+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:

2 Samuel 19:1-23, Acts 24:1-23, Mark 12:28-34

Please Note: there will be no post until Wednesday, 29 August, the Decollation of the Baptist. I’m on vacation in Canada for a birthday party this weekend with my Brodie and company.

Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’ this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question.
Mark 12:32-34

Jesus is, here, participating in a rabbinic dialogue - not here in the text, alone, but in wider Jewish History. The Rabbinic consensus, including Jesus in the equation, is that to love your neighbour is to make possible the rest of the Torah. Even in later years of the Common Era, the Rabbis and saints of the Jewish people offer this commandment.

At first, (Rabbi Raphael) –may his light shine upon us–said: ‘According to the plain meaning, when a person loves, the Shechinah [the light of the Presence of God - ed] rests upon them. In this way, ‘all workers of iniquity are dispersed’ (Psalm 92:10) and it is easy to fulfil the Torah.

There is (and has been) extensive discussion within the Jewish tradition about the meaning of “neighbour”. Some feel it is anyone, some that it is only Jews. Indeed, the “only Jews” understanding is born out by the context of the verse in the Torah. But Jesus makes it clear (in “The Good Samaritan” and elsewhere) that his feeling is anyone - without regard for doctrines - is a possible Neighbour. Followers of Jesus’ teaching thus have an answer to that question. It is not just to members of “our tribe” that we are responsible.

Jesus and the Scribe both use the same word for love: αγαπαω “agapao”. It means “to entertain”. In other words, to show hospitality. It’s not a matter of agreement (as in doctrine) or of mere camaraderie: hospitality is to invite into your home, to share food with, to “break bread together”, to defend even to the loss of your own life and person (see an extreme version in Lot’s offering of his daughters in place of his guests to the people of Sodom). This word comes from the more-familiar “Agape” or unconditional (Divine) love. Imagine an unconditional hospitality. This is a shared concept among many cultural traditions - certainly the Aramaic, Jewish and Arab cultures of the Middle East. Jesus would have known of it. In the Celtic traditions, agapao is the “bottomless cauldron”: it’s what the host owes to the guest less the host become too embarrassed to show his face in public. I’ve been heroically hosted in Ireland and Canada within this tradition.

My own experience of living out this commandment is in the second person. I’ve never been very good at it, but a lot of people have made me their neighbour or else have “been neighbours” where I could see them.

I can list on one hand the religious communities I’ve entered where I’ve felt unwelcomed. But the communities where I have felt love and welcome are numerous and without regard for tradition: Congregations Beth Simchat Torah and B’nai Jeshurun, the Churches of St Mary (Time Square) and of St Mary Magdalen, all in NYC; the Church of St Gregory of Nyssa and Holy Trinity Cathedral in SF, and St Mary’s Church here in Asheville.

More importantly I can list the persons who have loved me so much as to bind my wounds, care for me, provide me a home or a place, - Fr V, Dcn M and Sham. A, David and Jeannette, Rick, Marcia and Joel, Mtr Minka, Leesy, Pace, Donald, Todd, David and Jim, Wayne, RJ and Sam, Zara, Mat. Elizabeth and Fr J, Susan and Nancy, the monks… oh, the list goes much further than that, yes. What I’ve lived knowing more than anything is how unworthy I am of such care. Without going into stuff better kept with my confessor, these folks and these communities of faith have loved me and cared for me through quite a lot of royal screw-ups. Nothing huge - always human. But I’m the sort of person… well, let’s just say I don’t know how I would treat me if I showed up at the door.

But the Saints - Jewish and Christian - offer us the same point: the stranger is in the image of God. To love that stranger is to love the icon of God in a way that simple religious ritual does not. One of the saints commands us to even interrupt prayer for our brother at the door - for, following John, how can we love God whom we don’t see if we won’t love our neighbour whom we do see.

All the people on my list above - and many more - have showed me such hospitality. How can I claim to show such hospitality to some vaguely “Spiritual” God if I do not show it to the flesh and blood God standing next to me?

