+Z’ev

Today’s assigned Readings:
Genesis 7:1-10,17-23, Ephesians 4:1-16, Mark 3:7-19

He went up the mountain and called to him those whom he wanted, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons… Then he went home.
Mark 3:13-15,19b

My housemate converted to Islam several months ago. Prior to that he had been Eastern Orthodox. During an online chat the other day this conversion came up with someone who knows of my interest in Judaism and he asked why I just didn’t become Muslim as well - as wouldn’t Judaism be a step backwards? My reply surprised me: for I felt that since the Muslims considered Jesus only a prophet, I was left with the “Liar, Lunatic or Lord” dilemma in the Gospels - our primary source about Jesus. I had to take Jesus on the basis of our (scanty) historical documentation, or I had to not take him at all. Islam doesn’t appeal to me because the assumption is that people who lived at the time of Jesus got it all wrong, while one guy who lived 600+ years later got it right. I - personally - no more trust one man 600 years after the fact, than I would trust any other channeller today to get it right.

Today’s reading puts, in imagery, my situation rather clearly: Jesus goes up a mountain, picks twelve guys and then he leaves them alone and goes home. I left out the list of names in my quotation, but the sense of stranded is the same. No matter how you read the Gospels for “proof” what we do know is that Jesus went home leaving us to make the best of it.

God’s spirit is in this community - at least so we believe - and we can be guided in prayer. But that’s a claim of faith rather than visibility: certainly very little in the Church, taken as a whole, makes it look like a divinely guided ship! You have to break it up into small sections (Romans, Greeks, Russians, Syrians, Finish Lutherans, etc) and close your eyes to almost everything else to imagine that it’s running and unified as Christians proclaim it should be. If, for a moment, you take it all in - all the people who claim to be Christian at all - from the Mormons to the Monastics of Mt Athos, from the Messianic Jews to the Methodist Calvinists of Wales, you are left with either a glorious cacophony or a terrifying mosaic.

And you’re driven into the “Liar, Lunatic or Lord” dilemma.

I say that because, decidedly, the Church doesn’t manifest the things she was promised. If she does (rarely) it’s only in one pocket - while all the other pockets fail. I think the Quakers pull it off sometimes, but one would have to say that otherwise the Church had it wrong for 1500 years. I think the Anglicans used to succeed. But lately - as I’ve said to two clergy recently, “It *seems* as though everyone is circling the wagons and making sure the riffles are all cleaned and loaded.”

And it feels to me as though the only way out is to assume only that one tiny pocket over there (wherever that is) has got it right and the rest of you are wrong… or else none of this stuff is working, it was all a big hoax from the get-go.

Today is the Sunday within the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity. This year is the 100th anniversary of that prayer and it’s frustrating, is it not? Most of our denominations participate praying that, at least that we all could just get along. The official Roman position is that there can be no unity unless we’re all in Communion with Rome - an institutional unity - although the meaning of that has changed slightly over the years. To the best of my knowledge the Eastern Orthodox do not, liturgically, participate in this time of prayer except that every liturgy of every church includes a prayer “for the unity of all” and “for all mankind”.

From the outside looking in, we’re all pretty much the same, however: our minor differences are unimportant. Open or closed communion, gay-inclusive or exclusive, Papist or Prot, Holy roller or Jehovah’s Witness, priest, pastor, pontif or clerk-of-session, we all register as “them” to anyone who wants to see our faults. The common disclaimer, “Yes, I’m Christian but not that kind of Christian” is irrelevant when you lost them at “Yes”.

Both liberal and conservative Christians, who try to paint a picture of the Church exclusive of the “other side” fail to note that Jack Spong, wearing a purple shirt and a collar, would be indistinguishable from Pope Benedict and the local evangelical pastor to an outsider. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Phyllis Schlafly and Frederica Matthewes-Green would all register as Christians the minute they started to pray in public.

Which is why I like this image from the Gospel - as 100% true. Jesus picked some people and vanished. He told ‘em to cast out demons (symbols of the instruments of division in the world) and then just walked away: leaving the people on the Mountain Top of Religious Experience to decide what it all means. Mindful that today is the 2nd Sunday of Epiphany and we’re need to see this as a Manifestation of Jesus, the prime manifestation in this passage seems to be him leaving. We (the Apostles) are the only manifestation of Jesus most folks get. Or, as someone once said, “You are the only Gospel some folks will ever read.”

