+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:
Genesis 13:2-18, Galatians 2:1-10, Mark 7:31-37

They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do.
Galatians 2:10

Galatians is nearly universally acknowledged as authentically Pauline. One of the reasons is here, in this passage, where Paul mis-remembers (or purposefully spins in a different direction) the council in Jerusalem. Where, of course, the council didn’t just say “take care of the poor” but, in fact, ask few a few things - care for the poor not being among them - “that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication…”

Of course, it’s equally possible that Paul has it right in Galatians and that the Book of Acts records something that didn’t happen or mis-remembers it or spins it for the author’s own ends.

At least as far as my experience in Orthodoxy goes, “things sacrificed to idols” is still a bug-a-boo for most, but blood - long an issue among Jews - is not at all on the radar. In five years in Orthodoxy, I heard a lot about things sacrificed to idols. This was all over the spectrum: ranging from the Orthodox Cooking Group where one woman worried that seeing the “K” (Kosher) label on her hot dogs meant that evil Jews had prayed over her meat and didn’t that count as idols? To the Bishop who told me to accept the fruit etc at my rather heathen college, where most things were, in fact, offered to idols on a regular basis. Bishop Seraphim told me to “trace a cross over it and just eat with thanksgiving.” But even given all that, Blood Sausage was on the menu at Pascha.

I point this out to indicate that as early as 50 AD, the game of politics and telephone was already changing the message: the carrying of tradition is based on personal preference. And it is, really, only now in the days of the internet, when we have the ability to check up on each other (Anglicans in Africa worrying about Anglicans in America) or report on each other (Media in American blabbing things to the World) that issues of conformity really matter at all.

Ironically, such change is also a mark of authenticity: scholars imagine a forger would be meticulous in trying to keep all things in a textual forgery identical. Differences of opinion mean humans are involved in community.

St Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary, is on the liberal end of the (admittedly very narrow) Orthodox theological spectrum. At an annual teaching event 3 or 4 years ago, Frederica Matthewes Green a respected writer and newsperson both in and outside of Orthodoxy, greeted the students with “I’m so glad to have found the Church that never changes!” The response, according to a friend who was in the room, was a lot of eye rolling.

When we (Christians) are being Dysfunctional, we pretend nothing has ever changed. We do this despite an historical record of change set out before us. And when we are called to the carpet about it, we can go into denial. Compare this to the attitude expressed (in an admittedly minority opinion) on this question as I recently blogged over on my main site:

I believe in my heart that the Five Books of Moses and the Prophets are from G‑d. When it comes to the Talmud, however, I am beginning to believe it was made up over the centuries to control the Jewish believer with all its added laws. The rabbis add scores of laws to each of the 613 commandment and you end up having to obey all kinds of things that were never part of Judasim when it all started.

The Chabbadniks provide and amazing answer, one that clarifies my fascination with the Jewish approach to religion - even when I look at following God in the way of Jesus.

That is why what we do is called Judaism–and not “Scripturalism” or “Torahism” (there was such a movement, called Karaism). Judaism believes in the Jews, meaning, in the Torah that is revealed through the Jewish People.

Here’s why that Chabad post is so important:

When I read the question - which was posted as “The Question of the Week”, I was 100% sure I new the answer. The standard Orthodox (and ultra-Orthodox) response to questions about the Oral Torah is “God Gave the Oral Torah to Moses at the same time as the written one.” Most flavours of Orthodox Judaism takes the same tack as Eastern and Roman (etc) Christianities: the Oral Tradition is an inspired part of the religion handed down to us by the Founder (Jesus or Moses, as the case may be). Yes, there are exceptions and not all parties accept these claims.

But it was a great (as in enjoyable, wonderful, awesome) surprise to see such a conservative group as Chabad say what most religion geeks imagine to be true: that “We the people” came up with the these things. It was also rather wonderful to read that, in fact, this was what God had intended.

The Maharal of Prague provided another parable.20 He likens our situation to a man who moves into a home built by a master architect. The man finds all in place, in exquisite design and order. Yet, in one place, it seems a door is missing. There is a lintel, there are doorposts, even hinges in place. Within is a room that needs to be shut off from the rest of the house. So the man fashions a door, in accordance with every other door in the house, to match the fittings of the open doorway.

