Post Vacation Reflections

I returned last week from my annual July vacation break. As some of you know, Al and I have been vacationing in the Lot Et Garonne – Dordogne Departments of SW France for many years. It’s a region of Bastides – fortified villages and small towns whose fortifications date back to the 100-years war between England and France that raged approximately between 1337 and 1453. This is region of rolling vineyards producing the classic Bordeaux wines, although more locally, Duras and Bergerac have their own wine appellations. The wines of the SouthWest became the staple wine for the English to which they gave the generic name of Claret. The region is also the heartland of French Rugby. To gain a flavor of this region I recommend Martin Walker’s novels featuring Bruno Chef de Police. Although Southern Europe experienced an unprecedented heatwave this July, the misdirected flow of the Gulf Stream resulted in this region experiencing the coolest July we can remember.

During my month away each year I try to read something substantial and was pleased to be able to complete Tuck Shattuck’s Christian Homeland, his recently published history of Episcopal-Anglican missionary activity in Palestine between 1850 and 1950. I also had time to delve into numerous Tom Holland podcasts and online lectures.

Tom Holland is a renowned historian of the Classical period. A much-published writer and speaker and host of his own podcast The Rest is History. His book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind is of particular interest. In it he explores how the revolutionary impact of Christianity completely remade the ancient world with profound reverberations that have continued into our own age.

Holland has some interesting thoughts on Western Secularism which he sees as the child of the Christian revolution. He notes that pews may be emptying and the institution of the Church fading, yet Western Secularism continues to preserve the Christian revolution despite most secularists’ overt hostility towards conventional theistic Christianity.

Love, equity, justice, the protection of the rights of the individual, freedom of expression, the championing of justice for the oppressed – are among the principles Western Secularism claims – as the US Constitution states – to be truths that are simply self-evident. Secularists seem to assume these self evident truths float in a rational vacuum awaiting discovery in the Enlightenment. Yet, as Holland points out these values are nowhere to be found in historical societies not shaped by the Christian revolution. What secularists discern as self-evident truths- those for instance enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights – are the legacy of the fact that like fish in water we are all, people of faith as well as secularists, swimming in the same Christian sea.

What distinguishes Christians from Western Secularists is not values or principles but simply that for Christians the active presence of the mind and hand of God remains discernable to us in the flow of events in the world around us.

Yet, the immediate difficulty for people with a Christian faith story is how do we arcuately discern the presence of the mind and hand of God in the flow of daily events. The simple yet problematic answer is we look to the Bible.

However, the problem is how do we distinguish between the mind and hand of God and the influences of our minds and hands. Can the Bible be a conduit for discerning the mind and hand of God’s activity unsullied by our own projections? The power of text lies not in what the text says – that is – the plain meaning of the words on the page – but in what can be read into it. The temptation for both conservative and progressive Christians alike is to project into the biblical texts a reflection of each’s culturally conditioned priorities, hopes, and fears and assume they are evidence for the mind and hand of God.

In the contested heat of biblical interpretation is that the biblical witness still matters for progressives as much as conservatives. What is often missed however, is that at the heart of contested interpretation lies an area of commonality – a mutual recognition that the function of the biblical witness is not to confirm but to disturb. The Bible functions not so much to affirm or align with our projections but to confront us with what we refuse to see. The mind and hand of God’s activity in the world is one of judgement – calling us to repentance for the willful conflation of our priorities and self-interests as if they are the same as those of the mind and hand of God.

Since Pentecost we’ve been journeying through the significant story lines in the Book of Genesis. On the 14^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, we arrive at the story of Joseph – the final epic story cycle in Genesis.

The date of Genesis’ compilation as a written text is still debated, but consensus favors sometime between the 7^th– 6^th centuries BCE by a group of scribes known as the Deuteronomists. 200 hundred years later, the Deuteronomic corpus received a complete editorial makeover during the Exile between 585 and 457 BCE – leaving us with the Torah pretty much in its present form.

Genesis contains two grand narrative sweeps. It begins with a sweep from creation through the fall, the flood, and assorted events leading up to the arrival on the scene of a man called Abraham. The second great sweep chronicles events in the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and finally Joseph – men collectively known as the Patriarchs. Whereas Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph have their own extensive narrative cycles, Isaac gets short shrift – appearing only through his relationships and never in his own right. He is Abraham’s son, Rebekah’s husband, Jacob and Esau’s father. Isaac’s main function for the Deuteronomic compilers of Genesis is that he is the procreative link allowing them to conflate independent patriarch traditions into a contiguous narrative through the fiction of kinship – father, son, grandson, and great-grandson -connecting Abraham to Jacob and beyond to Joseph.

The Joseph cycle brings Genesis’ grand story of origins to a close. The book of Exodus opens with the list of Jacob’s eleven sons before reporting the death of the 12^th son, Joseph. After the deaths of all the patriarchs, the Hebrews continue to flourish and multiply in the land of Goshen. However, a significant shift in tone occurs at verse 8 which simply begins with the ominous words: Now a new king arose in Egypt who did not know Joseph. These words – so full of import become the preamble to the enslavement of the Hebrews – setting the stage for the next act in the Israel’s epic story – Moses and the Exodus.

The OT reading for next Sunday continues Joseph’s remarkable story – details which we will pick up then. So, stay tuned.

August 12, 2023 0

Tradition & Change

Feature picture: Peter and Paul, El Greco

The collect for today begins: Almighty God, you have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you….

This collect comes on the Sunday closest to the joint commemoration of Peter and Paul on June 29th. While each have their own individual commemorations, it has always struck me as an important statement by the Church that they are additionally commemorated together on June 29^th.

Peter, entrusted by Jesus as the leader among the apostles – whose symbol is the crossed keys of the kingdom – ended his days in Rome, where he became its first bishop. Paul, the dramatic covert, whose encounter with the Spirit of Jesus on the road to Damascus transformed him from persecutor to apostle, also ended his days in Rome. It was in Rome that both Peter and Paul were martyred during the persecution of Nero between 64-67 AD. Peter was crucified upside down – feeling unworthy to die in the same way as his Lord. As a Roman citizen Paul had the privileged of beheading by sword. Thus, Peter is depicted by the crossed keys, while Paul is depicted with crossed swords.

In the English Church, the commemoration of Peter and Paul on June 29^th is known as Petertide. The Saturday closest to June 29th is the customary date for ordinations to the diaconate and presbyterate. In cathedrals up and down the land, as many as between 900 to a 1000 women and men in any given year are ordained. It’s a massively festive time in the Church.

Petertide is a very personal commemoration for me. This Petertide marks my 38th anniversary as a Clerk in Holy Orders – as the clergy of the Church of England are officially known. My ministry has been characterized by remarkable twists and turns – each completely unanticipated by me. One of the things I have learned is that the door that opens is never the door we’ve had our sights on. The trick is to notice and have the courage to walk through the door -that though unlooked for – is actually the one opening. This has guided me well navigating the twist and turns of my ministerial path and of my life more generally.

Two different men one could not imagine. Could the church in Rome have been big enough for both at the same time? I suspect the answer was yes and no. Yes, because each understood the charism with which he had been entrusted by the Lord. Peter’s mission was to the circumcised and Paul’s to the uncircumcised. But nothing could have disguised the personal friction between them – largely based on temperaments as different as chalk from cheese.

Paul records an interesting incident in Galatians 2 where he tells us of the difficulties encountered among the Gentiles because of the interference from the circumcised (Jewish) followers of the way. This continued to be a serious issue and helps account for Paul’s preoccupation with the relationship between Gentile and Jewish converts – a major theme in his Letter to the Romans which we’ve been hearing about in the epistle readings over several Sundays.