Today’s assigned readings:

2 Samuel 18:19-23, Acts 23:23-35, Mark 12:13-27

Jesus said to them, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were utterly amazed at him… And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to him, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong.”
Mark 12:17, 26-27

I love these questions for Jesus, all of them, actually, not just the ones here. The Questions for Jesus format is the second part of the Gospels, the first, of course, being the Parables. Sometimes the Parables come in response to the questions, and sometimes Jesus just gives a straight-up reply. Usually (not always) Jesus turns the questions on their heads: there’s nothing wrong with asking… but the suppositions are wrong.

Nothing wrong with giving to Caesar his due, just give to God his as well! Your questions about life after death are predicated on there being no life after death. Why do you butter me up by calling me “good”? David ate the holy bread. Let me tell you a story about this guy that fell in with some thieves. Let the one without sin cast the first stone…

These are not the answers expected. All of his answers are surprises. It’s worse, of course, if the one asking is setting out to trip up Jesus.

Now…

When I compare that to the answers I’ve been handed in the name of Jesus, they’re not the same.

When I was evangelical - Jesus wants everyone to pray the sinner’s prayer and get into heaven.
When I was on the Gospel Side of the Altar it was all about environmentalism and social justice.
When I was on the Epistle Side of the Altar it was all about sexual morality and traditional family values.
It was always predictable, given whose pew I picked (or not-pew when I was Orthodox).

I’ve had a few unexpected surprises handed to me over the years: and I always hear Jesus.

Thing is waiting for the unexpected is uncomfortable. “I want to know answers” quickly becomes “I know the answers so I don’t have to wait.”

I know that Jesus would want me to pick up a sword and defend the world from Muslims - just like St Bernard said.
I know that Jesus would want me to toss out wrestling with scripture and hug a tree - just like St Bono says.
I know that Jesus would want me to punch those blasphemers in the mouth - just like St Nicholas did.

By answers I seem to mean good-for-all-time forever answers. But the Spirit blows where it will, right? What if my quest for answers is the problem?

Today’s assigned readings:

2 Samuel 18:9-18, Acts 23:12-24, Mark 11:27-12:12

Have you not read this scripture: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’?”
Mark 12:10-11

It is reported that Queen Elizabeth I uttered this verse when news was brought to her that her half-sister had died without an heir, leaving Elizabeth on the throne of England. She who had been in prison and otherwise held away from court and royalty because of her status as the child of Anne Boleyn (and also because she was known to have Protestant sympathies whereas Mary - also known as “Bloody Mary” for her martyring of Protestants - was Roman). Forgive me for compressing so much history into so few sentences.

I watched this story played out, recently, re-watching the movie Elizabeth (staring Cate Blanchett), and it struck me hard: this woman who had been, basically, sent to the corner… was now Queen. While different from the “spin” that Jesus puts on that verse here in Mark, it gave me cause to think: how much of my own life was built on rejected stones. Finding it in today’s reading has underscored that.

Religion-wise it’s almost comical for me to recount the rejected stones: a number of religious traditions, a number of specific communities and events, all tossed out. All very present. Friends, too: I find myself reconnecting with old friends who have been absent from my life through my own actions. But they are essentially needed, very present in my life. Ironically, it’s the folks I’ve lost touch with through no fault of my own that I can’t seem to find any more.

Jesus fits in here as a good example: for no matter how far away from him I get, I’m pulled back. Even my own pagan paths seemed to be predominantly Christian flavoured - despite problems on both sides of that equation. In the end I was ordained in an that uses (in part) Christian holy names. But equally, my paganism flavours my Christianity (when I’m honest) as does my Judaism and any other religious event/path I’ve touched. And most all of my friends, too. I think of the sexual and emotional relationships from my past that fill out the foundations of my emotional life now. This is not always so good: not only am I learning from past positives, but also from past negatives. I’m learning from my missteps as well as from the good things.

I find this pattern repeats in ever larger cycles. In Michael Wex’s wonderful Born to Kvetch, I was astounded to read how many Yiddish phrases and sayings refer back to Jesus or Christianity. The root of a lot of what is now known to us as Eastern European Jewish culture is found in reaction to the stone rejected. A Canadian friend asked me if the major cultural differences between our two countries might not be found in the fact that one country took its independence in a revolution while the other was simply granted it. It’s true in negative and positive forms as well: see how similar (in respect to individual freedoms) were the Allies and the Axis powers in WW2, or look at how President Lincoln suspended various cilvil rights (of northern whites) in order to win his war.

