Isaiah 59:(1-4)9-19
Hebrews 5:12-6:1,9-12
Mark 10:46-52
Psalm 13
One astonishing thing in the gospel for today is that when the blind man, Bartimeus, actually comes before Jessus, Jesus does not suppose he knows what Bartimeus desires. Many of us see a person in need and immediately assume that the person wants a problem resolved. Jesus, however, did not think he knew what Bartimeus desired before he himself told Jesus what it was.
Barbara Crafton raises some very good questions from this observation in her periodic e-mailing. Do we see the person, or do we see the disability? Does it not make more sense to see a person, a rich and multi-textured personality, rather than simply what stikes us as the most immediate difference to ourselves? Is it not better to ask a person their own story rather than to make assumptions?
A further consideration is what will Bartimeus do for his living? He is accustomed to sitting on the road to Jerusalem receiving alms from pilgrims who are seeking to please God, and one such way is to give to those who are in need. What will Bartimeus do for a living when he stops receiving this ancient equivalent to a disability check?
If we look at Bartimeus as a metaphor for our lives, do we really want to see? What do we receive from not seeing in our lives? Are we hiding from talents and accomplisments that we have because we cannot accept the good things God has done for us, but determine to remain victims, or to maintain a false image of ourselves? Are we hiding from parts of our lives that are destructive to ourselves or others? We can choose to be blind both in our personal lives, or in our life in society. How do we profit from our blindness? What is the equivalent of our disability check?
I suspect Jesus would not have faulted Bartimeus for not wishing to leave his livelihood behind. Jesus knows our weakness, and I believe that God is very patient with us, gently pulling us towards a greater fulfillment of our lives, though it is also true God sometimes tugs at us in less than gentle ways. More importantly I imagine Jesus was touched again by his faith in desiring healing, a faith he already expressed in calling Jesus, Son of David. Can we also exercise this faith, and express our desire to truly see ourselves, and our society?
God bless,
Father John
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Monday, September 25, 2006
TWO PICTURES
Hello All! We are on the verge of getting the internet reconnected to the church office. Then we will be back to our normal level of communication.
WORSHIP: SEPTEMBER 24, 2006
TWO PICTURES
The gospel on Sunday portrays the inner circle of Jesus and his disciples. We have two principal sets of teaching stories in the gospels. One set Jesus is teaching the crowds and his disciples are standing around as support people, or as not that supportive people, saying, "Hey Jesus, it's time to go now." The other set is Jesus with his disciples in their time alone, their quiet time. This Sunday's gospel from Mark 9:30-37 portray two such moments. One is apparently on the road, and the other in the house. We get hints that the cortege of Jesus moving from city to city can be pretty much like a parade. People are talking in groups, and looking, it is possible, very much like any group on a stroll on a country road. When Jesus teaches them again of his impending death and resurrection the disciples do not understand. They do not say anything, perhaps remembering the last time Peter commented on this message, perhaps just in an attempt to save pride. Then when they get to the house, and Jesus asks, "What were you talking about on the road? (the word in Greek is more neutral than the word "argue")", they do not respond because they were discussing who was the greatest, and they had already paid attention enough to know this is an innappropriate question. Jesus takes a child, a person who is both helpless to fend for self, but who is also free to become the person we would like or NOT, and says who ever receives such a child in my name recieves me and receives the one who sent me. Jesus is saying that greatness comes from service, comes from serving those who the world does not consider important or powerful, and that in that process we meet Jesus, and in meeting Jesus God. Service leads us into the presence of God.
The contrasting picture is in the book of Wisdom 1:16ff. This book is attempting to persuade people that belief in an afterlife is essential for proper devotion to God. It is saying life must be looked like from an eternal perspective. It paints the picture of a capable, intelligent person (possibly the Preacher from another biblical book, Ecclesisates) who on seeing that death is inevitable chooses to make the most out of life. While this policy is not necesarily a bad one, in fact I personally would commend it, the author of Wisdom points out that the problem is when this becomes the most important thing in our life. If we attempt to grab as much pleasure out of life before death, thinking death our end, it is very easy to head down a slippery slope leading first to complete self-centeredness, then to downright indifference to others, next to active exploitation of others, and finally to a mockery and even persecution of those who remind us of the values of godly justice, love and responsibility. This picture is one that leads us into further and further alienation from others and God. It is the contrast of what Jesus says the life of service leads toward.
Our desire as a church is to make our life ressemble the picture of service that Jesus points out in the gospel. Certainly parts of our life reflect both the grasping picture of Wisdom and the serving picture of Jesus. Yet in this picture of Jesus with his disciples we see that he patiently teaches and guides them. Jesus is not the controlling person who looks for a "gotcha" moment in order to dismiss you as a person. Jesus patiently teaches and works with his disciples to lead them into the way of service, into a way of life that brings us into relationship with our neighbors, especially the vulnerable ones, into relationship with Jesus and with the one who sent him. It is not by our efforts that we will reach the life of service. It is the power of God leading, guiding, forming us into the divine life of boundless generosity.
WORSHIP: SEPTEMBER 24, 2006
TWO PICTURES
The gospel on Sunday portrays the inner circle of Jesus and his disciples. We have two principal sets of teaching stories in the gospels. One set Jesus is teaching the crowds and his disciples are standing around as support people, or as not that supportive people, saying, "Hey Jesus, it's time to go now." The other set is Jesus with his disciples in their time alone, their quiet time. This Sunday's gospel from Mark 9:30-37 portray two such moments. One is apparently on the road, and the other in the house. We get hints that the cortege of Jesus moving from city to city can be pretty much like a parade. People are talking in groups, and looking, it is possible, very much like any group on a stroll on a country road. When Jesus teaches them again of his impending death and resurrection the disciples do not understand. They do not say anything, perhaps remembering the last time Peter commented on this message, perhaps just in an attempt to save pride. Then when they get to the house, and Jesus asks, "What were you talking about on the road? (the word in Greek is more neutral than the word "argue")", they do not respond because they were discussing who was the greatest, and they had already paid attention enough to know this is an innappropriate question. Jesus takes a child, a person who is both helpless to fend for self, but who is also free to become the person we would like or NOT, and says who ever receives such a child in my name recieves me and receives the one who sent me. Jesus is saying that greatness comes from service, comes from serving those who the world does not consider important or powerful, and that in that process we meet Jesus, and in meeting Jesus God. Service leads us into the presence of God.
The contrasting picture is in the book of Wisdom 1:16ff. This book is attempting to persuade people that belief in an afterlife is essential for proper devotion to God. It is saying life must be looked like from an eternal perspective. It paints the picture of a capable, intelligent person (possibly the Preacher from another biblical book, Ecclesisates) who on seeing that death is inevitable chooses to make the most out of life. While this policy is not necesarily a bad one, in fact I personally would commend it, the author of Wisdom points out that the problem is when this becomes the most important thing in our life. If we attempt to grab as much pleasure out of life before death, thinking death our end, it is very easy to head down a slippery slope leading first to complete self-centeredness, then to downright indifference to others, next to active exploitation of others, and finally to a mockery and even persecution of those who remind us of the values of godly justice, love and responsibility. This picture is one that leads us into further and further alienation from others and God. It is the contrast of what Jesus says the life of service leads toward.
Our desire as a church is to make our life ressemble the picture of service that Jesus points out in the gospel. Certainly parts of our life reflect both the grasping picture of Wisdom and the serving picture of Jesus. Yet in this picture of Jesus with his disciples we see that he patiently teaches and guides them. Jesus is not the controlling person who looks for a "gotcha" moment in order to dismiss you as a person. Jesus patiently teaches and works with his disciples to lead them into the way of service, into a way of life that brings us into relationship with our neighbors, especially the vulnerable ones, into relationship with Jesus and with the one who sent him. It is not by our efforts that we will reach the life of service. It is the power of God leading, guiding, forming us into the divine life of boundless generosity.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
ETERNAL LIFE NOW
I have not enough time to spend blogging,while I am arranging to leave the country, but I just will say that the lessons continue with "eternal life" speech. And it occurs to me that, Jesus although siding witht he pharisees on the topic, his eternal life was tenable during your earthly lifetime, it seems not to be reward after death, but rather something that we cans receive if we partake of his passion (my flesh, my blood) the journey will be long and arid and the only way of surviving it, is by living his life that he shares with us now. Having eternal life now, would have liberate his disciples and us, of the fear of death, which in my opinion is reponsible for many curtailments of the joy of living. One may say, that precisely the fear of death frees people to live life fully, becuase they know they will die. Let have fun now, because we shall die tomorrow. That reminds me of the "Labor will make you free" inscribed on the entrance of the concentration camps in Nazi Germany.
It all depends what kind of life you call the "good life" that you want to live to the fullest.