Paul writes in Galatians 2:11 about Peter’s visit to Antioch where he says: I opposed him to his face – for he stood self-condemned. On arrival Peter seems to have been living it up – enjoying the dispensations from the restrictions of the law accorded to the Gentile converts. Paul writes:

for until certain people came from James, Peter used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. Other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas (Peter) before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at that encounter!

Yet, in commemorating Peter & Paul together, the Church is making a statement not only about the acceptance of difference but the need for diversity in how we approach and understand the Tradition. The Church is making a clear statement in bringing Peter and Paul together that one approach does not meet the needs of every situation.

Let’s consider the following questions:

Are you a rule keeper or a rule breaker?
Do you value time honored traditions and rely on them as a guide in new situations, or do you recognize that new situations might need completely novel responses?

Taking the last point first. Peter – hot headed and quick on the draw. Exuberant and fun-loving. Always speaking before thinking – but undoubtedly possessing a gravitas that others recognize in his leadership. While Paul is the one who burns at a low simmer – the one you might worry about – fearing the possibility of going from slow burn to combustion in a matter of nano seconds. Paul the introverted scholar – given to building his case through long winded legalistic argument before suddenly – his hidden passion – his love for Christ sears everyone to the quick. With Paul you could be in little doubt whether he thought you were for or against him.

But temperament is not the main issue here but simply a recognition that temperament equips each for the nature of the work Christ calls us to. Peter was essentially a rule follower, a trusty pair of hands to whom the future of the Church had been entrusted. Peter’s approach was to rely on the time-tested tradition to respond to the challenge of new situations.

Paul, had been a disciple of the great Pharisee teacher Gamaliel, and so we might expect him to be a pillar of orthodoxy. At first, he was – as Saul he was the chief prosecutor of the followers of the way. But his life had been dramatically changed when its course took a hard left. All his certainties were challenged and collapsed in a searing encounter with the Spirit of the risen Christ on the Damascus Road. Once an advocate of implacable tradition, Paul became the one to think outside the box – reinterpreting and reshaping tradition to meet the challenges of situations requiring completely new responses. Peter stays home and solidifies the base while Paul is the bold adventurer – striking out into uncharted waters.

Like Peter, Episcopalians greatly value the Tradition – the teaching and practice inherited from former generations of Christians. Like Paul we also believe that applying former interpretation to new situations is doomed to failure. We accept that each new generation must find itself in the inevitable place of tension between what has been handed on to us and the challenges we face in the lives we are actually living.

We live in an age in which change moves at unprecedented speed. Our civic as well as religious institutions are facing challenges to their fitness for purpose in a rapidly changing world. Jesus teaching about new wine needing new wineskins is the point.

We face the challenge to regulate AI armed with 19^th-century legal principles and 20^th-century legislative tools no-longer fit for purpose. The tech companies motivated by good old capitalist greed are poorly equipped to build AI programs other than in their own self-image. Hence, we will have AI programs -devoid of the moral and spiritual frameworks that will enable them to truly serve humanity. We will need AI that is not just cleaver but also possessing the essential spiritual qualities of humanity. AI must be better than many of its creators.

A conservative Supreme Court majority seeks to apply a fundamentalist doctrine that imprisons the Constitution – confining its inherent wisdom to guide instead of thwart change in American life. The conservative Justices claim to infallibly intuit the Founder’s intentions- while ignoring the Founder’s overriding intention – which was to create a document sufficiently clear and yet more importantly, sufficiently vague enough to allow for evolving interpretation in response to the issues of the time. Their espousal of a fundamentalist doctrine of originalism would be the stuff of standup comedy – if that is -the consequences affecting the lives of women, LGBTQ+ persons, the young and educationally indebted, and now people of color were not so serious.

The Church faces a demographic and cultural shift of enormous significance for the survival of the tradition’s embodiment of centuries of human wisdom honed from the human-divine journey together. We see all around us frantic attempts to plug the cracks appearing in the vessel of Tradition with 19^th-century mortar – sealed over with 1st and 2^nd -century veneer – the most recent example being the decision of the Southern Baptists to inhibit women from positions of authority.

What is our response to be as the cracks in the vessel of tradition multiply and expand? Is our response to be one of patching and filling – or can we come to see in the cracks the light of new solutions shining through?

Perhaps Peter and Paul despite their difference or even because of it might agree that tradition is a poor cudgel but a brilliant searchlight. A searchlight illumining new pathways into the future – a future glimpsed through the cracks – because without the cracks how else will the light get in?

July 1, 2023 0

Family Trouble

Image Sarah and Hagar by Svetlana Tartakovska

There is always a temptation as preacher to steer clear of difficult passages. But maybe I’m a glutton for punishment as they say – because the 4^th Sunday after Pentecost presents us with challenging OT and Gospel readings.

In Matthew 10:24-39 Jesus seems to be suggesting that conflict between family members and by extension, conflict in wider society is to be expected. The passage concludes with this dire warning – I’ve not come to bring peace but a sword – for I’ve come to pit family members against one another and one’s foes will be one’s kith and kin.

Once over our shock at his words, we might begin to notice that the picture of familial and societal conflict Jesus presents is actually the one we are most familiar with. What’s shocking about it is for some reason we don’t expect Jesus to talk this way. After all –isn’t Jesus the prophet of turn the other cheek not the prophet of strike back? Isn’t Jesus’ message all about love and acceptance?

The reality is that we live in a conflict riven society set in an increasingly conflict riven world. Riffing a little on my own responses to this passage – it’s as if we cry out for peace and yet Jesus rebuffs us with don’t cry to me for peace, when you have no real appetite for what it takes to establish it.

The reign of God’s Kingdom ushers the promise of peace. But it’s not any kind of peace. It’s not peace without cost. It’s peace predicated upon the establishment of justice. To the extent to which there is no justice in the world then there will be no peace. For the reign of God’s Kingdom is at odds with the ways of the world. Jesus does not so much bring the sword as many of his more crusader minded followers believe. The sword of violence is already in play when God’s reign breaks into a world not yet committed to peace with justice.

Love is the abiding principle by which we as Christians should live. We prattle on about what a complex word love is and how can we even begin to know what it should look like. But it’s actually very simple. Justice is what Christian love looks like in action. Justice is Christian love’s expression of solidarity with the stranger, the vulnerable, and the outcast. It’s one thing to acknowledge we may not be up love’s demands, but it’s quite another to say we don’t know what love is.

This gospel from Matthew 10:24-39 is preceded by the reading from Genesis 21:8-21 which relates a curious incident of conflict in Abraham’s family life. It’s a story about a wife and a concubine. It’s a story about the heir and his bastard brother. It’s a story about power and the victims of power – about the jealousy of a wife for vengeance on the one who threatens her son and his future – and the failure of a husband to intervene in order to protect both his sons – bastard son as well as heir. Talk about family drama!

The shock value in this story is a reminder to us that we cannot impose a 21^st Western veneer of monogamous family life upon Abrahams domestic arrangements. This is a warning to popular American religion that likes to take early Biblical figures and modern role models. It requires a lot of airbrushing out to maintain this fiction.

