We "Whities" seized dominance with vigor, vengeance, veracity
We consumed everything within our reaches—and more.
We—voraciously and stingily— gobbled up
all land
all healthcare
all money
all goodly resources
all power—and made it male
At first our status gave us
pride, joy, glory
Then denial, ignorance, lassitude.
Now we are dying
in droves,
droves.
The Beauty of the Earth
dims
blurs
dwindles.
We are quick to say wild animals—some human—have invaded,
BUT
It is we—we—who have invaded their living space. We. Us.
We are scared to death
ashen.
On knees we pray, and pray, with all that makes quiver our minds.
There is only one solution—one.
Forgiveness?
Too slippy slippery
No, we must actually love our neighbors as ourselves.
This cannot be lame lip service, a nod to Biblical aspirations.
NO.
It must run deep into the veins of our heart.
We must get to know, not just love, our neighbors.
Known and unknown,
always the one commandment.
Bidden or not, neighbors are here.
Moses legislated the politics
Jesus summarized the vision
Paul made it unconditional
Parental figures taught the young
repeatedly taught and told and taught
the only one—just one behavior
crucial
necessary
indispensable
SHARE.
Showing posts with label Paul. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul. Show all posts
Sunday, October 25, 2020
2020.10.25 Scared Sinless
Sunday, April 26, 2020
2020.04.26 Up, Down, and All Around
As a child, my eyes were trained upward, peering through the jagged line of city skyscrapers, trying to get a glimpse of God on high. I saw many clouds and sun and rain. As an adult, I look downward for glimpses of God in my own heart, in the faces and actions of people on earth. I see smiles, and kindness, and tears—signs of what Jesus called the Kingdom of God, the dear truth of a holy society envisioned here on earth.
For centuries many have prayed: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Do we expect that all this will happen without our help?
According to Vida D. Scudder in her book, Social Teachings of the Christian Year. Lectures Delivered at the Cambridge Conference, 1918, republished in 2015, the appointed Scriptures in Eastertide “keep us strictly to earth, at her homeliest and most difficult. The Risen Lord with the marks of His Passion on Him, moves among His own in old scenes, in the familiar ways. As they tread dusty roads, as they eat their suppers, as they ply their trades; in rooms where they were wont to gather, or by the lake whose waters have known the tread of His holy Feet, suddenly He is with them.”
Suddenly, someone verifiably dead appears—not in a dream but in a vision, earthbound in a sensory way and often with a life-changing message. Some of us have had such visionary experiences of someone to whom we’ve been very close. These are mostly personal and private. We are afraid we’re crazy, so we don’t tell anyone. But a child will always tell. A child I knew once announced: “Daddy called today.” Daddy was dead. Mommy argued truth, but the most she could get from the child was an agreement that she would not to tell anyone else. Such things just do not fit into rational boxes. Jesus’s followers were just as blown away as we are.
Still, let’s remember that the very first person to “tell” about such a strong vision had never seen Jesus alive, but only after he was dead in a vision with a message to TELL the world. That person was Paul, persecutor-in-chief of Christians. He was so radically converted by this vision that, once he digested what had happened to him, he never shut up. So we ought never dare dismiss such an experience as “just a vision.” The child knew the sound of Daddy’s voice and heard it through the phone—so strong was the sensory memory backed up by the truth of Daddy’s love still in her heart. This was true for the gospel writers—and for us as well.
What’s odd is that these extraordinary spiritual experiences happened in mundane ways and were nothing new. As Scudder puts it, Jesus was “still bent on training his followers to create the Beloved Community.”
This Lord/Christ—alive, dead, resurrected—was/is consistent and insistent. With few exceptions, this Jesus addressed them when they were gathered in a group.
Today we are the group. Some have interpreted these appearance visions to include instructions to organize the Church to be the Kingdom. Scudder warns, with wry humor that “there is scant evidence of this in the Bible and the idea of the Kingdom is belittled when confined to the partial and imperfect expression in the Church visible here below. The Church is doubtless the natural, the appointed instrument of the Kingdom, but it would take an inveterate optimism to identify the two.”
This vision, this message, this God, was to be proclaimed up and down and all around, all at once, and not restricted to any one religion, including Christianity.
I find this limitless spirituality helpful today when we are all of us together yet trapped in solitary confinement because of a lethal virus sweeping the globe. We are caught in a paradox we cannot, and are not supposed to unravel: the more alone we are the more together we become.