In the Jungian analysis of things, there are mythological archetypes. Jesus is usually compared to the Sacrificial God: Adonis, Osiris, etc. But I think, with today’s passage, we might think of him as being the Trickster Archetype, more like Coyote or Loki or Bugs Bunny. To the trinity of “Liar, Lunatic or Lord” we can add “twisted sense of humour”.

Much love,

Huw

Today’s assigned readings:
Genesis 1:1-2:3, Ephesians 1:3-14, John 1:29-34

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude.
Genesis 2:1

For all that our (Anglican) problem seems to centre on sex, I think it is here, actually, in the first chapters of Genesis, that our problem begins. Many Christians - even the most conservative of them - seem to draw little actual doctrine out of these passages, beyond “God Created Everything and Evolution is a Damned Lie”. But a deeper reading - especially as we look into various passages this week - provide us with some very serious, very primal doctrines. These doctrines are ones on which we base everything - even our most liberal of faiths.

And so, let us take a look, an overview, as it were, at where we’re going this week.

As a friend of mine wrote - and about his priest, who was also mine - “The priest who catechized me said that a lot in Genesis can be called mythology by someone who is Orthodox. However, it is not possible, he said, for someone to be Orthodox and also say Adam and Eve were not real people.”

In the Orthodox Church, the liturgy is seen as a primary teaching tool: what the liturgy says is doctrine. This is not always literal, but the “inner meanings” are important. We don’t feel the same way in the west: a hymn, sung in rhyming metre to a catchy Victorian tune will only be quoted as a poetic highlight in a sermon. In the East the hymns - no more poetic or rhythmic than the Psalms - are quoted often as doctrinal statements. They make it into the liturgy because they are Orthodox statements, rather than because they sound nice and are singable.

On Sundays (and feast days) during the liturgy when Orthodox sing the Beatitudes (just prior to the Little Entrance) they insert verses between each Beatitude. These verses say things such as:

By a tree was Adam deceived; yet again by the Tree of the Cross was the thief saved, who cried out: Remember me in Thy kingdom, O Lord!

Hearken, O Adam, and rejoice with Eve; for he who of old stripped you both naked, and by deception hath taken all of us captive, hath been set at nought by the Cross of Christ.

Nailed of Thine own will to the Tree, O our Savior, Thou didst deliver Adam from the curse which came through the tree, and hast rewarded that which is in Thine image with a dwelling in paradise, in that Thou art compassionate.

From paradise didst Thou drive our forefather Adam, who had broken Thy commandment, O Christ; but, O Compassionate One, Thou didst cause to dwell therein the thief who confessed Thee on the cross, crying out: “Remember me, O Savior, in Thy kingdom!”

Adam and Eve become very real, at least as far as the text goes. A couple of years ago, in a discussion on my blog I wrote:

Lex Orendi, lex credendi: we say over and over in our Liturgy that God Created Adam and Eve. Then they sinned. “As in Adam all die…” is either a statement of literal truth or else it is myth. It is a cool myth, yes, but myth. IF it is myth: where does it stop? The next half of that equation is “even so in Christ shall all be made alive”. Is that also myth?

Our Liturgy teaches that Jesus entered hell and released Adam and Eve from their chains. Myth? If so what else?

Our Church teaches that as God made Eve for Adam so man is for woman even today: but some good few scientists and other experts say, (a) that was a myth; and (b) some men are wired for women, some for men and some for both, celebrate diversity. If we mythologise the origins of our sexual morals, do we not ALSO need to bring them in line with modern science? Again, I have no way to evaluate either side of that “science” debate, although I know a good few of the folks who poo-poo the “Creationists” also poo-poo the, pardon the term, “heterosexualists”.

And I think it all begins here, with this verse that I cited at the head of the post: Thus the heavens and the earth were finished

The Hebrew word is “y’chooloo” from the root kHalah. The dictionary lists the meanings in the following redundant way:

to accomplish, cease, consume, determine, end, fail, finish, be complete, be accomplished, be ended, be at an end, be finished, be spent
(Qal)
to be complete, be at an end
to be completed, be finished
to be accomplished, be fulfilled
to be determined, be plotted (bad sense)
to be spent, be used up
to waste away, be exhausted, fail
to come to an end, vanish, perish, be destroyed
(Piel)
to complete, bring to an end, finish
to complete (a period of time)
to finish (doing a thing)
to make an end, end
to accomplish, fulfil, bring to pass
to accomplish, determine (in thought)
to put an end to, cause to cease
to cause to fail, exhaust, use up, spend
to destroy, exterminate
(Pual) to be finished, be ended, be completed

You can’t get much more finished than that. Or, if you wish, take a look at the way Genesis uses the same word throughout. God finishes his work, people finish talking and walk away, blessings end, the years of plenty in Egypt end. It’s a word meaning “done”.