In 2017 Linda+ preached on this text in a sermon titled Families are Complicated. In it she drew the following conclusion from the story about Abraham’s domestic arrangements:

God continues to work within the framework of the gift of free will and the resulting complications and chaos that accompany it. …. In doing that, we gain a window on our own lives and the lives of our neighbors. Hagar’s suffering is redeemed through us; it calls us to see and hear her lament in the abused, rejected and marginalized of our own time, and it further calls us to offer them God’s healing wherever we can, like a well of cool water in the harsh wilderness. By God’s grace and with God’s help, that’s not really complicated at all.

Linda’s+ final sentence expresses her desire for a hopeful conclusion to the otherwise disturbing story. Yet, I also hear a note of irony in her final sentence. The irony of not really complicated at all is the hint that it’s very, very complicated indeed! Well, without God’s grace, that is. But often we human beings are not much interested in God’s grace when it comes to sorting out interpersonal and wider societal conflicts. A note of irony lies in our continued deafness to the point of this ancient story – because it endlessly complicates our lives if we see and hear God’s lament in the abused, rejected and marginalized of in our own time.

Although the actors in this Genesis story are far from modern persons with modern sensibilities – and again, I warn against viewing them through our 21^st-century Western cultural lens – they nevertheless represent archetypal human choices. We see in Sarah our human desire to protect what is ours both now and in the future by sacrificing others whose existence threatens our control. In Abraham, we see despite the helpless hand wringing and genuine heartache – a response of I can’t get involved – a nothing to do with me response. In Hagar and Ishmael, we see the responses of the powerless who have no protection but that afforded by the love of God. It seems it’s only God who is listening and loving.

Kathryn M. Schifferdecker, Professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary in St Paul, MIN, in her 2014 commentary on this text in Working Preacher notes:

God opens Hagar’s eyes to see a well of water nearby, just as Abraham in the next chapter will see the ram caught in the thicket. And in both cases the seeing leads to new life for [both] Abraham’s sons. …It is easy to overlook this story of Ishmael, set as it is between the story of Isaac’s miraculous birth and the story of his (near) sacrifice. Yet, it is worth pausing and considering what Ishmael’s story tells us about God’s care and providence. As the old hymn reminds us, “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea.” We cannot limit God’s mercy. God hears the cry of the abandoned. God hears the cry of the outcast, and God saves.

We cry peace, peace, but there can be no peace until there is justice. The sons of Abraham are still at each other throats in multiple permutations of this family conflict that echoes still in our own time. Whether it’s Jew and Arab; Israeli and Palestinian; Christian and Jew; Christian, Jew and Muslim – however you define it -this is the timeless family struggle between the Sarahs and Hagars, between the Isaacs, and Ishmaels, and between the Jacobs, and Esaus. On and on – round and round it goes – to our undying shame.

Cleophus J LaRue, Princeton Seminary Professor of Homiletics sums it up thus:

Some think the divisions are little more than a family squabble, while others see in them a struggle against the cosmic powers of this present darkness (Ephesians 6:12).  …. The Christ whom God has sent among us does not come to usher in an era of peace but rather an era of engagement and challenge where convictions will be tested and decisions made about the things that matter in this life even as creation, along with humanity, groans for redemption. The struggle is not an easy burden to bear.

Jesus’ sword means that simply following Jesus will bring its own rejections and conflicts as we work to right wrongs, fight complacency – ours as well as others, speak truth to power, turn away from judgement and embrace service, and be genuinely open to a transformative encounter with Christ in our worship and work. All these are possible with God’s grace. Note, not a hint of irony in this last sentence.

June 24, 2023 1

A World not for the Faint-hearted

In the Church’s calendar today it’s the 6^th Sunday in Ordinary time- the 3^rd after Pentecost. In the secular calendar it’s Father’s Day, and in our local calendar the Sunday of the PVD Pride Weekend.

Over the decades Pride month with its customary Pride marches has morphed with changes in cultural attitudes towards homosexuality. I refer you to this week’s E-News Epistle in which I wrote a more detailed overview of the derivation and contested meanings of the term homosexual, along with an overview of the constituent communities that nestle under the umbrella of the LGBTQ+ Rainbow Alliance.

For me the significance of the acronym LGBTQ+ lies in its modeling not of a single community but of an alliance of different communities coexisting under a collective umbrella. The Rainbow Alliance is an alliance of differences in a celebration of diversity. Given the increasing forces polarizing our society, the toleration of contested differences within alliances of diversity is an important model for a possible way forward.

The adoption of the colors of the rainbow as the emblem of the LGBTQ+ Rainbow Alliance reminds us that in the Bible, the rainbow is the divine commitment to a regeneration of the creation after the total devastation of the Flood. The rainbow is a sign of God’s new covenant with humanity and the creation – a reminder of the divine faithfulness and mercy – a symbol of hope, beauty, and of the divine presence guiding us into a new future.

Someone recently sent me a cartoon which said God- the original they/them. Pride Festival has over the years become a wider cultural celebration – no longer just an LGBTQ+ event – but a true community-wide carnival.

Providence Pride comes at the end of a week in which the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) reaffirmed its prohibition on women exercising authority in the church – unless that authority is vicariously derived from the overall authority of a male leader. To emphasize their point, they expelled from the SBC all the churches with a woman in overall pastoral leadership.

Religious organizations are prone to delusion. SB thinking is that this move will stem the hemorrhage of members leaving the SBC. Currently at around 13 million members – its estimated that the Convention has lost 1.1 million members just in the past three years with half a million in the last year alone. From the outside looking in – it’s been a bad week for the SBC. Clearly their loss must surely become the American Baptists USA’s gain. Listen- you can hear the clapping in Providence’s First Baptist Church in America from here!

Conservative Christian traditions – evangelical, catholic, or orthodox, are at odds with the social and cultural evolution that has redefined relations between men and women. They cling onto a 1^st-century social structuring of gender relations rooted in the theological notion of a Bible-based Fatherhood of God that is immutable to change.

God is male and sits at the apex of the authority pyramid. Therefore, men are the human beings most like a male God. According to Genesis it was Adam whom the divine community created first from the dust of the earth. As the male God reigns from heaven, so the men exercise the male God’s vicarious authority as the heads of family units within which women and children nestle in protective custody.

This argument is on shaky ground when we remember that in Genesis God gave all authority over creation not to Adam alone, but to Adam and Eve as a couple. But hey, who cares about this small discrepancy, because as the argument goes we know Jesus only called men as disciples and Paul said women must not be allowed to speak in church.

Abstracting sideways from the family we arrive at the church – which for the SBC at least seems nothing more than a collection of male headed families grouped under male religious leadership – an extension from the family of the same pyramid structure of authority and culture of protective custody for women and children. Like all forms of custody – protective or otherwise – attempts to challenge it -or to step outside its control – are met with punishment – the usual one of being cast out of family and church. Social death and still in some places, physical death is the ultimate punishment for challenging the hierarchy of male authority.

We should not miss two essential points in this debate around male authority. Gender rooted authority -resting on the privilege of maleness – is the root of all cycles of abuse in church life regardless of denomination. Gender rooted male privilege is conceived of as a zero-sum game. Like all authoritarian regimes no change is possible for fear that any change – no matter how seemingly inconsequential – will result in the whole edifice being swept away.

Last week SBC leadership signaled that they understand the core issue only too well. For if the wall of strict male dominated gender based authority is breached, where will things end?

Well, we all know the answer to that question. It means that any change in the status quo will result in so much more than allowing women a voice. One change opens the door to questions that go to the very heart of the construction of gender identity itself. Women in religious authority today – what’s to stop trans women exercising religious authority tomorrow?