Can anything good come out of this crisis? I believe that a cultural shift of massive proportions will occur to move us from global selfie-ism to a god’s-eye-view perspective—up and down and all around— in every major institution: arts, business and commerce, religion, politics, science, medicine, education, social organization.
Why so? Because we have lived with solitary confinement; we have lived surrounded by death; we have lived in the throes of collective angst and hope, death-in-life. And we will grieve and live to begin anew in a catastrophically changed and strengthened world. Oh yes, we will live with the cruel bruises of this pandemic on our souls and bodies, and we will write new bibles, work to love and heal our Earth, tell old and new stories, sing new songs, never forget.
All changed, changed utterly
A terrible beauty is born.
-W. B. Yeats
For centuries many have prayed: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Do we expect that all this will happen without our help?
According to Vida D. Scudder in her book, Social Teachings of the Christian Year. Lectures Delivered at the Cambridge Conference, 1918, republished in 2015, the appointed Scriptures in Eastertide “keep us strictly to earth, at her homeliest and most difficult. The Risen Lord with the marks of His Passion on Him, moves among His own in old scenes, in the familiar ways. As they tread dusty roads, as they eat their suppers, as they ply their trades; in rooms where they were wont to gather, or by the lake whose waters have known the tread of His holy Feet, suddenly He is with them.”
Suddenly, someone verifiably dead appears—not in a dream but in a vision, earthbound in a sensory way and often with a life-changing message. Some of us have had such visionary experiences of someone to whom we’ve been very close. These are mostly personal and private. We are afraid we’re crazy, so we don’t tell anyone. But a child will always tell. A child I knew once announced: “Daddy called today.” Daddy was dead. Mommy argued truth, but the most she could get from the child was an agreement that she would not to tell anyone else. Such things just do not fit into rational boxes. Jesus’s followers were just as blown away as we are.
Still, let’s remember that the very first person to “tell” about such a strong vision had never seen Jesus alive, but only after he was dead in a vision with a message to TELL the world. That person was Paul, persecutor-in-chief of Christians. He was so radically converted by this vision that, once he digested what had happened to him, he never shut up. So we ought never dare dismiss such an experience as “just a vision.” The child knew the sound of Daddy’s voice and heard it through the phone—so strong was the sensory memory backed up by the truth of Daddy’s love still in her heart. This was true for the gospel writers—and for us as well.
What’s odd is that these extraordinary spiritual experiences happened in mundane ways and were nothing new. As Scudder puts it, Jesus was “still bent on training his followers to create the Beloved Community.”
This Lord/Christ—alive, dead, resurrected—was/is consistent and insistent. With few exceptions, this Jesus addressed them when they were gathered in a group.
Today we are the group. Some have interpreted these appearance visions to include instructions to organize the Church to be the Kingdom. Scudder warns, with wry humor that “there is scant evidence of this in the Bible and the idea of the Kingdom is belittled when confined to the partial and imperfect expression in the Church visible here below. The Church is doubtless the natural, the appointed instrument of the Kingdom, but it would take an inveterate optimism to identify the two.”
This vision, this message, this God, was to be proclaimed up and down and all around, all at once, and not restricted to any one religion, including Christianity.
I find this limitless spirituality helpful today when we are all of us together yet trapped in solitary confinement because of a lethal virus sweeping the globe. We are caught in a paradox we cannot, and are not supposed to unravel: the more alone we are the more together we become.
Can anything good come out of this crisis? I believe that a cultural shift of massive proportions will occur to move us from global selfie-ism to a god’s-eye-view perspective—up and down and all around— in every major institution: arts, business and commerce, religion, politics, science, medicine, education, social organization.
Why so? Because we have lived with solitary confinement; we have lived surrounded by death; we have lived in the throes of collective angst and hope, death-in-life. And we will grieve and live to begin anew in a catastrophically changed and strengthened world. Oh yes, we will live with the cruel bruises of this pandemic on our souls and bodies, and we will write new bibles, work to love and heal our Earth, tell old and new stories, sing new songs, never forget.
All changed, changed utterly
A terrible beauty is born.
