John Shelby Spong

"Rigidly defined theological concepts are doomed."

— John Shelby Spong

An Argument for Religious Academia

I am often struck by people’s sense that academic study of sacred texts somehow threatens them.  Firstly, I think that such a position shows a lack of “faith” in the text and one’s tradition to withstand criticism.  Secondly and more importantly for me, however, is that in my understanding, if I believe that my sacred texts are sacred and reveal anything about God and/or have core insights into the human condition, I should study them from every angle, which involves applying the lenses of different disciplines and the best strengths of humanity to the text.  As a person in a committed relationship, I can’t imagine suggesting that I shouldn’t know my partner deeply and understand his stories, even if they reveal some of his problems.  It is precisely because I love him that I want to deal with those problems.  It seems strange to love a text and want to turn a blind eye to it at the same time.

Thecla

Carmel

Bible Study

Viewing the Hebrew texts as individual books is a very freeing way of understanding scripture.  Too often folks try to create a narrative that doesn’t exist or ascribe a kind of continuity that is dishonest.  

Understanding the complex nature of how these books came together and that they came together over centuries is important to being able to give the text the love I think it deserves.  In my first reading of these texts in my teens, I was as often struck by their violence as by their beauty.  In approaching the texts from a scholarly perspective, I can understand that the views that might disturb me were coming from particular people in particular places.  I may not completely understand their circumstances, but knowing some of it gives me the opportunity to acknowledge how different their world was and how different their understanding of it was.  I feel scripture is often treated as though it were written yesterday about people in our personal lives, which is, of course, pretty far from the truth.  I don’t mean to suggest that these books can’t have some kind of transcendent value, because they surely can, but when looking for that value, we need to try to do it through the lenses of people who wrote these books and what was important to them and their very different lives.

As someone who didn’t grow up in a religious family or in a church context, I think it is easier for me to adopt scholarly understandings of texts because I don’t feel as rooted in a particular way of understanding.  In fact, it was scholarship’s opening of these texts that led me to seek a religious community (as opposed to reading conservative authors in my bedroom and thinking their perspective was the only kind… the media did little to dispel that notion).  When I took Religious Studies courses in undergrad, they opened my perspective and freed me from the idea that I had to interpret these texts literally and try to accept some kind of meaningful, sacred value from texts that were talking about slaughtering people.  

Similarly, when I was able to separate the books as representative of different times, places, people, and circumstances, instead of trying to make a continuous narrative out of wildly different books, I was able to imagine some of the people “under” those books and how their different worldviews played a part in producing such different understandings of what a religious life looks like.

That said, sometimes trying to remember the varying contexts and times is difficult for me as I DO try to create some kind of story about the development of the Jewish faith and its people.  Timelines are helpful in that respect as I try to ponder, “Now where was Solomon in all of this?”  Sometimes that development and the “maturation” (to use a word that will hopefully not be construed as condescending) of ideas about God as the world changed and people’s views adapted to meet the needs of their contexts is something I try to think about.  However, I think that “narrative” or somewhat linear story I try to construct in my mind is benefited, not hurt, by being able to separate the texts and see them as representing different circumstances.

Monkey Salvation for a Fish

From “The Song of the Bird” by Anthony de Mello (Jesuit priest).

Special Relationship

"The Bible’s authority for Christians lies in the fact that they have a special relationship with it that can never be altered, like the relationship of parent and child. This does not deny relationships with other books which may be both deep and long-lasting, and it does not necessarily make the parental relationship easy or pleasant. It is simply of a different kind, and can never be abrogated. Once we see this, much modern neurosis about the authority of the Bible can be laid aside. Maybe the Bible can be taken seriously rather than literally."

—

Diarmaid MacCulloch, from Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

This echoes sentiments I have read from John Shelby Spong.  Our relationship, like that of the relationship we have with our parents, matures over time.  There comes a point when we can no longer see it as infallible, as the spotless book that is better than all of the other books.  BUT WE LOVE IT.  We love it deeply and messily.  It is never perfect, but it is a true, IN YOUR BONES love.  It is a connection I can’t deny or walk away from.  It is a connection I will honor for the rest of my life.  There is something about that book and its stories that is so different and meaningful to me in a way that nothing else is.  It is beyond my ability to describe or relate and THAT is why I am a Christian: because that book makes me want to talk forever about it and leaves me speechless.  I’m looking for the white fire.

No Fear, No Death

And from “No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life” by Thich Nhat Hanh.

From "Once Upon a Country"

Zen

Happy to see this lovely arrangement on the altar today. In Zen thought, blossoms (specifically: cherry blossoms) are symbolic of the fleeting nature of life and can remind us to appreciate now. Happy Sunday, everyone. Make the most of your life. #blossoms #flowers #church

Spiritual Practice

From today’s spiritual practice readings… One of my favorite passages from the Dao De Jing. Translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English.

Evolution

I grew up in a steak and potatoes family.  We had meat with most meals.

Today I am a vegetarian who eats mostly vegan.  I also try to eat local and organic, but that can be expensive, so sometimes it’s either local or organic.

Even as a vegetarian, I didn’t used to think it was wrong to eat meat.  I didn’t see meat-eating as inherently problematic.  I saw our meat industry as a horrible torture-machine and I stopped eating meat because I believe that animal treatment on the vast majority of American farms is grotesque and inhumane… it is torture.  We torture our food.  Read “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer.  Or watch “Vegucated.”

And then I learned that animal agriculture is the leading contributor of greenhouse gases.  If we are taking environmentalism and climate change seriously, we need to be cutting back our consumption of animal products.  Animal agriculture contributes more to greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector combined (planes, trains, automobiles, boats…).

And then I learned that plant based lifestyles lead to a healthier body.  Meat consumption is associated with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, cancers, most food-based disease outbreaks, heart disease, and many other health problems.  In fact, after I stopped drinking milk, my bad cholesterol went down significantly (according to my doctors).  I have naturally high cholesterol that I may need medication for later in life.  Or maybe I won’t need it.

I know we have sharp-ish canines, but we have plenty of vestigial stuffs that our bodies don’t use because evolution is imperfect.  Many other herbivore animals have larger canines than we do.  Whether or not we can digest meat, our bodies digest plants better and we don’t need to eat meat.  As I mentioned, people with plant-based diets are generally in better health.

More recently, I have come to believe that eating meat is wrong.  Killing other animals for food is wrong.  I think it is seminary and my increasing rejection of hierarchies wherever I find them.  It is an act of cruel arrogance to eat animals.  

If tomorrow, our planet was invaded by aliens who wanted to enslave or eat or destroy us in some way, what would we say?  Why should they not?  We justify locking up, torturing, breeding, and killing animals despite the reality that very few people need to eat meat.  Because they are lesser beings, right?  Because we are more intelligent and we have the power, we think it’s okay.  Non-human animals are not as smart.  So when the alien race shows up and is smarter and more advanced than we are, why should they not kill us?  

I don’t want to be eaten or tortured by someone who thinks they are better than me.  I don’t want to be complicit in cruelty and torture.  I don’t want to contribute to these systems that privilege humans and our shitty desire for the way meat tastes in our mouths over the health of our planet and the integrity of other sentient beings.  

I think it’s wrong– inherently wrong.  Irresponsible and cruel.  

That is my truth.  

The Language of God

San Francisco

Another beautiful day at Golden Gate Park. #sf #ggp

Latin

"What ever happened to Latin? At least when that made no sense, the Church approved."

— Giles (via whedonesque)

Found at an Orthodox Monastery

This quotation was found on the Facebook page for a Romanian Orthodox monastery in the Bay Area and was sent to me by my friend Flo.

“Do not say, as the divine Jeremiah tells us, that you are the Lord’s temple (cf. Jer. 7:14). And do not say that ‘mere faith in our Lord Jesus Christ can save me.’ For this is impossible unless you acquire love for Him through works. For in what concerns mere believing, ‘even the demons believe and tremble’ (James 2:19).” — St. Maximus the Confessor, “Four Hundred Chapters on Love” (I, 39)

I can’t get over that quotation. Too many people use their religion as an excuse to be crappy and then confess. Religion shouldn’t just be about finding solace and coming to peace with your faults. Religion IS about those things, but more than that, it’s about fostering selflessness and the kind of compassion that Jesus was trying to build within his community. I think it’s tragic when people use religion solely to service themselves. I can’t find a self-servicing Jesus in my scripture.

They Were Onto Something

ca. 55-135 CE #mdiv #seminary

Women in Ministry

SO happy to see this.  Victoria Rue is a professor at San Jose State University. I have had the pleasure of speaking to her and hearing her speak a number of times.  She was fantastic.  She is also a graduate of the Graduate Theological Union.  Victoria Rue is a Roman Catholic Woman Priest.

Danger: Bible

While I think pointing out the “danger zones” in the Bible is imperative, I also value the “intention” of the author.  Of course at this point in our removal from the initial tellings of these stories, there are many suggestions that may be valid regarding what the author/s of any given text may have actually been trying to do.  I see reflected in the Fourth Gospel a marginalized community angry with the dominant voices of their religious community (that anger manifests in some unfortunate ways).  This marginalized community’s voice was used to colonize once the “Christian” voice became dominant and folks, in reading back on these texts, colonized these characters, in a sense, “stealing” them and reimagining them in ways that modern Jews nor Jews of the second century (including the Johannine community) would recognize as valid.  Furthermore, these texts have been used as justification for colonization and terrible abuses of power.  I guess I think “we” are more accountable for these abuses than the texts.