The actions of the SBC this past week allow me to segue nicely into the celebration of Father’s Day. The notion of fatherhood along with just about every other traditional institution in our society is a hotly contested one. All roads lead to Rome – as the saying goes. If human fatherhood is in contention, then the fatherhood of God as identified with the exclusively male gender also comes into contention.

Underpinning shifting understandings around how gender identity is constructed lie the complexities of nature v nurture, biology v social conditioning, somatic bodies v psychological minds. All I have space to say here is that for many motherhood and fatherhood can no longer be perfectly aligned with traditional notions of gender identity-based roles. Because ultimately, both motherhood and fatherhood are essential qualities of the divine – and are thus reflected in our human nature without discrimination – taking us on a journey beyond all cultural gendered distinctions.

We can trace three great cultural emancipation movements that have changed the modern world during the last 250 years. The first emancipation movement took the 19^th century by storm with the ending of commercial slavery. The emancipation of women followed close on the heels of slavery’s abolition. In our own living memory homosexuality has been freed from the shackles of legal persecution and punishment – paving the way towards a growing social acceptance of lesbian and gay sexual identities. A fourth cultural upheaval is upon us with the questioning of premodern constructions of gender identity.

Each shift in culture has been accompanied by an interrogation of the Biblical voice – freeing it to speak its truth into new contexts. Episcopalians together with mainline Protestants have been in the vanguard of this evolution – an evolution fiercely resisted by Evangelicals and the official voice of the Catholic Church at every step of the way. The struggle continues.

The confluence of Pride and Father’s Day this year focuses attention on the questioning of traditional constructions of gender. Questioning leads to reaction and the tactics of traditional gender conformity reaction are taking an increasingly fascist turn.

No longer content to arrange matters within their own institutions and communities, white Christian nationalist traditions such as the SBC see no downside to supping with the devil in their pursuit of political power – such is their fear of any change leading to a loss of historic privilege. Through the courting of power, they seek to enforce their religious worldview on the rest of society through a very unconservative legislative intrusion into the arenas of freedom of religious conscience and individual choice.

When the historic champions of freedom of religion, freedom of choice, freedom of speech, and little or no government regulation become the party of religious infringement of women’s rights, don’t say gay, public library book bans, and an Orwellian intrusion into the arena of parental choice – we need to wake to the fact that we have entered a world no longer for the faint-hearted.

June 17, 2023 0

Epistles

Who do you think is has had the more lasting influence on the shape and development of Christian faith and practice – Jesus or Paul? It’s kind of an interesting question. Of course, I would want to put Luke up there as well – as it’s his historical structuring of the story of the transmission from Jesus to the Church that gives us the shape of the liturgical year from Christmas through Easter.

Who you think has had the more lasting influence on the content and shape of Christian faith also depends on whether you are a member of an apostolic or evangelical Christian tradition. For instance, you hear very little reading of, and preaching on, the gospels in evangelical churches compared with a heavy preponderance of long expositions on brief and selective soundbites from the epistles.

Conservative, white Evangelical thinking prefers rules-based black and whites – do this but don’t do that – this is good, that is bad kind of thing. While Jesus’ name is loudly and ritualistically proclaimed in evangelical communities there is little teaching on his kingdom message because his teaching does not easily lend itself to a follow-the-rules approach to Christian living . Whereas the epistles of Paul and even more so, the pastoral epistles – those which are clearly dated later than Paul’s own lifetime although often claiming his or one of the other the Apostles authorship – are crammed full of dos and don’ts. They lend themselves to attempts to apply 1^st and 2^nd century cultural norms concerning the patriarchy’s hot button issues – slavery, women, and sexuality to 21^st century life – while ignoring the clear challenges that early Christian communities posed to the existing imperial orders of the time. If you ignore the early Christian challenge to 1st century imperial world order, then you can go on excusing modern-day authoritarianism.

The nub of the matter is that Jesus’ teaching is too counterculture for conservative leaning white evangelicals. Jesus confronted the conventional practice of Jewish religion of his time with a provocative radical religious challenge. He challenged the way religious practice inevitably submits to the pressures of culture. The hallmarks of religious submission to cultural norms can be seen in a reducing of the Christian message to one of individual sexual morality – ignoring Jesus social teaching – and conveniently exonerating the political, economic, and cultural norms of the status quo – the business as usual society.

When Christian faith is reduced to a message about cultural conformity, being different makes you vulnerable. If your view of salvation depends on following a culturally submissive, rules-based approach to faith – then you’ll harden your heart towards those whose vulnerability threatens that order.

The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung once remarked that he was glad to be Jung and not a Jungian – referring to the tensions that had already emerged in his lifetime between his visionary yet idiosyncratic thinking and his followers need for systematic consistency. This struggle to preserve the teaching of the founding visionary by restricting its application in the interests of consistency and cultural conformity is particularly prevalent in the history of religious movements. To ensure survival – the movement restricts the vision of the founder sacrificing the flexibility and creativity of the leader’s vision to preserve and protect for posterity, the leaders teaching.

And so, it was for the writers of the NT epistles. Their job was to preserve and transmit the memory of Jesus into a system that served living communities faced with the challenges of a continually changing and challenging world. If you embrace an early Christian patriarchal worldview but ignore their challenge of these communities to the violence of power, then contemporary, white American evangelicalism is what you end up with.

Given my earlier comments about the epistles being the go-to texts for conservative evangelicals, it’s important that we in the apostolic Christian tradition reclaim them.

With the Easter season now behind us we enter into the period of the calendar known as Ordinary Time which opens with several weeks of readings from Paul’s letter to the Romans. Here, Paul lays out the contours of what it means to live the new life of the resurrection. In Romans, Paul is at pains to distinguish between obedience to the Law of Moses and the life of faith in Jesus Christ.

From our vantage point, Paul is often difficult to read because he loves to get down in the weeds of the meaty issues of the time. He’s at pains to contrast faith with works, with baptism not circumcision as the mark of belonging. Paul’s letters are written in a cultural and religious context different from ours. I find the trick with Paul is not to be distracted by his words so as to miss the radical quality of his vision for the Christian life – a vision in which it is baptism not circumcision that matters.

On the 5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time we read Romans 4 in the light of Genesis 12 which details the call of Abraham. In Romans 4, Paul is reminding his fellow Jews that it is Abraham not Moses who is the father of the nation. That the first covenant with Israel is the one God makes with Abraham – a covenant not of circumcision or at least not at first, but a covenant of faith. Paul’s direct argument in Romans 4 is that Abraham was reckoned righteousness through his faith in God – and not simply for his own sake but for ours because like Abraham, our relationship to God is a matter of faith i.e., baptism and not circumcision.

In the readings for Pentecost 2 or the 5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time we see a continuous connecting thread. We have examples of the way both Paul and Jesus approach the Law of Moses. The difference is telling and demonstrates my earlier comments about why the epistles are the go-to texts for evangelical Christians.

Whereas Paul is the lawyerly lawyer – Jesus is the social renegade. Jesus challenges the aridity of a legalistic following of the Law not with complex legal argument like Paul does but by confronting the way the Law has submitted to cultural and social norms. He breaks these norms. He risks ritual impurity by eating with the unacceptable people. In response to Pharisee criticism, he notes God’s concern is with the sick not with those who define themselves as the healthy. God comes not to call the righteous but those who acknowledge their sinfulness. Jesus does not resort to complex invective but simply reminds the followers of the Law to soften their hearts – reminding them that God requires mercy not sacrifice.

We are living through a time in which the authoritarian politics of hate and exclusion are drawing energy from the submission of evangelical religion to the norms of white patriarchal culture with its values of racial superiority, hatred of women, and persecution of lesbian, gay and transgendered persons.

