Fifty Shades of God
Confessions of a simple parish priest
by
The Reverend Canon Paul B. Bresnahan B.A, MDiv.
A Personal Introduction
Allow me to introduce you to God; all fifty shades of God, every color in the rainbow of God. I see God in the whole kaleidoscope of human experience.
GOD; as I approach my 75th year to Heaven, I cannot help but notice how much YOU have been and continue to be a Presence to me. I use the word YOU because this is how I encounter YOU. I prefer to use the second person as if YOU were here and now, which I believe YOU are. I try to avoid using the third person since that would be like talking about YOU to somebody else while YOU are still Present with us in the same room. That would be rude. That would be gossip. The third person “God” misses the immediacy of relationship. What I am seeking to do here is to introduce the reader directly to the experience of YOU.
How do I introduce YOU? The reader might be rightly perplexed at the language and the idea of YOU. But it is not an idea of God that I seek to present. It is the experience of YOU. This is why I use the second person when addressing YOU. In order that I might help clarify that, allow me explain what I mean. Perhaps many are used to ideas about God and theological approaches to and understandings of God. What follows is anything but that. I seek to invite the reader directly into the experience of God, and encounter the Holy One. Namely YOU.
The Word G-d
In a sense, the use of the word “G-d” is a misnomer. The very mention of the Holy Name is forbidden by most observant Jews. Even when typing the Name we should not actually spell it out but render YOUR Name as G-d. We are not even supposed to pronounce the Name but substitute The Holy One, or The Lord, when referring to YOU. While the scriptures do not specifically forbid the use the Sacred Name, the third commandment does forbid us from taking the Holy Name in vain.
Alas here we are well along into the 21st Century and reverence for the Holy Name is a custom “honored more in the breach than in the observance”. In an increasingly secularized society even the idea of G-d has become foreign to many. The observance of a Holy Day seems quaint and relegated to the devout among the folk of Abrahamic faith traditions. G-d doesn’t even get honorable mention anymore. The operative notion is that there is no such thing as G-d.
I apologize to YOU for saying so, but this is now the truth. YOU and I have seen it before. “The fool has said in his heart; ‘There is no God’” ~Psalm 14:1
Therefore I believe that the time has long since passed for us to come right out and use the HOLY NAME to help us see how it is that we experience YOU as the ground of our Being.
Moses encountered YOU directly at the Burning Bush. Imagine it! ~(Exodus 3) Moses steps aside to see this wondrous sight; a bush that burns and yet is not consumed. YOU instruct Moses to remove the sandals from his feet because the very ground on which he stands is Holy Ground. YOU tell him that YOU are the G-d of Abraham, YOU have seen the misery of the people in slavery and will deliver the people from oppression and will send Moses to Pharaoh. Notice here how G-d abhors injustice, slavery, and oppression. Naturally Moses balked at the idea of speaking Truth to Power.
Among the imponderables for Moses was the question; “how am I to tell the people who G-d is? G-d must have a Name like the gods of all other nations. What is G-d’s Name? If I am going to convince the people that I’ve been talking to G-d I’d better know who G-d is.
Moses addressed G-d: “Who are YOU? What is YOUR NAME? Every other nation on earth has a god, each with a name. What is YOUR NAME?”
G-d replied: “YHWH”.
YHWH is the sacred name. To render the Hebrew word into English is tricky. There is no clear translation. The mood of the copula verb “to be” used in these consonants defies simple translation. One can venture these words; “I AM THAT I AM and “I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE”. Precise translation is impossible. But the rich symbolism of the NAME suggests an encounter with BEING itself. Perhaps G-d is BEING itself. Interestingly the encounter establishes relationship between G-d and Moses in this critical historic moment.
The street kid in me wants to render the encounter as follows:
Moses; “Who are you, anyway? What is your name?
G-d; “You want to know who I am? I AM WHO I AM, that’s who I AM”
Therefore G-d is the Great I AM and I am somewhat the lesser version of YOU, namely “I am”.