It all depends what kind of life you call the "good life" that you want to live to the fullest.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
POLITICS OF INMORTALITY
During previous weeks I have been talking about the strong (see shellacked mandala or fear and generosity posts) presence of the Exodus story in the gospel passages. Even going back to the feeding of the five thousands, we have seen Jesus re-enacting the Exodus story. I have pondered that Jesus interest in reactivating as if it were such a powerful foundational myth in Israel must also been an important part of his program of re-igniting hope in his audience.
However the exodus of Jesus is not quite the same of the exodus from Egypt, it plays on the historical memory of the people of Israel known as “The Exodus” and it does shares its major motifs and specially its major symbols and breaking points. Like manna, water crossing, feeding. Walking to freedom, passage from state of slavery and scarcity to state of freedom and abundance, to mention a few. But it does it like the one who dyes new hues into old and worn fabric bleached by centuries of fierce sun and heat. He picks up the pattern and repaints a New and quite different Promised Land.
We have talked about that the Israelites of the First century found themselves again “ab intio”, back to square one, slaves and living in scarcity, the problem was they were in Egypt no more, but in the promised land were supposedly they will live in freedom and abundance. There was a dissonance between God promises and reality.
The contractual nature of the relationship of the people of Israel and God, assumed that the people have not fulfilled their side of that bargain and therefore God was off the hook in fulfilling his. There was historical precedence, they had a severe and catastrophic similar covenantal failure when the educate leadership was deported to Babylon. They came back after 500 years, we presume some of them, while others were probably assimilated to Babylonian culture. And joined the locals that were left behind. Similar failure on the covenantal relationships happen when the Northern Kingdom fell to the invader and Israel was reduced to smaller southern portion known as Judah. Jesus and most of his followers were descendants of that disappeared kingdom in the northen part and seen as suspicious by their southern brothers.
Now, at the time of Jesus no one was free, and Jesus audience with some noted Gospel exceptions, were a raggedly riffraff. For this crowd the hope of liberation was not a philosophical or theological musing of the well-fed-ivory-tower-scholars, but a rather more crude, pungent and pressing need. Studies have it that the level of poverty in Israel at the turn of the first century was widespread and deep, as in hand to mouth. It is from this urgency that Jesus frequently scoffs at the Pharisee and Sadducee political parties, who although nationalistic the first and lacayune the second have both failed to provide guidance to the people in such dire times and spent all of their energy in endless arguing of the finer points of the law and the correctness of doctrine.
The Sadducees close to the Romans and the puppet government in Jerusalem did not believe in life eternal and went on to prove that one could derive a clear direction from the text of the law to sustain such believe. For the Sadducees when one died we sleeps in the Lord until and that is that. No wonder they were consumed with “earthly concerns” if they could deal with their meaning in life by succeeding here and now. The pharisees, who scoffed at the Romans for having other religion and being not form the chosen people, believed in the idea that life prolongs itself beyond its physicality. Some of the stories told by Jesus seemed to indicate that he was at least within that group of ideas akin or close to the pharisee party.
However the exodus of Jesus is not quite the same of the exodus from Egypt, it plays on the historical memory of the people of Israel known as “The Exodus” and it does shares its major motifs and specially its major symbols and breaking points. Like manna, water crossing, feeding. Walking to freedom, passage from state of slavery and scarcity to state of freedom and abundance, to mention a few. But it does it like the one who dyes new hues into old and worn fabric bleached by centuries of fierce sun and heat. He picks up the pattern and repaints a New and quite different Promised Land.
We have talked about that the Israelites of the First century found themselves again “ab intio”, back to square one, slaves and living in scarcity, the problem was they were in Egypt no more, but in the promised land were supposedly they will live in freedom and abundance. There was a dissonance between God promises and reality.
The contractual nature of the relationship of the people of Israel and God, assumed that the people have not fulfilled their side of that bargain and therefore God was off the hook in fulfilling his. There was historical precedence, they had a severe and catastrophic similar covenantal failure when the educate leadership was deported to Babylon. They came back after 500 years, we presume some of them, while others were probably assimilated to Babylonian culture. And joined the locals that were left behind. Similar failure on the covenantal relationships happen when the Northern Kingdom fell to the invader and Israel was reduced to smaller southern portion known as Judah. Jesus and most of his followers were descendants of that disappeared kingdom in the northen part and seen as suspicious by their southern brothers.
Now, at the time of Jesus no one was free, and Jesus audience with some noted Gospel exceptions, were a raggedly riffraff. For this crowd the hope of liberation was not a philosophical or theological musing of the well-fed-ivory-tower-scholars, but a rather more crude, pungent and pressing need. Studies have it that the level of poverty in Israel at the turn of the first century was widespread and deep, as in hand to mouth. It is from this urgency that Jesus frequently scoffs at the Pharisee and Sadducee political parties, who although nationalistic the first and lacayune the second have both failed to provide guidance to the people in such dire times and spent all of their energy in endless arguing of the finer points of the law and the correctness of doctrine.
The Sadducees close to the Romans and the puppet government in Jerusalem did not believe in life eternal and went on to prove that one could derive a clear direction from the text of the law to sustain such believe. For the Sadducees when one died we sleeps in the Lord until and that is that. No wonder they were consumed with “earthly concerns” if they could deal with their meaning in life by succeeding here and now. The pharisees, who scoffed at the Romans for having other religion and being not form the chosen people, believed in the idea that life prolongs itself beyond its physicality. Some of the stories told by Jesus seemed to indicate that he was at least within that group of ideas akin or close to the pharisee party.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Breast Cancer and Bread that Came from Heaven
I have only dial-up this week and I am afraid I can not blog much. This week I have been looking into getting supplies to my niece in Cuba, she is about thirty and she had a mastectomy, she said she did it because she wants to look after her children and when she found out that she had a growth in her left breast that turned up to be malignant, she said she did not have to think too much. It make me think of Jesus begin the bread that came from heaven and the incredible power and responsibility of nurturing those to whom you have a duty to. She make me think of Jesus, whom Presiding-bishop elect called "Our Mother" in line with the mystics. How God was able to sacrifice his own self for the salvation of the world, the power and responsibility of nurture. Jesus seemingly feeds us with nothing better than his own self, in the most common but also the ever present at the dinner table "bread". He is the manna that will feed the people of Israel as the walk away from "Egyptian slavery" to the true freedom of the messianic promised land. What a feat! Convincing his followers that they were not indeed responsible for the "Egyptian" status they find themselves in the Land of Milk and Honey, but they were put there again by the political and economic class who stole both milk and honey. What Jesus promises though is not an instant solution but a pilgrimage of 40 years in the desert, to break away from internalized slavery and move into freedom. Exodus is what he promises, the promised land is still far away. Reigniting the foundational myth of Israel is his long term goal, and for the long journey he offers himself as "the bread that came form heaven", we can not hoard it because it will be enough for the day -panis cotidianum- of the dominical prayer.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
THE SHELLACKED SAND MANDALA
Luke 9:28-36
http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Luke+9:28-36&vnum=yes&version=nrsv
I met this man in the north market in Columbus, Ohio, during our 2003 General Convention. The market has just closed and I was looking for a place to eat something light, was like five or six o’clock and this man was manning a stall, actually the only stall open in the market, with his two daughters and an older man besides him. The dress was peculiar because it reminded me of the Old Order of Amish, straw hat, bear, no shoes, plain and rough material shirt. The girls were having a good time playing but their dress was simple, the older man looked very similar in appearance to the younger man, I think in his late thirties. He seemed to be the two little girls father. There was a cell phone on the table and a credit card machine the only two reminders in the whole scene that I was still in USA 2006.
The stuff he was selling were beeswax candles and honey and sweets, I do not remember much. He had some fliers about the wax and the honey and one shabbily printed flyer on the Old Quakers, my mother was a Quaker before becoming a Communist and I engaged him in conversation, he was very pleasant and well read, quoted Plato. He was critical of the modern Quakers that engage in social work or human development in the world as a matter of program ad not as an specific prompting of the inward Christ. The session we had just finished was one of acute arguments over the authority of Scriptures and I asked him to comment.
I must admit that my knowledge of the Society of Friends is very superficial, so I was surprised when he said that there was no way we could really know what Jesus meant or the circumstances in which his sayings were said, he said, I think, that words can never convey a story in full. Therefore they wait upon God to give them the word for this time, that well could be interpretation of Scripture or something totally new.
It was refreshing to see somebody dress like a peasant from before the turn of the century, with the name conservative attached to himself speaking so liberally about the authority of Scripture. The foundation of what he said were not a sign of arrogance but humble understanding and acceptance that words can never contained a whole experience. That is why we have resorted to poetry and the arts in general to provide insights that words cannot efficiently and fully ever provide.