When religion submits to the values of a political culture of tribal exclusion – the result is the Reich Church of Nazi Germany with its wholehearted endorsement of the anti-Jewish laws, the Russkiy-mir of Putin’s tamed Russian Orthodox worldview promoting the virtues of a medieval conquest mindset, the Southern Baptist bully pulpit culture now feeding into a cycle of Republican sponsored discriminatory legislation amounting to a very unconservative governmental intrusion into the personal lives of Americans. The result is always the same. When religion submits to the values of tribal political culture – sacrifice replaces mercy and hearts are hardened against those who pose a challenge simply by virtue of becoming vulnerable.

June 10, 2023 0

Imagine!

Image by Jennifer Allison – fineartamerica.com

In a piece titled Science fiction writers imagine the way out – in the May edition of The Christian Century, Melissa Florer-Bixler writes Jesus’ parables give us space to see that something else is possible. In her article she explores how sci-fi writers are putting flesh on the bones of Jesus teaching.

Florer-Bixler is clearly a devotee of science fiction writing. She cites one story in which a city is planted from seeds – buildings, people, and animals sprout like daffodils. In another – people bound together by their common fate, create a new life in a decimated land.

I have often referenced science fiction speaking more directly to our 21^st century imagination – reimagining new approaches to faith – enriching our inherited biblical images.

Images from Biblical imagination were fashioned within a pre-modern worldview with quite a different sense of the relationship between cause and effect. The biblical and medieval pictures of a three-tiered universe still hold poetic charm. But in most cases they no longer inform our 21^st-century worldview. The Biblical pre-modern imagination may continue to charm us – yet it’s now relegated to the category of ancient tales of implausibility if not downright impossibility; imaginative attempts to explain the workings of the universe before humanity learned better – or so we think.

Sci-fi imagination is a key that unlocks biblical imagination – opening it up for us as a space to imagine something else – the possibility of new worlds.

Florer-Bixler cites the renowned sci-fi writer, Walidah Imarisha, All organizing is science fiction. Florer-Bixler comments that the inverse is also true – our disorganizing, our entrenchment, and the intractability of our brokenness are a failure of imagination, a failure to believe in the possibility of new worlds.

Imarisha writes that whenever we try to envision a world without war, without violence, without prisons, without capitalism, we are engaging in speculative fiction. Florer-Bixler describes this as an invitation into an experience of dislocation and disruption – a process of transporting us into worlds that are strange – with their own distinctive language, unknown place names, and intricate histories patterning themselves in our brains. The sci-fi imagination invites us to move beyond the impoverished architecture of our modern materialist mindset – shaking loose expectations and assumptions that from a spiritual perspective – no longer serve us, or serve us poorly.

About this process of shaking loose, Florer-Bixler writes I’m familiar with this loosing as invitation, how it curves within me toward curiosity. In the New Testament Jesus turns my attention from endless cycles of harm toward seeds, pearls, and returning children. Jesus stretches me past the scraps of good life I’ve come to believe we can scratch out from the ruins. The reign of God is like yeast and weeds. It is fisherfolk with nets in flight.

Luke, having given us an account of Jesus Ascension in the first chapter of his Acts of the Apostles – the sequel to his story of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth – Son of God – his second chapter opens with the following description

When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.

Our modern scientific imagination poorly equips us for taking this account seriously as an actual eyewitness account of events on the Day of Pentecost. Of course, we are charmed by its details. Luke’s account works for us as a series of narrative props. We are invited to wear red. Flame motifs abound in banner, balloons, and streamers. We love to mimic the polyglot experience as members of the congregation for whom English is a second language are invited to speak in their native tongue. But beyond enacting aspects of Luke’s story, what sense are we to make of it all?

We embrace the idea of receiving a double portion of the spirit of the risen Christ – the reciprocal movement to his Ascension. But as to the how and even the why of it all beyond the colorful details in Luke’s story – we adopt an attitude of indulgent agnosticism or even down right disbelief. Nice story we say – wish it were true.

Luke’s description of the event – wind and flame and an early form of instantaneous translation for the benefit of the international audience present – is followed by Peter’s long address in which he sets this pyrotechnic-poliglot event within the context of the unfolding of Israel’s longer story of relationship with God. Today’s portion ends with Peter citing the prophet Joel: In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

But remembering Joel’s prophecy of a people empowered to imagine new worlds is not where Luke ends chapter 2. Our current reading ends at verse 21 and if we had been able to jump from 21 to 43, we would see that Luke’s purpose is not to end with Joel’s poetic vision but to go on to describe what it looks like when – to paraphrase Florer-Bixler – a community moves beyond the impoverished architecture of conditioned imagination – to shake loose expectations and assumptions and believe in the possibility of new worlds.

From verse 42-47, Luke paints a compelling picture of what a community empowered by the Holy Spirit looks like. He writes:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. … All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Luke’s task in constructing his Day of Pentecost narrative is not to tell us about the amazing pyrotechnic-polyglot experience accompanying the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the witnesses – but to show the effects of the Spirit’s birthing of a new community capable of believing in the possibility of a different world.

Luke describes a community of folk transformed through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit where from all according to ability -to all according to need –became the central organizing principle. Talk about the courage to imagine new worlds. The pooling of resources is the foundation for the early Christian community’s experience of an empowered transformation into a truly magnetic community configuring itself for those who had yet to show up.

I’m not proposing a return to the early Christian model of resource sharing. It’s both attractive and also unappealing – conjuring for us unfortunate resonances to failed Communist experiments. What it highlights for us however, is the requirement for us to imagine new ways of sharing resources more equitably.

In terms of the use of resources the world today is facing a resources crisis – of which water is the number one resource in increasingly short supply. In a world of finite resource supply, Luke’s portrayal of the effects of the Spirit’s outpouring upon the first Christians points us to the question of equity – that is – how resources are to be shared. The many do not have enough for life – because the few have way more than we need.

Florer-Bixler writes: In the real world, the tethers of oppression are wrapped so tight. Corporate interests and monied developers curl their tentacles around hope. There isn’t enough air. Jesus loosens the grip as we are given space to see that something else is possible here. He refuses reforms that polish up our entrenched systems or policies that quibble over the structure of power. The reign of God sprouts and grows, wild and unruly.

The reign of God sprouts and grows, wild and unruly! Few of us are happy with the ways of our world today. But how might we imagine things to be better. Of course, imagining is the first step. But two additional steps are necessary – the will and the courage to believe in the urgency of our dreams becoming reality.

Pentecost is when we celebrate our receiving of a double share of Christ’s Spirit – the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father through the Son as we say in the Nicene Creed. Following the first day of Pentecost what exactly was the nature of the transformation of Christ’s followers? It seems that it was the transformation of imagination – the power to imagine living life differently empowered by Christ’s Spirit to continue the work he began.

At Pentecost the baton passes to us!

This is my prayer for us this Pentecost – to imagine the life we long to live; to postpone our dream no longer – and waste our hearts on fear no more (O’Donohue, Morning Offering).

May 27, 2023 0

Don’t look up!

Don’t look up – words of warning for us as we, like the disciples let our eyes be distracted with gazing upwards after Jesus majestically ascending into a swirl of cumulus clouds – illuminated against a backdrop of suffused sunlight.

Oh, how different is Jesus’ departure from his arrival into this world!