I take it that YOU are Great, YOU are Good. You are Immortal.
I one the other hand am just one person, sometimes good sometimes not so much, and certainly mortal.
This too is part of my relationship with YOU as I seek to put things in perspective.
Therefore I address G-d as YOU. The Hebrew philosopher/mystic Martin Buber referred to this relationship as the “Ich-Du” (German) the “I-Thou” relationship. Paul Tillich, the Christian Existentialist theologian developed the thought that Faith is relationship. G-d is the Ground of all Being. Therefore my being and G-d’s Being are intrinsically woven together as One.
Cynthia Bourgeault writes; “The journey to the wellsprings of hope is really a journey toward the center, toward the innermost ground of our being where we meet and are met by God.”
My grandmother told me stories of YOU when I was a child. This is how I “caught” my faith. The best way to introduce someone is through storytelling.This is perhaps the best way to introduce YOU to the reader. Tell the Story. YOUR STORY. This is where the Holy Writings come in; in a Book we call the Bible.
But first: a caution. When we read the Scriptures we run the risk of trivializing the Bible. Many take it to an extreme and assert that the Writings are literally true. The power of metaphor and symbolism can get lost if we take the Bible as exact word for word dictation from
G-d.
Biblical literalism misses the point of how these writings came down to us over the ages. There is a transmission process. Here, for instance, let me explain. What follows is a vast over-simplification, but it may give the reader a sense of the long journey our Holy Writings have taken to get where they are today. Understanding the transmission process may even help introduce YOU to the reader.
How the Bible came to be
First there was an experience of YOU. In fact the entire Biblical record is a series of experiences. The purpose of my work is to introduce reader to the experience of YOU. When we read the Biblical narrative, part of the challenge and the fun is to “go back” to those experiences, just as people encountered YOU in the first place.
Naturally people told stories of their encounter with YOU. A tradition of shared experience began to emerge. From that, an oral tradition developed and stories became part of the identity of a people. Particularly as they wandered in the Wilderness, they told the sacred stories night after night in around the fire. YOU delivered them from slavery, YOU fed them. YOU gave them water to drink. YOU gave them a Law to live by. There were so many wonderful stories to tell.
In due course, a consensus grew that these stories needed to be recorded. There were different points of view. Priestly, Deuteronomic, Yahwist schools of thought with various sets of experience to transmit recorded their traditions. Eventually scrolls and texts appeared. The Torah became a well defined portion of the Scriptures. Likewise the Histories, the Wisdom literature, and the Writings emerge. The Psalms became a defining collection of devotional literature. The Prophets and their schools emerged and produced their scrolls. The greatest scholars and rabbis eventually agreed that certain of these scrolls were to be considered authoritative. A Library of Scrolls emerged from all these traditions and thus a Bible is born. The word Bible is from the French for Library; “bibliothèque”. Thousands of years later with th invention of the printing press were we able to develop the technology to produce a book in the modern sense of the word called “The Bible”.
Notice how many steps we have to take to get from the words we see on a page in this the Biblical Epic to the “experience” of YOU that is found in those words.
A similar process happens in the New Testament, though over a much shorter period of time. First we experienced Jesus. Then an oral tradition emerged. There may even have been a source that precedes the Gospels. Some scholars refer to it as the “Q” or “quelle” from the German “source”. More than a generation later, from 70-110AD approximately, it became necessary to write down what our experiences of Jesus were. This gave us four “snapshots” into the life of Jesus; Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
The earliest of the New Testament writings were those of Paul and others. These writings are called the Epistles or the “Letters". There is considerable debate over dating and authorship of the Epistles, many of which are very likely written by Paul, but not all.
The Book of Revelation is unique in the New Testament given that it comes during the first persecution of the Church. Its interpretation poses some challenges given that to many it seemed as if the “End Times” had arrived. True enough, all of the original Apostles met a violent end. Church Headquarters in Jerusalem was destroyed. The End had come for many but not for all. The Story goes on.