How parents can describe in words how their children looked like when they were born, how they felt, how other people felt and responded to their coming into the world. How to apprehend the entire story in words? Or tape for that matter?.
I think the history of the value of Scripture as the Word of God is tied up to the history of the Reformation, a revolt of the Universities against the ignorance of the clergy at the break of the Renaissance. Not surprising still to this day, in some of the Lutheran denominations, clergy garb is the black academic gown worn by University professors. Luther principle of “sola scriptura” (only scripture) is paired with “sola gratia”(only grace). Interesting that he found a balance between a written and somewhat fixed record of God’s work in the past -Scriptures- and the most fluid and experiential: God’s grace.
The gospel passage of today is one of those beautiful instances in which we need to imagine Scripture. We need to sit and purposely contemplate the Divine and to consider such contemplation sufficient in itself. We need to enhance the text and open ourselves to te experience.
The undertow of the passage is still the ancient story of Exodus. I have said that the whole section of this stories from the rejection at Nazareth, the feeding of the 5,000, the walking on water and the Transfiguration had underneath the ancient and well know story of Exodus. The retelling of which was re-enacted in all Jewish homes during Passover.
The theological problem of the time, could be the fact that the Jews were slaves in Egypt and still remain slaves in the Promised Land, against the promise of the Lord to bring them to a land of milk ad honey, instead they lived in squalor and from hand to mouth. The reconciliation of God’s will with the presence of evil, one of the thorniest issues in Christianity according to conservative Anglican theologian Stott, was most likely also a serious problem in the Israel of the first century.
The Jewish understanding of cause and effect mediated by the contractual nature of their relationship with God will make them believe that they or their ancestors before them were sinners and because of that they will were today neither free or wealthy. Not only they were poor and slaves but their were the only ones to be blame for it. Wonderful idea for the oppressor class to convinced the oppressed that they are the ones to be blamed for their status in life. The complexity and codification of religious practices and their lack of resources and time made the poor sink even further into guilt.
In short the people of Israel were like an abused wife convinced by her abuser that is her clumsiness in ironing or lack of ability in cooking that makes her responsible for her “just” punishment. And here Jesus, in the feeding of the 5,000, or walking on water or being transformed on the Mount is reminding them that is not God’s will their present misery, and that it is certainly man abusing of his free will. He reminds them of the foundational myth of Israel, the story of Exodus so they can break away from the stupor of years of theological abuse and break free again.
The journey with Jesus, was a like a new journey with a new Moses to a new promised land. One that you engage with the essentials for travel, one in which you know yourself to be homeless in the world and recipient of the hospitality of faith. One in which you know that God multiplies scarcity into abundance. One in which God shares his very self in the midst of the storm reassuring us and calming the elements. It is also a journey with God’s endorsement, like when Moses met God and his face shone, Jesus clothes became dazzling white.
Moses came down with the seeds of Scripture, the Ten Commandments tablets, second edition, while Jesus, Elijah and Moses were talking about Jesus impending passion in Jerusalem. The New Law of this New Moses seems not be a catalogue dos and don’ts, but rather an experience, a sacrificial one to boot. One in which the need for a scapegoating and its consequent mimetic violence will be extinguished. So instead of written law, Jesus brings a law written in our hearts.
There are many differences between Jesus and Mohamed, and I will not even to attempt to name them all, but one that is clear to me is that Mohamed wrote a book -Quran- that he claimed inspired by God to the letter, but Jesus on the other hand lived a life and die on the cross for us. The only instance in which we know of Jesus writing was during the forgiving of the adulteress, when he wrote something on the sand.
The stories of Hebrew Scriptures in the present authoritative list were put together by the so-called Council of Jamnia in 90 after Christ and the stories about Jesus we call the Gospels and the rest of the letters and most of the New Testament were not accepted as authoritative until the Council of Constantinople 381 and 397 with the Council of Carthage a council for the local church of North Africa.
I will not question the faith of the early church, which often did have very few patchy pieces of the new scriptures. Even more we do not know exactly how they were consider in the community. What was important for them and for me is that those scriptures said about the One they loved so much that they did not want to offend him, not because of fear of retribution, but rather for fear of facing in solitude a troubled world.
It reminded the story of the sand mandala, a special creation of Tibetan Buddhism - and I am not going to enter into details about it other than to say that is made with colored sand deposited in a highly stylized form. The story goes that a Japanese tourist after taping the building of one he asked to be able to take home to which the monks smiling agreed, and then he proceeded to shellac the whole thing.
Peter’s response to the fleeting apparition of the Divine was to try to fix in time the experience, codifying it -building tabernacles as in the Feast of Booths- understandable human desire of moving from faith to certitude, specially when face with great challenges. It is no different that the desire in some Anglican corners to go back to the law written in stone and abandon the more fragile, exposed and rather fluid law of grace. It is not surprising that most mega-churches are built on the same principles, because people want the certainty of law to face the monumental cultural changes that Americans and most of the affluent North Atlantic Affluent societies are presently facing. To a world in flux we Christians have no to other choice but to get on the boat until we get to our true home. We have no to other choice but to trust God that our present homelessness in the world can only be faced with the hospitality of faith, that we need to do ministry without bling-bling. We have no other choice that be faithful to a God that can convert two fish and five loaves of bread in food enough for many.
We can shellac the Divine presence to take home to join touristic souvenirs but be certain that you will be worshiping an idol not the true and living God. He is my Son, listen to Him
http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Luke+9:28-36&vnum=yes&version=nrsv
I met this man in the north market in Columbus, Ohio, during our 2003 General Convention. The market has just closed and I was looking for a place to eat something light, was like five or six o’clock and this man was manning a stall, actually the only stall open in the market, with his two daughters and an older man besides him. The dress was peculiar because it reminded me of the Old Order of Amish, straw hat, bear, no shoes, plain and rough material shirt. The girls were having a good time playing but their dress was simple, the older man looked very similar in appearance to the younger man, I think in his late thirties. He seemed to be the two little girls father. There was a cell phone on the table and a credit card machine the only two reminders in the whole scene that I was still in USA 2006.
The stuff he was selling were beeswax candles and honey and sweets, I do not remember much. He had some fliers about the wax and the honey and one shabbily printed flyer on the Old Quakers, my mother was a Quaker before becoming a Communist and I engaged him in conversation, he was very pleasant and well read, quoted Plato. He was critical of the modern Quakers that engage in social work or human development in the world as a matter of program ad not as an specific prompting of the inward Christ. The session we had just finished was one of acute arguments over the authority of Scriptures and I asked him to comment.
I must admit that my knowledge of the Society of Friends is very superficial, so I was surprised when he said that there was no way we could really know what Jesus meant or the circumstances in which his sayings were said, he said, I think, that words can never convey a story in full. Therefore they wait upon God to give them the word for this time, that well could be interpretation of Scripture or something totally new.
It was refreshing to see somebody dress like a peasant from before the turn of the century, with the name conservative attached to himself speaking so liberally about the authority of Scripture. The foundation of what he said were not a sign of arrogance but humble understanding and acceptance that words can never contained a whole experience. That is why we have resorted to poetry and the arts in general to provide insights that words cannot efficiently and fully ever provide.
How parents can describe in words how their children looked like when they were born, how they felt, how other people felt and responded to their coming into the world. How to apprehend the entire story in words? Or tape for that matter?.
I think the history of the value of Scripture as the Word of God is tied up to the history of the Reformation, a revolt of the Universities against the ignorance of the clergy at the break of the Renaissance. Not surprising still to this day, in some of the Lutheran denominations, clergy garb is the black academic gown worn by University professors. Luther principle of “sola scriptura” (only scripture) is paired with “sola gratia”(only grace). Interesting that he found a balance between a written and somewhat fixed record of God’s work in the past -Scriptures- and the most fluid and experiential: God’s grace.
The gospel passage of today is one of those beautiful instances in which we need to imagine Scripture. We need to sit and purposely contemplate the Divine and to consider such contemplation sufficient in itself. We need to enhance the text and open ourselves to te experience.
The undertow of the passage is still the ancient story of Exodus. I have said that the whole section of this stories from the rejection at Nazareth, the feeding of the 5,000, the walking on water and the Transfiguration had underneath the ancient and well know story of Exodus. The retelling of which was re-enacted in all Jewish homes during Passover.
The theological problem of the time, could be the fact that the Jews were slaves in Egypt and still remain slaves in the Promised Land, against the promise of the Lord to bring them to a land of milk ad honey, instead they lived in squalor and from hand to mouth. The reconciliation of God’s will with the presence of evil, one of the thorniest issues in Christianity according to conservative Anglican theologian Stott, was most likely also a serious problem in the Israel of the first century.