Because Ascension always occurs on a Thursday – the 40^th day after the resurrection, the normal custom is to celebrate Ascension on the Sunday after – and even then – we are likely to miss the significance of this event because the Ascension of Jesus presents its own set of challenges to belief.

In Matthew and Mark, it appears as a kind of concluding event to tie up some loose ends. Jesus had died and then unexpectedly returned in a post resurrection body – that while defying some fundamental laws of Newtonian physics is still a recognizable human body – even to the extent of still displaying the wounds of his passion. They’d seen him die and then they ‘d witnessed his return! He remained living and breathing among them and then – poof – he was gone! But gone where? Well, as every child in Sunday School knows, he’d gone up to heaven – dummy.

In Luke, the Ascension not only comes at the end of the story of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth, son of God – tying up any loose ends – but more importantly it becomes the preamble for the opening chapter in Luke’s sequel to his life and times of Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God – the Acts of the Apostles – or the life and times of the Church.

Writing after Luke, John understands this point clearly but has his own inimitable way of writing about it as we find in today’s Gospel. John’s Jesus in unpacking the significance of his resurrection over a series of Sunday evenings in the upper room carefully explains to his disciples that he must leave them so that God can glorify him with the glory that he had before the world existed. But he is at pains to reassure them that they will not be left comfortless like abandoned orphans.

When it comes to the Ascension, it’s not the when, or where, or how, or even whether it took place – but that with the Ascension a pivotal transition point is reached in the longer story of creation, incarnation, and resurrection. In Jesus’ birth God entered human experience through a human life. In other words the Creator came to dwell within the tent of the creation. At his Ascension, it’s not the restoration of Jesus’ pre-existent divinity that is the main point but God’s reception of his full humanity – perfected through suffering – into the divine nature.

The function of imagination is to construct meaning out of events that are not directly observable to the human eye – and yet – events that nonetheless shape our experience. Religious imagination builds pictures that distill into sharp focus choices to be made, actions to be taken, and directions to be followed – or avoided – as the case may be.

Luke’s graphic account of the event is powerfully influenced by Elijah’s ascension recorded in the 2^nd book of Kings. In like manner – as the mantle of Elijah fell upon the shoulders of his disciple Elisha – giving him a double portion of his master’s spirit, God having received the fullness of Jesus’ humanity – perfected through suffering – into the divine nature – a double portion of Jesus’ Spirit now descends upon the disciples at Pentecost. Ascension and Pentecost – humanity ascending and divinity descending, are the contraflow events connecting the dimension of time and space with the spiritual ground – joining heaven to earth and earth to heaven.

For the modern imagination, the medieval picture of a three-tiered universe – with the spatial references of heaven above and earth beneath – of up and down – becomes the image of a contraflow between time and space and the spiritual ground. The Ascension is a contraflow between parallel dimensions.

If we can stop looking up long enough we can ask the real question – so what next?

Traditional religious imagination pictures two possibilities in answer to the question: what next? Both are imagined in the dualling collects for the Ascension.

Listen:

Grant, we pray, Almighty God, that as we believe your only begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into heaven, so we may also in heart and mind there ascend, and with him continually dwell.

Compare and contrast with:

Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things: Mercifully give us faith to perceive that, according to his promise, he abides with his Church on earth, even to the end of the ages.

We see how religious imagination struggles with the question: so, what next? We long to throw up our hands – giving up on the evils of the world – to ascend with the Lord and there with him to dwell. We long for God to rescue us from ourselves and the mess we continue to make of the world.

We stand amidst an imperfect recovery from global pandemic while staring into the abyss of the ecological collapse. We are struggling to avert the prospect of multiple global flashpoints – Ukraine- Russia-Nato, Israel-Palestine, Israel-Iran, a collapsing nuclear armed Pakistan, China-Taiwan-US – any one of which could spell global catastrophe. For us things seem to be going from bad to worse according to every measure of progress. So, it’s a natural response to pray for God to – beam us up, Scotty.

Yet, in the Ascension of Jesus God promises to fill all things and to abide here with us – amidst all the pain, disappointment, and sheer messiness of this world. We must not fall into the temptation of wishing to be rescued out of this world. Instead, we must stand firm – empowered by a double measure of the Spirit of Jesus to face up to the challenges ahead in the knowledge that a God acquainted with suffering stands with us. Because Jesus is acquainted with our suffering – God through the divine spirit empowers us in our age-long struggle to realize coming of the kingdom in a new heaven – on earth.

The Ascension of Our Lord is a central insight of our Christian faith. The nature of this insight does not lie in the when, where, how, or whether the event as Luke pictures it took place. As a central insight the Ascension punctuates the continuum that runs on one side from Jesus’s birth, through his death and resurrection to the other side of the Ascension where the instruction don’t look up becomes the question what’s next?

What’s next? Let the words of the late Irish poet, John O’Donohue speak here:

May [we] have the courage today,

To live the life that [we] would love,

To postpone [our] dream no longer

But do at last what [we] came here for

And waste [our] heart[s] on fear no more. (Morning Offering)

May 20, 2023 0

Good-Enoughness

If you love me? This is the direct as well as the implied question that Jesus asks his followers all the way through John’s gospel. The thing not to miss here is that Jesus asks if you love me? But what we often hear is – if you loved me?

From love to loved – there’s a world of difference. A difference we hear and feel implicitly. If you love me is a question that implies promise. Whereas if you loved me implies a regret – even a threat. Love me as I demand, or I won’t love you back.

If you loved me, is the battle cry for conditional love. Conditional love is love with strings. And conditional love is the most common form of love we experience. If you loved me, you would show you loved me by meeting my needs.

Sometimes the needs to be met are material, but most often, they are psychological and emotional. The threat implied in if you loved me is the threat of abandonment, rejection, and the fear of being alone.

Jesus said, if you love me – I will not leave you orphaned – that is – I will never abandon you. But Jesus also said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. So, is Jesus’ love conditional after all? Perhaps? But the condition here is not a commandment to – love me back – but the greatest commandment of all – love one another. The string attached to Jesus’ love is not – meet my needs – but meet one another’s needs. Through loving us, Jesus models how we should love one another. He is – in short- the archetype – the universal pattern for the good mother.

Ideally, we learn to love because we were first, loved. In the process of learning to love through first being loved – we encounter many vicissitudes along the way. Many of us enjoy the gift of love and loving because of the indelible memory of first having been loved at our mother’s breast. Others of us were not so fortunate. There are many reasons why the mother-infant exclusive bonding fails leaving many of us afraid of surrendering to loving and being loved.

In a period when as a culture we are struggling to delineate the biological hardwiring of gender from the softwiring of gender identity – confusions also proliferate around the differences between birthing and mothering.

In the most usual course of events, being pregnant triggers the hormonal instincts for mothering. Giving birth ushers a woman and infant into the complex and sacred relationship of mothering – a state of mutual enthrallment. We are fortunate if we experienced the nurturance of being loved because the woman who birthed us was also the one who mothered us. Yet, this is a complex process. Good mothers can never be perfect mothers. Fortunately, all that is required is that they be good-enough.

The concept of the good-enough mother originated with one of the most influential figures of the Object Relations School of British Psychoanalysis – Donald Winnicott – a man who combined the rare skills of both pediatrician and psychoanalyst. Take a look at this short 6 minute video on the essential elements of Winnicott’s approach here.

By good-enough, Winnicott meant that mothers did not need to be perfect. The mother-infant relationship, though vulnerable to mishap is also robust and able to withstand a variety of imperfect conditions. That mothers needed to be good-enough but not perfect is a reminder for us all that in the arena of love, the quest for the perfect is certainly the enemy of the good.