-W. B. Yeats
Sunday, February 17, 2019
2019.02.17 Valentinus and Me
Who's ever heard of Valentinus? Well, he’s not the saint who invented Valentine’s Day, alas. He’s not very in-the-box famous at all. Which makes him all the more mysteriously intriguing, if not infamous to me— mostly because his gnostic point of view did not win the day, nor the election as Bishop of Rome. Check it out, he’s not iconically compelling either.
Valentinus was a poet and visionary, born in Egypt about 100 CE. His writings were sequestered in a cave with other ancient Christian and gnostic scrolls in an Egyptian town called Nag Hammadi. By 1945, scholars were flipping and buzzing about the Nag Hammadi discovery and all the sacred texts found there, Valentinus’s among them—a gospel called The Gospel of Truth.
Gnostic texts were considered heretical, mostly because they claimed to have exclusive knowledge (gnosis) about access to divine salvation. They also maintained that God favored only the spiritual world and was hostile to the material world, thus creating a dualism between matter and spirit. This did not do much for the guy Jesus I’d met in the church window who loved children, even at their worst, I was told.
In 1945, I was only seven and in love with myself, my pony, and God, in that order. I’d discovered God in my own little “nag hammadi” cave under a dining room table. As a child I was being a little gnostic, coveting my secret knowledge—also learning that I mattered a lot to a super-parent named God. In time it became clear that secrets, although excitingly powerful, weren’t so good for me. I also learned that all matter mattered to God-Creator—not just me. It was a comedown. Thus ended my gnostic phase.
As to Valentinus, his brand of gnosticism eventually proved worthy of scholarly attention, particularly that of Elaine Pagels, noted for her academic work on the value of gnostic gospels. Pagels challenged patriarchal assumptions about sacred texts. As an adult and a priest, I was challenging patriarchal assumptions about just about everything, particularly the authority of women in the church, the authority of the immanent nature of God, and the idea that the closed canon of scripture meant that there were no other gospels of worth. Bunk!—and more bunk! I have spent most of my adult life rebooting the God I’d met as a child, the God of my gnostic days, the God who gave me my spirituality.
One of the Nag Hammadi texts gives the life-giving energy at Creation a feminine voice:
I am the thought that lives in the light. I live in everyone, and I delve into them all . . . I am she who gradually brought forth everything . . . I am the image of the invisible spirit. . . The mother, the light . . the virgin . . . the womb, and the voice . . . I put breath within all beings.” (Pagels, p 199, Why Religion?)
Meeting Valentinus through Pagels’s work has been thrilling. St. Paul had merely hinted at other gospels, also at hidden wisdom revealed through the Spirit, “ . . . for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. . .” (I Cor. 2:10) Even the depths of God? If this Spirit searched even God’s own depths then what was there to fear? I have taken this as my mandate, permission, and invitation to dive into the “secret” mysteries of God, accompanied by this Spirit. Oh yes, I know we can never know God, but that never stopped me from trying. Paul’s words described what I’d experienced under that table: God and I exploring our depths together in lively conversation. Well, I talked and God listened and loved. Thirty-four years later God spoke to me and I listened.
The Gospel of Truth, attributed to Valentinus, is all about relationships and connection. I had grown up thinking, and still wonder, about the Cross of Jesus as being the great separator, something that our liturgies still proclaim: the cross is an instrument of torture, suffered by Jesus, for our sake, our sins, coming perilously close to saying it’s our fault, and we should feel like hell about it—still. The Gospel of Truth, reframes the vision of the cross directly in new language: The cross is a “new tree of knowledge, which unlike the tree in paradise does not bring death but life to those who eat of it.” (Pagels p. 201)
I get so tired of the words of death that continue to enshroud our Eucharist, even though Jesus is supposedly risen and we are to feel joyful and beloved. The words do not suggest that. The Gospel of Truth however suggests that when those who participate in the Eucharist eat the symbolic flesh and blood of Jesus they “discover him in themselves while he discovers themselves in him”. That's powerful truth. This mutuality feeds my body and soul weekly. It brings me back under my table and into my own flesh when I knew God, and God knew me, and we knew each other.
Heed the intimate scriptures of your own heart and intuition. It’s not meant to be private, esoteric, or used to assert superiority over any living matter. It is, however, not provable, replicable, or measurable—inaccessible by scientific methodology.
Paul hints again at this knowing in his speech in Athens, giving a gentle nod to local poets from whom his broad interpretation is derived. Paul refers to God Creator in whom we all are connected: “For in him [sic] we live and move and have our being; as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we too are his [sic] offspring.” (Acts 17:28) I knew this when I was three, and still know it today.