My Story
In order to introduce the reader to YOU, I must also introduce the author of this work whose experience of YOU began in the earliest days of childhood. This experience continues throughout life and into this very present moment in which these words are being written; in this Silence accompanied by the cooing of a mourning dove, with YOU at my side, in my mind, in my heart. Throughout the traumatic events of boyhood there was one anchor of hope. A grandmother kept the child connected by a mere thread to YOU and to sanity. All the way through childhood and into adolescence there YOU were. Here YOU continue to be.
In college years, the Enlightenment, Reason and Rationalism challenged many of my deeply held presuppositions. It became necessary to rethink and overhaul not just how to approach the biblical narrative, but also how to approach the very idea of WHO YOU ARE.
The Common Room at Glendon College at York University in Toronto was the primary setting for lively conversation and vigorous debate. One of my best friends was a student of European History. Uppermost in his heart was the study of the Holocaust. As a Jew he was devastated by the knowledge of how brutal that history was, but he felt “called” to rigorously study the truth. Stephen earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins and has made significant contributions to what we have come to know of those dark times.
It was difficult for him to believe in God knowing what he knew. It was difficult for me to believe in YOU as we both confronted the ABSURD.
Over the years we lost touch as many do after College. Even at our 50th Reunion he was nowhere to be seen. Eventually a mutual friend happened to discover that Stephen is now a Rabbi in Florida and lives only a few miles away form where my wife and I spend time with her dad for winter breaks.
I called Stephen and we had lunch. I asked him about Moses’ encounter at the burning bush. I asked him about the HOLY NAME. He shrugged his shoulders. How can anyone KNOW YOU AS YOU ARE? All we can know is that YOU ARE. It was, as you can well imagine a meeting of the minds. As friends, we picked up where we had left off. What joy!
On the way back to the car after lunch a woman stopped him to say how much she enjoyed his services at the Synagogue. When she was beyond earshot, he said; “I don’t know that woman from Eve. Just because she comes to services on the High Holy days, she expects me to remember her name. Does that ever happen to you?” I told him, “We too have our High Hoy Days. We call that crowd the C&E Christians.” He understood instantly what I meant and we shared a good laugh as colleagues would.
In Seminary there was a shift from theology to an even more urgent set of concerns involving Civil Rights, Gender Equality, War and Peace and the question of The Inclusive Church particularly for the LGBTQ community. A lifetime of controversy in the church and society followed and continues into the present.
The scholastic enterprise also included an introduction to Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. At the same time the critical method of examining the Bible using current academic standards of exegesis challenged faith and spirituality more acutely than college atheism did. Here the very underpinnings of faith fell away and needed another exhaustive overhaul.
Tragically, there was no Common Room at Seminary. Our conversations were in the Refectory or in each other’s rooms. We’d gather in two’s and threes and our conversations never reached those depths as they did in College. We were left largely on our own to puzzle out our faith and spirituality.
One notable exception was the work of Dr. Harvey H. Guthrie, professor of Old Testament Biblical Theology. He also taught “The Life of Prayer”. It was the single best attended class each year. So many have a hunger and a thirst for YOU. I remember how he presented the encounter at the Burning Bush, much as I have presented it here in these pages. He presented all his course work in the Torah and the Prophets, the Writings, and The Psalms as though YOU were always there, which of course YOU were. In chapel, whether presiding at the Eucharist, or Preaching the Word, YOU were always Present when he spoke. He had a singular gift in knowing YOU and making YOU known. Naturally I asked him to preach at my ordination. Interestingly, he was painfully introverted, but when he spoke of YOU, there was never a doubt about YOUR Presence.
From College and Seminary I went on to serve congregations at times of social and theological upheaval. Many hands including YOUR’S and mine got good and dirty in the muck and mire of hunger, domestic abuse, homelessness and a laundry list of human cruelty and misery. The struggle to make sense of the ABSURD was never far away from honest spirituality.
Likewise in the Church, we struggled with issues of Liturgical revision, Civil Rights, gender equality, and the place of the LGBTQ community in the life of the church. The Church could be cruel, especially during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. There is so much bigotry and small mindedness in the church from time to time.