This is a sound psychological principle, although I forget the name. It is also a sound new age one: “A god ignored is a demon born.” That may read a little extreme, but it is true - what we try to suppress will come back at us anyway. The important question is how do we use it?

I finished my B.A. at the California Institute of Integral Studies. The thing about their programme is integration: body, mind and spirit; future, present and past. The point is to bring them all together to integrate into a whole person. This discovery of my own rejected stones is part of that.

Jesus takes the rejected stone as a symbol of himself. Jesus as God rejected by almost all mankind. And yet coming to us to replace what is missing. Jesus as the “one needful thing.” When I evaluate and reclaim my past with an eye towards integrating it into a whole human being (mindful that “whole” = saved) I am participating in the process Jesus starts.

What are your rejected stones?

Commemoration of Bernard of Clairvaux

Today’s assigned readings:

2 Samuel 17:24-18:8, Acts 22:30-23:11, Mark 11:12-26

When Paul noticed that some were Sadducees and others were Pharisees, he called out in the council, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection F183 of the dead.” When he said this, a dissension began between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. (The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, or angel, or spirit; but the Pharisees acknowledge all three.)
Acts 23:6-8

Did you read this and notice Paul making trouble simply for the sake of making trouble? In the internet world we’d call this a troll. This is not logical debate. This is not scriptural or rabbinic arguing. This is simply mischief, pure, unadulterated mischief. For what purpose do we include this in scripture?

I don’t have anything profound to say about this… other than to say I tend to make a blogger’s living from such actions. It’s too hot to think deeper.

Today’s assigned readings:

2 Samuel 17:1-23, Galatians 3:6-14, John 5:30-47

Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
5:40

The text of John here has Jesus make some astonishing claims. To understand them we need to go back to 5:26 where Jesus says that both the Father and the Son each have “life in himself” (albeit the Son by the Father’s gift). The rest of this text has the Son inviting humans to come to him in order to receive the gift of the Father. Since we are to go to no one but God… the Son is making an astonishing claim here, in the text.

There are two Greek words for life in the NT: psyche or “breath”. Anything alive has psyche. And zoe or “vitality”. All humans are born with the former and seek the latter. God has the latter in himself. “Eternal Life” or “Salvation” implies Zoe. And the text here says Jesus has it: the Zoe of God is Jesus’ own to pass to us.

I’ll say, “in the text” as many times as you like because it is the text we’re using here and that is the beginning of our problem. When the early Church met they didn’t have the text. They had only Presence: the Presence of each other gathered at the Eucharistic feast and Present, in that feast was the Presence, the Zoe, of Jesus himself.

The text tells not only Jesus’ words and actions, but it also shares with us the experience of the early Christians. In their gatherings, where they found the presence of Jesus, they gained Zoe together.

We, too, can find that: without regard for the text. And that’s where I want to point today - to textlessness and the Gospel.

My own quest, well documented in other places, has been one long journey of conversions. I’ve been Southern Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, Pagan, Gnostic, Episcopalian again, Eastern Orthodox… I think I might be Episcopalian again, although I’m hesitant to identify as such. You might want to say “he converts good” but I think it’s more honest to say I’m on a journey. I am a self-identified Christian (even when I was a pagan!). I believe God’s love for the world is real and that it was best shown to us in the person of the Preacher from Nazareth.

But I don’t believe in truth.

I know others who do: I used to as well. We all set out on a quest, once, for “truth” and we had it in our heads we’d be able to identify it when we found it. I think we got this idea from the Greeks. The basic concept was that truth was a thing that could be pinpointed, stapled down, held in a box and pointed at. We could list truth. We could thus list what was and what was not truth. We had a very textual idea of truth. A text could be true or not in itself. A story could be true or not in itself. A human could be true or not in himself.

We got the idea that God didn’t move. We originally developed this from the idea that the earth didn’t move. But we discovered that, in fact, the earth did move. Then we decided that the sun didn’t move - but we discovered that it did as well. Eventually we found out that everything in the entire known Kosmos was moving; from atom, electrons and quarks up to galaxies and galactic clusters: Nothing is Not Moving. Perhaps, according to eleven-dimensional theory, there are even huge things beyond our universe and they, too, are fluctuating.