So, too, says the Maharal, when the story of Esther occurred and the rabbis established the festival of Purim; when merchants began to trade on the Shabbat and the rabbis established the laws of muktzah; when Jewish society became primarily mercantile and the rabbis established the pruzbul. And in our day, as we deal in medical halachah and supervision of the food industry—at each step along the way, we find the lintel, the doorposts and the hinges awaiting our finishing touches.

And whose door are we placing? Not our own, says the Maharal, but that of the Master Architect. For all is His design, only that He has provided us the privilege of being His partner in completing His world.

This was precisely Moses’ intent: That Torah should come from within, not from without, from below, not from above. He recognized that, even though he had not been Divinely instructed so, this was the true intent. It’s just that you can’t direct a populist revolution from above, so it had to come from Moses himself.

This is, I think, what many mean when they say “living tradition”. A living tradition grows and changes as needed by the culture and times. And it happens at the hands of the *people* in the tradition. The “keep four sets of dishes” and no cheeseburgers rules weren’t handed down from Mt Sinai. The “no meat dairy, fish, eggs, wine or olive oil” fast wasn’t whispered by Jesus to St Andrew for future reference and God didn’t reveal Sunday as the new Sabbath. We made it up: it’s the action of our lives in response to God. Of course it lives and grows.

But should one turn around and say that exact thing, many hyper-pious Orthodox (of any religion) take exception.

But next step after that is to realise that very very little isn’t Oral Tradition and subject to interpretation.

We live in a society where it is possible to point at each others differences in minute detail instead of focusing on the one commonality we all have: building a relationship with each other in the wake of the God we claim to follow. Our differences have been with us from the beginning. (Abram and Lot split up in today’s reading, one prefers the City the other the Country.)

God was with us before that.

Much love,

Huw

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.

Today’s assigned readings:

AM Ezekiel 2:1-7, Acts 11:1-18
PM Isaiah 49:1-6, Galatians 2:1-9

…I, Paul, had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised…
Galatians 2:7

Today’s feast is curious. Today’s date has nothing to do with the life of either Apostle. As with so many saints’ days or even Dominical holy days, today is a Church anniversary: in or around 258, under the Valerian persecution, what were believed to be the remains of the two apostles were both moved temporarily to prevent them from falling into the hands of the persecutors.

Icons for the feast usually show the two men embracing or even kissing! An interesting notion considering we’re commemorating the transfer of their relics. Also, there is no clear notion in the scriptures that Peter and Paul really got along. Luke has an interesting version of the “Peter eating with Gentiles” story if we compare it to a similar story in Galatians 2:11-2:14. This must have come before Peter’s vision… or maybe the other way around? Not sure. The writer of Acts usually sounds like a friend of Paul’s. But today’s passage makes it almost sound like Petrine Propaganda and that Paul comes along for the ride. Maybe the propaganda is an insert? Is that why “Cephas” (Kephas, in Greek) is used in verse 9, and it’s suddenly shifted to “Peter” or Petros? Don’t know: I do think it’s odd that the writer(s) use both names.

And then we come to Galatians and you have to imagine that after he spoke to God, saw the sheet filled with foods, etc, Peter backslid into the old ways of the Circumcision Faction. That’s not too infallible.

We want to imagine that Paul and Peter agreed on everything. This is a reading-back. Some also like to imagine that Peter was the First Pope - whom Paul opposed to his face for being wrong so there’s nothing so infallible about him in Acts and Galatians. It’s ok to be reading our current assumptions into these ancient texts: there’s no way not to. But it’s important to be honest about doing it.

It’s comparing passages such as these - or manufactured feast days such as this one - that make me want to accept the “revisionist” readings of scripture and Church history: that there were many orthodoxies, eventually stamped out by the state Church. Than the state church constructed a reading of scripture and of history that supported her. You can call this the “Dan Brown” reading if you’d like but I think his work of fiction is only the most far-fetched of these.

Which brings me to the question of Authority… which is a good one for the feast of these two.

Who has the authority to read the scriptures and tell us what they mean?