Knowing YOU and making YOU known in this context often seemed beyond my reach. Ultimately it was YOU who did the reaching in these most difficult times. When surrender was all I could offer, there YOU were. Here YOU are strong to save.
For the simple parish priest it is always a pure delight to baptize babies as well as those of riper years. In due course there were weddings to rejoice the heart though some raised concerns if not eyebrows. Eventually folks suffered from savage sicknesses and died a thousand deaths. Again the struggle to make sense of it all is never far from the pleading tears of all faithful people.
The very act of BEING brings us into the nexus of our struggle for understanding This is why I wish to introduce the reader to YOU and to someone whose lifetime experiences lead to one encounter after another with YOU.
Much like Space and Time are woven into all matter and energy, YOU seek to establish relationships with all sorts and conditions of humankind and Creation itself. The way I seek to introduce YOU and a whole host of characters that follow is through the art of storytelling.
How interesting that the Biblical narrative is an anthology of stories about a cast of characters akin to those we might meet in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales or in the Star Wars Epic.
Biblical Literalism versus Biblical Criticism
Tragically Biblical Literalists require uncritical acceptance of each and every word in scripture as if true, without error ever, anywhere. This is nothing new. The Pharisees, Sadducees and Scribes often tried to trip up Jesus in his own words or God’s. Thankfully, Jesus was quite familiar with the text and managed to stay a step ahead of that crowd until the ultimate confrontation at which point he surrendered to crucifixion, died and rose again.
The critical approach to Biblical study is a much more scholarly process. It takes a while to understand the exegetical method. But in its simplest terms it requires that we begin with a mastery of three languages; Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. The first two are the languages in which the Biblical text was written and the third the one Jesus and his contemporaries used in everyday speech.
Looking at the Biblical text in its original language and historical context is what the scholars call; “textual criticism”. That is not to say the scholars “find fault” with the text, but seek to “understand” the very depths of its rich symbolic and metaphorical meaning. The process involves a rigorous study of vocabulary, syntax, and idiom. Then it requires an understanding of the cultural, political, and economic context in which the text is composed, at least as far as it is possible to do so across the millennia.
This is not an easy process. Consider how challenging it is for people to understand one another today across the classifications we use; race, ethnicity, class, gender, orientation, nationality, language etc. International diplomacy now and throughout history has been marked with periods of misunderstanding, conflict and warfare.
Hermeneutics is the process of applying what was said then to what Scripture is saying now. One of my colleagues, Sr. Patricia Scott Terry helped me to simplify the process of “Hermeneutics” by saying; "The interpretation of language, whether written or spoken so that we can bridge the gap between our minds of today and the minds of the Biblical writers through a thorough knowledge of the original languages, ancient history and the comparison of different versions of Scripture."
It is so easy to lift a word or a verse out of context to support a particular point of view or even in the extreme to establish a whole new religious group. Rather the critical approach is to read the entire Biblical narrative again and again and again in order to “soak up” the sense of all of it rather than select that part that satisfies one particular point of view.
You can find biblical verses to support slavery and racism. Paternalism and gender dominance can find lots of support in the Bible. Many find the use of a few verses in Leviticus and Paul’s letter to the Romans as a justification to perpetuate marginalization, persecution and violence against the LGBTQ community.
For a religion founded on the idea of love and compassion we can be anything but. Jesus reached out his loving arms during his life and on the hard wood of the cross for the sake of the sick, the poor, and the outcast. This thing we have come to know as “christianity” can become the very bastion of cruelty, violence, ignorance and superstition, when the Person of Jesus is twisted into someone who can be so judgmental. When mishandled, the Scripture can become a weapon to exclude a whole swathes of humanity. This is a profound misinterpretation of Scripture.
Frankly, it gives me second thoughts about introducing the reader to YOU or to that child who grew into this old man whose experience of YOU will simply not go away.
Given the embarrassment I have about so much of what passes for “christianity” not just now but throughout history, I feel the need to distance myself from the word “christian”.
