+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:

2 Samuel 3:6-21, Acts 16:6-15, Mark 6:30-46

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them.
Mark 6:30-33

You know this is why I like this daily discipline of reading the lessons: first off, the daily office lessons are usually longer than the readings assigned for Eucharist; and, as a result, I’m always finding new and interesting things!

Among some liturgical scholars (starting in the last century?) the view is that all the meals in the Gospels (or most of them, anyway) need to be seen as intimations of liturgy. The first time I read this, I wasn’t too sure about it. But the more I listen to other scholars debate the content of these stories, the more I see that Liturgy is just as likely as anything else.

The feeding of the multitude is often shown as a Eucharistic teaching - Christ giving himself to everyone. But it’s usually read by itself, starting at around vs 34: Jesus sees the multitude and has compassion because they’re all out in the empty places. But if you read staring at vs 30, it’s different. Verse 30 ties it in with the rest of the chapter. The Beheading of John the Baptist is a bit of an odd interlude; a flashback. Read verses 7-12 and then skip to verse 30-33 and then continue to the feeding miracle, here. There is a very discernible pattern there, minus the Baptist story.

Jesus sends out the disciples.
They come back.
Jesus says, “Let’s us close friends go on a retreat, y’all must be tuckered out…”
Other people follow them anyway.
Jesus tells the disciples to feed them.
Jesus feeds everyone himself.
Then he goes on a retreat alone.

There’s more to this story, I’ll return to this pattern tomorrow, but I’ve never paid much attention to the narrative, just to the individual scenes. If, thinking of Eucharist, you read the individual scene of Jesus feeding the five thousand men (plus women and children) with five loaves and two fish, you might - given a certain theological bent - come away with an idea of what is called “open communion” or even “radically open communion”: feeding all comers at Jesus table. But you also might come away with other ideas.

However, if you read the full story, not just the “pericope” that gets read at Mass, again, thinking of Eucharist, you’re stuck with open communion, even radically open communion. The only other choice is to say this passage has nothing to do with Eucharist at all.

Look: Jesus says, “hey, let’s us 13 guys go off and be alone…” And when everyone - the multitudes - follow anyway, and intrude on the disciples’ Quality Jesus Time, the Messiah includes the multitudes. In fact, when the disciples come and say, “Yo, Jesus - get rid of these people cuz they need something to eat! (And, maybe we can get some Quality Jesus Time too!) Jesus goes goes on with the teaching exercise - “Feed them!” When that fails, he feeds them himself.

Like I said, reading the full narrative, we’re left with a choice of saying “This is about Eucharist - and so we have to be open, like Jesus was” or we have to give up saying this is about Eucharist at all.

Of course some groups would say this isn’t about Eucharist at all. This is about a miracle, pure and simple.

But, largely, those sorts of communities have huge agape-feasts all the time (not communion with bread and wine, but communion, none the less) and those feasts are open to everyone. There are covered dish suppers, and pot luck luncheons and fish fries, pork pulls, BBQs, all day hymn-sings with hamburgers on the grill and red velvet cake and sweet tea… They feed the multitudes from their Sacred Heart just as Jesus did. In tomorrows reading we’ll cross the Sea of Galilee to the other side to Gennesaret which is on the Jewish side of the water. That means we’re in Gentile territory today. That adds a new spin to feeding the multitudes.

But if we put the Baptist story back in now… does that become a way to report the end of all of that older tradition - supplanted by Jesus’ own banquet. Or is the insertion of the John story a way to remind us that after the preaching comes the baptism and then the Eucharistic feast? If it is either of those, is the John story an editorial insert? Did things change requiring the story to be edited?

Today’s assigned readings:

2 Samuel 2:1-11, Acts 15:36-16:5, Mark 6:14-29

David inquired of the Lord, “Shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah?” The Lord said to him, “Go up.” David said, “To which shall I go up?” He said, “To Hebron.”
2 Samual 2:1

I’ve written about this before - about God having a direct say in the choices we make. Does God have a plan for our life? Not just an abstract idea of things but a specific A-to-Z idea of what’s right from Day 1 to Death? The god in Samuel’s world seems to function that way. The god in Much of the Hebrew scriptures seems to function that way as does the one in the Greek scriptures that come from the Jewish or the Christian Tradition. That god tells people even the tiniest of things: Don’t go to Macedonia. Ok, now go to Macedonia. Don’t pick that guy, pick this one.