This has been my on-going struggle over the last couple of years. It seemed a logical assumption - shared by many who make the journey - that someone must have that authority. Everyone seems to make it somehow: for Romans it is the Pontiff. For some Eastern Christians it is the consensus spoken in the Ecumenical Councils and continuing on through their bishops to this day. I’ve heard that idea voiced by at least one Anglican as well - that the Bishops gathered in communion can speak the “Mind of Christ”. Other churches hold the same ideas about Synods, seemingly, although some insist the “real” Church can’t do anything opposed to scripture which idea creates a sort of infinite regress of Authority on itself. Some groups seem to think the Senior Pastor or the founding preacher holds that Authority. Most American Protestants take up many “Bible study books” with various interpretations and never notice the conflicts in them - or if they do they seem to mark it all down to providence. Some seem to trust the footnotes almost as much as the text. The more liberal sorts pick up the Jesus Seminar materials or maybe the work of non-theistic rejection conducted by Jack Spong.

Ultimately - even in the most authoritarian of all possible choices - what I came to realise is that each of us relies on herself for the final choice: even if that choice is to give up making any further choices.

Each of us experiences what all the converts have since the very beginning:

And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
Acts 11:15-16

I know Jesus promised us the Spirit would lead “you” into all truth. The “you” is plural. It should be “Y’all” or, as they say in these parts, “You’uns”. But it is still an egalitarian word. He didn’t say “will lead y’all, from the top…” or “will lead you’uns who are leaders and the rest of them as wants ta will have ta follow…”

Peter and Paul “those who were supposed to be acknowledged leaders (what they actually were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)”; Peter and Paul and the rest of us are in this together.

Double coincidence: today is the 24th of June and the same readings have come up again in the Eucharistic Lectionary on the same Sunday and it is also Gay Pride Sunday… So I post this

Sermon, 24 June 2001

by D. Huw Richardson

The Lessons were St Pauls Letter to the Galatians 3:23-29 (Neither Jew nor Greek, etc)
And Luke 8:26-39 (Christ healing the Man possessed by the Legion of Demons)

It’s my sense that both these readings that we’ve heard today talk about healing of one sort or another. The Gospel speaks of an internal healing, and the Epistle talks about an external healing in the community.

In October of 1986 Rolling Stone Magazine published an article called “AIDS on Campus.” The idea was to discuss how the sexual culture on college campuses had changed in the three or four years that AIDS had been part of public discourse, at that time. At the end of the article was a section called “Strange Bedfellows,” where the writer was talking about how AIDS had created very odd friendships. And in that section was a paragraph about a gay man who was a member of a college fraternity. And the gay man shared the story of his straight roommate, who was concerned that he might “catch AIDS” as they shared a joint, back and forth.

Since my mother’s here, I’ll state categorically that I did not inhale!

Rolling Stone interviewed me because they couldn’t figure out what a gay man was doing in a fraternity. I had a coming out story that was, truthfully, very odd. I had almost no negatives to report. I had a loving family and a caring and supportive church community. And when you consider how bad it could have been - with a group of 20, post-adolescent, sexually frustrated males, living in a house with a common shower, and beer on tap 24/7 - I had an amazing fraternity to come out in!

The semester I came out, I was elected Secretary of my fraternity, and also Chairperson of the Gay and Lesbian Union and New York University. As a result, my fraternity went from being what ad copy called “the nation’s oldest continually active fraternity” - which I know Tim Smith has trouble with - to being poster children for multi-cultural diversity! That year we got $20,000 in funding from the university, which was quite a leap over the $3,000 we got the year before.

Actually, my fraternity loved me.

My fraternity and my gayness were only two parts of a contradictory picture. I was in the Protestant Campus Ministry, where I was the Episcopal Peer Minister. But I was also known on campus as a person you could call and ask questions about paganism. In fact, two dorm counselors paid me real money to go sit in the dorms and talk to their students about why that pagan roommate wasn’t a Satanist who was going to kill you when the sun went down.

I was known for going to church every Sunday, and yet during the two years when I was the only gentile studying Hebrew at NYU, worshiping on Friday nights at the Congregation Bet Simchat Torah, practicing my Hebrew and worshipping, right along with everybody else. When I went to church they wondered what I was doing with those pagans. And when I went to pagan groups - or gay groups - they wondered, “what is he doing with those Christians?”

Oh, and that fraternity! Oh my goodness!

For their part, my fraternity was okay with my religious backgrounds, but they really wanted to keep the gay stuff in the bedroom and not in the living room.