(Those sics are mine, because of course God is never to be corseted into one gender, especially when we’re speaking of the vast expanses of all Creation. Please!)
Gnostic texts were considered heretical, mostly because they claimed to have exclusive knowledge (gnosis) about access to divine salvation. They also maintained that God favored only the spiritual world and was hostile to the material world, thus creating a dualism between matter and spirit. This did not do much for the guy Jesus I’d met in the church window who loved children, even at their worst, I was told.
In 1945, I was only seven and in love with myself, my pony, and God, in that order. I’d discovered God in my own little “nag hammadi” cave under a dining room table. As a child I was being a little gnostic, coveting my secret knowledge—also learning that I mattered a lot to a super-parent named God. In time it became clear that secrets, although excitingly powerful, weren’t so good for me. I also learned that all matter mattered to God-Creator—not just me. It was a comedown. Thus ended my gnostic phase.
As to Valentinus, his brand of gnosticism eventually proved worthy of scholarly attention, particularly that of Elaine Pagels, noted for her academic work on the value of gnostic gospels. Pagels challenged patriarchal assumptions about sacred texts. As an adult and a priest, I was challenging patriarchal assumptions about just about everything, particularly the authority of women in the church, the authority of the immanent nature of God, and the idea that the closed canon of scripture meant that there were no other gospels of worth. Bunk!—and more bunk! I have spent most of my adult life rebooting the God I’d met as a child, the God of my gnostic days, the God who gave me my spirituality.
One of the Nag Hammadi texts gives the life-giving energy at Creation a feminine voice:
I am the thought that lives in the light. I live in everyone, and I delve into them all . . . I am she who gradually brought forth everything . . . I am the image of the invisible spirit. . . The mother, the light . . the virgin . . . the womb, and the voice . . . I put breath within all beings.” (Pagels, p 199, Why Religion?)
Meeting Valentinus through Pagels’s work has been thrilling. St. Paul had merely hinted at other gospels, also at hidden wisdom revealed through the Spirit, “ . . . for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. . .” (I Cor. 2:10) Even the depths of God? If this Spirit searched even God’s own depths then what was there to fear? I have taken this as my mandate, permission, and invitation to dive into the “secret” mysteries of God, accompanied by this Spirit. Oh yes, I know we can never know God, but that never stopped me from trying. Paul’s words described what I’d experienced under that table: God and I exploring our depths together in lively conversation. Well, I talked and God listened and loved. Thirty-four years later God spoke to me and I listened.
The Gospel of Truth, attributed to Valentinus, is all about relationships and connection. I had grown up thinking, and still wonder, about the Cross of Jesus as being the great separator, something that our liturgies still proclaim: the cross is an instrument of torture, suffered by Jesus, for our sake, our sins, coming perilously close to saying it’s our fault, and we should feel like hell about it—still. The Gospel of Truth, reframes the vision of the cross directly in new language: The cross is a “new tree of knowledge, which unlike the tree in paradise does not bring death but life to those who eat of it.” (Pagels p. 201)
I get so tired of the words of death that continue to enshroud our Eucharist, even though Jesus is supposedly risen and we are to feel joyful and beloved. The words do not suggest that. The Gospel of Truth however suggests that when those who participate in the Eucharist eat the symbolic flesh and blood of Jesus they “discover him in themselves while he discovers themselves in him”. That's powerful truth. This mutuality feeds my body and soul weekly. It brings me back under my table and into my own flesh when I knew God, and God knew me, and we knew each other.
Heed the intimate scriptures of your own heart and intuition. It’s not meant to be private, esoteric, or used to assert superiority over any living matter. It is, however, not provable, replicable, or measurable—inaccessible by scientific methodology.
Paul hints again at this knowing in his speech in Athens, giving a gentle nod to local poets from whom his broad interpretation is derived. Paul refers to God Creator in whom we all are connected: “For in him [sic] we live and move and have our being; as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we too are his [sic] offspring.” (Acts 17:28) I knew this when I was three, and still know it today.
(Those sics are mine, because of course God is never to be corseted into one gender, especially when we’re speaking of the vast expanses of all Creation. Please!)