Winnicott’s focus was on the good-enough experience within the early mother-infant relationship. Good-enough mothering is love that is consistent and unconditional. In the usual course of events, while good-enough mothering is found in our early experience with our birthing mothers – this cannot always be so. For many of us the experience of good-enough mothering came through non biological relationships with both men as well as women for the concept of good-enough mothering is not gender exclusive. Good enough mothering is not only an inherent human quality, but most importantly, a characteristic of God as mother.

Human beings are resilient and highly adaptive. Where mother-infant bonding fails – love ultimately trumps biology.

Human beings are highly resilient and the capacity to love and be loved is highly adaptive to circumstances. An interruption in the early experience of being loved can be later compensated for in the love of father, grandparent, or close relative – stepping into the role of primary carer. Early difficulties can be repaired through the love of a teacher, a mentor, or dare I say even a therapist. The redeeming unconditional love of a spouse, or significant other – offers reparation for earlier losses. A friend of mine refers to his husband as the one who has loved me into being. I know this is not an isolated experience.

As a society, we fail the women and men who are responsible for good-enough mothering through our political failure to promote social and economic policies supportive of maternal health, child development, and family life. In a country that eulogizes mother and apple pie, the US ranks low on the scale of nations where public policy concretely supports healthy maternal care, child development, and the structures of family life. We stand alone among developed nations in the stridency of our defense of the rights of the unborn and our social and economic neglect of the born.

This Mother’s Day is the first following the overturning of 50 years of a woman’s Constitutional right to abortion. The 33rd edition of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT^® Data Book describes how children in America are in the midst of a mental health crisis, struggling with unprecedented levels of anxiety and depression. This year’s publication continues to present national and state data across four domains — economic well-being, education, health and family, and community. A tragic paradox is revealed in the ranking of states according to measures in overall child well-being. Florida, at no. 32 out of 50, is the highest-ranked southern state in the family and community domain. Utah, New Hampshire, and Vermont topped this same list while New Mexico, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi feature among the bottom rankings. Again there seems to be a correlation between state preoccupied with a fanatical defense of the rights of the unborn and the chronic political neglect of the born.

When Jesus said, if you love me he made it clear that loving him meant following his commandment that we love one another. Being able to love one another is dependent on having an experience of being loved. Jesus also said, if you love me, I will give you eternal life. The rub is however that whatever the supposed joys in heaven – eternal life begins in the here and now! It’s ensuring the quality of life in the here and now that should matter most to us – and by which, Jesus makes clear, we shall be judged.

May 13, 2023 0

The Gateway

On the fourth Sunday after Easter – traditionally referred to as Good Shepherd Sunday – it is customary for the preacher to explore the protective and nurturing metaphor of shepherding. As many of you know I’ve explored in previous years how the metaphor of the shepherd and the dynamics of shepherding offer a sharp contrast between modern and 1^st-century methods of sheep farming. Good Shepherd Sunday also has a habit of falling on Mother’s Day and I’m somewhat relieved that this year we’re still two weeks ahead of that sermon challenge.

Coming from a country such as New Zealand – a nation of five million humans and over 40 million sheep – the life of sheep and that of the shepherds who manage them is somewhat familiar. In previous sermons on Good Shepherd Sunday, I’ve spoken of my nephew Hamish, who farms a hill country station – sheep farms are known as stations in the rugged hill country of NZ’s South Island – a topography familiar to many of us as the mountainous and foreboding terrain that formed the scenic backdrop for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

In the 19^th-century, Scottish farmers – familiar with the harsh topography of the Scottish Highlands – settled easily in the rugged high-altitude foothills of the imposing mountain range of the Southern Alps – running like a great spinal column down the center of the South Island (S I). For them this was as close to the homeland they had left as anywhere on the globe. Their sheep farming heritage easily transplanted into this new setting.

Like the Scottish Highlands, the S I’s high-country land is poor – expansive high-altitude grassland. With the granite bedrock only a couple of inches below the surface the land is completely unsuitable for arable farming. This landscape is only suitable to the particular Marino breed of sheep – a scrawny bread – bred not for the succulence of its meat but for the fineness of its wool – wool today much coveted by the Italian textile and designer fashion houses. The Italian fashion industry is the end destination for my nephew’s wool.

Easter IV draws its Good Shepherd theme from John’s presentation of Jesus as the good shepherd in chapter 10 of his gospel. Here we are given two contrasting images of Jesus. One is as the personification of the good shepherd- I am the good shepherd – hearing my voice my sheep know me and follow me. This image resonates with intimations of intimacy and loving care. The other image – which is the one presented to us on Easter IV in year 1 of the Common Lectionary – is the more striking image of Jesus as the gateway to the sheepfold.

Facing the blank looks of incomprehension on the faces of his disciples as he speaks about himself as the gatekeeper who guards against the illicit entry of thieves and rustlers seeking to mislead and steal the sheep, Jesus offers what I would have thought was an even less comprehensible metaphor – of him as the literal gate to the fold –I am the gate for the sheep.

On a baptism Sunday, the shepherd and sheepfold metaphors present us with fundamental questions about the nature of the church and the dynamics of belonging. What is the Church; how do we get into the Church, and what are the hallmarks of belonging???

The Episcopal Church has this quaint phrase to identify one of its three main membership criteria. Following John 10 you might think the Episcopal Church would say that one of the core attributes of membership is to know and be known by Jesus. It is very telling that the Episcopal Church prefers to define membership as those who know and are known to the treasurer. Easter IV being a baptism Sunday here at St Martin’s – lends an added poignancy to questions of belonging.

The Church is the Christian community – which may seem an obvious statement. But we have a very impoverished understanding of Christian community because we imagine that we are the Christian community – that without us there is no Church. IN this sense we think of the Christian community as a voluntary association much like being members of the tennis club. Accordingly the answer to the question what is the Church – is – we are the Church – the fruit of our organization.

However, the Christian community is God’s creation not ours. The Christian community is not a manifestation of our social organizing. It is the creation of God-in-Christ active within the dimension of time and space. Following this view, we don’t create Christian community – we simply participate in it. As the sheep entering the sheepfold – so we come into a divine community that is already awaiting our arrival and in which we are invited to participate.

That the Christian community emerges from our self-organization is only the first of two major mistaken ideas. The other widespread mistaken view is that being Christian is an individual thing – as in – you don’t need to go to church to be a Christian – or I’m spiritual but not religious. We each can be as autonomously spiritual as we like, but being spiritual does not make us Christian. The Early Church father, Tertullian summed it up when he said one Christian is no Christian. The only way to be a Christian is to participate in the life of the Christian community – which is the divine community of God-in-Christ or the Body of Christ – made visible in the dimension of time and space.

John 10 speaks of both sheep and sheepfold. The sheep don’t form the sheepfold – they enter the sheepfold when they pass through the gate. Likewise, we don’t form the Christian community, we enter the Christian community – the Body of Christ in the world – through the gate of baptism. If baptism is the gate, the rich pasture is the Eucharist. Through baptism we come to belong to a community that nurtures us with the rich pasture of the Eucharist – Christ’s mystical body – upon which we feed.

If John 10 is the metaphor for our entry and belonging within the Christian community then the first reading from Luke-Acts chapter 2 clarifies the nature of belonging. We don’t simply belong by virtue of becoming members – the hallmark of belonging is participation – active engagement in the covenanted relationship with God – and – more challengingly, a covenanted relationship with one another.