In Hebrew, Jesus would have said, “Zeh kHalah!” It is finished. Or even “kHalah zeh!” to add emphasis - as the verse in Genesis does: putting the verb first. “FINISHED it is!” (said Yodah.)

But if the world, the universe, all life is evolving, how can it be kHalah?

To varying degrees Jews and Christians have answered this for quite some time - nearly two centuries, anyway - with the statement that the Creation story is mythological: it conveys truth but doesn’t tell history.

But at the point where we begin to say that… what have we lost?

My own quest for certainty-in-faith, for literal truth that I could stake my life on, led me from this point. In the darkness of the Easter Vigil, my last year at St Gregory’s, the first reading was as always, the Creation Story. It was read antiphonally by my friends Steve and Clancy, standing back to back in the centre of the church, clipping off the verses of the poetry in a beautiful way that was made all the richer by their love for each other, shared with the community in their recent wedding. But we (at St Gregory’s) don’t believe it’s literal history. What, in fact, does any of this mean beyond being beautiful poetry?

What really is kHalah? Is anything that finished?

I don’t have an answer, really. I gave up that quest. For the Jews, this text is heavily woven with mystery even if it is without history. So it is, also, for Christians. But we’re so used to fighting over the history part that we miss the mystery. That night in the darkness with Steve and Clancy, I learned all I ever needed to know about Genesis 1 and 2. Their love for each other, God’s love for Creation, for us… it was all woven together liturgically in that moment of candlelit darkness. It was kHalah at that point: complete, fulfilled.

For Anglicans, with our sexuality issues and the authority of scripture, I think it all begins in Genesis 1. If the earth wasn’t created in Six Literal Days then how do read this one chapter. If we mythologise this passage, if we doubt the authority of scripture at the very beginning. Where do we draw the line? If the opening salvo in the scriptural story is only a story… where does the actual history start? As part of my cultural chauvinism, I’m prepared to believe that Peter Akinola and the other Third World Anglicans actually believe this to be literal history. I’d imagine, however, that many of their first world supporters do not. (I might be mistaken.) But Genesis is a elephant in the living room about which no one will speak: we’re happy to debate sex, yes. But beyond the whole “Adam and Steve” thing, these chapters won’t come up. If we asked about Genesis, would the entire Anglican Conservative Coalition fall apart? Or would we discover that even the conservative American Anglicans - Bob Duncan, John David Schofield, Jack Iker, etc - are all Genesis literalists, young earthers?

How else do you appeal to Adam and Eve for history?

When we read this text looking for history, a lot of things come out of it (as we shall see over the next week). But we miss what it’s there for. And when we reject it, outright, as some beautiful, but irrelevant, poetry we miss a lot of things. But in rejecting the literal meaning, we need to point out the other things we’ve rejected. As in the Orthodox hymn-verses I cited: if Adam wasn’t real, literally true, what is the fall? What is the redemption?

As we crack open Genesis this week, we’ll crack a lot of other things as well.

Much love,

Huw

Today’s assigned readings:
Joshua 3:14-4:7, Ephesians 5:1-20, John 9:1-12,35-38

Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 5:18-20

Oprah goes around spouting The Course In Miracles on her TV show and radio station. The Secret gets sold - even by my own employer - to unsuspecting poor people as the solution to all their problems. This isn’t new, of course. “Think it and get it” comes from the New Age movement, marketed by my Alma Mater and 1,000s of other outlets. From Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull to Oprah and back to Mary Baker Eddy’s “Christian Science”, they all preach the same message: focus on the good things and you’ll get more of them. Think positive and the Universe will do good for you.

The also preach (without often saying so) the exact reverse: if you don’t think positive enough, you’ll get bad things.

In other words: if life sucks, if you’re poor or sick, if you’ve lost your girl, your dog and your truck then it’s your own fault. You’ve got no one to blame but yourself for your negative waves.

The only folks this works for are the rich. The “Power of Positive Thinking” is just a way to feel guilt-free when confronted with the world’s poverty. Imagine telling a woman slowly fading to death by cancer that it’s her fault for not thinking positive. Imagine telling an Iraqi whose wife was killed by insurgents and whose children were tortured by American soldiers that it’s his fault because he couldn’t escape his negative thinking patterns. The only people getting rich on The Secret are Oprah and her friends and their real secret is Barnum’s Dictum (No matter who actually said it first): There’s a sucker born every minute.

Another way of looking at the world is to complain and never be satisfied.