That god doesn’t seem to be too active any more - at least not in the same way. I don’t mean that to project doubt backwards. But some part of me wonders if the common folks of Israel got to hear voices saying “go up”, or if the average Christian in the Roman empire heard a divine directive to “sail to Macedonia!” Most of us are rather normal humans, right? I’ve no suspicion that I’m the Chosen King of some country or the Prophet that’s intended to bring some news someplace (although Someone may have other plans).

And while in my (very rare) humility I realise I’m not King David or St Paul, there are times when I would just like even just a tiny bit of direction.

Most of my evangelical and charismatic friends seem to hear their from deity all the time. He’s got opinion on where to shop, who to hang out with, when to go to the movies, where to work, who one should marry, where one should vacation… and he seems to express himself rather clearly and even verbosely.

Clearly I’m doing something wrong.

Praying for guidance about where to find a job in New York, I end up living in San Francisco.

In San Francisco I enter a discernment process to find out if I’m called to the Ordained Ministry. Instead of God speaking to everyone and saying “yes” or “no” I leave the Episcopal Church and become Orthodox.

Once Orthdoox I discover no lack of complexity and discontinuity - what Anglicans would call “Local Option”. This provokes a fit of prayer and I end up falling in love and having coffee with my old Episcopal pastor and taking communion in an Anglo-Catholic parish.

If God has a plan for my life I’m clearly being subjected to the most round-about possibility out there.

Or am I making it up as I go along? Is my failure to follow God’s plan my own? Or have I, in reality, failed? As my birthday approaches (less than a month away, now) I’ve entered into that odd, slightly depressive evaluation phase that always precedes the celebration. Lately it’s not just been focused on the last 365 days, but the last 40+ years. What the !@#$% did I do wrong?

Sigh…

I want to be clear: I don’t think this is just a Christian problem. When I was pagan, I was a very skilled user of Tarot Cards. People offered me money even though I didn’t charge for it. It was a profound system of meditation and introspection, but even when people came to me for consultation, the cards never said “Go have a baby” or “get married to that man”. In fact, when the client asked such a question (in her secret heart, meditating in silence) the cards always failed to make any sense at all. I’d finally say, “You asked a yes or no question, didn’t you? Let’s try this again…” Even the pagan gods didn’t speak in that way.

What am I missing?

The online hagiography of today’s saint, William Wilberforce, reports that “He considered his options, including the clergy, and was persuaded by Christian friends that his calling was to serve God through politics.” It would seem that the god Wilberforce followed didn’t interrupt his sleep with sudden voices either…

Well there’s hope for the rest of us, then!

Today’s assigned reading:

2 Samuel 1:17-27, Romans 12:9-21, Matthew 25:31-46

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good… Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12: 9, 21

Ideas about Good and Evil change, of course. What is considered good by a Rabbi in Nero’s Rome will be rather different compared to what is considered good by us today. In fact, what is considered good by one person today will be rather different from what is considered good by another. The phrase “overcome evil with good” could be read by one party to mean “Liberate Iraq with military might” and by another to mean “practice non-violence always.” Both of those readings are common within the Church - in fact, both of those readings may be common in that group of Christians with whom you gather today.

I think Paul leans to the side of non-violence, myself, with his lines about offering hospitality to strangers and to enemies. And Jesus, himself, tells a whole parable on “the Judgement” without ever saying anything about “theological” good and evil, or about theological positions. Interestingly, the traditional read of that parable is that you can’t get to the right action (of feeding the hungry, clothing the natked, etc) without having the right theology.

Some of these ideas showed up in a conversation we had once in the pages of my blog. You can see the ideas expressed fully in the article, Who are “The Least” of Christ’s Brethren, which is part of the March 2005 edition of “The Lion” (that’s a PDF file.)