I am mindful of two apocryphal stories often repeated about the great actress and agnostic Tallulah Bankhead. She loved to attend “Smokey Mary’s” (The Parish Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Episcopal) on Broadway. Famous for its dramatic liturgies, incense, vestments, and lively preaching, she often found occasion for wisecracks. One day, during an especially solemn procession as the censer glided by her with considerable pomp and circumstance, great clouds of incense wafted toward the the heights of the church interior; she leaned over to the person next to her in the pew to say; “Daahling, please tell that man in the dress that his purse is on fire!”
On another occasion as she was leaving the church someone recognized her and was surprised; “Tallulah dear, are you a Christian?”
To which Bankhead replied; “Heavens no daahling, I’m not a “christian” I am an Episcopalian!”
There are many who have not been swept up into the far right wing Evangelical/Pentecostal megachurches. There are those of us who are struggling with faith issues while at the same time fully present to lively debate and critical thought. We think! There is a strong strain within the Christian experience that has a rigorous respect for intellectual honesty, reason, critical thinking and a profound love for science and the lively arts.
Harvey H. Guthrie, one of my favorite seminary professors in Biblical Studies was fond of saying that “we do not take the Bible literally but we do take it seriously.” On the other hand, he would often crack a smile after we had exhaustively pursued our exegetical efforts; “Folks” he’d say; “sometimes the text sheds light on the commentaries.”
Anyone who reads some of the serious contemporary authors in Biblical Studies like Marcus Borg, Richard Rohr, Diarmaid MacCulloch, N. T. Wright and the like will realize that simplistic literalism robs the Biblical narrative of its rich symbolism. The reader will also come to see what a wide variety there is in interpretation and debate among scholars. If you are looking for “certainty” in modern biblical scholarship, you simply will not find it. However you will find “certainty” in simplistic literalism, which I suppose is part of its appeal. For those of us who like to think critically however, we find that literalism fails to recognize the marvels of metaphor and all the other literary devices the ancient writers used with care as well as with a certain amount of creative delight.
Another great contemporary biblical scholar, John Dominic Crossen writes;
“My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”
In the midst of all the contentious debate about the authority and understandings of scripture, Jesus made it all so very simple. “Love God. Love your neighbor”. ~Matthew 22:37-40. Likewise, John the Beloved Disciple; “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. ~1 John 4:8.
YOUR Story is also quite straight forward and uncomplicated. Perhaps a few pages about how we might approach the Holy Bible may be in order.
The Five Mighty Acts of God
Some may be intimidated at first glance when taking the Bible in hand. Understandably we can shy away from it not knowing where to begin or how to navigate the “plot”. It is helpful to have a conceptual framework when approaching such a ponderous volume as the Bible. Years ago I learned that we can simplify the Biblical Narrative into Five Acts as if it were a Great Shakespearean Drama. In fact the Church uses the concept in the Catechism or what we call “the Outline of Faith” to present YOUR Story in these Five Mighty Acts;
1. The Creation
2. Exodus
3. Jesus Christ
4. The Church
5. The Christian Hope
Act I: The Creation
There are Two Creation Stories in Genesis. In Chapter one we have the familiar account of God creating all that is in seven days. Notice that in this account of the created order, every day is good. Ultimately when God rested on the Sabbath day God declares it all very good. In this story there is a note of great satisfaction and harmony. God, Creation and Humankind exist as One. The First Creation Story establishes a notion in which all is at peace with God.
The second Creation Story has an entirely different tone. First, everything in this story is created in one day. ~Genesis 2:4. Familiar characters make their appearance; Adam and Eve, the Snake, the Apple and of course God walking with them all in the Garden of Eden. The Snake tells Eve to have a bite of the Apple and assures her that she will not die. Truth telling is not the Evil One’s strong suit. Eve offers the Apple to Adam, he takes a bite and things begin to go from bad to worse for all of us at that point.