The Jewish understanding of cause and effect mediated by the contractual nature of their relationship with God will make them believe that they or their ancestors before them were sinners and because of that they will were today neither free or wealthy. Not only they were poor and slaves but their were the only ones to be blame for it. Wonderful idea for the oppressor class to convinced the oppressed that they are the ones to be blamed for their status in life. The complexity and codification of religious practices and their lack of resources and time made the poor sink even further into guilt.
In short the people of Israel were like an abused wife convinced by her abuser that is her clumsiness in ironing or lack of ability in cooking that makes her responsible for her “just” punishment. And here Jesus, in the feeding of the 5,000, or walking on water or being transformed on the Mount is reminding them that is not God’s will their present misery, and that it is certainly man abusing of his free will. He reminds them of the foundational myth of Israel, the story of Exodus so they can break away from the stupor of years of theological abuse and break free again.
The journey with Jesus, was a like a new journey with a new Moses to a new promised land. One that you engage with the essentials for travel, one in which you know yourself to be homeless in the world and recipient of the hospitality of faith. One in which you know that God multiplies scarcity into abundance. One in which God shares his very self in the midst of the storm reassuring us and calming the elements. It is also a journey with God’s endorsement, like when Moses met God and his face shone, Jesus clothes became dazzling white.
Moses came down with the seeds of Scripture, the Ten Commandments tablets, second edition, while Jesus, Elijah and Moses were talking about Jesus impending passion in Jerusalem. The New Law of this New Moses seems not be a catalogue dos and don’ts, but rather an experience, a sacrificial one to boot. One in which the need for a scapegoating and its consequent mimetic violence will be extinguished. So instead of written law, Jesus brings a law written in our hearts.
There are many differences between Jesus and Mohamed, and I will not even to attempt to name them all, but one that is clear to me is that Mohamed wrote a book -Quran- that he claimed inspired by God to the letter, but Jesus on the other hand lived a life and die on the cross for us. The only instance in which we know of Jesus writing was during the forgiving of the adulteress, when he wrote something on the sand.
The stories of Hebrew Scriptures in the present authoritative list were put together by the so-called Council of Jamnia in 90 after Christ and the stories about Jesus we call the Gospels and the rest of the letters and most of the New Testament were not accepted as authoritative until the Council of Constantinople 381 and 397 with the Council of Carthage a council for the local church of North Africa.
I will not question the faith of the early church, which often did have very few patchy pieces of the new scriptures. Even more we do not know exactly how they were consider in the community. What was important for them and for me is that those scriptures said about the One they loved so much that they did not want to offend him, not because of fear of retribution, but rather for fear of facing in solitude a troubled world.
It reminded the story of the sand mandala, a special creation of Tibetan Buddhism - and I am not going to enter into details about it other than to say that is made with colored sand deposited in a highly stylized form. The story goes that a Japanese tourist after taping the building of one he asked to be able to take home to which the monks smiling agreed, and then he proceeded to shellac the whole thing.
Peter’s response to the fleeting apparition of the Divine was to try to fix in time the experience, codifying it -building tabernacles as in the Feast of Booths- understandable human desire of moving from faith to certitude, specially when face with great challenges. It is no different that the desire in some Anglican corners to go back to the law written in stone and abandon the more fragile, exposed and rather fluid law of grace. It is not surprising that most mega-churches are built on the same principles, because people want the certainty of law to face the monumental cultural changes that Americans and most of the affluent North Atlantic Affluent societies are presently facing. To a world in flux we Christians have no to other choice but to get on the boat until we get to our true home. We have no to other choice but to trust God that our present homelessness in the world can only be faced with the hospitality of faith, that we need to do ministry without bling-bling. We have no other choice that be faithful to a God that can convert two fish and five loaves of bread in food enough for many.
We can shellac the Divine presence to take home to join touristic souvenirs but be certain that you will be worshiping an idol not the true and living God. He is my Son, listen to Him
Friday, July 28, 2006
Fear and Generosity
FOR THE LESSONS FOR THIS SUNDAY (BCP LECTIONARY) http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearB/Pentecost/BProp12.html
Jesus has just fed the multitude with the scarcity of his offering and in the process he has reenacted Exodus. This ritual re-enactment of Exodus retrieves the ancient historical memory, the grand transition from slavery and scarcity to freedom and needlessness [The desert experience was not one of abundance, but of needlessness, they had food and water, they had a purpose and with every day of desert walk another slave-man died and a new freedom was birthed] However, Jews of the first century, specially the am-ha-aretz, people of the earth, found themselves without milk, honey or freedom. The situation of the poor was a desperate one, no wonder Jesus was popular, not only he could heal, but also fed multitudes. The poor in Palestine very well could be wondering what happened with the Lord’s promise? Some seem to have everything and most of the people have barely to eat.
The radical difference between the Exodus promise and the situation of need and oppression of the Israel of the first century has to have an impact on the theological thinking of the day. The cause and effect of Jewish thought would place the burden of the broken promise squarely on the people themselves. If they did not prosper, if they did not have their share of the milk and honey was because they were sinners.
Jesus breaks away from cause and effect and restates the theological question on entirely different premises. He is the new Moses who has come to bring a new Kingdom, a new Promised Land, and invites the multitude to sit in groupings (remaking of the tribes?) while partaking of the messianic banquet, so the feeding has to be seen not as a question of practical expediency (they have nothing to eat and neither we have enough to offer to them and the towns are far away ad it is late) but rather the Jesus response to the theological question of the day, are we the way we are, living as slaves and hungry on the promised land because ourselves or our forefathers sinned? The feeding of all is a response in the negative, all were fed transforming scarcity in needlessness.
There is an interesting phrase in today’s portion “they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened” which was the word used for pharaoh’s heart during the Exodus story Ex 7,13 and following. It confirms Jesus’s intentionality offering the messianic banquet that have just taken place.
Again the Exodus motif continues here, crossing a body of water, the different mediums, the disciples on a boat buffeted by the sudden gales of lake Galilee, Jesus walking on water. Moses parted the waters, so Elijah did, while Jesus walked over it. Both Moses and Elijah have to part the waters first and then walk on the dry water bed. Jesus on the other hand was above that. He not only walks on water but he joins them on the boat and calms the storm. For Jesus water was no obstacle, while for Moses and Elijah (the two other guys on the Mount of Transfiguration) it was: it needed to be pushed aside for them to walk. There is implicit claim to divinity here which becomes explicit in the adoration scene on Matthew in the expanded version of this same episode (Matthew 14,33).
Jesus has just fed the multitude with the scarcity of his offering and in the process he has reenacted Exodus. This ritual re-enactment of Exodus retrieves the ancient historical memory, the grand transition from slavery and scarcity to freedom and needlessness [The desert experience was not one of abundance, but of needlessness, they had food and water, they had a purpose and with every day of desert walk another slave-man died and a new freedom was birthed] However, Jews of the first century, specially the am-ha-aretz, people of the earth, found themselves without milk, honey or freedom. The situation of the poor was a desperate one, no wonder Jesus was popular, not only he could heal, but also fed multitudes. The poor in Palestine very well could be wondering what happened with the Lord’s promise? Some seem to have everything and most of the people have barely to eat.
The radical difference between the Exodus promise and the situation of need and oppression of the Israel of the first century has to have an impact on the theological thinking of the day. The cause and effect of Jewish thought would place the burden of the broken promise squarely on the people themselves. If they did not prosper, if they did not have their share of the milk and honey was because they were sinners.
Jesus breaks away from cause and effect and restates the theological question on entirely different premises. He is the new Moses who has come to bring a new Kingdom, a new Promised Land, and invites the multitude to sit in groupings (remaking of the tribes?) while partaking of the messianic banquet, so the feeding has to be seen not as a question of practical expediency (they have nothing to eat and neither we have enough to offer to them and the towns are far away ad it is late) but rather the Jesus response to the theological question of the day, are we the way we are, living as slaves and hungry on the promised land because ourselves or our forefathers sinned? The feeding of all is a response in the negative, all were fed transforming scarcity in needlessness.
There is an interesting phrase in today’s portion “they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened” which was the word used for pharaoh’s heart during the Exodus story Ex 7,13 and following. It confirms Jesus’s intentionality offering the messianic banquet that have just taken place.
Again the Exodus motif continues here, crossing a body of water, the different mediums, the disciples on a boat buffeted by the sudden gales of lake Galilee, Jesus walking on water. Moses parted the waters, so Elijah did, while Jesus walked over it. Both Moses and Elijah have to part the waters first and then walk on the dry water bed. Jesus on the other hand was above that. He not only walks on water but he joins them on the boat and calms the storm. For Jesus water was no obstacle, while for Moses and Elijah (the two other guys on the Mount of Transfiguration) it was: it needed to be pushed aside for them to walk. There is implicit claim to divinity here which becomes explicit in the adoration scene on Matthew in the expanded version of this same episode (Matthew 14,33).