That’s one part of my patchwork quilt, sewn together at one point in my life, in 1985, 86, 87 - when I was in NYU. It’s not a “legion” inside, but it’s close. It seems at times all we can do is take out one facet of ourselves, one part of our legion, and show it to the people around us, in the hopes that they will like that. But the “legion” inside, even a small one: it’s as if we are filled, filled with a thousand points of very disparate light. And each light accents only one fragment of the whole. And sometimes one fragment of the whole, Christ intended is “the whole.”

I’ve spent an inordinate part of my life - most of the last 20 years - being GAY! Big rainbow flags, big triangles, gay parades! I think I was all every bit gay. Gay owned and operated businesses and gay stores and gay jobs and gay employees and gay roommates and gay media and gay news. When I came to San Francisco I even worked for a time at gay.com!

It all seems very oddly imbalanced now, when I think about it, but I moved to San Francisco to be a gay pagan. (Indicating his vestments, the president’s chair in which he is seated, and the entire congregation - laughter) Evidently this is what gay pagans do in San Francisco on Gay Pride Day!

When Paul was writing Galatians he was writing to a community that was made up at the time - as were most Christian communities - of Jews who had come to believe that Jesus was the messiah, and of Gentiles who had reached that decision as well. And they were debating, arguing, fighting and praying about the question, “How can a Gentile enter into relationship with the Jewish God through the Jewish Messiah, if he doesn’t first become Jewish?” And Paul’s answer to them was very important.

It was a division in their society that was visceral. It was even felt in the prayers. In the Jewish tradition then - and still today, in Conservative and Orthodox tradition - the morning prayers include the lines, ” “Blessed are you Adonai our God, King of the Universe, for having not made me a Gentile.” “Blessed are you Adonai our God, King of the Universe, for having not made me a Slave.” “Blessed are you Adonai our God, King of the Universe, for having not made me a Woman.”

The prayers are phrased in that negative way: “thank you, God, that I’m NOT that.” A woman, by the way, does something I like. She gets to affirm: “Thank you, God, for having made me according to your will.”

So Paul’s answer: “As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” There is neither Jew nor Gentile; there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female. Paul’s answer was direct, to the point: divisions don’t count now. All are one in Christ.

The most heretical thing I ever heard preached in my entire life was in this very chair, by our Rector, Rick Fabian - and I don’t mean his questions about the Resurrection! He said Fred Phelps was a child of God and I had to love him. Fred Phelps - the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church. “God Hates Fags” Fred Phelps - is a child of God and I have to love him.

And the second most heretical thing I ever heard is on our liturgy video (that you can buy at that table by the door!) And Dave Hurlbert says, “I have found a church where it didn’t matter if I was gay or straight - where I did not feel gay.”

The first thing the demoniac says is, “let me stay with you.” And Jesus’ reply is “No - go home. Reconnect with your family. Reconnect with your community. Reconnect with your life.”

I can’t tell you my story without telling you about the pain and the division. It’s not a valid story without that. But it’s not a valid story either, if I leave the rest off.

Jesus’ Gospel doesn’t seem to be just about one person’s “holistic self-integration” but rather, it’s about a community of different and disparate voices, healing, coming together. Because in Messiah God reached out to us when we could not reach out to Him. It is, however, only one small step to go from “here’s my pain” to “you were never a demoniac; you can’t understand!” “You were never a gay man; you can’t understand!” “You didn’t have trouble coming out - they said to me - you can’t understand!”

All are one in Christ. As many as have been immersed in Christ have put on Christ. Alleluia! We sing it in our baptism, but there are many ways to be immersed in Christ.

When I first started coming back to church I wondered “how could I give my life back to this person I had rejected? There must be something I could do in public. And then came Holy Week last year, and the Maundy Tuesday Service, and the foot washing.

And after dinner Michael Barger got up from our table and went to the kitchen to get one of those huge bowls and the towels, and he came back to our table. He came to me, and I saw Christ kneel down and wash my feet. And then Christ got up out of my chair and turned around, and knelt down, and washed the feet of Christ who was sitting right next to me. All are one in Christ. I ran from the room, crying. I couldn’t cope.

The divisions are real. The pain of our division and our sense of separation is real. But all are one in Christ. What changes? Our divisions, our pain become our gifts. And we are gathered together
like so many grains on so many hillsides into one loaf that’s placed on the altar, and we feed each other, and when it comes back to us, it is Christ. And every hand has a nail print.