The theme of the Second Creation Story shifts significantly from the goodness of the First. Disobedience, Blame, Lying, hiding and shame enters human history and continues right up into current events. The concept of Sin becomes part of our human experience. God drives us out of Paradise. Cain kills Abel and the ugliness of violence and fratricide is introduced front and center onstage.
These two themes goodness and alienation weave their way throughout the Biblical Narrative. For many, there is general harmony throughout life. For many others there is anything but.
From this beginning, we proceed to a series of stories which, by the way, we find in other Ancient News Eastern literature such as the Gilgamesh Epic. The idea of Creation, the Flood, Noah and the Ark, and the Tower of Babel are all familiar in Ancient Near Eastern literature.
As humankind became more literate, we also became more curious about how we came to be who we are and how. These stories have a universal quality to them. Everyone needs a “Creation Myth”. We need explanations of why there are so many languages, and why floods in the Mesopotamian Region between the Tigris and the Euphrates recurred with such frequency. It makes sense that these stories would be shared by so many cultures.
We then proceed to the stories of the Patriarchs; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their wives Sarah and Gomer, Rachel, and Leah. Then we meet a righteous fellow by the name of Lot. We witness the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The folks there went a little over the top in “forcing” folks to do things they did not want to do. It was worse than Vegas by a long shot. Lot’s wife glanced over her shoulder to have a look see after being told not to. She was turned into a pillar of salt. Frankly that sounds like an overreaction on God’s part. After all, who wouldn’t want to have a peek at what was going on with all that fire and brimstone raining down? Isn’t it interesting that a woman’s minor fault would be dealt with so harshly in a patriarchal society?
Then Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers and the record of human skulduggery and cruelty continues on its merry way.
Consider this; are we to take all these stories as literally true or do we rather look at them in the power of metaphor; as a reflective lens to help us look at ourselves and our own ethical behaviors? It is unfair to the ancients to assume they did not understand exactly what they were doing in telling the stories as they did.
Act II: The Exodus
One universal in human history is the fact of slavery, oppression, cruelty, violence and genocide. This much we know to be literally true. One race over another one gender over another, one class over another, one ethnicity, one group or another over “the other”. In the annals of human cruelty there is a need to find a leper or someone we can identify as outcast. Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, are often pigeon-holed by the oppressor and easily rounded up for marginalization, vilification or extermination. Absolutists like Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot require them to be eliminated because of the threat they pose.
A free press, open debate, criticism of the authoritarian leader all pose a threat. They must be dealt with severely. We need only take a look in a mirror to see some of the seeds of Absolutism in our own contemporary history.
Onto this dismal stage of human history we are told that God sent Moses to deliver us up out of bondage in Egypt and into freedom in the Promised Land. Moses encountered God at the Burning Bush. God gave Moses his marching orders; “Go down Moses; tell old Pharaoh, ‘Let my people go’”.
God abhors slavery, oppression and injustice. Frederick Douglass steeped himself in the Biblical narrative and in Shakespeare. He memorized vast portions of both because he realized his own freedom and the freedom of all people depended on it. It was axiomatic to Douglass that Moses’ confrontation with Pharaoh was the necessary posture on which history turned for God’s will to be realized. The struggle for freedom is not only for the sake of the slave but for the sake of the slave owner. Therefore our struggles against oppression and for freedom are for the sake of all.
Abraham Lincoln became God’s instrument when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. But the struggles against slavery continue. Douglass knew that the ugliness of White Supremacy was woven in to the American psyche. Reconstruction was anything but just. The fearful violence of the Ku Klux Klan enjoyed free reign in the South and beyond. Lynchings and other forms of violence against people of color were permitted with impunity and those in authority looked the other way when the darkest deeds were done.
God abhors injustice in every form. Eventually, God led Douglass to ally himself with Susan B Anthony in the struggle for universal suffrage. More recently God raised up Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and all the Great Souls down through history who understood that God’s will is woven into the fabric of human history and our struggle for freedom. The Law and the Prophets say so.