Sunday, January 27, 2019
2019.01.27 Body Matters
In preparation for a sermon, I engaged probably one of the most powerful and apt metaphors for the human condition: the human body. I know many of us religio-spiritual types would like to dismiss the flesh of the body as only a container for what matters most, they think; that is, the soul—the sliver of divinity in all living things. Bunk! We are ensouled bodies and embodied souls, and all of it works together for the good of all.
The metaphor that intrigues and inspires me is in Paul’s letter to the Church in Corinth: I Cor.12: 12-31a. The lectionary ends the reading for Epiphany 3 on the first part of a whole verse. I’m always curious to see what they decided to leave out. What’s in verse 31b?
Paul addresses his people the Jews describing this Body of Christ. It’s startling when you let it seep into you, this new vision of a new community. Paul insists that no body part can say to another: I have no need of you. ALL members are honored equally; those that seem to be unworthy of honor, we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect. And furthermore, this is God’s desire and design. (Yes, I know that the brain is the head and the best body part, right? But what good is a brain without a body to empower?)
The whole body image is so egalitarian it surpasses even the best social justice rhetoric. It’s a non-partisan game-changer. Let it sink in. How does it make you feel? Myself, I feel a little shivery when I see how huge and how demanding this vision is. I give to beggars, pray like crazy, and do what I can, but I know that, secretly, I don’t see beggars as equal. Do I have a right to call myself a member of this Body of Christ—really? I, a privileged person, can not say to the less fortunate, I have no need of you. I, an able-bodied person cannot say to the disabled-in-body, I have no need of you. I, a baptized Christian, cannot say to a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Hindu, or an Atheist, I have no need of you. I, a Democrat, cannot say to a Republican, I have no need of you. I, who count my race as Caucasian, cannot say to any other race, I have no need of you.
Paul is a saint and spiritual genius, partly because he messes up so darn much. His spirituality soars, like with this image above, but alas, he simply cannot resist the temptation to qualify it. He rank-orders the gifts in this body of Christ (first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, and so on, all the way down to tongues.) Rank-ordering? Come on! What’s worse, concludes with: “But strive for the greater gifts.” Greater gifts? What? Paul sets us up for competition, critique, an ethic of win-lose. This is bad politics. This will NOT hold this body of Christ together. It certainly does not hold our world together very well.
So: what is in verse 31b? What is the second half of verse 31? What follows “Strive for the greater gifts”? “And I will tell you a better way.” Strive for the greater gifts, AND I will tell you a better way. There’s a better way than striving to be greater. What is it?
Paul launches his famous hymn to love in I Cor. 13—what everyone wants read at their weddings. Love is a better way. Love is the great equalizer, not gifts. Gifts divide and conquer. Love unifies. In Love there is no rank-ordering. Love holds this body of Christ community together. Love, by its very nature, and when we let it be divine-in-us, neither competes nor devalues self or other. Pray for Love.
The joy of the Creator be your strength.
The compassion of the Christ be your heart.
The boundless energy of the Spirit be your soul.
The metaphor that intrigues and inspires me is in Paul’s letter to the Church in Corinth: I Cor.12: 12-31a. The lectionary ends the reading for Epiphany 3 on the first part of a whole verse. I’m always curious to see what they decided to leave out. What’s in verse 31b?
Paul addresses his people the Jews describing this Body of Christ. It’s startling when you let it seep into you, this new vision of a new community. Paul insists that no body part can say to another: I have no need of you. ALL members are honored equally; those that seem to be unworthy of honor, we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect. And furthermore, this is God’s desire and design. (Yes, I know that the brain is the head and the best body part, right? But what good is a brain without a body to empower?)
The whole body image is so egalitarian it surpasses even the best social justice rhetoric. It’s a non-partisan game-changer. Let it sink in. How does it make you feel? Myself, I feel a little shivery when I see how huge and how demanding this vision is. I give to beggars, pray like crazy, and do what I can, but I know that, secretly, I don’t see beggars as equal. Do I have a right to call myself a member of this Body of Christ—really? I, a privileged person, can not say to the less fortunate, I have no need of you. I, an able-bodied person cannot say to the disabled-in-body, I have no need of you. I, a baptized Christian, cannot say to a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Hindu, or an Atheist, I have no need of you. I, a Democrat, cannot say to a Republican, I have no need of you. I, who count my race as Caucasian, cannot say to any other race, I have no need of you.