Saturday, July 22, 2006
ABUNDANCE AND SCARCITY
Mark 6:30-56 Picnic by the lake alson known as the feeding of the 5,000
bible.oremus.org/?passage=Mark+6:30-56&vnum=yes&version=nrsv
-have you se the back of a computer in many places -maze of cables- computer/monitor/printer is a 3 in one -scanner, fax, copier and printer- video camera and microphone, additional portable hard-disk, USB expander, lamps, palm pilot cradle, voice over IP box, internet bridge, not only that I am messy but also a sign of abundance- I can buy all of those things, while most of the world will be lucky to have electricity
-speaking of electricity, no one know how important is something until you have a shortage of it, that goes for everything in life -in Spanish we have a saying - nadie sabe lo que tiene hasta que lo pierde- no one know what one has until one loss it-
How many things depend on the abundance of resources of this country
Look at our health care. I had a tooth ache in the far away island of Malaita in the Solomon Islands, when I went to Kilofi Hospital for being white I was looked after immediately and quite frankly I had such a tooth ache that I did not care. I recoiled at the look of the dental office, not your Park Avenue dentist, I forgot how medical facilities operate in the Developing World, but the pain was too strong for me to be prissy and the dentist was very efficient and provided me for free with the medications I needed and in a few days my pain was gone.
Healthcare has becoming so expensive because I suspect that pharmaceutical-industry generates and finances a constant stream of studies that justifies the increase use of resources, many of them outright useless at best and mortal at worst. Now Americans are told to get rid of the nasty regular bacteria who has lived thousands of years on kitchens. We are told that we now have to be aseptically clean, almost surgically. And I will say nothing of the chemically managed feelings that we are supposed to have a control off via zoloft and prozac and the like.
Feelings, deeper communications of the soul, heart to heart, face to face, within the reach of someone’s aroma, that come about only and more successfully when there is an abundance of wasted unstructured time, are almost impossible these days. People get home drained of energy, work not only pays better than in Melanesia but also suck up our very soul. In the area of communication we have an abundance, I will call obscene, of mediums for it, and yet increasingly we are trapped in a sort of social autism, unable to break out of ourselves and reach to others. Fear mongering in this era of terrorism and war just comes handy to solidify and reinforced the steel door behind which our souls live in terrifying solitude.
Speaking of war, the katyushkas missiles being dropped on Israel by Hezbollah, literally “The Party of God”, are wreaking death and destruction in the very same area where Jesus over 2,000 years ago asked hungry people to recline on the green grass and taking just five loaves and two fish, and acknowledging where all blessings come from, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave it to them and he divided the two fish. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of leftovers of the bread and the fish.
What an irony, the chosen people of God, Israel and the Party of God “Hezbollah”, bombing each other senseless, while the innocent caught in the crossfire are called “unfortunate casualties”. And the setting for so much destruction and death on the Israeli side is where we believe God, acting powerfully as Creator, transformed the scarcity of five loaves of bread and two fish to feed many who were hungry.
Right off the bat, I got to tell you that we are making the world more skeptical when they hear god-speak, and I say we, because specially in the US we have contributed to aggravate and additionally planning to do nothing, it seems, to prevent further deterioration of the situation in the Middle East. So sometimes, let us not be surprised that the world refuses to believe. Here do we have two conflicting views about God or we have the useful manipulation of and by the way blasphemy, of using the name of God, to further a geopolitical agenda? It is hard to separate one form the other, because I think in the historical memory of nations in the area, both politics and religion become undistinguishable.
Who does not know about Exodus? If you bring to mind the Exodus story and read the passage again you will see and find a number of considerable clues that lead me to think of a small scale re-enactment of the exodus story. Crossing of a body of water. God feeding his people -manna and quails then, bread and fish now- the scarcity of it all, the desert place setting, Moses I in the Book of Numbers 27:17 prays to G-d that the wandering people of Israel do not become “like sheep without a shepherd”, Jesus saw them with compassion, because they looked like they could use some direction, some shepherding. The were arranged in groupings like it is described in Exodus 18:25.
Jesus takes the position of a host giving a banquet for his guests.260 The gestures by which Jesus blesses the bread before giving it to the disciples to distribute (v. 41) recall the eucharistic blessing (Mark 14:22), even though the meal itself does not consist of bread and wine. The fact that there were five loaves and the two fish and they amount to seven items should not be overlooked, since the number seven in Judaic tradition stands as the time of God, the Sabbath -remember the disciples went away to rest to a deserted place- was the seventh day of the week, the Jubilee Year, seven year cycles of seven, was also known as the Sabbath of Sabbaths.
The numbers seven and twelve in the narration are not accidental, they were signs posts known by about everybody in Israel that this what was happening was no simple picnic, but it was about God and his people and their legendary journey from the Egypt, land of slavery and oppression to the Promised Land, land of abundance flowing with milk and honey. They were not allowed to keep leftovers in the Exodus story (Exodus 16:21), just what they needed for the day. Jesus on the other hand commands to collect the leftovers from them.
The primary function of the feeding miracle in this section of the Gospel is to demonstrate that the people now have a true shepherd in Jesus. The banquet in the messianic age would repeat the wilderness miracle of yonder.
Land flowing with milk and honey was God’s promise to Israel, to walk the burning sand of the desert, seeking freedom and material wealth. But Jesus audience were probably wondering what had happened with God’s promise. The Temple establishment was willing to explain it away by blaming people for their sins, interiorizing responsibility for their own misfortunes and removing any traces of it from the landowner class, enabling self-aggression through guilt, destroying in their historical memory the liberation implied in Exodus.
For twenty three years I have worked more that my fair share, and me too like the disciples, sometimes did not even have time to eat. We in clericoland have this thing called a sabbatical year every seven and if I succeed raising the funds I will be on my way to Amsterdam, to study at Vrije Universitet. This will be my first sabbatical in twenty three years of ordained ministry. Not a day goes by in which I do not have doubts about the whole idea, or where I prefer to stay home overblowing my own importance for the development of this congregation or I find reason with the kitchen project to stay put. I spend the whole of my seminary education looking after two parishes on the weekends and when I went to Canada I worked as associated priest in two parishes as well. But everyday, at the end of the day, when I feel really tired, tired from within, I realize that I have to do this. So talk to people who are tired about rest and will tell you a story.
Jesus re-enacting the Exodus myth by the Sea of Galilee, indeed a make-believe Red Sea, is reclaiming that foundational story of Israel and resetting it on a context of utopia, hope begetting new time, new Sabbath of rest for the exhausted laborers of Israel, for those whose milk and honey was stolen by the people in charge and who now collaborate with the Roman Empire forcing the poor, who eat from day to day, to pay high taxes to a foreign power that oppress and shames them. No wonder the disciples could not eat! No wondwer the multitudes followed him everywhere he went!
Jesus’s movement was in its peak of popularity. The whole story here is one of abundance and hope. However, lest we forget, when Jesus dies on a cross, he dies alone.
Seven were the years of famine with which God castigated Egypt and seven were the years of abundance
bible.oremus.org/?passage=Mark+6:30-56&vnum=yes&version=nrsv
-have you se the back of a computer in many places -maze of cables- computer/monitor/printer is a 3 in one -scanner, fax, copier and printer- video camera and microphone, additional portable hard-disk, USB expander, lamps, palm pilot cradle, voice over IP box, internet bridge, not only that I am messy but also a sign of abundance- I can buy all of those things, while most of the world will be lucky to have electricity
-speaking of electricity, no one know how important is something until you have a shortage of it, that goes for everything in life -in Spanish we have a saying - nadie sabe lo que tiene hasta que lo pierde- no one know what one has until one loss it-
How many things depend on the abundance of resources of this country
Look at our health care. I had a tooth ache in the far away island of Malaita in the Solomon Islands, when I went to Kilofi Hospital for being white I was looked after immediately and quite frankly I had such a tooth ache that I did not care. I recoiled at the look of the dental office, not your Park Avenue dentist, I forgot how medical facilities operate in the Developing World, but the pain was too strong for me to be prissy and the dentist was very efficient and provided me for free with the medications I needed and in a few days my pain was gone.
Healthcare has becoming so expensive because I suspect that pharmaceutical-industry generates and finances a constant stream of studies that justifies the increase use of resources, many of them outright useless at best and mortal at worst. Now Americans are told to get rid of the nasty regular bacteria who has lived thousands of years on kitchens. We are told that we now have to be aseptically clean, almost surgically. And I will say nothing of the chemically managed feelings that we are supposed to have a control off via zoloft and prozac and the like.