Michael Wex, in his wonderfully funny (and educational) book, Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods, opens the opus with the following joke (Paraphrased): An old Jewish man is on a train and kvetches non stop, “oy am i tirsty”.. “oy, Am i tirsty.” Finally, his annoyed and put-upon seat companion gets him some water. The Jewish man drinks deep. Sits back. And sighs… and then says, “oy, vas I tirsty!”

Wex’s book is largely about a culture developed (as he tells it) to complain about everything. It’s a fun book to read, but it’s an exploration into a linguistic world world of exile made bitter by a millennium and a half of oppression at the hands of Christians. For Wex the entire purpose of Yiddish is to note how well the world succeeds at disappointment. Whole passages are dedicated to explaining how common expressions are, in fact, slurs on the people who oppressed the Jews. (My favourite: “Never got up and Never flew” in Yiddish, compressed to “won’t fly” in English, comes from a denial of the Resurrection and Ascension!)

I don’t know if that’s an authentic picture of Yiddish language and culture (some of the reviews on Amazon would indicate not), but it seems to be a clear indication of Wex’s experience of Yiddish. And while I laughed all the way through the book there were times when I just wanted to say, “Oh, Crap, it’s not all that bad, is it? If it is, suicide is painless!”

Both of these views take, as a common foundation, the idea that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. And they both mislay the blame: either on someone who has no power to fix all the things that are wrong (Oprah) or one everyone but me (Wex). Complain all you want…

Paul comes in with this revolutionary idea:

Eucharist at all times for all in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ to our God and Father.

Good or bad, wealthy or poor, sickness or health, oppressed or free, give thanks (Eucharist). In fact, don’t just Eucharist, but sing too!

What a revolution this must be for most of the world? In fact, Judaism - outside of Yiddish - blesses God for all things as well. Even death and loss. How odd must have this sounded in a world of omens and superstitions! How free it must seem to avoid such superstitions and just “Give things”. Remember the people who “revealed” the real reasons that God “allowed” the attacks of 9/11 or the Christmas Tidal Wave in Asia? Gays and Muslim apostates or did they ever “thank God in all things” and stop trying to place the blame? Did Oprah and her ilk imagine that the people of Indonesia just attracted the tidal wave to themselves?

Much love,

Huw

Today’s assigned readings:
1 Kings 19:9-18, Ephesians 4:17-32, John 6:15-27

Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.
Ephesians 4:29-32

My comments on the passage from 1 Kings are here. God is the “sound of silence”. And in the passage from Ephesians, Paul tells us to imitate God… speaking only grace and peace. And to avoid letting “evil talk come out of” our mouths.

In Hebrew and Yiddish there is a phrase, לשון הרע Lashon Hara, the “Evil Tongue”. Paul’s talking about that here. The Wiki says that Lashon Hara “is the Jewish sin of gossip. Lashon Hara generally refers to true statements, written or spoken; untrue gossip is even more strictly prohibited. Thus, while truth is generally a defense against slander or libel, it is not a defense against lashon hara.” And according to Jewish teaching you can violate 31 commandments just by speaking evil of your neighbour and there are whole categories of ways to avoid it. As Paul notes, “what is useful for building up” is permitted, even in Judaism.

So…

When I was 14 or so, my Mom got involved in local politics through her boss. Gary was running for Mayor on the democratic ticket in our village of 900. His brother, Denis, was supervisor of the township. So, my brother and I, deciding to “do our part”, took a bucket of bleach and other cleansers (it was probably totally toxic) and a mop. We went around town and bleached out the faces on the Republican posters. It didn’t matter: no one but their families bothered to vote for them. No Republican ever won an office in that district from 1978 (or so) when I started paying attention until well into the 1990s when my parents moved away. In fact, the only Republican I know in that area who ever got elected, did so by becoming an independent.

We bleached the posters out on the very trees where they hung. Bright green Democratic posters hung next to odd grey splotches. For some reason, that year, the Republican posters were all black and white head shots with “vote for…” in white letters. It was easy to ruin these posters.

A 14 year old version of Lashon hara in action, right there, and learned at the knee of my own parents and their political fellow travellers. And we see this play out, in more adult versions, in every political race that happens, on an increasing scale: the higher the political office, the bigger the bucket of bleach.

A few months ago here in the US, we launched into a presidential race and it will hit a fevered pitch today with the Iowa Caucuses and, shortly after, a series of primaries. We’ve heard enough already - of candidates insulting each other over “hot button issues”. One candidate has already implied things about the religions of the others. One has implied that non-religious people are not really Americans. One has said certain things about the votes of the others on certain issues. Another has said exactly the opposite.