Paul is a saint and spiritual genius, partly because he messes up so darn much. His spirituality soars, like with this image above, but alas, he simply cannot resist the temptation to qualify it. He rank-orders the gifts in this body of Christ (first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, and so on, all the way down to tongues.) Rank-ordering? Come on! What’s worse, concludes with: “But strive for the greater gifts.” Greater gifts? What? Paul sets us up for competition, critique, an ethic of win-lose. This is bad politics. This will NOT hold this body of Christ together. It certainly does not hold our world together very well.
So: what is in verse 31b? What is the second half of verse 31? What follows “Strive for the greater gifts”? “And I will tell you a better way.” Strive for the greater gifts, AND I will tell you a better way. There’s a better way than striving to be greater. What is it?
Paul launches his famous hymn to love in I Cor. 13—what everyone wants read at their weddings. Love is a better way. Love is the great equalizer, not gifts. Gifts divide and conquer. Love unifies. In Love there is no rank-ordering. Love holds this body of Christ community together. Love, by its very nature, and when we let it be divine-in-us, neither competes nor devalues self or other. Pray for Love.
The joy of the Creator be your strength.
The compassion of the Christ be your heart.
The boundless energy of the Spirit be your soul.
Sunday, July 19, 2015
2015.07.19 Improbable but Perfect Fields for Zeal
This day marks the 167the anniversary of the first women's rights conference in history. Organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, author of The Women's Bible, and Lucretia Mott, the conference took place in 1848 in Seneca Falls, N.Y. Stanton, one of my "sheroes," was dissatisfied with traditional biblical translations, authorized and executed by well-meaning men, who apparently forgot the verse in Genesis in which God created men and women equally in the divine image. But Stanton and other women knew their bible, and they knew, too, about the dismal status of women in society.
They brought religion and politics together with zeal.
Stanton still inspires me, though much of her bible commentary sails over my head, and I bet I'd be cowed by her formidable presence.
Seneca Falls, a small hamlet (2010 population, 6,681) borders New York's
Finger Lakes. It was an improbable setting for feminist zeal and the
birth of the impossible demand for a woman's right to vote.
First-Century Palestine after the crucifixion of Jesus was no more probable a setting for reformist zeal, or resurrection cheer, either. The sweetly naive, Christian song, “They will know we are Christian by our love,” written in 1968 by then-Catholic priest Peter Scholtes, has been recorded and popularized so much that many Christians today consider this an identifying refrain, a musical mantra— despite the fact that its spirituality, “We are one in the spirit,” doesn’t ring true in the face of contemporary Christian rancor and divisiveness.
Well, it didn’t ring true in the first century land some now call “holy” either. What is astounding is that Christianity, the little love-faith, didn’t miscarry completely and wash out to sea like so many other movements of zealous beginnings.
Why? Well, for one thing there wasn’t an ounce of naiveté in the faith of Jesus of Nazareth, any more than there was in Stanton and her women. No cotton candy. The early Christians had love all right, as did the women, and they also had zeal for their God of grace.
I wonder if zeal is what we softened Christians need more of today?
As Jewish insurgents in First-Century Palestine warred for power and position, they were terrified of extinction. Where was their God? Who would be Messiah/King/ Head Honcho? Who would be the King of the Jews? (The inscription the Romans put on Jesus’ s cross, King of the Jews, was not a faith statement; it was mockery because they had crucified another of the Jewish rebels, another zealot, another political annoyance.)
Something new had to happen fast—and zealously. Zeal means great energy or enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause or an objective. It’s close to jihad. The early Jesus followers had to save their people, and they had to save their sense of divine favor. Some of them followed the zeal of one man, Jesus of Nazareth, and they kept that zeal going like a brushfire.
Do we need more zeal today? Do I, as I write and advocate for the fullness of the image of God, have enough zeal?
Reza Aslan, author of Zealot. The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, gives a stunningly vivid picture of the context of Jesus’s times. I’d studied some of this but never had it explicated in such powerful and complete ways. Both the political and historical context came alive. Context, they say, is everything. Well no, content also counts; in fact, context and content must be inseparable—held together in tension. This book succeeds.
Aslan (just love that leonine name!) is an Iranian American, professor of creative writing at the University of California, a scholar of religions and historian—not a theologian. He was born into a luke warm Muslim home (Sound familiar, Christians?) Aslan met Jesus at fifteen at an evangelical youth camp in Northern California. He writes: “It was there that I heard a remarkable story that would change my life forever.”