Here’s a couple of lead paragraphs to give you an idea:

A scholar names Sherman Gray, in a fascinating dissertation, surveyed nearly two millennia of exegesis of this passage and found that the majority of exegetes over the centuries (ancient, medieval and modern) have tended towards the “particularist” reading - that “the least” refers specifically to persecuted Christians, particularly Christian missionaries working amongst both hostile Jews and Gentiles. While there are notable examples of “universalist” interpretations in the patristic era, Gray shows that, for the most part, it was the more specific interpretation which dominated Christian exegesis of this passage, from antiquity, through the Middle ages, practically down to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Further more, it is Gray’s provocative thesis that the “universalist” interpretation only really began to gain momentum in the twentieth century, particularly in the “decades most closely associated with the two World Wars and the phenomenon of the Second Vatican Council.” Recently, amongst biblical scholars there has been a radical shift back to a more particularist reading, a reaction against a merely “ethical” or “social justice” oriented so common amongst Christians of the last century…

While I acknowledge that some great number - perhaps even the vast majority - of my Christian ancestors heard this parable to refer to persecuted Christians, particularly Christian missionaries and I can follow from that assumption that therefore you have to have correct doctrine before you can have correct action… I can’t not stop having the sense that such is a twisting of the clear meaning of the story. Yes, the story may be in code. And yes, Matthew, in reporting the story, may have had persecution in mind. But if this scripture passage records a story that Our Lord actually told, he wasn’t talking about Persecuted Christians in code because there were none.

The problem with this reading is that it leads quickly to the assumption that we have to know orthodox Christianity before we can practice correct morality at all. This despite that the Church Fathers and Mothers were clear that many pagans were, really, Christians - such as Plato and Socrates. In this era of very public debate with non-believers, this often comes up in one way or another - that one can’t be moral unless one believes in God, or even is a Christian. I remember a form of this debate in 1982 at my evangelical college - in Western Civ 101 with Douglas Carlsen. My contribution then was “If a Buddhist says ‘it’s raining’ will you not take an umbrella?” Non-Christians can be very right-acting people. They can tell the truth. They can show love. That seems to be the point. Right-acting is more important than all the right-doctrine in the world - unless you have a vested interest in lifting up “right doctrine.”

Certainly there were persecuted Christians when Paul was writing - and he doesn’t seem to limit his reading at all: hospitality to strangers and enemies. The greek word is “philoxenia” meaning “love of strangers”. Hospitality or love, of course, precludes any conception of violence. I think the multifarious readings pulled form such passages shows the ability of the Gospel to speak in many cultural contexts. I don’t need to say “you’re wrong” to those who read it differently, but I do need to keep going forward with my universalist reading, which I’m bad at living. Even though I think the final judgement will ask “did you love as I loved?” My painful answer is still “no.”

I’ll close with an example of Christian love I’ve used often - even when I was an ultra-pious Orthdoox person. I wrote it into a podcast I did in Lent of 2006 as part of a project for a theological training programme and it was reposted again in Lent of this year. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Lent is preceded by the Sunday of the Last Judgement when this parable is read at Liturgy. This is from my meditation posted for that Sunday.

I’m going to close today with another Episcopal example. As my friend Ana used to say, “Sometimes the pagans are better Christians than the Christians.” She may have been referring to an Episcopal parish well known to me and to readers of my blog: the parish as a whole doubts the virgin birth and has serious trouble with the Resurrection. They don’t even say the Nicene Creed on Sundays because not everyone is comfortable with the concepts. But every week a committee of the parish has organised for all the local restaurants and grocery stores to donate food to a food bank an d every week hundreds of people come to the parish and find, around the altar table, a cornucopia of free food. No one is asked for ID cards or proof-of-income, no one is even questioned about coming in last week. they don’t do this “to help” as Fr Schmemann worries. Help is not the reason. They say, at ever service, “all that we give, we give in response to what God has given us.” The food given out is an extension of the Eucharist. Everyone receives freely because the parish believes that Christ has given to us freely - but don’t ask them what because they mightn’t know.

All of these people will get into the Kingdom before me.