How angry do “Their” positions make “us” feel? How strongly do “we” feel in opposition to “them”? One need only look at websites around the net to see Lashon Hara in action. One candidate’s supporters will be poking holes in the other’s and vice versa. My personal blog is already filled with posts either bitching about “them” or, at least, making fun of “them”.

Imagine what it would be like to only imagine the best of your political opponent? This is not to say “tell your supporters to vote for the other guy…” but rather, imagine how it would be to say only the good things about “them” - or nothing at all - and only the truth about “us”. Imagine if you hear something bad about “them” (even if it’s the truth) that you exercise all your spiritual energy not to repeat it?

To be honest, it’s more fun to go out with the bucket of bleach.

Much love,

Huw

Today’s assigned readings:
1 Kings 19:1-8, Ephesians 4:1-16, John 6:1-14

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
Ephesians 4:4-6

These verse show up often enough in quotes here and there. They are nearly, I think, a credo of the Early Christians. But ever since my youth I’ve noticed and wondered about the clear division between “the Lord” on one hand and “God” on the other. No divinity is credited to Jesus in these verses. Chrystostom doesn’t comment on this, but at least he doesn’t do his usual trick of turn all the words on their heads and saying it really means what it clearly doesn’t.

But what I’m interested in today is not what we call Jesus, but the term “Father”.

I’m not sure where I first go the idea, perhaps listening to a sermon on the whole “‘Abba’ is Hebrew for ‘Daddy’” thing. (Which is, itself, a mistake. Paul’s Greek is spot on if the “Abba” is question is Aramaic.) Or perhaps in a sermon on the Lord’s prayer. Not sure. Anyway, the general idea is that the level intimacy implied in “One God and Father of us all” as well as in “Our Father” is unheard of in Judaism. “They” had a God, awesome and majestic, but - through Jesus’ revelation - “We” have a Father, intimate and warm.

Fatherhood of God is what Jesus gives us.

Spurgeon goes so far as to say, “Jesus Christ taught it not to all men, but to his disciples, and it is a prayer adapted only to those who are the possessors of grace, and are truly converted.” And later, “Some say that the Fatherhood of God is universal, and that every man, from the fact of his being created by God, is necessarily God’s son, and that therefore every man has a right to approach the throne of God, and say, “Our Father which art in heaven.” To that I must demur. I believe that in this prayer we are to come before God, looking upon him not as our Father through creation, but as our Father through adoption and the new birth. I will very briefly state my reasons for this.”

Spurgeon is only carrying forward such thoughts as these of Gregory of Nyssa: It is impossible for God who is goodness in his very being to be father to someone of evil will. It is impossible for the Holy One to be father of a depraved person. It is impossible for the Giver of life to have as a child one whose sin has subjected him to death.

And if God is not the father of the unrighteous, then surely he is only the Father of Us Christians, yes?

As in this Roman sermon: Thus, God is not Father of those who have not received the grace of justification and redemption in the same way as those who have. Yet they remain potentially His children, since the Father wills the salvation of all (1 Tim 2:4) and makes sufficient grace necessary for salvation available to all.

Or this choice quote from the Dean of ECUSA’s Nashotah House (And the Canon Theologian of the ECUSA Diocese of Quincy): It is worth noting that no other religion calls God “Father.” Even in Old Testament Judaism, they never addressed God as Father. They might say metaphorically, that God is like a Father. But they never called God “Father” in the way that Jesus does.

No other religion calls God “Father”… in the way that Jesus does.

Does that not make you feel warm and fuzzy? Does that not make you feel special? “We” have a Father… the rest, not so much.

In Judaism (you knew I was going here, huh?) they have a prayer recited during the “Days of Awe” around Yom Kippur. It’s called “Avinu Malkenu” from the first line:

Our Father, Our King
Hear our voice, Lord our God,
pity and be compassionate to us, and accept - with compassion and favour - our prayer.

But, more important than that, three times a day, every day, God is addressed as Our Father (Avinu) in the central prayer of the Jewish Liturgy, the Amidah, asking Our Father for mercy and forgiveness and to direct us in his ways. Thus Jesus was simply picking up where the prayers of his own culture left him.

What I have noticed, over and over, when Paul is talking, is that, in writing to Gentiles, he’s telling *them* that God has brought them into the same relationship with God that the Jews already had. No need to be afraid or spooked or even superstitious about this. Relax: God is your father now.

Of course the ancients had very different ideas of what fathers could do do their children… I still fail to see why this was a comfort.

Much love,

Huw