Many of us Christians hear bits and pieces of this story every Sunday in parish churches. Does it change our lives?
Aslan’s experience sounds like, but was not, a religious conversion experience. He is married to a Christian woman and remains Muslim. His teenage zeal, however, had a life of its own —enough to fuel his pursuit of the Jesus of history and write about it. His book is not meant to be theology, any more than the Bible is meant to be history, yet the complementarity of the two shapes my spirituality and my religious practice.
But do I have enough zeal? Can you be zealous about the whole enchilada of history, politics and religion? Zeal sounds extremist. It’s scary. My Godde, I’m an Anglican! I’m not one of the conservative evangelical Christians in the south, or wherever they are supposed to be, possessed by certain social political issues that can get confused with religious ones. They do have zeal, though. Still, the spirituality of zealotry must rise above particularity, even go beyond and deeper than social justice activism. It’s a soul-fire. It's what the women at Seneca Falls had.
The frenzied hotbox of Jesus’s day, held intact only by Roman oppression, made zeal near-inevitable. Something had to explode. This ancient empire has been compared to our American empire—too much wealth and status concentrated in too few people who hold the reins of power. Will there be a revolution, as some young people say, maybe advocate? Revolutions demand change. Collective zeal is their fuel. By 70CE the Romans had burned Jerusalem and the Temple to the ground. Messianic pretenders felt abandoned by God. All was lost.
Aslan writes: “Meanwhile, in triumphant Rome, a short while after the Temple of the Lord had been desecrated, the Jewish nation scattered to the winds, and the religion made a pariah, tradition says a Jew named John Mark took up his quill and composed the first words to the first gospel written about the messiah [sic, one of many] known as Jesus of Nazareth—not in Hebrew, the worship language of Jesus, but Greek, the language of the heathens. The language of the impure. The language of the victors.
This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus the Christ.” (p. 68-69)
This one sentence stunned me. One. One Jewish man remembered and wrote—this in the midst of violence, terror, chaos and grief. Thus began the written biblical memoir known as the New Testament. One.
Was that simple, single act of remembering and writing the real miracle? Was it zealous?
* * * *
Zeal makes change, for better or worse. It is not to be mocked, and not to be exaggerated. When you force or fake zeal, you desecrate it. Zeal is born, focused, and expressed in diverse ways: silence, creating art, music, movement, shouting and jumping, praying, preaching, storming, talking and listening into the night. Often zeal comes in childhood, and often it gets eclipsed as we grow. But something mysterious touches you to the core, and you never forget. Never. Forever. What you do with it depends on your context.
I'm haunted on and off by something a wondrous seminary professor of mine referred to more than once: "the routinization of charism." We, dumbly rapt and determinatively zealous, middler seminarians laughed and clapped, as if we actually knew we were hearing the call to zealotry.
Zealotry was the right spiritual gift to awaken First-Century Palestine to divine grace for all. Zealotry awakened 19th century America to basic rights for all, including women. Is zeal what’s needed for 21st-century America? For 21st-century Christianity?
They brought religion and politics together with zeal.
Stanton still inspires me, though much of her bible commentary sails over my head, and I bet I'd be cowed by her formidable presence.
First-Century Palestine after the crucifixion of Jesus was no more probable a setting for reformist zeal, or resurrection cheer, either. The sweetly naive, Christian song, “They will know we are Christian by our love,” written in 1968 by then-Catholic priest Peter Scholtes, has been recorded and popularized so much that many Christians today consider this an identifying refrain, a musical mantra— despite the fact that its spirituality, “We are one in the spirit,” doesn’t ring true in the face of contemporary Christian rancor and divisiveness.
Well, it didn’t ring true in the first century land some now call “holy” either. What is astounding is that Christianity, the little love-faith, didn’t miscarry completely and wash out to sea like so many other movements of zealous beginnings.
Why? Well, for one thing there wasn’t an ounce of naiveté in the faith of Jesus of Nazareth, any more than there was in Stanton and her women. No cotton candy. The early Christians had love all right, as did the women, and they also had zeal for their God of grace.
I wonder if zeal is what we softened Christians need more of today?
