called us to be at our baptisms.

* * *

At the close of this reading, Jesus challenges us, “You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

I’m not so sure we’re good at interpreting the appearance of the earth and sky nowadays; much less, interpreting the present time.  The challenge for us today, as it was in Jesus’ time, is to avoid hypocrisy; acting as if we know the mind of God, thinking that by claiming to be Christian our thoughts must be God’s thoughts on the issues we are confronting today.  Isaiah reminds us, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8).  

Nothing makes this more apparent than the table-turning teachings and ministry of our brother Jesus who sheds a new light on our darkening world, who bequeathed us his ministry of healing those who are hurting, forgiving the unforgivable, and loving the unloveable; a visionary ministry that would set our world ablaze with the purgatorial fire of God’s love that would burn away the chaff of our selfish desires to expose the pure grain of our God-made selves. 

May such a fire burn within us today and always.    Amen. 

* * *

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm  

CARING FOR ONE'S SOUL - A HOMILY

 This was the homily I prepared for Sunday July 31.

* * *

Luke 12:13-21

Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, `What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, `I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, `Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, `You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.

(The New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA) 

* * *

Jesus’ parable about a rich man, a well-to-do farmer who has experienced an huge bumper crop of grain, that exceeded the capacity of his current grain bins and who is laying in bed thinking  to himself about how he can maximize this harvest to his benefit is a bit odd.

Let’s be honest, could anyone of us sitting here in today’s world blame him for thinking this way?    It’s his grain.  He planted it.  He sowed it and he reaped what he sowed.  Isn’t he entitled to enjoy the fruits of his labor, the blessing of such a great harvest?  Why not build better grain bins?  Why not enjoy the thought of being able to sit back, eat, drink, and be merry? 

* * *

Was Jesus just having a bad day?   What got Jesus so riled up that he shouts, “Take care!  Be on your guard against all kinds of greed because one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possession!”

One could say that Jesus was having a bad day, which started back in Luke 11, the chapter that preceded today’s reading, where after healing a man of demon possession was accused of casting out demons by the prince of demons, Beelzebub. Then Jesus was being chastised for not properly washing up before dining by the Pharisee who invited him to dine.  Finally, there is this man who wants Jesus to tell his brother to share the inheritance that was left to his brother, as if  Jesus’ primary role was to fix the mundane issues of the world we created.

* * *

Yes.  Jesus was having a bad day but not as bad as the day the people who were being trite, who were caught up in their self-righteousness, their sense of self importance; who failed to see the goodness of God working through Jesus for them and  who couldn’t see God’s love within their own souls; in that, they were caught up in what Jesus described as every form of greed in which the small self of egoism shaped their limited perspective of life’s meaning and purpose.

To address this limited perspective and to get them and us out of our mundane comfort zone,  Jesus invited them - invites us - into this parable in which he reveals the inner thoughts, the inner dialogue between this rich man and his own soul on the very night this man’s souls, his very life would be required by God.  

In Genesis 2, the soul is described as the totality of our being, shaped by God’s own hands and breathed to life in order to bear the image of God within the world of God’ creating.  The problem that Jesus is addressing in this parable is the failure to recognize what we just recited in the Jubilate; “Know this: The Lord himself is God; he himself has made and we are his….”

The man in the parable had forgotten who made him, whose he was.  He fell victim to that deceptive idea of the self-made person, the person who has pulled oneself up by one’s bootstraps, who owes no one anything, even God.   This becomes apparent when he says to his soul, as if he alone owned it, “`Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” 

It was at that point in the parable that God speaks to the man directly, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”

Jesus ends this parable by saying, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”  Through the use of the stark imagery of this parable Jesus is stressing the need to take care of our souls by keeping in mind who made us, whose we are, and  that our life’s purpose is not to make the most of our lives by through the acquisition of things, but to present in our lives the righteous image of God.

Unfortunately, the lectionary left out of today’s reading Jesus’ explanation of the parable and gives us a clue how to be mindful in caring for our souls which I will paraphrase:

After this parable, Jesus said to his disciples, “Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat, or what you will wear.  Life is more than eating well and looking good.  Look at the birds: they don’t sow or reap, they don’t have storage bins. God feeds them.  If God feeds them, God will feed you. 

There really is enough for everyone if we stop being anxious about things that really don’t matter.

Do you think worrying about acquiring more than you need will add a single hour to your life?

If being anxious about such things won’t add an hour to your life, why bother with such things?

Look at the wildflowers that grow in the pastures.  If God clothes the grasslands with such beauty, God will clothe you because you are a child of God, made in the image of God,  

Trust God!  Stop worrying about what you think you need to acquire in order to live a good life in the here and now.  God knows what you need.  Rather, seek God in your life; find the image of God within your soul.  Be the child of God that you are and you will find that your soul’s truest and deepest desires will be met.”  (Compare original text in Luke 12: 22-31)

To which I can only say -  Amen.

* * *

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm