[Evolution of the Word] 1 Thessalonians

I forgot that one of my favorite verses is in here -- "Test everything. Hold on to the good" (5:21, NIV).

"Did you just do Bible Study over the phone?" my housemate asked me last Sunday. Yup.

Chelsea is a much deeper reader than I am.

She talked about the fact that Paul didn't call the Thessalonians to repentance but rather to do more [of the good they were already doing]. She mentioned Patrick Cheng's idea of sin as immaturity. [I haven't yet read Cheng's "grace" book, but he mentions the idea in e.g. this interview.]

She's reading the Jewish Annotated New Testament (which I want to own*) and talked about what it says about the "the Jews killed Jesus" portion (2:14-16) -- which I somehow had no recollection of having read ... what even, self?

She said that the JANT suggests Paul said "Judeans" but that his Gentile audience might not have caught that nuance. I talked about Borg's point [which I wrote about in my last post] that Paul's prime audience was Gentiles who were already attracted to (and somewhat involved with) Judaism (including synagogue life), so I wasn't entirely convinced that the Thessalonians took away a simplistic "the Jews killed Jesus (so we hates them, precious)" message -- though it is certainly sadly true that later in Christianity, that became a dominant message.

At the end of Chapter 2, Paul says to the community, "You are our glory and joy."
Chelsea talked about this idea of it feeling like it doesn't matter what happens to you because you know this community will continue on, like your legacy.
This reminded me of the importance in Judaism's lack of belief in an afterlife and how that leads to children being considered very important (they're your legacy).
In articulating what she said back to her, I linked it to the parent language Paul uses (e.g., "But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children." [2:7b], "As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children" [2:11]) and she said that parent language doesn't actually resonate for her (here) -- and rightly pointed out Paul's frequent use of sibling language (Ari: every time in I read "brothers and sisters" in Borg's NRSV, I ~auto-corrected it to "siblings"). She talked about the idea that there are people who, she can't explain/understand herself apart from them -- those people have so supported/formed her that she can't take any credit on her own.

I said that having read Borg's front matter, I was primed to have the "rapture" passages stick out for me. Borg talks about the fact that Paul wasn't trying to provide a blueprint of the End Times but was reassuring people whose loved ones have died. I was also reminded of Prof. Koester talking about the "meeting Jesus in the air" as not meaning that the people are gonna go up into the sky to live but as just meaning that like when one leaves the walls of a city to meet an incoming king, you go out into the roads ... since Jesus is going to come from the sky, of course that's where you have to go to meet him on his way.

Later in the week, I pulled up my class notes:

1 Thess 4 -- Paul & Timothy forgot to tell them about the resurrection of the dead? that is NOT the problem Paul is addressing. people have died, so what about them when Christ comes?

could not be buried inside city, so buried outside city, along road (esp. fashionable decorated ones) -- people want the tombs of their loved ones to be seen

apanthesis -- what happens if a dignitary comes to a city? city sends out delegation, who meets king/governor/whatever outside the city and leads that person in with a triumphal entrance

meet Christ on clouds because Christ is coming from the heavens -- the parousia is Christ coming back to earth (clouds are not to take people up to the heavens)

ch.5: who will be scared by the coming of the Lord? those who say "peace & security" (e.g., the Empire) -- those people are the first who will perish
Christians: don't be scared, you are already children of the day/light

I mentioned to Chelsea on Sunday that I'm used to Jesus' parables about "no one will know the day or the hour" and that yes, Jesus does also talk about the importance of being prepared, but that this emphasis on "you are children of the light" is something I'm less used to.

Other notes from Koester's class:

1 Thess 2:13-16 -- the wrath against "the Jews" is a non-Pauline interpolation

"[the more difficult reading is a ~good criterion] -- but not in the case where the more difficult reading is idiotic"

Up Next: Galatians

[book | HuffPo article]

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* I was thinking about how I have a gut-level love A-J Levine (though I have still never actually read any of her books -- she was at Karl Donfried's retirement symposium #SmithCollege, but my love for her is most connected to her being the "Bible Study" person at the first Convo I went to #Vanderbilt; I was less in love with the last talk I saw her at #Harvard but still) and I was thinking about who else I have these strong gut-level love memories for, and my first thought was Lauren Berlant ("Monster") whom I also first encountered at a talk at Smith and whose work I've never read (I looked her up sometime this past year and her work doesn't actually appeal to me that much).

Continuing to recall my Smith experience, I remember Tammy Baldwin Bruce, who, okay, my dominant memory is, "I wanna be that hot at 41 ... and I want your silver coat," and I would probably find her even more problematic now than I did then -- though still, MUCH better choice than Ann Coulter, Smith College Republicans.

(I have a knee-jerk fondness for Tammy Baldwin, but that's more about a Pavlovian response to #Smith & #queer than any personal experience of mine.)

Who else do I have a gut-level deep and abiding love for from my time at Smith? Okay, "The Naked I," and I think Toby Davis identifies as a trans man, though I have fond memories of S. Bear Bergman but not in the same way that I do e.g. A-J Levine -- huh, I think there's an element of seeing myself in them/wanting to be them, where that happens more intuitively with women-people 'cause I am a woman. I have a lot of love for certain male teachers I had at Smith, and certainly there are male people I admire a lot, and I used to say I wanted to grow up to be Eugene Volokh "thoughtful and consistent and intelligent and knowledgeable and compassionate and yeah," but there's an appeal to awesome women-people that doesn't happen for me with awesome male-people.

[Evolution of the Word] (the past is) prologue

H!PS-Chelsea and I talked about reading the "New Testament" in ~chronological order, and she reminded me that Marcus Borg put out a book [HuffPo article] which orders the NT documents (NRSV) chronologically (and also includes some front matter), so that's what we're using for our read-through. (Well, I'm using the book anyway -- she may just be using his ordering and not shelling out the cash for the book.)

When she and I were first talking about it, I felt like that's how Bibles "should" be printed (in chronological order) -- which I think makes sense especially since the canonical NT gives the impression of being in chronological order, but it is also true that I'm a Western child of the Enlightenment, can you tell? :)

So I was struck by this in Chapter 3:

I began my introductory New Testament course one year with Paul's letters rather than the gospels. About half of my students had grown up without any involvement in a church, and so they knew little or nothing about Jesus and the gospels. Paul knew about Jesus, but they didn't. They were lost as they tried to figure out what on earth Paul's letters were about. I taught the course that way only once.
(p.16-17)

Right.

I eyeroll at Christians who insist that if you just pick up the Bible (by which I think they might mean the New Testament, I've never asked) and read it through, you'll be converted; but it does make sense to start with the documents which tells stories about the life and ministry of Jesus Christ before moving in to the documents which focus on resolving disputes in communities of Christ-followers.

If one has been raised in a Christian tradition, I think it matters less what order the documents are printed in because you've already absorbed something of an oral tradition -- just like Paul's audience -- but yes, if you're designing a book you can hand to newbies (though seriously, people, that is not how the Bible is intended -- I know, I know, I am All About The Text, but I have been converted to the importance of in-community), you probably don't wanna open with 1 Thessalonians (which Chelsea and I are gonna talk about tomorrow -- you know you wanna read with us :) ).

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Borg also talks about why, "when Paul arrived in a new city, he went first to the synagogue--not because his mission was to convert Jews, but because Gentile 'God-lovers' [Gentiles who were attracted to Judaism] would be there" (p.26). He points out:

it is unlikely that Paul preached in synagogues or to crowds of strangers who were completely unfamiliar with Judaism. What would his message, which makes so much use of Jewish language and tradition, have meant to Gentiles who knew nothing about Judaism?
(p.26)

Which got me thinking about how evangelicals in my day present Christianity as its own self-contained thing -- reminded me of an exercise I think we did in some FCS setting once about what we would say in a gospel for our time, as well as reminding me of the troublesome tendency in so many Christian communities to downplay/dismiss/oppose Judaism :/

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Other things I didn't know:

In the canon, the thirteen letters attributed to Paul are organized according to two principles. The nine letters addressed to communities are placed first, followed by the four letters addressed to individuals. Then, within each category, the letters are arranged in descending order of length, from longest to shortest. The exception is Galatians; it comes before Ephesians, even though the latter is about two hundred words longer.
(pp.29-30)

[Advent 1: Hope]

Last night I read the d'var Torah that Velveteen Rabbi offered that morning at her shul on this week's parsha, "Vayishlach."

She talks about Jacob wrestling with the angel and says:

Having received a new name, Jacob bestows a new name: he names that place, that bend in the river, Peni'el, literally "the face of God," saying, "For I have seen God face-to-face, yet my life has been spared."

(which is really interesting in and of itself, given the multi-vocality of Scripture on seeing the face of God -- e.g., God to Moses in Exodus 33:20 "you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.") and then talks about Jacob's encounter with Esau, where he says:

No, please, if I have truly found favor in your sight, take the offering from my hand; for to see your face is like seeing the face of God.

She closes with the bit from the Talmud about each individual human being being created in the image of God but each of us are unique -- unlike identical imperial coins each stamped with the mark of the secular leader.

This all seemed quite a lovely connection to Molly's "Light Gets In" Advent theme. But then she closes the post with her 70 Faces Torah poem on this parsha, which ends with such a downer:

For one impossible moment Jacob reached out.
To see your face, he said, is like seeing
the face of God: brother, it is so good!

But when Esau replied, let us journey together
from this day forward as we have never done
and I will proceed at your pace, Jacob demurred.

The children are frail, and the flocks:
you go on ahead, he said, and I will follow
but he did not follow.

Once Esau headed out toward Seir
Jacob went the other way, to Shechem, where
his sons would slaughter an entire village.

And again the possibility
of inhabiting a different kind of story
vanished into the unforgiving air.

***

The theme for this year’s Advent is Light Gets In. No matter what walls we throw up, what boxes we climb in or that circumstances put us in—Light gets in. Light will have its way.

This Sunday in worship, I’ll be preaching on the walls humans throw up that block out Christ’s light. We’ll begin building an actual wall in the sanctuary, that will grow each week up until Christmas Eve, when the Light will get in. Will you bring cardboard boxes to church anytime you show up, and leave them on the chancel, and help us duct-tape them together to build our Babel-wall up toward heaven and obscure the cross?

-Molly in This Week at First Church

To my mind, Advent is about the light slowly breaking in (we light first one candle and then a second, and so on), so I don't love this theme.

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Pre-service lectio divina happened in the Parlor, and as a result we could hear the pre-service choir rehearsal. I heard "Emmanuel, Expected Jesus," and fell into Advent.

...

We did Luke 1:5-25, and I was struck by Gabriel's statement, "I stand in the presence of God."

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Before service, I picked up a hardcopy of Molly's Advent calendar.

December 2
First Sunday in Advent: Put on your sparkle cream. Glow.

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Unison Prayer of Confession

Light-Bringer,

We offer you our repentance.
We replace holy days with holidays.
We hurry past opportunities to give the gifts of kindness and honesty.
We do not listen to angels in our dreams, forgive those dearest to us,
Or welcome into hearts and homes, the poor and the stranger.
If all sin is separation, forgive us for all the walls we throw up, and let your Light in.

-Maren Tirabassi, adapted

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Jamie facilitated an Advent Devotional Workshop, which I attended.

I was starting to investigate the art supplies when the horde of kids who had been playing war or something all came in and decided to do art (well, Simon was like, "Guys, can't we go back to what we were doing before?" and got ignored by all the kids wrapped up in doing art, so he compromised by making pictures of e.g. ninjas) so I stepped back from the chaos and worked on poetry.

Sue D., to her husband, later: "I was looking for the kids, and I found a craft fair, so I sat down."

I think I definitely want to go back to Art Night.

***

I really liked the Call to Worship we used at CWM tonight:

[One] How shall we prepare God's house for the coming of the Promised One?
[Many] With fragrant branches of cedar, the tree of excellence and strength.
[One] How shall we prepare God's house for the Christ child?
[Many] With a stable and a manger where in the weeks to come, the mystery of the Advent story will be revealed and where the entire creation will welcome the Promised One.
[One] How shall we prepare God's house for Emmanuel, God with us?
[Many] With garlands of pine and fir, whose leaves are ever living, ever green -- symbols of our faith in the living God.
[One] How shall we prepare God's house for the prophet of Galilee?
[Many] With sprigs of holly and ivy, telling of Jesus' faithfulness, even unto death and resurrection.
[One] How shall we prepare our hearts for this revelation of God?
[Many] By hearing again the words of the prophets, the stories of the ancestors of Jesus, and the promises of God.
[One] For in the story of Jesus we see revealed the transforming power of God, and we are reminded anew of God's vision of wholeness, justice, and peace for all creation.
[Many] Thanks be to God!

...

Marla preached on Isaiah 11:1-9 and 1 Samuel 16:1-13. I was mostly meh, but she closed with talking about the fact that we ignore the parts of the Biblical stories that don't seem "proper" or "dignified" and inviting us to think about, if Jesus were to come as a baby a second time, what unexpected places that baby might show up in -- and her shocker suggestion was: born to a Wall Street executive (I thought of the Buddha).

things Christianity didn't quite invent, and theologies I don't quite have

Velveteen Rabbi recently posted a round-up of selichot posts from previous years.

In one, she wrote:

At our selichot services, we'll be using the prayer as a lead-in to a meditation around the radical idea that every single time/place we've missed the mark in our entire lives is always forgiven. Whenever I seriously think about that, it blows me away. Everything I've ever done wrong, in my relationships with other people, in my relationship with myself, in my relationship with God: all of it is forgiven. What would it mean to truly understand that, and to let all of that old baggage go?

My immediate reaction, of course, was, "Gee, that sounds familiar."

I'm also reminded of the conversation Shoshana and I once started to have about the issue of God forgiving you for sins you committed against other people.

We did John 3 at SCBC last night, and I asked what does it mean to "believe in [Jesus]" (John 3:16) and didn't get a satisfactory answer -- nor do I have one myself (though I keep going back to Borg's point about "believe" meaning "to give one's heart to" and thus I move to an emphasis on relationship rather than doctrinal assent) -- though I continue to have discomfort with the idea of Jesus being necessary to save us from God sending us to eternal damnation (which was the idea that kept coming up from the other people in the group). Yeah, I'm reminded of my telling Pr. Lisa that no, I don't have anything written down about my Christology, in large part because I don't have a coherent Christology. And I'm still trying to make sense of Borg and Crossan's book on Paul.

[Rest and re/New] on anger at God

Last night's Rest and re/New theme was being angry with God.

James mentioned Jacob wrestling with the angel and Laura T. commented that she really likes that Jacob doesn't leave the encounter unscarred.
She also said that often we're wrestling with the wrestling, and that that just makes things worse for ourselves.

Have I mentioned that everything makes me think of DBT these days? I talked some about "radical acceptance" -- which I said is not my strong suit :) -- and "doing what's effective." I said that lots of us come from backgrounds that encouraged us to deny/repress our anger at God and that's definitely not healthy, and so we need to find a middle ground -- to experience our anger, but not dwell in it, and to do what we need to with it, that sometimes you need to go and yell at God and sometimes you need to go for a walk and try to let go of the anger.

Lisa talked about William Schultz's article "What Torture Has Taught Me." Apparently he has done a lot of work with Amnesty International with torture survivors and is also a minister and he found himself wondering... if those survivors showed up at his church, what would they think of the theology he espoused? would they find it naive? would they find it deep and meaningful?
I thought of Mariella at Art Night last week talking about someone saying that your theology shouldn't be anything you "can't say in front of burning children."

I Googled just now for [theology "burning children"] and yay, GoogleBooks:

Irving Greenberg's principle that no statement, theological or other, can be made "that would not be credible in the presence of the burning children."⁹ (p. 128, Long night's journey into day: a revised retrospective on the Holocaust by Alice Eckardt & Arthur Roy Eckardt)
9. Greenberg, "Cloud of Smoke," p. 23
[which I think (doing more GoogleBooks search) is: Irving Greenberg, "Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire: Judaism, Christianity and Modernity after the Holocaust," in Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era? ed. Eva Fleischner (New York: KTAV, 1997), pp. 1-55]

In skimming through the footnotes, Moltmann's Crucified God, and possibly I have a new reading project...

P.S. Regular Google got me a top hit of a blogpost that opens with the quotation:

“No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children.” Irving Greenberg

From the blogpost:

“Weep with those who weep,” St. Paul said, and indeed, sometimes as a chaplain that is almost all you can do. [...]

A theology that has everything figured out is not particularly helpful at such a time. My friend Jenny calls that “2 a.m. Theology” – and in fact, it was two in the morning – two a.m. theology cries in pain. It doesn’t have answers. Two a.m. theology just says, I don’t get it, but I’m here, and I believe you’re here, too, God. Even though I’m mad at you. Two a.m. theology believes God is crying, too.

(Erev) Yom Kippur

From Kita:

"May all the people of Israel be forgiven, including all the strangers who live in their midst, for all the people are in fault."

This year:

I am sorry for not being the person you thought I was.
I am sorry for being exactly the person you thought I was.
I am sorry for not being able to commit the way you needed me to.
I am sorry for not being able to fix things for you.
I am sorry for trying to fix things for you, when they were not my responsibility to fix.
I am sorry for letting you down.
I am sorry for expecting too much from you.
I am sorry for being unable to listen to your perspective with an open mind.
I am sorry for being unwilling to consider where you might have been coming from.
I am sorry that I can't forgive you yet.
I am sorry for not treating you with more kindness.
I am sorry for not treating myself with more kindness.

*

I forgive you for not being the person I wanted you to be.
I forgive you for your inability to give me what I needed.
I forgive you for making it all about you.
I forgive you for disappointing me, for angering me, for making me sad.
I forgive you for not being able to empathize with my perspective.
I forgive you for not treating me with more kindness.
I forgive myself for needing more time to let go of past hurts.

*

If there is anyone I have hurt, with words or deeds, this past year, I am truly sorry, and I ask for your forgiveness. You are not obligated to forgive me, but I sincerely hope you will think about it. If there is anything you would like to discuss related to this [...] I promise to be as respectful and considerate as you are.

wholeness is possible

From "Teshuvah, In Three Acts: A rabbi reflects on the struggle to restore wholeness in the lives of three congregants" by Rabbi Ayelet Cohen (emphasis mine):

I ran into one woman outside of the sanctuary on Yom Kippur. She was sitting on the floor playing with her young son. She had lost her mother earlier that year. “I am furious at God,” she told me. “Ever since my mother died I have been furious at God. I have no intention of going in there and praying or saying anything to God.”

But she had come to shul anyway. It was Yom Kippur. She and her partner were raising a child. She was angry at God that her mother had not lived to know the grandson who would surely have brought her so much joy. But this woman and her partner were creating a family, continuing the chain of their Jewish families. They wanted their son to be a part of their Jewish community.

She didn’t go into the sanctuary that year. She may not have gone in the next year either. But she kept coming to shul, with her partner and their son. Even as she raged with God she knew that for her Jewish family, marking the holidays and coming to shul was essential. She wasn’t asking God for forgiveness. She wanted God to ask her for forgiveness, for taking her mother away before her son had a chance to know his grandmother. And it seemed like Yom Kippur was the right time for that.

Each year as the fullness of summer begins to wane and the moon of the month of Elul swells and subsides, the season of teshuvah returns. Teshuvah is a gift and a challenge. It is slow work. There is no magic formula that will suddenly heal all that has shattered in our lives. We build community; we explore and reconcile with Judaism; we search for God. Every year as we return to this season we are painfully aware of what is still broken.

But each year doing teshuvah reminds us that we may begin to repair what is broken. We may recover that which has been lost. Teshuvah reminds us that wholeness is possible.

[24] Pentecost +15(C) - Standing at the Gates of Repentance

Proper 18C / Ordinary 23C / Pentecost +15 - September 5, 2010

Jeremiah 18:1-11
Psalm 139
Philemon 1-21
Luke 14:25-33

Standing at the Gates of Repentance

We are coming up on the Days of Awe.  In a few days is Rosh Hashanah.  The Jewish New Year.  The time when we release everything from the past year which has separated us from God -- including that which has separated us from each other and from our own best selves.

Rachel Barenblat (Velveteen Rabbi) talks about the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah, about the work we are called to do to prepare ourselves.  She says that her teacher Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi calls the spiritual work of that month of Elul tikkun ha-sulam, "repair of the ladder."  She recalls the Biblical story of Jacob’s Ladder, with angels that ascend and descend -- which begs the question of why the angels begin here with us on the ground rather than up in Heaven.  One Jewish teaching answers that these angels are our prayers -- which begin where we are; and when we reach out to God, God reaches back to us.  She writes:

Reb Zalman's teaching about "repair of the ladder" tells me that the work of this season is work of alignment. We're meant to be aligning that internal ladder so that our prayers can ascend without obstruction, and so that divine blessing can descend in return. If there are obstructions in our relationships -- with ourselves, with our partners, with our families and friends, with our communities, with other communities, with God God's-self -- then blessing can't flow as it should.

I was reminded of this when I read the Luke passage -- about building a tower on a foundation.

Jesus asks, "which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether you have enough to complete it?  Otherwise, when you have laid a foundation and are not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule you, saying, 'This person began to build and was not able to finish.' "

Jesus, sensibly, exhorts us not to begin a project without a plan for how to bring it to fruition.

But this is counterbalanced by the God in Jeremiah who can rework the clay that is the substance of our lives into an entirely different shape than it is now or than we had planned it to be.

We are called to bring Jacob's Ladder into alignment, to free it of obstructions -- but we can also rest in the assurance that this work is not ours alone.  God is the Potter, the Carpenter, the Shepherd.  It is God's work that we are doing.  And we do well to remember that we are only repairing the ladder -- it is God who has created it.

Ultimately, all our projects are only a part of God's greater project of Shalom.

Counterbalancing the importance of the work of repair, in a later post, Rachel quotes Leonard Cohen's song "Anthem," which I'll quote at slightly more length here:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

Jacob dreams this ladder when he is fleeing from his brother Esau, who is out to kill him because Jacob tricked him out of his birthright. 

Throughout his life, Jacob has trusted in his own cleverness -- and the assistance of his mother -- to subvert the social order and to work situations to his advantage, despite his position as younger brother.

When we are wrapped up tight in our own doings, there is no space to let God in.  We don't want to let God in -- we've got this all taken care of.  God might have some different plans in mind, and who wants that?

But when our own devices have failed, when we leave the world we have known and venture into the wilderness to seek a new place, sometimes our self-assurance is a little bit shaken, and perhaps we let down some of our defenses, and some cracks open up in our shell through which the Holy Spirit can move.

Upon waking from this dream, Jacob says, "Surely God is in this place, and I did not know it."

God is with us not only when we have perfect offerings, when we have perfectly completed all the work of repair and have washed away all the grime of our labors, presenting our shiny clean and smiling faces before God.

God is also with us when we are fleeing the consequences of our own actions -- and is often even waiting with a blessing to offer us, as in this story, where God not only affirms that Jacob will inherit the promise made to Abraham, but also says, "Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go."  Our lectionary elides this portion of the Psalmist's address to God, for reasons that are unclear to me:

⁷Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?
⁸If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
⁹If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
¹⁰even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.
¹¹If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,"
¹²even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.

God is with us always -- always reaching out to us, patiently waiting for us to make a move toward ascending or repairing that ladder.

Jesus calls us to let go of all that we have in order to follow The Way which leads to eternal life.  For none of us has the tools to build Jacob's Ladder, and so we are asked to surrender to the One who does.

We are asked to open ourselves up to being radically remade -- to give up our gropings for power and control, to let go of our belief that we can do this all ourselves.

"Come, go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words."

Bring your self -- your shaky, wobbly, misshapen, soft clay self -- to the potter's house ... a house perhaps built of strong timbers, on the edge of a wood, so you have to travel a bit out of the hustling bustling "civilization" to reach it ... and settle yourself there, perhaps a bit nervously, as you watch a pair of strong hands throwing clay and you wonder what it would feel like to be that clay on the wheel. 

And as you settle yourself, the potter begins to speak to you, not taking her eyes off her work, but speaking directly to you, in a voice that is gentle but firm, perhaps a bit deeper than you had expected.  She reminds you that She knew you and knit you in your mother's womb.  And She tells you the story of your birth, of how you cried when you were pushed out of the amniotic fluid that had had been your home for months and into the harsh air.  She tells you of how quickly your lungs and eyes and limbs adjusted.  She tells you of the warm bodies, soft and firm, that held you close, that would not left you fall.

She tells you the story of your life -- of the times you fell, of the times you cried.  She reminds you of the times when someone was there to pick you up, to bandage your wounds, to hold you as you cried.  And She tells you that even when no human was there, when you felt abandoned and alone, that She was there beside you, watching you, and weeping with you.

And She tells you that She has such good plans for you -- plans to prosper you and not to harm you; plans to give you hope and a future.  And you know that She loves you.

And so when She finishes the piece She is working on, when She has cleaned off Her wheel, and She looks at you invitingly, you nod.

We often express a desire for new life, but we frequently want it on our own terms -- we have a clear picture in our minds of what that new life would look like, and we just want God to make it happen.  The story of the potter here reminds us that there is One with greater vision than ours.

In synchronicity with where we are in the Jewish calendar this week, today’s Jeremiah passage ends with God saying, "Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings."  The Psalmist, in turn, ends by asking God, "See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

Wikipedia informs me that:

In the Talmud tractate on Rosh Hashanah it states that three books of account are opened on Rosh Hashanah, wherein the fate of the wicked, the righteous, and those of an intermediate class are recorded. The names of the righteous are immediately inscribed in the book of life, and they are sealed "to live." The middle class are allowed a respite of ten days, until Yom Kippur, to repent and become righteous; the wicked are "blotted out of the book of the living."

I feel really disingenuous standing here before you extolling reconciliation -- because I am violently angry at someone.  But as I was struggling with that disconnect, I remembered that above bit about Rosh Hashanah.

It would seem to make more sense for the New Year to come on or immediately after Yom Kippur, so that after all this work you start the year fresh, but no, you start the year and immediately you begin a period of concentrated work.

And the Days of Awe aren't just about apologizing and asking forgiveness for the things we have done to others -- faithful Jews are also called to forgive that which has been done to them (or so I am given to understand from at least one Jewish friend of mine, anyway).

I do not get to pursue reconciliation with this person I am violently angry with.  Over and over again she has failed someone I care very much about, and the one time I tried to have a conversation with her about that, it did NOT go well.  She got an apology from me for the ways in which I was arguably out-of-line in that situation, so she probably feels sufficiently reconciled -- but she has also made it clear that she is incapable of providing my friend with what she needs, and is uninterested in trying.  So how do I achieve reconciliation with her?  Pettily I want to scream at her and possibly punch her in the face; but much more than that, I want to change her, to help her grow into the vocation she is pursuing, to help her help my friend.

But I'm not the Potter.  I don't have the power to reshape her, nor do I know what vision the Creator has in mind either for her or for my friend.

Jesus says, "None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."

Anger is a possession.

Bitterness is a possession.

Spite is a possession.

A desire to control is a possession.

In order to walk in the Way of the One who calls us to new life, we are called to let go of that which binds us to our old lives, that which keeps us twisted in on ourselves.

Letting go?  Not one of my strong suits.  So this isn't work I particularly want to do.  But perhaps the impending Days of Repentance will help me to try.

As we move out into the world, I invite us all to open ourselves, even a little bit, to the transformation God wishes to work in us -- whether that means doing some work of reconciliation or perhaps some other work altogether.

Amen.

Tikkun Olam

One of the professors I work for sent me a PDF document to print out for him and commented that I might be interested. One of its bullet points references “Arvut Hadadit" and “Tikkun Olam” and so of course I Googled them. One of the top-listed results for the second term was a 2007 article. Excerpt:

Rather than reject the term altogether as meaningless, I suggest a re-imagining of tikkun olam that combines the four understandings of the term that we have seen in traditional text: 1) the Aleynu’s concept of tikkun as the destruction of any impurities that impede the full manifestation of the divine presence; 2) the literalist midrashic understanding of tikkun olam as the establishment of a sustainable world; 3) the rabbinic willingness to invoke tikkun ha’olam as a justification for changing untenable laws; and 4) the Lurianic belief that individual actions can affect the fate of the world as a whole.

• From the Aleynu conception, our understanding of tikkun olam will include an emphasis on the elimination of evil and the restoration of the world to a perfected divine state.
  
• The midrashic emphasis on the physical maintenance of creation reminds us of the need to work to preserve the world at a time when human behavior is having a negative impact on global temperatures, hurricane systems, and other natural phenomena
  
• The rabbinic understanding of tikkun ha’olam as the creation of a workable social and religious system leads to a definition of tikkun olam as a mandate to correct the systems that make our own society dysfunctional.
  
• Finally, the Lurianic belief that individual actions can have a permanent effect on the cosmos offers hope that our efforts toward tikkun will succeed.

These four strands, though complementary in some ways, also remain in tension with one another in some other important ways. The Aleynu prayer has the potential to direct Jews toward an inward focus on connecting with God and on spreading divinity through less tangible means, such as prayer or basic kindness, rather than through attention to more concrete human needs. The midrashic focus on the physical maintenance of the world might lead to an emphasis only on issues that affect the physical world – such as global warming, deforestation, or the extinction of animal species—and a concurrent disregard for human problems, such as poverty and health concerns. The rabbinic attention to fixing loopholes that disrupt the legal and social system may limit the definition of tikkun olam to issues that are understood to interfere with the large-scale functioning of society to the exclusion of issues that primarily affect a certain segment of the population. The Lurianic emphasis on the restoration of divine wholeness easily leads to an otherworldly focus, and a minimization of one’s sense of obligation toward the here and now.

By combining the major themes of these four strands, we come to a definition of tikkun olam as the process of fixing large societal problems, while maintaining a belief that our actions can have a positive effect on the greater human and divine world. When I think about my own tikkun olam commitments, I ask myself whether the work I am doing makes our society, as a whole function in a more positive way; whether the work allows even the most vulnerable members of society to live fully realized lives; and whether the work contributes to establishing a world in which the divine presence is more readily apparent. If we each ask these questions of ourselves, we can help to ensure that our work is worthy of being deemed tikkun olam.

If we each ask these questions of ourselves, we can help to ensure that our work is worthy of being deemed tikkun olam.

***

One of the articles on the sidebar was "Why I Study Sabbateanism." In discussing Jacob Frank, the author writes: "If you see a boundary, cross it - that's the view, because it's what God did, mixing Godself with the impurity of the material world." I was a little thrown to hear a Jewish writer saying this, because hello Christian Incarnationalism, but of course the God of Abraham has been coming down and dwelling amidst God's people since Creation.

[unpreached sermon #5] Salvation Through Relationship (Pentecost 23B)

Salvation Through Relationship

Pentecost 23 (Year B) - November 8, 2009

Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
Psalm 127
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44

In beginning to prepare for this sermon, I was reading The Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings, which summarizes Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17 as "Ruth wins the favor of Boaz."  I was really not excited about that, but it's not actually an accurate representation at all.

Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, "My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you.  Now here is our kinsman Boaz, with whose young women you have been working.  See, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing-floor.  Now wash and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes and go down to the threshing-floor; but do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking.  When he lies down, observe the place where he lies; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down; and he will tell you what to do."
    Ruth said to her, "All that you tell me I will do."

So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife.  When they came together, the Lord made her conceive, and she bore a son.
    Then the women said to Naomi, "Blessed be God, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin; and may this child's name be renowned in Israel!  This child shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has borne him."
    Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his nurse.
    The women of the neighbourhood gave him a name, saying, "A son has been born to Naomi."  They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David.

These Sunday readings are also excerpts from Tuesday and Friday's daily lectionary.  As my best friend commented: Clearly they were the important parts of the story :)

I could do a whole annotated Book of Ruth highlighting the (potential) queerness, and that IS my preferred reading of the text, but I don't actually need to do that here.  This story isn't about Ruth and Boaz perpetuating heteronormativity; it's about Ruth becoming more fully integrated into the family; it's about restoration and sustenance for Naomi, who might otherwise have been left alone.  The Old Testament is full of exhortations to care for the widow and the orphan, because they are the most vulnerable.  Earlier in the Book of Ruth we have seen Boaz indeed be kind to Ruth, but I love that it is Naomi who makes this happen -- Naomi who has rejected her name and told those who knew her in earlier times to call her "Mara," which means bitter.  She says that she is bitter, laments that God has brought her back empty -- and yet she still seeks to provide for this foreigner who has returned with her, and tells her exactly how to go about it.

Last week we read about Ruth choosing to go with her mother-in-law rather than returning to her own people.  Here, she becomes more fully integrated into Naomi's people by partnering with Boaz.  I could use this as a segue into talking about modern life, about how regardless of the pledges you and someone else have made to each other with your hearts and souls, in order to access full legal protections, society requires something more official, like marriage -- and I hope that someone did preach that sermon, this Sunday after Election Day 2009, after the referendum on Maine's same-sex marriage law -- but that's not the sermon I'm interested in preaching right now.

She will become the ancestor of David, the greatest of all the Israelite kings -- and we Christians can't hear about Jesse and David without thinking of that other Davidic king: Jesus the Christ.  If this were a different church, I would interrupt my sermon to play part of the Hallelujah Chorus -- king of kings, and lord of lords, and he shall reign for ever and ever.  I am really really excited about Advent.

I know, I know, we don't like kings and lords -- ours is not a hierarchical God with power-over, but rather a God of an egalitarian Kin-dom.  But I can't help but be thrilled not only by the music of the Hallelujah Chorus but by its idea -- of the Creator of the world once again reigning over it, of the world being as it should be.  When I think about prayers of confession, I think about turning back to God, of the Jewish concept of teshuvah.  I think about walking with God, of God's will and our will being aligned.  And so the idea of the Reign of God doesn't necessarily conjure up for me images of some enthroned guy in the sky waving a scepter.

We're still in Hebrews for the Epistle reading.  It's getting to the point where I'm not sure which I dislike more -- that I keep having to deal with what reads to me like substitutionary blood atonement or that each week's lectionary passage seems to say the same thing.

I read Marcus Borg's The Heart of Christianity this week, and Borg argues that in the first century CE, the statement "Jesus is the sacrifice for sin" had quite a different meaning than the one that is common today.

According to temple theology, certain kinds of sin and impurities could be dealt with only through sacrifice in the temple.  Temple theology thus claimed an institutional monopoly on the forgiveness of sins; and because the forgiveness of sins was a prerequisite for entry into the presence of God, temple theology also claimed an institutional monopoly on access to God.
    In this setting, to affirm "Jesus is the sacrifice for sin" was to deny the temple's claim to have a monopoly on forgiveness and access to God.  It was an antitemple statement.  Using the metaphor of sacrifice, it subverted the sacrificial system.  It meant: God in Jesus has already provided the sacrifice and has thus taken care of whatever you think separates you from God; you have access to God apart from the temple and its system of sacrifice.  It is a metaphor of radical grace, of amazing grace.  (p. 94-95)

God in Jesus has [...] taken care of whatever you think separates you from God.  I really like that.  God is always with us ("close to us as breathing and distant as the farthest star" as a UCC prayer puts it -- which reminds me of the Quranic statement that Allah is closer to a person than that person's jugular) and it is we who build up walls and stumbling blocks, it is we who think that anything -- death or life, angels or principalities or powers, things present or things to come, height or depth, or any other created thing -- can separate us from the love of God.

Critiques and rejections of the exclusive temple system also evoke this week's Gospel passage -- where Jesus warns against the scribes who gloat on their appearances and then notes the widow who gave her last two coins to the treasury.

I'm not actually sure what to do with this passage, as I'm not really a fan of giving up absolutely everything you have materially -- and giving it to an institution, to boot -- so I'm wary of the apparent exhortation to give everything we have to live on.  I mean, I've talked before about "credo" meaning "to give one's heart to," and I am totally on board with the exhortation to love God with our entire selves, with all that we have.  But give all my money to the church?  I love my church, but I am also attached to making my rent payment, for example.

Last week we heard (from a scribe no less -- they're not all bad): To love God and to love neighbor, "this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."

So we are called not necessarily to material sacrifice, but to love -- knowing, of course, that the former often comes with the latter.

In this week's daily lectionary, Paul says, "Since we have now been justified by Christ's blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through Christ!  For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of God's Child, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through Christ's life!" (Romans 5:9-10)

Leaving aside the implicit blood atonement theology, I love this idea that even when we were God's "enemies," God so wanted to reconcile with us that God sacrificed SO MUCH.  This is not a God who is going to say, "You didn't hold the proper tenets, too bad for you."  This is a God who, as I say during the Call to Confession every Wednesday, is always reaching out to us.

Our Psalm today begins: "Unless God builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless God guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain.  It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for while they sleep God provides for those God loves."

One thing I hear a lot at the church I grew up in is: "God's work, done in God's way, never lacks God's supply."  Google attributes this quotation to J. Hudson Taylor.

This always makes me uncomfortable because it has the same ideas as Prosperity Gospel -- that your material success (prosperity) is directly proportional to how much God approves of you.

A number of this week's daily lectionary passages are from Paul's Letter to the Romans, exhorting us: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." (Romans 12:21) and "Love does no harm to its neighbor.  Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law." (Romans 13:10).

A book I was reading recently points out that the famous passage on Love from Paul's letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 13) comes after a list of the gifts of the Spirit.  You might get all this awesome stuff which we would parse as Fruits of the Spirit -- prophecy, healing, etc. -- but if you don't have love, it's not worth anything.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.  (1 Corinthians 13:1-3, NIV)

Love is what is most important.

I like to think that is what the Psalmist is talking about about God building the house and guarding the city.  God is Love.  And we can build our insular communities and guard our wealth of privilege, but if we are not working in alignment with God, if Love is not the spirit that moves through our hearts and hands and mouths as we do this work, our work will ultimately crumble.

I'm cheating again, writing the sermon AFTER the Sunday in question.

I've been frustrated recently with sermons that water down the radical, challenging message of the Gospel to make it palatable for middle-class Americans.  But maybe I'm being too harsh.

I mean, I can talk a good game about radical servanthood or whatever, but I'm still a selfish bitch.  How helpful really is it for me to exhort people to do things I'm definitely not doing myself?

The day after the Sunday this sermon is for, I ended up in a fight with one of the people I love most in the world.  One of the things that struck me in processing it was my feeling that THIS of all things is something I want to do right by and yet I can't manage it.  And giving money to the New Sudan Education Initiative or whatever seems so beside the point when I continue to hurt people I love.

We live our lives in the day-to-day.

And we live in a global community, so I'm not suggesting that we turn our back on those concerns, but I wonder if in all the focus on faceless charitable giving we lose our attention to the ways in which we can better live out Love in our daily lives, with those close to us.  Ruth was a foreigner working Boaz's fields, but her mother-in-law was kin to him, and so she was also family, even before their marriage.  And maybe he would have married her even if she had been his neighbor's Moabite daughter-in-law, and I absolutely think that we are called to be radically hospitable to the stranger, but maybe this week we can think a little bit more about how to be hospitable to those we are already in relationship with -- to be more charitable, more gracious, to cultivate a generosity of spirit ... to be kinder and gentler to those around us, to pay attention to where they're coming from rather than making snap judgments and reacting thoughtlessly.

When we sang "Won't You Let Me Be Your Servant?" in morning church on Pentecost 21, verse 3 literally made me cry.

I will hold the Christ-light for you in the shadow of your fear;
I will hold my hand out to you, speak the peace you long to hear.

This is what we are called to do -- to embody the light and life of Christ in the world, for strangers and for those we love (and for those who are neither strangers nor loved ones as well, of course).

Go now, to love and serve God.

Apparently it's Advent already in my head?

[First Sunday of Advent is actually November 29.]

At Harvard T last night, a busker was playing "God of Grace and God of Glory" ("cure thy children's warring madness...").

Later, I also had "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" in my head ("Mild He lays His glory by, Born that man no more may die.").

This morning, I had "O Come, All Ye Faithful" ("Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, born this happy morning...") and "O Little Town of Bethlehem" ("Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.") in my head.

Is it bad that most all these songs blur together when I'm singing them in my head? (Not so much "O Little Town of Bethlehem," but...)

++

Yesterday I read a Magpie Girl post on The Imposter Syndrome, and one thing that struck me from the "Treatment Plan" was:

Trust the fear. I know this seems contradictory, but here’s what I mean: The more persistent that nagging voice is that’s calling you a con-artist, the more likely it is that you are actually doing exactly what you are meant to be doing. Know that the voice will get louder before it dies down, especially if you start ignoring it, but it will, in time, begin to give up the fight and let you do your work in this world fully and without doubt, second-guessing, and insecurity. Marianne Williamson said it most famously: “We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?…Your playing small does not serve the world.”

(1) "The more persistent that nagging voice is that’s calling you a con-artist, the more likely it is that you are actually doing exactly what you are meant to be doing."

I push back against this to some extent -- in so far as I think there are voices inside us that tell us not to do things which we should listen to. Sometimes we're not as [smart, talented, whatever] as people think we are AND THAT'S OKAY. We shouldn't push ourselves just because other people want us to.

But that's my own bias speaking, because really she's talking about something else, and yes, the voices that say "You're not good enough to do this thing you want to do" is usually a gremlin voice and should not be heeded.

(2) "We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?…Your playing small does not serve the world."

Your playing small does not serve the world.

+++

Last night I was thinking of a Velveteen Rabbi post I'd read ("The View from Week 35"):

Being pregnant has been endlessly fascinating. Already it's has shifted my spiritual practices. My weekday prayer practice has morphed: I'm less likely to get out of bed and daven a full shacharit these days, but much more likely to make brachot at random moments of the day. I say a blessing every morning when I give myself an injection of blood thinner, and when I feel my son moving inside me. I wonder what bracha I'll make over breastfeeding, and whether I'll be able to sustain gratitude when I'm changing his diaper at 2am.

I talk with him constantly when I'm alone in the car -- I tell him about my day, about how I'm feeling, about the world we're bringing him into. In that sense, being pregnant feels a bit like I'm praying all the time, because the other figure I talk to when I'm alone in the car is God. Lately I find that I shift back and forth between words intended for the baby and words intended for the Holy Blessed One without making much distinction between the two.

Being pregnant has shifted my relationship with the liturgy. I've known intellectually for years that we call God ha-rachaman, The Merciful, but I hadn't considered what it means that the root of that word for merciful is the root of rechem, womb. I get distracted while davening prayers I've known by heart for years: one mention of God's mercy and I'm liable to be caught in contemplation of what it means that God is the womb in which creation is nurtured. It takes conscious effort to set aside those meditations and move on with the service sometimes.

I'm less likely to get out of bed and daven a full shacharit these days, but much more likely to make brachot at random moments of the day.

I think this particularly jumped out at me because I'm trying to develop a practice of saying grace* before each meal (which then begs the question of what constitutes a "meal" -- do I count snacks? obviously the answer is to adopt a more Jewish approach and say a blessing before I put anything in my mouth ... yes, I went to a gutter place when I wrote that -- but I will be disappointed in contemporary Judaism if no one's composed a blessing for that).

I'm somewhat hesitant about automatic rote things -- because I worry that they lose meaning that way; that we say them without thinking. But I am a really big fan of acknowledging God's presence and grace in all things -- and having prepared language for that really helps.

* "Dear God, we thank you for this food, may it bless us and nourish us. We ask your blessing on all those responsible for bringing this food to our table -- from the first farmers through to [the grocery store employees, the restaurant staff, these people who are hosting me, etc.]. We also ask your particular blessing on those who have no food and those for whom food is a difficult issue. (We ask all this for love's sake. Amen.)"

Yes, apparently my default language for this kind of prayer is plural even though I'm the only one asking (and am always doing it silently at that).

And "for love's sake" is totally taken from Laura Ruth.

"melech": king, mother, abundance

I recently read a Velveteen Rabbi post on Yom Kippur 5770, and I was struck by her section on king:

The word מלך, "king," is a prevalent metaphor in the High Holiday liturgy. We can see this through a new lens if we unpack the individual letters of the word:

• מ / mem: this letter can be found in the mmm of mama and ima, the m-sound at the beginning of the word mayyim (waters, both cosmic and otherwise). Mem is a letter of motherhood and water.
  
• ל / lamed: this letter begins up high, then takes a crooked path to reach the ground below. Like the flow of divine abundance which begins on high and divagates as it reaches us; like our lives, which start out straight but always wind up complicated. Lamed is a channel from high to low.
  
• כ / chaf: this letter is cupped, like hands brought together to receive.

These three letters flow together sequentially in the alef-bet. Here in our liturgy they speak to us of divine kingship or sovereignty -- and they also speak to us of the root metaphor of motherhood and divine flow, coming down through its crooked channels into our hands.

Before reciting the ha-Melech prayer on Yom Kippur morning, Simcha Zevit gives over this teaching in the name of Reb Marcia Prager, and then invites us to rise and embody it: hands waving above our heads like the rish-rush of the waters, then twisting and flowing down toward the ground, then cupped to receive abundance and then to offer it to someone else in the room. Suddenly melech doesn't seem to be so much about power-over anymore.

My primary church is really uncomfortable with hierarchical language for God, and I have come to internalize that discomfort to some extent -- though at the same time I think the idea of God's sovereignty can be really useful. I really like this meditation on so many of the ideas that are included in this God we worship.

"And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations."

Last Friday I was having a conversation with a friend about the Book of Revelation, including a Shiva analogy, and I went to capitalize "Destruction" and "Rebirth" and I thought of the Endless and realized that all of the Endless are White. Admittedly, making them racially diverse would come with its own host of problems (tokenism, stereotyping, etc.), but it still makes me uncomfortable.

Folks with better familiarity with Sandman than I have (it's been years since I read the books) suggested that the Endless appear as whatever the viewer's default is, which I had kind of been suspecting, and which is apparently supported in the text by Dream's appearance to a particular character in one story arc -- though problematically the follow-through on this is incomplete, as Dream appears as White in modern America, regardless of the race or culture of the person he's appearing to.

***

In my conversation about the Book of Revelation, I got into the OT/NT dichotomy, which I've come to really problematize in recent years, and how I now see the Bible as a record of a people's encounters with the Divine, mediated by their sociohistorical context, which reminds me of something I saw excerpted recently:

In March 2007, a reader left the comment: "Would you folks please stop putting the word 'Christian' in front of the name 'Ann Coulter' as an adjective? Those of us who actually do practice our religion would appreciate it."

My answer was no, I wouldn't stop. And my answer about distinguishing between "real" and "unreal" Christians, beyond noting that there are Christians who try to impose their beliefs on others and those who don't, is also no.

[...] Yes, I have personal opinions about how closely self-identified Christians of all stripes hew to their own religious text, but it's flatly not my place to kick someone out of the Christian community, even semantically.

And, truth be told, even if I did feel like it were my place, I wouldn't stop identifying as Christians people like, for example, Ann Coulter, anyway—because Christianity is about culture as much as it is scripture no matter on what part of the Christian spectrum one falls.

-from "On "Real" Christians and Christian Privilege" posted by Melissa McEwan on Shakesville

I clicked through and read the whole post before posting here, and she talks a lot about privilege, which I found really interesting.

"They were off my path so I never had dared"

(1) This post makes me want to see the movie Jennifer's Body.

(2) A friend of mine recently linked to this this NY Times article on prayer which has one paragraph which, as she put it, "basically plagiarizes inaccurately paraphrases closely adapts an excerpt from this 2008 news article" (and I'm here quoting from the 2008 article):

Among the most innovative -- and controversial -- aspects of the Siddur soon to be released by San Francisco's main gay synagogue is a prayer for "unexpected intimacy." The new prayer is intended for meaningful encounters with strangers, including, according to some involved in the project, anonymous sexual relations.

It is featured in the forthcoming Siddur created by Congregation Sha'ar Zahav, a 31-year-old synagogue in San Francisco affiliated with the Reform movement.

"In the dark, in a strange place, our father Jacob encountered a stranger with whom he grappled all night," the prayer begins, referring to the biblical story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. "He never knew the stranger's name, yet their encounter was a blessing, which turned Jacob into Israel and made him realize, I have seen God face-to-face."

The prayer, titled "Kavannah for Unexpected Intimacy," goes on to ask God -- "who created passion and wove it throughout creation" -- to permit the encounter to be a blessing "that allows us to both touch and see the Divine."

[...]

Ramer, who describes himself as "fiercely monogamous," stressed that the prayer was not intended solely for gays and lesbians. He also emphasized that it need not refer solely to encounters of a sexual nature, but to any exchange with a stranger that was deemed meaningful.

"Isn't this one of the things we're told the most, to honor strangers?" Ramer asked. "In an anonymous act, this is our chance to recognize the sacredness."

I have thoughts on the NYT prayer article, but I'm much more struck by the stranger-encounter prayer idea.  My friend suggests that the question we ask (and not just about sexual ethics) shouldn't be about Right/Wrong but rather should be, "How can this activity reflect and deepen the presence of God in my life and the world?"

Also, Rosh Hashanah

Possibly the first Rosh Hashanah blogpost I saw this year was Rosh Hashanah + Talk Like a Pirate Day.

More seriously:

I really like this interpretation of the death litany:

The prayer itself is a list of ways people die. It purpose isn’t to scare you, but to get your attention: “Hey! This could be your last year on earth. How do you want to live it? Enslaved to old habits? Obsessed with trivialities? Self¬–absorbed and clinging? Or is this a time to turn, reflect, and let go?”

You are going to die. If not this year, maybe next year, or the year after that. So death isn’t your problem. Your problem is how to live until you die. Unetanah Tokef challenges us to live with teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah. Teshuvah, weakly translated as “repentance” literally means “turning,” and is the act of turning from evil and doing good, turning from self to others, turning from fear to love, turning from self to God. Tefillah is prayer, and in Hebrew the act of praying (hitpallel) is reflexive: true prayer is seeing who you really are as the image and likeness of God and then acting accordingly. Acting accordingly means practicing tzedakah. Tzedakah, from tzedek, justice, is the act of uplifting the poor and enfranchising the disenfranchised. The highest form of tzedakah is seeing that people are gainfully employed and self–supporting. Tzedakah means earning your money honestly in a manner than does no harm, and using your money wisely in a manner that does great good.

So on this birthday of humanity, take a moment and remember your mortality, examine your life, and where necessary turn toward a deeper act of generosity.

And from this post on tshuvah:

The word Tshuvah doens’t really mean “repentance,” but “return.” “Return” means that rather than saying one is sorry and moving on to the next wretched remark, one has to realize that one has walked way off the right path, turn around and walk all the way back. It is insufficient to apologize and move on, becasue usually, the things that we do wrong are not single mistakes in an otherwise unblemished life. No, we humans are creatures of pattern and habit, and that eans those mistakes that we make aren’t just about a one-ff. THey are usually part of a larger pattern of behavior which we need to observe and reform. That is one of the reasons why Judaism is based on laws - halakha- not feelings: tzedaka, not caritas, for example-
psychology confirms what the rabbis have been telling us for centuries: peoples’ behavior is not driven by rational choice making, but rather by impulses often driven by habit, which are then after the fact justified. Which means that more important than good intentions are good habits, good patterns.

BUt there’s one more thing to add here. Sometimes one really does do wrong by accident, or by mistake. In our society today, we often try to emphasize intent and show tht our action was not intended to do harm - that is, in part, the origin of the non-apology. BUt in Judaism, accidents, too require tshuvah - how do we know this? In the Torah, sacrifices are offered for unintentional sins, moreover, check your high holiday liturgy - you may notice that accidental sins are listed there too. In our society, that is counter-intuitive - if it’s an accident, why do we have to say sorry? BUt accidents too, are often not done in a vacuum - they, too, often result from patterns of behavior that result in outcomes that - while we may not have intended them- are inevitable, and results of our actions.
You may not have intended to fall off the roof and land on someone and kill them- but why were you up on a roof without safeguards? Do you tend to behave in risky ways? YOu didn’t intend to get drunk again? Well, why were you hanging out with your drinking buddies and depending on them for a ride?

From a poem Velveteen Rabbi wrote:

In Hebrew, “compassion”
shares a root with “womb”
and God is the One in Whose womb
creation is nurtured.

On Rosh Hashanah we say
today the world is born.
Or: this moment right now
is pregnant with eternity.

my biases are showing

A friend of mine made a post last night about seeking faith &etc., and I am having such a difficult time reading the comments wherein people say really disparaging/dismissive things about their experiences with Christianity -- both because of some of the tone and because of the implication that ALL Christianity is thus sullied.

Hi, watch me feel really really defensive of my faith.

It also reminded me of my friend L. saying that all men are manipulative assholes -- which is true of her experiences with men but not of mine.

So rather than just griping, let me sketch out some of why I love this Story so much.

God created the world and declared it good. God said, "let us make humanity in our image, according to our likeness." Every single one of us is beloved of God, God who has known us since before we were air-breathers (Psalm 139).

God is a God of the underdog. God hears God's people crying out. God lifts God's people out of bondage. God mourns when God's people turn away from God.

God spoke to God's people throughout history.
God Incarnated, came and met humanity in the flesh.
We commemorate our communion with God and with each other with sacred meals.

Jesus was resurrected, body and soul. After the Road to Emmaus, Jesus' friends recognized Jesus in the sharing of a meal. Throughout his ministry, Jesus touched people and healed them of physical ailments and forgave their sins and sat down to meals with them -- people of all sorts.
We look forward to the redemption of all creation.

We are an embodied, beloved, blessed people.

On the seventh day of Creation, God rested. At times, Jesus went off to be alone. We have canonical models which tell us that we should not work 24/7.

Jesus also asked his friends to pray with him as he approached the hour of his death. We have strong models of community.

Creation is so rooted in breath and Word. God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. The Tetragrammaton (YHWH) sounds like breath. The first human was created from the earth and God inbreathed. The Christian church was born when the Holy Spirit descended upon the early disciples and those gathered all heard the Good News in their native tongue.

Abraham argued with God to not destroy the city of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:16-33). There is a midrash that when God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac that God had wanted Abraham to argue then, too. We argue with God. God holds us to a high standard (and also extends us grace and mercy, streams which will never dry up) and we too remind God of the importance of justice and mercy.

"What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8)

We are called to love everyone.

"You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." (Exodus 22:21)

Jacob wrestled with the Angel and was renamed "Israel," a people who struggle with God and live.

This brain-dump isn't holding together as well as I had hoped. Let me sum up.

I believe in a God who loves me, who loves all of Creation, who meets me in the silence of my heart, in the whirlwind of my anger and frustration, in the belly of the great fish, in the sharing of bread and drink with friends and with strangers.

in which I complain about a World Religions class

So, I'm auditing a World Religions class at Harvard Summer School (taught by a guy with a PhD from BU), the first session of which was Tuesday of this week.

A friend of mine had criticized one of the main texts we're using, saying, "she [the author] makes some cringingly simplistic statements, and her bias against traditional Christianity was so apparent (to me, anyway) that I didn't fully trust her appraisal of other religions I know less well. I wish I knew of a better comparative religion text to recommend."

Early in class, the prof spoke praisingly of the author (whom he has become friends with). I'm only about ten pages into the text, though, so I didn't have an opinion of my own to make me hesitant.

[Sidebar before I start complaining in earnest: I will give the prof credit for recommending to us that we get to know people from other faith traditions -- and other countries, other ethnicities -- and sit down and have a drink with that person, that you'll learn more from that than you will from a class. Though it came across a little uncomfortably tokenizing, with an implication of "tell me about your faith tradition" without an understanding that everyone's experience of a given faith tradition is going to be unique and often very different from someone else's ... though he did sort of touch on this at other moments ... and he's traveled to lots of places around the world getting to know different Buddhist practitioners, so I think he really is aware of the diversity that exists within a given faith tradition.]

Later, he told a story of saying to his parents, "Isn't it interesting that two out of your three kids became Buddhists" (his parents were Methodists, possibly ministers), and his sister turned to him and said, "You're not a Buddhist." He said he was -- he meditates some, the Buddhist philosophy is very important in his life. She insisted that he didn't actually practice it (she gets up every morning and chants, has an altar, etc.), sure he goes all over the world and writes books, but "it's a hobby for you." (As the class went on, I returned to this as an articulation of my problem with him -- that he's not a practitioner of religion but rather an outsider ... though admittedly my problem may simply be that he's an outsider talking about my faith tradition.)

A friend of his suggested he take the Belief-O-Matic quiz to settle the question. So he read us his results, mentioning an important belief of his (concern for social justice, the environment, church that doesn't have lots of talking) that explained why he had scored high for that faith tradition (until he finally got to a kind of Buddhism, which I think was #8).

Later in the class, he talked about how we're going to focus on elements common across many religions, but that he's not trying to say that all/most religions are at heart the same. For example, he said, suffering is a central theme of Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity, but if you actually dig down, the way that suffering is central to their faith traditions are very different. Buddhism: everyone suffers, this is the first Noble Truth, doesn't matter how much material wealth or anything you have you're still as susceptible to suffering as anyone else. Judaism: a people who have faced threats of extermination over and over again (the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Nazis), so suffering is understood in community. Christianity: Jesus on the cross is a central image, but that's an individual suffering, albeit suffering to atone for the sins of the whole world.

I couldn't point out to anything he said during class that was factually wrong [maybe "untrue" is more the word I want?], and I tried to remind myself that of course in an introductory overview you have to oversimplify and you can't necessarily be constantly caveating (e.g., "Substitutionary atonement is the traditional understanding of Jesus' death on the cross, but there are many different ways to understand Jesus' salvific work, and many progressive churches in particular reject the idea of substitutionary atonement") but much of what he said still really rankled.

Plus, of course, "suffering" is not something I would posit as a central theme of Judaism or Christianity (or Buddhism).

The next evening, I told my friend Cate that if I were asked to list major themes of Judaism I would say: enslavement, exile, liberation, being a people set apart, having a covenant with God, a legalistic understanding but along with that a tradition of arguing with God ("see the fine print here... oh you didn't specify that... what if there are only ten righteous people in the city? etc."), holidays of "They tried to kill us but they didn't succeed; let's eat!"

I then went to say, "If I were asked to list major themes of Christianity... actually I'm not sure what I would say. Maybe because it is my tradition and so I'm very aware of how much disagreement there is?"

Cate said she was never particularly observant even when she went to church with her family, but that her main takeaway from church was: "Jesus loves you, so go and love everyone else." She later said that she would also list "hope" as a major theme of Christianity.

***

Seven(!) years ago I took the the Belief-O-Matic quiz.