Feelings, deeper communications of the soul, heart to heart, face to face, within the reach of someone’s aroma, that come about only and more successfully when there is an abundance of wasted unstructured time, are almost impossible these days. People get home drained of energy, work not only pays better than in Melanesia but also suck up our very soul. In the area of communication we have an abundance, I will call obscene, of mediums for it, and yet increasingly we are trapped in a sort of social autism, unable to break out of ourselves and reach to others. Fear mongering in this era of terrorism and war just comes handy to solidify and reinforced the steel door behind which our souls live in terrifying solitude.
Speaking of war, the katyushkas missiles being dropped on Israel by Hezbollah, literally “The Party of God”, are wreaking death and destruction in the very same area where Jesus over 2,000 years ago asked hungry people to recline on the green grass and taking just five loaves and two fish, and acknowledging where all blessings come from, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave it to them and he divided the two fish. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of leftovers of the bread and the fish.
What an irony, the chosen people of God, Israel and the Party of God “Hezbollah”, bombing each other senseless, while the innocent caught in the crossfire are called “unfortunate casualties”. And the setting for so much destruction and death on the Israeli side is where we believe God, acting powerfully as Creator, transformed the scarcity of five loaves of bread and two fish to feed many who were hungry.
Right off the bat, I got to tell you that we are making the world more skeptical when they hear god-speak, and I say we, because specially in the US we have contributed to aggravate and additionally planning to do nothing, it seems, to prevent further deterioration of the situation in the Middle East. So sometimes, let us not be surprised that the world refuses to believe. Here do we have two conflicting views about God or we have the useful manipulation of and by the way blasphemy, of using the name of God, to further a geopolitical agenda? It is hard to separate one form the other, because I think in the historical memory of nations in the area, both politics and religion become undistinguishable.
Who does not know about Exodus? If you bring to mind the Exodus story and read the passage again you will see and find a number of considerable clues that lead me to think of a small scale re-enactment of the exodus story. Crossing of a body of water. God feeding his people -manna and quails then, bread and fish now- the scarcity of it all, the desert place setting, Moses I in the Book of Numbers 27:17 prays to G-d that the wandering people of Israel do not become “like sheep without a shepherd”, Jesus saw them with compassion, because they looked like they could use some direction, some shepherding. The were arranged in groupings like it is described in Exodus 18:25.
Jesus takes the position of a host giving a banquet for his guests.260 The gestures by which Jesus blesses the bread before giving it to the disciples to distribute (v. 41) recall the eucharistic blessing (Mark 14:22), even though the meal itself does not consist of bread and wine. The fact that there were five loaves and the two fish and they amount to seven items should not be overlooked, since the number seven in Judaic tradition stands as the time of God, the Sabbath -remember the disciples went away to rest to a deserted place- was the seventh day of the week, the Jubilee Year, seven year cycles of seven, was also known as the Sabbath of Sabbaths.
The numbers seven and twelve in the narration are not accidental, they were signs posts known by about everybody in Israel that this what was happening was no simple picnic, but it was about God and his people and their legendary journey from the Egypt, land of slavery and oppression to the Promised Land, land of abundance flowing with milk and honey. They were not allowed to keep leftovers in the Exodus story (Exodus 16:21), just what they needed for the day. Jesus on the other hand commands to collect the leftovers from them.
The primary function of the feeding miracle in this section of the Gospel is to demonstrate that the people now have a true shepherd in Jesus. The banquet in the messianic age would repeat the wilderness miracle of yonder.
Land flowing with milk and honey was God’s promise to Israel, to walk the burning sand of the desert, seeking freedom and material wealth. But Jesus audience were probably wondering what had happened with God’s promise. The Temple establishment was willing to explain it away by blaming people for their sins, interiorizing responsibility for their own misfortunes and removing any traces of it from the landowner class, enabling self-aggression through guilt, destroying in their historical memory the liberation implied in Exodus.
For twenty three years I have worked more that my fair share, and me too like the disciples, sometimes did not even have time to eat. We in clericoland have this thing called a sabbatical year every seven and if I succeed raising the funds I will be on my way to Amsterdam, to study at Vrije Universitet. This will be my first sabbatical in twenty three years of ordained ministry. Not a day goes by in which I do not have doubts about the whole idea, or where I prefer to stay home overblowing my own importance for the development of this congregation or I find reason with the kitchen project to stay put. I spend the whole of my seminary education looking after two parishes on the weekends and when I went to Canada I worked as associated priest in two parishes as well. But everyday, at the end of the day, when I feel really tired, tired from within, I realize that I have to do this. So talk to people who are tired about rest and will tell you a story.
Jesus re-enacting the Exodus myth by the Sea of Galilee, indeed a make-believe Red Sea, is reclaiming that foundational story of Israel and resetting it on a context of utopia, hope begetting new time, new Sabbath of rest for the exhausted laborers of Israel, for those whose milk and honey was stolen by the people in charge and who now collaborate with the Roman Empire forcing the poor, who eat from day to day, to pay high taxes to a foreign power that oppress and shames them. No wonder the disciples could not eat! No wondwer the multitudes followed him everywhere he went!
Jesus’s movement was in its peak of popularity. The whole story here is one of abundance and hope. However, lest we forget, when Jesus dies on a cross, he dies alone.
Seven were the years of famine with which God castigated Egypt and seven were the years of abundance
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Jesus Homelessness and Faith Hospitality
Mark 6:6-13
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mark%206:6b-13&version=31
The Evangelical Seminary of Matanzas in Cuba is my alma mater, this is sixty year old foundation of the Methodists, Episcopal and Presbyterian churches in Cuba. At "SET" as we called, is where I went to do my first four years of theological education. As part of our training students were in charge of organizing the daily services at the strikingly beautiful Chapel of the Resurrection, part of the Episcopal Church contribution to the seminary in 1955.
Seminarians had liberty to experiment with services at the chapel, since we were all from different denominations, there was no official liturgy. Some of us used that liberty, quite liberally at times. One of the times when iwasas my turn to organize the service. I closed the doors of the chapel, gathered the students on the steps, it was February which meant that it was chilly, grey and windy. I forbade the use of hymnals or any other book including the bible. I crossed to pieces of fallen branches on the floor in front of us and told the students that the III World War has just ended fifty years ago and we were a very small group of Christians gathering for worship, no books survived the war and church buildings were badly damaged and the institutional church has ceased to operate.
So for worship we had only our memories to rely on, there was no pastoral leadership and therefore the service will be as we decided it to be. Someone quoted scripture and talk about it, someone ask to pray for the world and we sang a couple of stanzas of hymns that we all could remember and then we disbanded.
I asked afterwards, as it was the custom, for an evaluation of the experience. The responses were mixed as it was to be expected. Most of the people felt uncomfortable because of the weather, and somewhat depressed, nevertheless they thought that the experience was a valid one. Since Christianity should not depend on the shelter of venerable and fine buildings or the existence of an institutional cast of theologians to lead it, or any particular structure for ancient and appreciated as it may be. It was somewhat odd, because the experience took place in the bosom of a seminary that as an institution exist to educate and form institutional agents of the institutional church.
I have never forgotten the experience, and I do belong happily to a tradition -the Anglican tradition- that is full of stuff. Tunics more than one and in many colors and shapes, thuribles, incenses, bells, musicians, and fine and well sheltered buildings. People tell me all the time that they are precisely attracted to the "stuff" of the Anglican worship, performed with dignity and good taste.
However, no matter how much the "incidentals" and "trappings" of my visually obsessed mind are important to me, I got to admit that in order to be church we need just our faith. Just like in my Cuban seminary, perhaps not triumphant, nor joyous and perhaps somewhat depressed, we needed just to believe. Neither buildings, or institutions or budgets or even scripture. Just our faith. The Church in Cuba was a witness to that.
There was an important lesson in that "service", one in which we were willing to relinquish the fantasy of control and share in Jesus deep homelessness. Not only the Redeemer of the World, the son of the living God, has willingly and freely subject himself to the limitations of time, space and human evil for our love sake, but He who had created all things did not have a place where to lay his head. Jesus and those who followed him were homeless by choice.
In the passage last Sunday, we saw another dimension and perhaps a deeper sense of Jesus homelessness. The people who saw him grow from a child to a man, the people who thought that knew Jesus well, his customer base, his village friends and foes, his extended family and his own close family have just shamed him in public. They have disowned Him, have question his legitimacy, have called him back to his old "metier", the one that he was only good for. So He has not just no place to lay his head on, but his has no home, nor village, nor family and certainly no job to go back to. His homelessness has gone deeper, he is now more than ever, freely albeit painfully, in the hands of the stranger who wishes to offer him hospitality. In any way, he is also free, no affecting present and prospective customers, nor plying a prophetic trade of divination by which he could enrich family and friends, having no "customers" either by building or religious, he can say whatever He wants.