By covenanted relationship I mean a relationship in which we become responsible for one another. We read in Acts 2:42 that the first Christians devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and when they gathered to worship God, they broke bread with one another – praying unceasingly for one another, and for the world around them that often viewed them with considerable hostility. In addition, they practiced common fellowship which meant they shared their material resources – holding all things in common for the benefit of all. It’s this characteristic of early Christianity that not only facilitated the Church’s astonishing growth in a short span of time – and day by day the Lord added to their number – but has continued to inspire a vision of a society where each gives according to their ability, and each receives according to their need.

Through baptism we enter into belonging. By participation our belonging fosters believing – both signs of our taking responsibility for one another.

That we seem even further away from being able to embody this ideal as the hallmark of our participation together within the Christian community – is a continued matter for our profound repentance.

April 29, 2023 0

Re-Membering

Image: Road to Emmaus by Ivanka Demchuck

Following the Great Three Days of Easter, we find ourselves among the various accounts of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances. These come mostly from John but also include today’s gospel portion which is Luke’s account of the experience of two of Jesus’ disciples on the road to Emmaus – a village not far from Jerusalem.

Luke 24:13-35 is one of the iconic gospel passages – shaping Christian spiritual imagination down the ages. Emmaus is a name deeply associated with places of spiritual seeking and retreat – a name that Christians automatically associate with spiritual journeying.

The post-resurrection accounts from John that pose a direct challenge to our received Newtonian understanding of the laws of the physical universe – accounts where Jesus walks through locked doors and solid walls, one moment appearing, the next disappearing – and all that. Luke’s account relates an experience that offers no such challenge to our Newtonian rationality. Luke’s post resurrection appearance is immediately relatable because at its center is the all too familiar experience of minds clouded and hearts set on fire.

Jenna Smith in her article A Blaze of Glory published in The Christian Century, alerts us to the Ukrainian artist Ivanka Demchuk’s painting Road to Emmaus. Demchuk’s work is influenced by the techniques and aesthetics of iconography and in the painting, we see Christ, in white, facing the two disciples on the road. She layers gold filament in a way that draws the eye immediately to the disciples’ torso region – portraying that most significant phrase in the passage: Were our hearts not burning in us as he spoke to us? Smith comments that Demchuk’s use of gold, against the back layers of white, effectively lights up the scene, as if there is a ball of embers in the disciples’ chests. I love the image, both in the text and in this artwork, of hearts burning within us. It is, in this story, so good, such an indicator of trueness and of life. I’ve posted the painting to accompany this sermon online at relationalralties.com and stmartinprov.org.

We relate to Luke’s story on the road to Emmaus because, whether we know it or not – we are all on the road to Emmaus – journeying with minds clouded by grief and hearts enkindled by the fires of our yearning.

For the two disciples traveling to Emmaus, it had been a long and bewildering day. The Lord’s death – yes – can it only have been on Friday? – somehow time for them has stood still – the Lord’s death and now first thing today some of the women reported the disappearance of Jesus’ body from the now mysteriously empty tomb. The succession of these events is too great for them to bear. Faced with experience too huge and overwhelming to process – their minds shut down like a computer hard drive crashing. Numbed into mindlessness by grief – all they can think of to do is to physically react and get as far away from Jerusalem as a day’s travel can take them.

Viewing this story from the sidelines of history – from our 21^st-century psychologically informed perspective– we’re curious about the dynamics of the experience these two disciples are having as they walk away from the city as fast as their legs can carry them. Along the road they encounter a mysterious stranger who asks to walk with them. He’s been following, perhaps, at a distance and having caught up with them he asks: What are you discussing while you walk along?

Oh, it’s bad enough this stranger intrudes on their grief, but he further burdens them with his dumb-assed question as well. Cleopas, one of the two, turns on the stranger and in a voice dripping with incredulity demands: Are you the only one in Jerusalem who doesn’t know what been going on there these past days?

As if to rub salt into their wounds the stranger simply asks: what things? The disciples commence to pour out their hearts – the first stage of articulating their grief by talking it out to someone else. They relate their grief and bewilderment, the devastation of their lost expectation: we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. And now the worrying disappearance of Jesus body – with only the witness of the women – unreliable in itself – as you know what women are like imagining all sorts of fancies. I mean women – being addressed by angles – really?

We can picture them standing dumbfounded when the stranger rebukes them: what fools you are – not only fools but faithless fools! He then begins a process of reconstructing the broken chains of memory – relinking associations which like broken links on a website no longer connect to the source of meaning. Today, we would recognize that the disciples were suffering from post-traumatic depression – a state of mental shutdown resulting from an overwhelming experience of trauma, grief, and loss.

Luke relates that Jesus beginning with Moses interpreted the things about himself in all the scriptures. In the guise of the stranger, he helps the disciples to begin to process their grief through a process of re-membering. When hyphenated the word remember takes on its original meaning. To Re-member is to put back together – to reconnect broken memory fragments weaving them once again, into a meaningful picture of the world.

There is a fundamental law of psychological life – that the mind only recognizes what it already knows. They could not see what their minds had no stored memory template for – offering a clue into the mindset afflicting the disciples’ on the road to Emmaus.

All forms of trauma – of which acute grief is but one form – interfere with the pattern mapping of memories onto real time experience that enables recognition – that is – the act of re-membering. We know how depression – depresses certain chains of memory capable of restructuring pain and loss – preferring instead memory chains associated with hopelessness and helplessness that simply confirm our current experience of suffering.

The disciples had seen Jesus’ death and burial. With his death all their hope died. They could no longer access the stored memories of him to map onto their real time experience. Cut off by grief from their memories of his teaching, they couldn’t see Jesus because their minds had no way of recognizing him.

As the three men journey on the road to Emmaus something deeply therapeutic is taking place. Grief has traumatized them – preventing remembering. They don’t recognize Jesus because they’ve lost access to the memories of him that could reconnect them to his resurrected body. Gradually with each step along the road – as the stranger beginning with Moses, interprets the things about Jesus in all the scriptures – they begin to re-member – a process beginning in their bodies ennkindling their hearts. By the time the stranger leaves them they can turn to one another exclaiming: Were our hearts not burning in us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?

There’s one more thing to notice in this story. When the disciples reach Emmaus and invite the stranger to stay and eat with them: Stay with us for it’s almost evening and the day is now nearly over. – it’s not only the day that is nearly over but the therapeutic process of reconnecting the broken links – allowing them to map memory onto real time experience is also complete. In response to their invitation – the stranger takes bread, blesses, and breaks it before sharing it with them. Luke tells us that then were their eyes opened and they now correctly recognized the stranger as Jesus. Process complete –memory pattern mapping onto real time experience has been rebooted – and Jesus vanishes from them.

Every therapist working with serious trauma knows that it’s action –as in controlled reenactment rather than words that matter. Over the sharing of the bread Jesus reenacts – reconnecting the last broken link in the disciples’ fuller recovery of memory in real time.

The road to Emmaus is the symbol for our spiritual journey. Like the disciples’ – we make this journey travelling in one another’s company. Like the disciples’, we walk the road to Emmaus with minds clouded by distraction and forgetfulness. Memory templates of doubt and fear rather than hope and courage map onto real time experience. Consequently, like the disciples’ on the road to Emmaus we fail to notice the ball of embers – our hearts burning with yearning for something more.

If we don’t see Jesus – maybe it’s because he’s not who we are looking for – until like the disciples’ we recognize him as he blesses, brakes, and shares with us his bread of life. Only then are our eyes opened in recognition of his abiding presence with us.

April 22, 2023 0