I took it again today and ugh, my beliefs do not fit into your options... I can pick an approximate, but your statement has resonances I don't intend and elides certain things that are important to me. Yes, multiple choice quizzes are inherently problematic. And this does help the prof's commentary on his results feel less offensive. "Concern for the enivironment" would not be the key phrase I would pull out were I asked to talk about Neo-paganism, for example, but given the questions and answers in this quiz I can see how someone like him could score high for Neo-paganism in large part because he has strong concern for the environment.

The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.

Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.

In 2002, my top 10 were:

1. Reform Judaism (100%)
2. Liberal Quakers (87%)
3. Orthodox Judaism (83%)
4. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (82%)
5. Unitarian Universalism (82%)
6. Sikhism (79%)
7. Bahá'í Faith (78%)
8. Islam (76%)
9. Neo-Pagan (69%)
10. Mahayana Buddhism (68%)

My 2009 results:

1. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (100%)
   
2. Liberal Quakers (83%)
   
3. Orthodox Quaker (80%)
   
4. Unitarian Universalism (72%)
   
5. Reform Judaism (70%)
   
6. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (62%)
   
7. Seventh Day Adventist (61%)
   
8. Eastern Orthodox (48%)
   
9. New Age (48%)
   
10. Roman Catholic (48%)

"Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you establish their rule of the earth?"

A UCC church I'm affiliated with is doing a Lenten series called "Making the Faith Our Own In This Generation." One week, the topic was "suffering, poverty, and (in)justice." We read some Scripture passages as well as some readings from the Social Gospel movement and Liberation Theology, and then we were invited to generate a short list of questions which we would then discuss in smaller groups.

I said, "I want to ask, 'Why does God allow suffering?' but that seems too big a question to inflict on a small group for a 45-minute discussion." The facilitator insisted that it was a good and important core question :)

A couple days later, I saw a friend mention a Radio National "Encounter" program called "Ashes," looking at the Book of Job. (Transcript and audio available here.)

There were a few things which really stuck out at me as I read the transcript.

1. As with so many stories in the Hebrew Scriptures, this story includes arguing with God.

Relatedly, I'm really intrigued, for example, by the midrashic [I think -- I forget where I encountered this] reading that in the aqedah (the binding of Isaac -- Genesis 22), Abraham was supposed to refuse to sacrifice his son -- he fought back against God's plan to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah just a few chapters earlier after all (Genesis 18:16-33) -- and that the blessing he got after the saving of Isaac wasn't as great as the blessing God had initially planned to bestow on him.

Jason Kalman: Elie Wiesel, for example, has written that even though God behaves in an unjust manner with regard to Job, Job is really at his greatest point heroic for standing up to God, for challenging God. And as such, human beings have a responsibility in the face of all injustice, whether divine or human, to stand up for the righteous.

One of the things we talked about in our small groups was the issue of justice -- our obligation to help bring about the kin(g)dom of God here on earth.

2. how do we suffer

David Rutledge: It brings up this question of why, which is not answered in the text, why do these terrible things happen to Job, why do the righteous suffer, why does God allow suffering? If that question is not answered, if we take away that question, what kinds of questions are we left with? Is Job in some sense a book about how to suffer?

Jason Kalman: Well, it may be. Certainly contemporary Jewish teachers have tried to read it that way. The question of the 'what' of suffering really becomes dominant. 'Since I've now suffered, what do I do as a result?' Certainly Job's attempts to seek out God, to try and find the just path, is a model that becomes important. Certainly Job's challenges to God's justice take on a particularly important role after the Holocaust. Not to explain the why of suffering, but how one should respond. That is, we should always demand justice. We should always learn from the event: if I can't learn about God, at the very least, I should be able to learn how to respond to that suffering, either by becoming more empathetic, or by actually physically going out and taking what I've learned from the disaster to help avoid future disasters.

The speakers on the program were careful to not justify suffering by the good that can come from it, but I also appreciated this articulation of what we can learn from suffering -- if I can't learn about God, at the very least, I should be able to learn how to respond to that suffering, either by becoming more empathetic, or by actually physically going out and taking what I've learned from the disaster to help avoid future disasters.

3. This next section brings to my mind the analogy about how you only get [naturally-occurring] diamonds after incredible amounts of pressure have been exerted on carbon.

Mark Vernon: One answer to the question of why we suffer is that it's a necessary part of our make-up, it's just what it is to be biological creatures, to be psychological creatures. There's no happiness without sadness; there are no good things in life without struggle. But that doesn't seem to be a hugely satisfactory answer to me, for two reasons. One is that it seems rather calculating, and if there's one thing not to be when it comes to trying to deal with suffering, that is calculating. Reason compounds suffering, if you like.

[...]

Mark Vernon: I don't think there's any rational sense to be made of it, but there is perhaps experiential sense to be made of it. One of the things which I noticed when I was a priest is that often the times when people are suffering very greatly, when they've got ill children or when someone who's loved has died, and they're often the most meaningful moments in people's lives. It's then that they know that they really loved the person who has gone, or that they really care for the child, and they're very intense experiences in some way that they never felt so alive as during that time. And so there's a mystery here, if you like, that while you would never will that suffering upon people, it can be a very profound experience.

I'm in some ways positively inclined toward an "ends justify means" line of explanation, but I also recognize that that's not always the best response.

4. the issue of choice

Havi Carel: I think this emphasis on choice is something that's very important to the discussion of illness and suffering, because even though the illness and the suffering might be unavoidable, and inflicted on you by an external process, you still have the choice as to how to respond to it. The discovery for me that I was the only person who could decide how to respond to it, how I would respond to it, was an immense sense of freedom, precisely because it restores some of the sense of autonomy that is really massively damaged, at least initially when you become ill.

I think this is arguably the hardest one -- to think about the choices we have in respond to difficult situations, especially when it feels like so many of our options have been stripped from us.

5. God shows up.

David Rutledge: Well, it's interesting you talk about maintaining a relationship with the God of the Book of Job, because in some respects, a relationship is precisely what that God disavows. God's engagement with Job, apart from allowing him to be afflicted with suffering, is limited to saying, 'I'm God and you're human, you don't understand me, so keep quiet and just take what's meted out to you'.

Jason Kalman: Well, I think there is that issue - but there's also the fact that Job demands a personal encounter with God and God actually responds. I might not like what God says, but the fact that God shows up, I think, offers a redemptive note.

I don't know how to articulate my thoughts on the "I'm God and you're not, so sit down and shut up" section. Every time I start to talk about where/how/when I think I tend to think about this section, it's like I realize that's not actually accurate. I will say that I've come to appreciate more the "It's a mystery" line, just kind of general.

6. We keep living.

David Rutledge: What about the end of the story? We've mentioned the way in which it's made the book problematic for readers who are addressing questions that come up through the Holocaust, the experience of suffering there. Job is apparently rewarded, which seems to contradict everything that's gone before. How do you read that ending?

Robert Eisen: Well, it is a very troubling ending, and let me share with you the comments of a couple of the more obscure commentators in the Jewish tradition, who basically think that it was tacked on as a way of kind of just appeasing the masses. You know, in other words, Job isn't rewarded in the end, but the author had to put something in there to make them feel good.

I'd like to go in a different direction by saying that it is part of the book, and the issue of whether God rewards him is one thing, and I'm not sure I have a good answer to that - but the thing that really strikes me about it is that he gets back into life. Who's Job at the end of this incredible of tragedies? Is he a broken person who simply gives up? No. He goes back, he raises a family, he gets married and raises a family, and that to me is the most important message that I think a Jew can respond to - and maybe any human being - which is that if you experience tragedy, don't give up.

The fact that Job engages in a dialogue, the fact that at certain points in the text he protests against God, I think that's very modern, that appeals to my sense of the need to talk about injustice, to engage God in dialogue in which you question him. I think we should all do that, all people of faith. And again, the fact that in the very end Job has enough faith to raise a second family. Many Jews lost families in the Holocaust, and it just is a marvel to me that they made a new life in Europe, America, and raised children again. So having that faith not necessarily in God, but in human living, and in moving on past suffering, I see that in Job and I find that very inspiring.

I'd never thought about that before -- that Job starts over after having lost everything, sets himself at risk for losing everything all over again. (Though I do remember it feeling bizarre to me that Job got a whole new family like magic, as if you could just replace people you loved like they were interchangeable.)

7. We are not in control.

Laurie Woods: It's one of those few books I think in the bible that says life isn't about control - and I think that's something that touches us in the 21st century, we're all control freaks, we all want to be in control.

And we can't control God, and Job realises he can't control anything that's going on in his life, so he sits back, not so much agnostically, because as I said before, he knew God through tradition but now through life, experience, suffering agony, he's come to know God in a different kind of way, and through struggle, he has been able to emerge transformed.