He knows that the longing for being in control has a darker and sinister side, the side of violence. The fantasy of being in control fuels every kind of pathological violence because we deep down know how vulnerable and fallible we all are, the pressure is then to keep turning up the intensity of language and extremism of action to fill the void. Said Archbishop Rowan Williams addressing just recently the Synod of the Church of England in the wake of the Bombay bombings and the first anniversary of the London Subway bombings and he continues:
Serving God by organizing slaughter and suicide and random killings in order to promote God's honor or his justice makes it a god that can not be trusted. God is too weak to look after his own honor and we are the strong ones who must step in to help him. Such is the underlying blasphemy at work. End of quote.
Only by deepening his own homelessness and encouraging his disciples to follow suit, sending them without bag, nor money, a staff and the clothes on their backs and relying absolutely on the hospitality of strangers, embracing their powerlessness is for Jesus the way, the only way, to bring honor to God and his Good News because -there is no prophet without honor except in his hometown, among his kinfolk and his family- The power to expel sinister lurking demons of falsehood and pretense is by releasing the power of the mirage over our visually controlled perceptions.
Our God indeed is a God of paradox, whose power is found in powerlessness, whose honor is promoted by our relinquishing and releasing of any and all proprietary claims to his grace and love. Whose grace abounds where the sin is greater, whose light can not be put out by the thickest darkness, who has overcome death by dying on a cross, whose arms were open up in an embrace of the whole world by having them nailed to the cross by the Roman army. Yes it is absurd, absurd by the ways of the world, but in that absurdity I do believe, and I invite you to believe as well.
I do not want to sale to you religious cocaine by telling you that everything will be alright if you join the way of the cross. I am not going to invite you to defend GodÂ’s honor because he does that by delivering himself powerless to the world. I am not even, at least not today, give you an intellectually suitable and well reasoned proposition and exposition of the Christian message. I am just going to ask you to embrace that you all along knew just too well, namely that you and I, are vulnerable and fallible and that our area of control is simply minuscule.
I am going to ask you to accompany Jesus in his homelessness, both personally and as a community of faith. And to trust that there will be always people in the world, no matter how horrible it gets (and it is not getting any prettier lately) willing to offer Jesus and his message hospitality by believing that he has honor in this his adopted family and that we need nothing but our faith to be part of that family who has been given power exorcisehigh to exorcize the demons of this world, the demons of death, fanaticism, war and greed.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mark%206:6b-13&version=31
The Evangelical Seminary of Matanzas in Cuba is my alma mater, this is sixty year old foundation of the Methodists, Episcopal and Presbyterian churches in Cuba. At "SET" as we called, is where I went to do my first four years of theological education. As part of our training students were in charge of organizing the daily services at the strikingly beautiful Chapel of the Resurrection, part of the Episcopal Church contribution to the seminary in 1955.
Seminarians had liberty to experiment with services at the chapel, since we were all from different denominations, there was no official liturgy. Some of us used that liberty, quite liberally at times. One of the times when iwasas my turn to organize the service. I closed the doors of the chapel, gathered the students on the steps, it was February which meant that it was chilly, grey and windy. I forbade the use of hymnals or any other book including the bible. I crossed to pieces of fallen branches on the floor in front of us and told the students that the III World War has just ended fifty years ago and we were a very small group of Christians gathering for worship, no books survived the war and church buildings were badly damaged and the institutional church has ceased to operate.
So for worship we had only our memories to rely on, there was no pastoral leadership and therefore the service will be as we decided it to be. Someone quoted scripture and talk about it, someone ask to pray for the world and we sang a couple of stanzas of hymns that we all could remember and then we disbanded.
I asked afterwards, as it was the custom, for an evaluation of the experience. The responses were mixed as it was to be expected. Most of the people felt uncomfortable because of the weather, and somewhat depressed, nevertheless they thought that the experience was a valid one. Since Christianity should not depend on the shelter of venerable and fine buildings or the existence of an institutional cast of theologians to lead it, or any particular structure for ancient and appreciated as it may be. It was somewhat odd, because the experience took place in the bosom of a seminary that as an institution exist to educate and form institutional agents of the institutional church.
I have never forgotten the experience, and I do belong happily to a tradition -the Anglican tradition- that is full of stuff. Tunics more than one and in many colors and shapes, thuribles, incenses, bells, musicians, and fine and well sheltered buildings. People tell me all the time that they are precisely attracted to the "stuff" of the Anglican worship, performed with dignity and good taste.
However, no matter how much the "incidentals" and "trappings" of my visually obsessed mind are important to me, I got to admit that in order to be church we need just our faith. Just like in my Cuban seminary, perhaps not triumphant, nor joyous and perhaps somewhat depressed, we needed just to believe. Neither buildings, or institutions or budgets or even scripture. Just our faith. The Church in Cuba was a witness to that.
There was an important lesson in that "service", one in which we were willing to relinquish the fantasy of control and share in Jesus deep homelessness. Not only the Redeemer of the World, the son of the living God, has willingly and freely subject himself to the limitations of time, space and human evil for our love sake, but He who had created all things did not have a place where to lay his head. Jesus and those who followed him were homeless by choice.
In the passage last Sunday, we saw another dimension and perhaps a deeper sense of Jesus homelessness. The people who saw him grow from a child to a man, the people who thought that knew Jesus well, his customer base, his village friends and foes, his extended family and his own close family have just shamed him in public. They have disowned Him, have question his legitimacy, have called him back to his old "metier", the one that he was only good for. So He has not just no place to lay his head on, but his has no home, nor village, nor family and certainly no job to go back to. His homelessness has gone deeper, he is now more than ever, freely albeit painfully, in the hands of the stranger who wishes to offer him hospitality. In any way, he is also free, no affecting present and prospective customers, nor plying a prophetic trade of divination by which he could enrich family and friends, having no "customers" either by building or religious, he can say whatever He wants.
He knows that the longing for being in control has a darker and sinister side, the side of violence. The fantasy of being in control fuels every kind of pathological violence because we deep down know how vulnerable and fallible we all are, the pressure is then to keep turning up the intensity of language and extremism of action to fill the void. Said Archbishop Rowan Williams addressing just recently the Synod of the Church of England in the wake of the Bombay bombings and the first anniversary of the London Subway bombings and he continues:
Serving God by organizing slaughter and suicide and random killings in order to promote God's honor or his justice makes it a god that can not be trusted. God is too weak to look after his own honor and we are the strong ones who must step in to help him. Such is the underlying blasphemy at work. End of quote.
Only by deepening his own homelessness and encouraging his disciples to follow suit, sending them without bag, nor money, a staff and the clothes on their backs and relying absolutely on the hospitality of strangers, embracing their powerlessness is for Jesus the way, the only way, to bring honor to God and his Good News because -there is no prophet without honor except in his hometown, among his kinfolk and his family- The power to expel sinister lurking demons of falsehood and pretense is by releasing the power of the mirage over our visually controlled perceptions.
Our God indeed is a God of paradox, whose power is found in powerlessness, whose honor is promoted by our relinquishing and releasing of any and all proprietary claims to his grace and love. Whose grace abounds where the sin is greater, whose light can not be put out by the thickest darkness, who has overcome death by dying on a cross, whose arms were open up in an embrace of the whole world by having them nailed to the cross by the Roman army. Yes it is absurd, absurd by the ways of the world, but in that absurdity I do believe, and I invite you to believe as well.
I do not want to sale to you religious cocaine by telling you that everything will be alright if you join the way of the cross. I am not going to invite you to defend GodÂ’s honor because he does that by delivering himself powerless to the world. I am not even, at least not today, give you an intellectually suitable and well reasoned proposition and exposition of the Christian message. I am just going to ask you to embrace that you all along knew just too well, namely that you and I, are vulnerable and fallible and that our area of control is simply minuscule.
I am going to ask you to accompany Jesus in his homelessness, both personally and as a community of faith. And to trust that there will be always people in the world, no matter how horrible it gets (and it is not getting any prettier lately) willing to offer Jesus and his message hospitality by believing that he has honor in this his adopted family and that we need nothing but our faith to be part of that family who has been given power exorcisehigh to exorcize the demons of this world, the demons of death, fanaticism, war and greed.
Friday, July 07, 2006
July 9/2006 Shame in your own town and no frills mission
Mark 6:1-13 http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=19288918
The people were not questioning neither Jesus’s wisdom or his deeds of power, the question for them was authenticity, was this from God or from whom? How this transformation took place, how Jesus became a rabbi/scribe, who was his teacher? Where did he go to study?. He grew up with the staple local synagogue preaching and study of Torah, which everyone else in town got, so from where he got the guts to talk so incredibly daring. In a society where you have to be a pupil for a long time before going solo in any profession we know nothing of Jesus’s teachers. Where does the power [deeds] and wisdom [teaching] of this man, they knew to have a “proper place” in their village, comes from, where and who provided him with this new honor of teacher, beyond the honor he was entitled and born for like building houses or tables?
