+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:
Genesis 42:18-28, 1 Corinthians 5:9-6:8, Mark 4:1-20

Paul says in verse 9 that he’s written the Corinthians before, in an earlier epistle. Which, of course, makes this to be the second - and the one we call “2nd Corinthians” to be the 3rd! I wonder how many other ones we’re missing?

But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Do not even eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging those outside? Is it not those who are inside that you are to judge? God will judge those outside. “Drive out the wicked person from among you.”
1 Corinthians 5:11-13

In his commentary on this passage, John Chrysostom says,

“Put away from among yourselves the wicked person.” Paul used an expression found in the Old Testament, (Deut. xvii. 7.) partly hinting that they too will be very great gainers, in being freed as it were from some grievous plague; and partly to shew that this kind of thing is no innovation, but even from the beginning it seemed good to the Law Giver (Moses) that such as these should be cut off. But in that instance it was done with more severity, in this with more gentleness.

Chrysostom notes that “in that instance” (in the OT) in fact, it was stoning. Here it is “only” excommunication - driving “such a one” out from the community.

But, really Paul wasn’t being less severe at all.

All modern translations of this text into English agree: Paul was referring to “an evil person”. The Hebrew text that Paul citing only mentions “evil” - sweep the evil out from your midst.

The LXX, however, uses the Greek that Paul sites - and it adds a person to it. The Greek is more than a little awkward, using the word for “evil” the same way that Jesus uses it in the Lord’s Prayer where it means “the evil one”. In this passage from Paul, “the evil one” is made more explicit by telling the Corinthians not even to “eat with such a one.”

This passage annoys me.

Because Paul gets the Hebrew wrong.
Paul says *nothing* like what Jesus would say.
And conservative Christians - to this day - use this passage as a proof text when they want to avoid people who are different. Some (Catholics, Orthodox, Missouri Synod Lutherans) use this as support to avoid taking communion with others.

The Hebrew seems to imagine “the evil” as a a contagion within the community. (As later, the Rabbis will refer to “the evil inclination” and “the good inclination in people.) The LXX seems to personify “the evil” however, into “the evil one”. But even so it’s not clear if “the evil one” refers to someone committing a sin (that has just been stoned to death) or to the devil, as, again, an evil force or contagion in the community. Paul goes a step further and makes the implication clear: the evil is personified in the sinner.

So what I want to know is, how is this like Jesus - who even gave communion to Judas?

Again, Chrysostom says that Paul is being “more gentle” than Moses. But I’m not sure that kicking someone out of the community (where, to let Paul continue God will judge the “outsiders”) is very gentle at all.

How should we treat one among us who is “sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber”? Jesus was quite clear: let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone.

Right now the Anglican Communion is going through this over and over - with people on both sides of the Human Sexuality Debate trying to “not eat with” the folks on the other side.

And, having followed Paul to the letter through these first few verses, they are filing law suits in secular courts, going to the secular media, making a public outcry - denying Paul in the rest of today’s reading.

They will know we are Christians by our love.

Yup.

Much love,

Huw

Today’s assigned readings,
Genesis 41:46-57, 1 Corinthians 4:8-21, Mark 3:7-19a

I am not writing this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you might have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers. Indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. I appeal to you, then, be imitators of me.
1 Corinthians 4:14-16

Don’t you think it’s interesting that Paul says “Imitate me…” instead of “Imitate Jesus…”? Or even, “Look I’m trying to imitate Jesus, so you can follow me in trying to do so as well…”

One of the more-common accusation levelled against Christianity is usually along these lines: “Jesus was pretty cool, but Paul messed the whole thing up.” And there places where Paul says rather Christ-like things, to be certain. But this isn’t one of them.

In fact, reading this passage, I understand some things and so feel inclined to remind readers of a story.