As Jewish insurgents in First-Century Palestine warred for power and position, they were terrified of extinction. Where was their God? Who would be Messiah/King/ Head Honcho? Who would be the King of the Jews? (The inscription the Romans put on Jesus’ s cross, King of the Jews, was not a faith statement; it was mockery because they had crucified another of the Jewish rebels, another zealot, another political annoyance.)
Something new had to happen fast—and zealously. Zeal means great energy or enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause or an objective. It’s close to jihad. The early Jesus followers had to save their people, and they had to save their sense of divine favor. Some of them followed the zeal of one man, Jesus of Nazareth, and they kept that zeal going like a brushfire.
Do we need more zeal today? Do I, as I write and advocate for the fullness of the image of God, have enough zeal?
Reza Aslan, author of Zealot. The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, gives a stunningly vivid picture of the context of Jesus’s times. I’d studied some of this but never had it explicated in such powerful and complete ways. Both the political and historical context came alive. Context, they say, is everything. Well no, content also counts; in fact, context and content must be inseparable—held together in tension. This book succeeds.
Aslan (just love that leonine name!) is an Iranian American, professor of creative writing at the University of California, a scholar of religions and historian—not a theologian. He was born into a luke warm Muslim home (Sound familiar, Christians?) Aslan met Jesus at fifteen at an evangelical youth camp in Northern California. He writes: “It was there that I heard a remarkable story that would change my life forever.”
Many of us Christians hear bits and pieces of this story every Sunday in parish churches. Does it change our lives?
Aslan’s experience sounds like, but was not, a religious conversion experience. He is married to a Christian woman and remains Muslim. His teenage zeal, however, had a life of its own —enough to fuel his pursuit of the Jesus of history and write about it. His book is not meant to be theology, any more than the Bible is meant to be history, yet the complementarity of the two shapes my spirituality and my religious practice.
But do I have enough zeal? Can you be zealous about the whole enchilada of history, politics and religion? Zeal sounds extremist. It’s scary. My Godde, I’m an Anglican! I’m not one of the conservative evangelical Christians in the south, or wherever they are supposed to be, possessed by certain social political issues that can get confused with religious ones. They do have zeal, though. Still, the spirituality of zealotry must rise above particularity, even go beyond and deeper than social justice activism. It’s a soul-fire. It's what the women at Seneca Falls had.
The frenzied hotbox of Jesus’s day, held intact only by Roman oppression, made zeal near-inevitable. Something had to explode. This ancient empire has been compared to our American empire—too much wealth and status concentrated in too few people who hold the reins of power. Will there be a revolution, as some young people say, maybe advocate? Revolutions demand change. Collective zeal is their fuel. By 70CE the Romans had burned Jerusalem and the Temple to the ground. Messianic pretenders felt abandoned by God. All was lost.
Aslan writes: “Meanwhile, in triumphant Rome, a short while after the Temple of the Lord had been desecrated, the Jewish nation scattered to the winds, and the religion made a pariah, tradition says a Jew named John Mark took up his quill and composed the first words to the first gospel written about the messiah [sic, one of many] known as Jesus of Nazareth—not in Hebrew, the worship language of Jesus, but Greek, the language of the heathens. The language of the impure. The language of the victors.
This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus the Christ.” (p. 68-69)
This one sentence stunned me. One. One Jewish man remembered and wrote—this in the midst of violence, terror, chaos and grief. Thus began the written biblical memoir known as the New Testament. One.
Was that simple, single act of remembering and writing the real miracle? Was it zealous?
* * * *
Zeal makes change, for better or worse. It is not to be mocked, and not to be exaggerated. When you force or fake zeal, you desecrate it. Zeal is born, focused, and expressed in diverse ways: silence, creating art, music, movement, shouting and jumping, praying, preaching, storming, talking and listening into the night. Often zeal comes in childhood, and often it gets eclipsed as we grow. But something mysterious touches you to the core, and you never forget. Never. Forever. What you do with it depends on your context.
I'm haunted on and off by something a wondrous seminary professor of mine referred to more than once: "the routinization of charism." We, dumbly rapt and determinatively zealous, middler seminarians laughed and clapped, as if we actually knew we were hearing the call to zealotry.
Zealotry was the right spiritual gift to awaken First-Century Palestine to divine grace for all. Zealotry awakened 19th century America to basic rights for all, including women. Is zeal what’s needed for 21st-century America? For 21st-century Christianity?
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