+Z’ev

Today’s Assigned Readings:

Wisdom 16:15-17:1; Romans 14:13-23; Luke 8:40-56

When he came to the house, he did not allow anyone to enter with him, except Peter, John, and James, and the child’s father and mother.
Luke 8:51

I’ve never noticed this before and I don’t know where to look for resources off the top of my head.

Can God be unclean?

Whether you believe it or not, call to mind everything you know about Nicene Christology: “theanthropos”, “God-Human”. Fully God and Fully Human. That’s Jesus here.

Now… walk with me through this Gospel story:

Jesus, come and heal my daughter?

OK.

We’re walking…

Who touched me?

I did - I’ve been bleeding for 12 years but now I’m cured!

FULL STOP!

By the command of God in the Torah, a woman who has had a flow of blood at all - let alone for 12 years - is ritually unclean. End of story. Even cured she still must seclude herself, bathe in a ritual bath, and be pronounced clean.

She touched Jesus.

God is now ritually unclean - by his own command.

Entering the house of a synagogue official makes everyone in that house unclean.

Don’t you find it odd that neither the Apostles nor Jarius nor God himself seemed to care?

Go in peace, indeed.

So then, the passage from St Paul:

Let us therefore no longer pass judgement on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. If your brother or sister is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died. So do not let your good be spoken of as evil.
Romans 14:13-16

My vocational discernment committee - which we called a Wrestling Team - was a gift from God for me in a lot of ways: not because it set me off on a combative drive to run away from all that was impure. That was an accident. But because by their questions they helped me clear up some of my own theology, my own thinking.

This one night sticks in my mind: gathered around the table in the dining room, we were discussing the reality that the Episcopal Church didn’t need so much clergy in the urban parts of the country. Most of the clergy I knew came to seminary and stayed in the city - Atlanta, San Francisco, New York, Boston. No one wanted to leave. They took secular jobs, or jobs at large parishes. On Sundays many could be found just sitting in the pew of a parish. This had been true at every parish in which I had participated including St Gregory’s. In all of these places these extra clergy might be called on to serve a liturgy once in a while or preach, maybe teach a Sunday School class. But, should I get ordained, the last thing we needed was another priest for the Diocese of Some Cultural Ghetto in a Major City.

So, the Wrestling Team wondered, what did I want to do?

Well, there are empty parishes in the rural heartland of the country - places that need clergy, that need care, even if only as these places wither and die. They still need pastors. Maybe some of those places can be revitalised.

“But what if they don’t like the fact that you’re gay?”, asked the Team.

I turned to St Paul’s letter to the Romans: Don’t make anyone stumble. If God called me to minister in such a place, perhaps God was also calling me to a time of celibacy and being alone.

This sparked quite a huge conversation where the very idea that something like that could ever happen was appalling: maybe I was being called to enlighten them. What would I do if there were Gay teenagers there? How could I be the priest if I couldn’t be myself?

Mind you, this entire thing was hypothetical and thus, perhaps, a misstep.

And that’s where I still am with the whole Gay Clergy issue. We never moved beyond it that night. We never got very far, in fact: I think a month later I was Becoming Orthodox™. Another misstep, but let’s let that go for now.

St Paul’s teaching that the Christian should “resolve never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another” is one of the hardest things for us to live up to. Doctrines? That we got. Charity? Yup, most places have that, too. Stumbling blocks? TONNES.

For Roman Catholics or Orthodox, what they see as “Apostolic Tradition” creates a stumbling block for some protestants, whose lack of the same stuff creates a stumbling block for the Catholics. For Anglicans, fighting among themselves, women clergy, gay clergy, high church and low church, these all create stumbling blocks just as quickly as the rejection of any of these. For many protestants, the use of presbyters, titles, any church hierarchy, etc… these all create stumbling blocks.

Sadly, from maybe the second century (although some would say since about AD 50) the Church has found her self resolving the stumbling block issue by saying, “These are right, those are wrong. Half of you, out of the pool!” Is this important? I think so. Here’s the quote from CS Lewis again, same as I posted yesterday.

The real fun is working up hatred between those who say “mass” and those who say “holy communion” when neither party could possibly state the difference between, say, Hooker’s doctrine and Thomas Aquinas’, in any form which would hold water for five minutes. And all the purely indifferent things—candles and clothes and what not—are an admirable ground for our activities. We have quite removed from men’s minds what that pestilent fellow Paul used to teach about food and other unessentials—namely, that the human without scruples should always give in to the human with scruples. You would think they could not fail to see the application. You would expect to find the “low” churchman genuflecting and crossing himself lest the weak conscience of his “high” brother should be moved to irreverence, and the “high” one refraining from these exercises lest he should betray his “low” brother into idolatry. And so it would have been but for our ceaseless labour. Without that the variety of usage within the Church of England might have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility.

Now, here’s the Punchline from that quote, adopted twice for our purposes:

You would expect to find the “low” churchman kissing icons lest the weak conscience of his “high” brother should be moved to irreverence, and the “high” one refraining from kissing icons lest he should betray his “low” brother into idolatry.

Would that have resolved the entire need for the 7th Ecumenical Council? Yes, I think so. And our Churches, east and west, would look radically different.

Now, modern style and a little more adjustment:

You would expect to find the “traditionalist” churchman ordaining gays and women lest the weak conscience of his “progressive” brother should be moved to injustice, and the “progressive” one refraining from these exercises lest he should betray his “traditionalist” brother into immorality.

Does that cut too close? I know some who seem to view the primary thrust of the Gospel as a moral imperative and others who view it as a matter of social justice. I think it’s important to realise that Jesus took impurity to new heights in his actions. And Jews, you understand, did not view “impurity” as a sort of lesser moral code. It’s not “sin” over here and “impurity” over there. It’s all one package. If one was impure, one could not pray. That’s why some Christian conceptions of sin can seem so strange at times, when reading the Bible.

The faith that you have, have as your own conviction before God. Blessed are those who have no reason to condemn themselves because of what they approve. But those who have doubts are condemned if they eat, because they do not act from faith; for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

Jesus overrode all that “purity” stuff. But St Paul points out we’re not all Jesus. We don’t get to just override the weak. In fact, we must make them strong. Weak is not “progressive” or “traditionalist”. In effect, “Weak” means “the one teetering on the edge” or “the one who is not yet so firmly rooted in the faith that Judgement rather than Love comes easier”. That is all of us. It’s easier for all of us to Judge than to Love: even St Paul falls into it every once in a while. But to betray my brother or sister to the sin of Judgement - and then kick her out of the church for it - is to abandon the church myself. But the “Weak” is always in the second person. I am never the weaker brother: you are. It’s not up to me to claim weak status. It is, however, up to me to presume it for you.

How different would *that* church look from the one we have?

I have often wondered if the Great Schism and, after, the Reformation was not God’s own Holy Spirit shattering the Satanically imposed uniformity of an institutional church that had no business cutting some in and some out of the feast: The Rainbow People of God in all God’s glorious diversity. There is a place for everyone - a theological niche in which all might be challenged to Love God and Love Neighbour. If we can step apart for our differences yet realise both sides of a difference are Christians… the Iconoclast and the Iconodule, the High Church and the Low, the Priest and Priestess, the Gay and the Straight… or are those last two too far? Not, I think, in God’s eyes.

Instead of these things you gave your people food of angels, and without their toil you supplied them from heaven with bread ready to eat, providing every pleasure and suited to every taste. For your sustenance manifested your sweetness toward your children; and the bread, ministering to the desire of the one who took it, was changed to suit everyone’s liking.