Act III: Jesus Christ
The Baby was born in Bethlehem. Most everybody knows that much. Jesus was driven into the wilderness and faced squarely into his own demons just like we all must be from time to time. He healed the sick and fed the multitudes. He was fond of the poor, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart and the persecuted. You can cross check that with the written record if you like. Often called the Christian Manifesto, the Beatitudes comprise the opening sentences of the Sermon on the Mount. Many of us committed those lines to memory when we were children. ~Matthew 5-7. While the Gospel Proclamation played well to the multitudes the “religious establishment” felt threatened.
Without skipping so much as a beat Jesus went on from there to cleanse the leper, walk on water, cure mental illness, the paralytic, the blind, the mute, and so forth. He did so whether it was the Sabbath Day or not. He was front and center when there was someone who suffered.
He recruited an unlikely band of working people, political zealots, and of course a tax collector. He was fond of women and encouraged them to “tag along” whether they were pure or prostitute. “The Jesus Movement” culminates in the judgment of the nations; “Insofar as you have done it to the least of these you have done it to me.” ~Matthew 25: 31ff. Specifically Jesus challenged the social order to satisfy the needs of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned.” We need only look in a mirror to see how we measure up against Jesus’ ethical standard for the behavior of a nation. It may be a stretch to call ourselves “christian” in any proper sense of the word. We have certainly not fully “arrived” at the goal Jesus set for us.
To many Jesus is the Love of God made flesh and blood. This is why the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, points us to “The Jesus Movement”. He is challenging us not to be an organized religion but to become a part of who Jesus imagined us to be. We are not called to go to church as much as we are called to be the church.
Act IV: The Church
The Apostle Paul claims that the church is the Body of Christ and that we are all members incorporate in that Body. If it is true that Jesus is the Love of God made Flesh and Blood, then it follows that those of us who love are of God.
This fundamental statement, notice is not about organizations, institutions or buildings. The central proclamation about the Jesus Movement is that we are a community of doers not just a gathering of believers. Jesus himself said; “Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord, will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but the one who does the will of God is the one who enters the Kingdom of Heaven.” ~Matthew 7:21.
The Kingdom of Heaven is among us in the way we live as community. It is not a place to go when we are dead. Leo Tolstoy helps us to see into the nature of heaven’s place within the human heart in his treatise; “The Kingdom of Heaven is Within”. This is precisely what Jesus meant when he said; “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” or “The Kingdom of Heaven is among you.” or “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you”. All the Kingdom stories of Jesus likewise tell us how we are to love, forgive, reconcile, care for, and heal one another. These Kingdom Stories are not about the sweet by and by but about the urgency of this present moment.
Have you ever wondered how our faith ancestors brought folks to Jesus in history? As we reach back into our collective memory we learn that our Celtic ancestors came to Holy Island around 634AD, led by St. Aidan. He met people one on one on foot as he walked endless miles throughout Northumbria. He had no weapons, no armies, just a gathering of monks dedicated to poverty, simplicity of life, and obedience to the Way of Jesus.
During my pilgrimage to Holy Island (also known as Lindisfarne), I wondered how Aidan brought Christianity to Northumbria. I soon realized that I had things backwards.
Aidan organized the community at Lindisfarne around the needs of the people. He began where the people were. If they were sick, he took care of them. If they were dying, he did the same. Likewise if they were hungry, he fed them. Eventually, they needed to build an infirmary, a hospice, and a refectory. The monks did what they could but the people realized that their own craftsmen could lend a hand. Together they built an impressive complex of buildings to help satisfy the needs of the people.
These monks were among the finest scholars in Europe at the time. They built schools where students could learn the scriptures and the classics of Western Literature in their original languages. The Celts became the publishing society that held high the candle of literacy and learning during the so-called “Dark Ages”.
At Holy Island travelers found safe haven and for fun there were banquets, and copious amounts of skillfully brewed beer and ale. Needless to say the Celts loved to sing and dance and play tin whistles, Northumbrian Small pipes (or their precursors), bodhráns, spoons, bones, or a hundred other improvised instruments. At a time when depression and discouragement was the daily curse, the Celts brought good cheer to our souls.