When I joined the Orthodox parish in North Carolina, there was a Priest, a Deacon, a Sub-deacon and a Reader. We had the “full compliment” of the lower orders, as present in Orthodoxy. All of these other clergy were married, and their wives and children were also members of the parish. But by the time the parish closed all of them had left. Only one of them is involved in any church at all. The rest are not religious. Of the families that were left in the parish when it closed… none of them go to any church at all save me (and we know from the comments here, that I make a bad Christian at that)!

The reason is, I’m certain, because of a fetish that many - but not all - American converts to Orthodoxy have around this concept of a “Spiritual Father” which Paul is introducing right here.

And what has suddenly become clear to me, I think, is why it breaks down. Paul says, “What would you prefer? Am I to come to you with a stick, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?” And there is no way that can not be read but as a threat - a most un-Jesus like threat of “punishment” and anger and judgement. I say that - no matter what you might read in the same sentence - because of my experience at that parish: I’m thinking of spending 45 mins in confession because I voted the wrong way on the parish council and the guilt trip that was inflicted on me (I was crying by the end of the session)… and ultimately because *that’s* the only way some of these other people ever experience God at all.

I think it’s interesting that 100 years after this epistle is written St Clement, the Pope, is writing the Corinthians again, about the same problems. Why? Could it have something to do with Paul making threats and acting like an angry school marm or like that Nun who used to whip you in Catholic School?

There’s a good, solid, theological reason Paul doesn’t say, “Imitate Jesus…” Or even, “Look I’m trying to imitate Jesus, so you can follow me in trying to do so as well…” There a reason he says, instead, “Imitate me.”

Because Jesus isn’t there.

The only Jesus these Gentiles (and some Jews) in Corinth will ever see is Paul. The only gospel your friends may ever read is *you*. And someone who is waiving a stick around - or threatening to - doesn’t look very much like the man who said, “he who is without sin, cast the first stone”. Suddenly I understand why the Corinthians were still having their problems 100 years later, and suddenly I understand why all the clergy left - not only Orthodoxy, but any church at all. And when the only active and present Jesus someone sees turns into a royal putz… they loose all faith in God.

How do we act?

How do we embody the Gospel?

Jesus summed up the Torah as, “Love God, Love your neighbour as you love yourslef.” The ancient Rabbis said the Torah was summed up as “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour.”

Would you want someone threatening to come after you with a stick?

God is not there - save in your hands, your voice, your heart. Jesus is not present save in your body. How will God act in this situation - whatever situation you have in your life? Someone else’s life may depend on your choice.

Much love,

Huw

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:
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:
AM: Isaiah 49:13-23, Matthew 18:1-14
PM: Isaiah 54:1-13, Mark 10:13-16

Enlarge the site of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left, and your descendants will possess the nations and will settle the desolate towns. Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed; do not be discouraged, for you will not suffer disgrace; for you will forget the shame of your youth, and the disgrace of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called.
Isaiah 54:2-5

The Feast of the Holy Innocents is one of those odd events that has no basis in history, only in Myth. There is no evidence outside of Matthew for any of the incidents in the Infancy Narratives. It might, at least, have been nice if one or two other Gospels had some of this info. This even is not important to our salvation: none of the little babies die “for us sinners and for our salvation”.

But if you’d like to see the extent to which some will go to insist on the historical veracity of these events, click here. Ultimately the pro argument runs “you can’t prove that it didn’t happen, so, Nyah!”

What strikes me is how Matthew sets Jesus up as Moses. First there is a Joseph the Dreamer. Then there is the slaughter of all the kids. Then there is the Exodus from Egypt into the promised land. Then Jesus goes up a mountain and Delivers the the Law - the chapters of Matthew that contain the Sermon on the Mount are really the delivery of the New Torah. The slaughter of the Holy Innocents is, textually, a parallel to the same even in Egypt. (Coincidentally, that passage is being read in Synagogues this week.)

This story needn’t be historical to be important. Even if it *is* historical, it is also mythological. It’s part of our icon of God as presented in the text, it’s grafted in here. What are we to make of a God who lets such actions happen - killing of innocent people so that his chosen may live? Or, rather than pin it on God, what does the need to tell such stories say about us?

Much love,

Huw