In order to understand the outrage of Jesus’s fellow villagers is important we take a look at the issue of shame and honor in 1rst Century Palestine:
"Honor" is a positive social value. It is the status which a person claims, in combination with the social group's affirmation of that claim. Conversely, for a person to make a claim of honor and then be rebuffed by the community results in the individual being humiliated, labeled as ridiculous or contemptuous, and treated with appropriate disdain. In other words, honor is not simple self-esteem or pride; it is a status-claim which is affirmed by the community. It is tied to the symbols of power, sexual status, gender, and religion. Consequently, it is a social, rather than a psychological, value. How Honorable! How Shameful! A Cultural Analysis of Matthew's Makarisms and Reproaches K. C. HANSON Fortress Press
Conversely, Jesus has not paid his dues in town to lay claim to an honor higher that his social status of builder could allow him to. And as consequence his fellow villagers rebuffed him and by doing so, remind him of his place in town: You are a menial worker (tekton, carpenter), a bastard (Son of Mary) and you should be here helping your large family. This is where you belong.
Any one so shamed, needed through verbal dueling to re-establish his honor or face to the consequences of disrepute. So Jesus retort is very important in this context.
“Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” It looks he was quoting Scripture, but he was not, we do not know the source of the quote, which by the way has gone into mainstream western culture. My guess is that he was quoting a saying, a piece of practical wisdom that flourishes in the heart, in the crumbling “old quarter” of any culture, refined through many years of trial and error, of accumulated experience.
His rebuttal deprives his hometown villagers, his kinsmen and his own close family of any claim to his newly acquired honor. Dominic Crossan comes to our help to explain:
If Jesus was a well-known magician, healer, or miracle-worker, first, his immediate family, and, next, his village, would expect to benefit from and partake in the handling of that fame and those gifts. Any Mediterranean peasant would expect an expanding ripple of patronage-clientage to go out from Jesus, through his family and his village, to the outside world. But what Jesus did, in turning his back on Nazareth and on his family, was repudiate such brokerage, and that, rather than belief or disbelief, was the heart of the problem.
Then if we are to understand that Jesus ministry of both teaching and healing is not based on the patronage-clientage dynamic, nor his honor was to bring wealth to his hometown or family. One can understand then what follows with his no-frill mission.
Jesus response to this challenge to his honor is go on doing mission. Then he went about among the villages teaching, he entrust the disciples with the two jobs that have caused scandal among his neighbors in the village, his relatives and his family they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. 13They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them. And they were to do that, not by hoarding the gifts with they were empowered but by relaying entirely on people’s hospitality. Total reliance on the other, no bread, no bag, no money. One tunic, a par of sandals and a staff that was the only things permitted.
He was not speaking just for his neighbor, his relatives and immediate family but he was setting up a foundational mode in which his ministry and the ministry of the disciples and by extension the ministry of the church was to operate.
Healing and teaching were part and parcel of ministry, not just repenting but also restoring wholeness. Service and Word were not to be competing partners but one and the same part of Christian ministry. The second point I want to make is that ministry was not a commodity that culture could trade following the laws of the marketplace.
What are the implications, if any, of this passage for this community as it tries to both serve and minister to Astoria, New York City in the
The people were not questioning neither Jesus’s wisdom or his deeds of power, the question for them was authenticity, was this from God or from whom? How this transformation took place, how Jesus became a rabbi/scribe, who was his teacher? Where did he go to study?. He grew up with the staple local synagogue preaching and study of Torah, which everyone else in town got, so from where he got the guts to talk so incredibly daring. In a society where you have to be a pupil for a long time before going solo in any profession we know nothing of Jesus’s teachers. Where does the power [deeds] and wisdom [teaching] of this man, they knew to have a “proper place” in their village, comes from, where and who provided him with this new honor of teacher, beyond the honor he was entitled and born for like building houses or tables?
In order to understand the outrage of Jesus’s fellow villagers is important we take a look at the issue of shame and honor in 1rst Century Palestine:
"Honor" is a positive social value. It is the status which a person claims, in combination with the social group's affirmation of that claim. Conversely, for a person to make a claim of honor and then be rebuffed by the community results in the individual being humiliated, labeled as ridiculous or contemptuous, and treated with appropriate disdain. In other words, honor is not simple self-esteem or pride; it is a status-claim which is affirmed by the community. It is tied to the symbols of power, sexual status, gender, and religion. Consequently, it is a social, rather than a psychological, value. How Honorable! How Shameful! A Cultural Analysis of Matthew's Makarisms and Reproaches K. C. HANSON Fortress Press
Conversely, Jesus has not paid his dues in town to lay claim to an honor higher that his social status of builder could allow him to. And as consequence his fellow villagers rebuffed him and by doing so, remind him of his place in town: You are a menial worker (tekton, carpenter), a bastard (Son of Mary) and you should be here helping your large family. This is where you belong.
Any one so shamed, needed through verbal dueling to re-establish his honor or face to the consequences of disrepute. So Jesus retort is very important in this context.
“Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” It looks he was quoting Scripture, but he was not, we do not know the source of the quote, which by the way has gone into mainstream western culture. My guess is that he was quoting a saying, a piece of practical wisdom that flourishes in the heart, in the crumbling “old quarter” of any culture, refined through many years of trial and error, of accumulated experience.
His rebuttal deprives his hometown villagers, his kinsmen and his own close family of any claim to his newly acquired honor. Dominic Crossan comes to our help to explain:
If Jesus was a well-known magician, healer, or miracle-worker, first, his immediate family, and, next, his village, would expect to benefit from and partake in the handling of that fame and those gifts. Any Mediterranean peasant would expect an expanding ripple of patronage-clientage to go out from Jesus, through his family and his village, to the outside world. But what Jesus did, in turning his back on Nazareth and on his family, was repudiate such brokerage, and that, rather than belief or disbelief, was the heart of the problem.
Then if we are to understand that Jesus ministry of both teaching and healing is not based on the patronage-clientage dynamic, nor his honor was to bring wealth to his hometown or family. One can understand then what follows with his no-frill mission.
Jesus response to this challenge to his honor is go on doing mission. Then he went about among the villages teaching, he entrust the disciples with the two jobs that have caused scandal among his neighbors in the village, his relatives and his family they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. 13They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them. And they were to do that, not by hoarding the gifts with they were empowered but by relaying entirely on people’s hospitality. Total reliance on the other, no bread, no bag, no money. One tunic, a par of sandals and a staff that was the only things permitted.
He was not speaking just for his neighbor, his relatives and immediate family but he was setting up a foundational mode in which his ministry and the ministry of the disciples and by extension the ministry of the church was to operate.
Healing and teaching were part and parcel of ministry, not just repenting but also restoring wholeness. Service and Word were not to be competing partners but one and the same part of Christian ministry. The second point I want to make is that ministry was not a commodity that culture could trade following the laws of the marketplace.
What are the implications, if any, of this passage for this community as it tries to both serve and minister to Astoria, New York City in the
Monday, July 03, 2006
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Working on the sermon for Sunday and I have found such a treasure trove of material that I am some what overwhelmed.
The double-healing story of the daughter of Jairus and the woman with the issue of blood (Mark 5:21-43) seems to connect through the number 12, diverging or converging around that central axle.
The fact that the girl is 12 years of age and the woman have suffered for 12 years her disease, make me think that is not simple coincidence, is it that the 12 stands for the people of Israel? the 12 Tribes? The people from whom the woman was excluded due her particular sickness and the people that the girl was about to depart?.
Jairus, leader of the synagogue instersects his story of grace and healing with an equal story of an excluded member of it?
The woman ostracised as she was risks everything to touch Jesus and Jairus risks his reputation to seek Jesus healing touch (lay your hands on her)
The double-healing story of the daughter of Jairus and the woman with the issue of blood (Mark 5:21-43) seems to connect through the number 12, diverging or converging around that central axle.
The fact that the girl is 12 years of age and the woman have suffered for 12 years her disease, make me think that is not simple coincidence, is it that the 12 stands for the people of Israel? the 12 Tribes? The people from whom the woman was excluded due her particular sickness and the people that the girl was about to depart?.
Jairus, leader of the synagogue instersects his story of grace and healing with an equal story of an excluded member of it?
The woman ostracised as she was risks everything to touch Jesus and Jairus risks his reputation to seek Jesus healing touch (lay your hands on her)
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