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost:

2 Samuel 1:17-27, Romans 12:9-21, Matthew 25:31-46

Monday (William Wilberforce):

2 Samuel 2:1-11, Acts 15:36-16:5, Mark 6:14-29

Tuesday (Ignatius of Loyola):

2 Samuel 3:6-21, Acts 16:6-15, Mark 6:30-46

Wednesday (Joseph of Arimathaea):

2 Samuel 3:22-39, Acts 16:16-24, Mark 6:47-56

Thursday:

2 Samuel 4:1-12, Acts 16:25-40, Mark 7:1-23

Friday:

2 Samuel 5:1-12, Acts 17:1-15, Mark 7:24-37

Saturday:

2 Samuel 5:22-6:11, Acts 17:16-34, Mark 8:1-10

Today’s assigned readings:

1 Samuel 31:1-13, Acts 15:12-21, Mark 5:21-43

But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.”… When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.”
Mark 5:36,39

I had a very serious case of pneumonia when I was 6. I ended up in the hospital for quite a while - spending a long time in an oxygen tent. The tent was so big that I could get up and jump inside of it! I have a couple of memories from that time: shots. It seems to my memories that I got shots every five or ten minutes. I remember a couple of doctors and I remember spending a lot of time with my mother, who was often visiting me… And I remember her reading to me: Peter Pan. The plot’s vague… but I remember once scene.

You remember when Tinker Bell is very sick? (I think this might be a “book of the movie” from Disney?) The readers are all asked to say “I believe…” and Tinkerbell will get better. I remember this moment. I think in the theatre, were not all moviegoers asked to applaud? Eh. Whichever. I remember saying that “I believe” and, of course, she got better.

And I confess I’m tempted to see Gospel image the same way. “Do not fear, only believe.” You want to see the Father close his eyes and start saying, “I believe, I believe, I beleeeeeeeeeeeeeev!”

The Greek, of course, doesn’t say that. The Greek word, πιστευω - “pisteuo”, means “trust”. It’s offered in direct opposition to φοβεω - “phobeo”, meaning fear (from whence “phobia”). “Fear not: only trust,” says the Greek.

Fear Not. Only Trust.

The image of a fire walker comes to mind. It’s not as if they walk across chanting “Oh, this won’t hurt!” or with their eyes shut very tight saying “I’m walking on rose petals and cotton balls!” From my time in the modern Neo-pagan movement, I know that fire walkers don’t “do magic” to walk on fire. They just do it. They see themselves as finding a way to be one with fire, to walk and not be burnt not because of the strength of their “wooji-wooji” but because, there’s no reason for the fire to burn. They are acting with respect for the fire, as one wood with bees or electricity or anything else dangerous. When the time comes they trust the fire to act to them as they have towards it.

So must it have been for the man in the story whose daughter was so sick. How do you trust a man who says “She’s asleep” when all the evidence that meets your eyes says otherwise. It’s possible to read the verses literally and find more evidence of a miracle than we might know: “She’s not dead”, says Jesus. But Jesus in his supernatural wisdom knows something more than humans of that time: this coma only looks like death. Or to take the traditional reading - even now “all death is but sleep”. So Christians say things like “he fell asleep in the Lord” not out of fear of death but rather in trust. Now, even death itself is transformed into something not to be feared.

And so I remember a funeral at the parish in San Francisco, when, slowly dancing, we bore the ashes of Gus to the columbarium by the font. The huge door (bearing an icon of the Risen Christ) was opened and Donald said, “In sure and certain hope of the Resurrection…” And we placed the ashes there in trust for that Final Day.

No fear: trust.

That’s where God takes us in Jesus. He tells us to let go of the fear and walk in trust: quest forward for God in the way that Jesus has already walked. The fire will not burn. Do not fear - trust. I wish I could get there. I’m often afraid of a God who will send me to hell for the slightest infraction. Oddly enough, this doesn’t make me want to “do better” it makes me want to bargain, to hide, to tell lies all in order to cover up those things that I’m sure God won’t like. Trust tells us to come to God and honestly admit our sinfulness. Trust tells us to walk in love with those whom God places in our lives - even when they are right scummy to us. Trust tells us not to worry about or judge or fear others but rather to love them - even when that love is not returned.

I wish I could get there. It’s far more realistic to expect from me a gut-level reaction based on fear: judgement, condemnation, hate, anger. I’m more likely to laugh at than to laugh with. More than “I wish…” I pray: and by God’s grace only, I’ll come to that place of trust. My experience so far has not been so, but I shall keep striving forward on the race set before me in sure and certain hope.

Shabbat Shalom!