The multiverse moves. Generally science - like mysticism - just fills the world up with a swirling dance that gets bigger and bigger. There is nothing that is stable - like the invisible point at the top of a pendulum: it’s stable, but it doesn’t exist. Philosophy postulates a still point, an “unmoved mover”. The closest thing to “stability” I’ve seen in any scientific theory is the recent idea that we may be a computer simulation. There’s an unmoved mover for ya! Religion postulates deity and when religion and philosophy wed, we get the idea that God is this Couch Potato thing that doesn’t move: God in the Image of Computer Nerds.

Truth, however, is a moving target.

Jesus makes astonishing claims in the text of John - repeating the experience of the early Church - Truth is not a thing to be stapled down and defined. Truth is a Way (a Tao), a Life (a vital Zoe). Life is a Truth, a Way. It’s a journey after God along the way of Jesus. The text goes further and says this Journey is Jesus himself. Jesus is the Way, the Tao. The Vital, True Way is not a thing. Not a quantitative truth-as-thing. Not a list of values or statements or a creed. But Jesus, himself.

And that we find it in that most intangible, that most frustrating, that most vulnerable, that most fragile of all created things: relationship.

See, truth-as-thing can be found alone. We wonder long journeys and stumble sometimes, but there’s always truth calling us forward on our solitary quest. Jesus makes no such promises. Most of the NT scripture is addressed in second person plural nouns to a mystical y’all out there, or to use the local Appalachian dialect, you’uns, which is rightly pronounced “yoons”. Truth-as-thing doesn’t need Yoons. Projecting that idea of Truth-as-Thing on Jesus locks him into a box too: Jesus-as-Truth-as-Thing can be pinned down, defined, listed, checked and double-checked. He can be disagreed with. The Muslims believe in Jesus-as-Truth-as-Thing, they just define him differently than Christians (most of whom throughout history have followed the same Jesus-as-Truth-as-Thing).

Jesus says he is a “Way” and a “Vitality” and “Truth-as-being” that is known in relationship. In Love. Gack! Wouldn’t it be much better to just think about it a lot? Much cleaner. Much more logical? If you’ve ever been broken-hearted, or done something insanely stupid because of love and felt foolish or embarrassed for years after, I bet you wish God was Mr Spock.

But God is Love.

Relational. Hospitable. Messy. Moving. Sweeping. Journeying. Love.

The early Christians found this out, somehow, without text. They wrote text for us to find it, too. But we went all Greek on their gift to us. We analyse their text looking for Truth-as-Thing and when we find it the first thing we do is anathematise all who disagree with us, isolate ourselves into a corner and say, “We found it! Nyah!” It is no wonder that others came along and did the same thing. It is no wonder that when Mohammed or Calvin or Falwell came along they picked up the text thinking exactly the same thing: Truth-as-thing can be found in here. They learned that from generations of Christians who’d given up on Jesus as Tao/Truth/Zoe, and were only passing on Jesus-as-Truth-as-Thing. Jesus-as-Creedal-Points is easily rejected by “You have the wrong creedal points.” Bang, Bang! New creedal religion or sect is born.

Mohammed or Calvin or Falwell - or any one else, including you or me - can pick up the text and say, “look what this really means”. That’s why I stopped believing in truth-as-thing. Truth-as-thing is relative. We pretend Logic is cut and dry when every day life proves otherwise. It’s simply what I see. Most of us construct an internally-consistent logic, especially when dealing with “truth-as-thing”. Mohammed or Calvin or Falwell - or any one else, including you or me - can construct a true list of logically consistent talking points. My shopping list of truth is always the same, always logical, always true. We each see something different and we call it Truth. But that doesn’t mean it is Truth. Then we say our “Truth-as-thing” must have been divinely revealed. This is the Trump card. God said this is Truth, therefore it’s Truth and if you don’t come to the same conclusion, you are Not-True. We fight over that abstraction that is not real. I can decide to say I see what you see. Then for a while we’ll agree.

Yet “Relative” is not the same as “Relational”. We can see different things and still relate to each other in love. We don’t need to fight when we disagree. We can move into Zoe together with Jesus.

I’m on a journey: God-ward, I pray. Love-ward. They are the same thing.

To do that I have to do so with living people. We are messy: humans are. We are not things. But we can be True when engaged in ways that are relational, hospitable, messy, moving, sweeping.

It is a journeying in-and-to Love that is Truth.