The Celts remind us that the mission of the church is to organize its life around the needs of the people. Once the needs of the people are at least somewhat satisfied then we can proceed to Baptism, Eucharist and the outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual hope of all humankind.
Act V: The Christian Hope.
At the heart of the Christian Hope is the notion of death, resurrection and eternal life.
If we return to Aidan of Lindisfarne and all my other Celtic heroes in faith we cannot help but see a pattern in their way of life. As they took care of the sick and the dying, fed the hungry, preserved the sacred writings as well as the literature of the ancients, they built rudimentary hospitals, hospices, banquet centers, and schools. They built hostels for the weary traveller.
All the time this was going on, the monks of Holy Island would stop seven times a day to gather for prayer. The people could not help but notice this devotion. The sound of their prayers and the chants they sang must have had an other worldly quality to it. On occasion someone would ask Aidan or one of the monks about why they took so much time out of their lives for these curious rituals.
Aidan’s answer was simple; “We are Baptized.”
The inquirer might reasonably ask what that word meant. No question was more important in life than this; “Are you Baptized?”
Sadly the modern ear has trivialized the word to mean either that “I was sprinkled when I was a baby but that’s about it.” On the other hand there are those who will claim that they’ve been “born again”. In both cases the word has been robbed in part, of its rich meaning.
The people flocked to John the Baptist in the hopes of a new beginning through the washing away of sin. For Jesus, his Baptism was an occasion for the Holy Spirit to descend upon him like a dove. God speaks and declares “this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” He went on from there to offer his life for the sick, the poor, the hungry and the outcast. For being the Love of God made Flesh and Blood he was crucified, died, buried and rose again from the dead.
The Apostle Paul puts it this way; “in your baptism you are buried with Christ in a death like his in order that you may rise with Christ in a resurrection like his.” (Romans 6)
Likewise for Aidan as well as for much of the Christian Experience. We die with Christ and rise with him at our Baptism in order that we may live eternal life in the here and now. Like Jesus and the monks at Lindisfarne we can organize our lives around the needs of those who suffer from any form of illness, sorrow, or injustice of any sort. Our lives take on the quality of eternal life. There is no need to wait until we are dead for eternal life. What good will eternal life do for us when we are dead? We begin in the here and now.
Eternal life as Jesus describes it in the Gospels is a way of life we live in the present. It is characterized by great Christian words like forgiveness, compassion, reconciliation, and love. Eternal Life is the way of love. This is why the Celts organized their monasteries around the needs of the people. They lived the Beatitudes on behalf of the “least of these”. This is how they could see Jesus because they became Jesus on behalf of those in need and those who suffered.
The Christian Hope is eternal life lived by those who roll up their sleeves and dig in for the long haul and love one another.
If you ask me if there is eternal life after death all I can do is point to Jesus. In the heart of the Eucharist we declare;
Christ has died
Christ is risen
Christ will come again
Not only did Aidan and his monks live Baptized lived, they also lived Eucharistic ones.
To do Eucharist is to do thanksgiving and to live a life in gratitude all the way from our Baptism to our Birth into life everlasting. There I said it!
I tipped my hand. I believe in the Christian Hope. We mark St. Aidan’s Day on August 31,651AD. That is the day of his death. We Christian folk believe in celebrating a Saint’s Birthday on the day they die. Even then we break bread and drink wine together in gratitude because we are a Eucharistic People.
We are the Easter People who live the Christian Hope.
Finally, allow me a personal word. Obviously I am very much a “God lover.” YOU know that. So do you. It has been that way since as far back as I can remember. Among my earliest memories are those of the experience of YOU. YOU are my Constant Companion. Allow me then to introduce YOU to the reader. Likewise allow me to introduce you to that child who became the old man that I am today. What follows is the story of that child who became father to this man. You may ask; “How can the child become father to the man?”
“My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.”
~William Wordsworth, 1802
Thank you
Fr Paul
“A simple parish priest.”