God

I can smell God in the wet dirt after rain.  I can see God in sunsets.  I can feel God in cool river water.  I know that God is the totality of all of that—God is every smell and feeling, every breath and song.  God lives in my pain and is my mourning as much as my joy—God understands me because God is all of that.  God is living every moment with me, every joy and every pain, and in that sense, God loves.  God loves me because God is with me and in me.  God wants my life to be better as much as I do… and God wants everyone’s life to be better as much as everyone does.  God wants to see and feel happiness, joy, and community as much as we do, because God is what we create and God creates with us.  God is seeking perfection in Creation as much as we are—God just knows better how to Be and Create in this world because God can see and experience reality in its totality.  God, dwelling inside each of us, calls us to act in ways that are best for us, for each other, for all. 

When we center ourselves, when we listen, we know what those things are—treating others kindly, living respectfully and sustainably, forgiving people’s faults, trying our best not to falter, living unselfishly so that our selfishness doesn’t prevent, in some domino effect, someone else’s happiness. 

Those are things I know, yet cannot prove.  I could argue that all of those things are acting against natural selection.  I cannot draw from a math equation or a scientific theory to prove those elements of my “knowledge.”  In that sense, those “knowledges” (if I may call them such) are faith.  It is precisely because I have faith in such things that I believe there is a God.  God is the interconnection and wants us to see It. 

I think I do see it.  I think I see it and it makes me want to cry… Cry with joy?  Cry with sorrow?  I don’t know, but I think it’s both.

The Ragged Way People Fall Out of Love

"She wanted to be one of those people who found a subject to pursue, then discover a sweet secret about themselves, finally seeing through the filter of what was learned.  To take knowledge– facts, stories, equations, whatever it was– and learn to breathe under the water of that place.  People who did this found out how alive they were."

— Elizabeth Cox, The Ragged Way People Fall Out of Love

Controversy

EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP IS ALWAYS WILLING TO STAND UP FOR SOMETHING AND BE CONTROVERSIAL. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH WILL DIE OF BOREDOM BEFORE IT WILL DIE OF CONTROVERSY.

John Shelby Spong, from a lecture delivered July 14, 2014 at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA.

Factory Farming

This

Female Ordination

For centuries, women’s rights have been withheld because of religious patriarchy’s claim of women’s supposed moral inferiority. Women’s ordination has remained a controversial issue and is not available to Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and many Protestant denominations, despite the compelling arguments for women’s equality and the progress that feminists have made in creating a voice for women around the world. Many, if not most, Christian institutions still reject the notion that women should have equal rights to ordination.

The consequences of the denial of ordination rights to women are far reaching—the conscious and subconscious mindsets created and supported by antifeminist religious positions are damaging to progressive movements and serve to keep people in an archaic mindset that presupposes the spiritual and moral superiority of men, which can be used to support abuse, oppression, and varying forms of mistreatment toward women.

Christian Worship

"…The purpose of employing cultural, ethnic, or ritual forms in worship is to ‘serve the gospel… The use of diverse cultural gifts in worship is an imperative, as the gospel cannot be communicated outside of human culture. But the use of these gifts is always for the sake of the gospel, and not for the sake of culture.’"

— from Worship for the Whole People of God: Vital Worship for the 21st Century by Ruth C. Duck.  Quoting Karen Ward’s “What is Culturally Specific Worship?”

My Life's Scripture

While I claim the Bible as my scripture, I cannot say to the degree that some can that it has been formative.  While the Bible certainly informs my life and my person, it’s a book I didn’t find until my teens.  Considering myself ethnically “American,” I also feel that my racial heritage informs my life very little.  My mother might claim “Irish,” but I don’t feel that way.  I don’t know stories about my ancestors that are particularly meaningful to me.  I would have to suggest that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a huge part of my identifying story.  I am not sure that translates into preaching contexts, but it is very true for me.  I often turn to that show to ground myself or to explore a feeling.  What I can most glean from that reality is that my storytelling should offer the same kind of connection that I found in the show:  parallel and metaphor.  When I can reimagine Bible stories to include me as a character, to include us as characters, I think I can better communicate the messages I find in the text.

You Can Become a Blessing

Dedication

Gatlin Property

spinachandmushrooms:

On the Gatlin property.

The Trail of Tears went through my in-laws’ property.

For Those Whose Work is Invisible

Dayton, Tennessee

spinachandmushrooms:

The house.

This is where I spent my Christmas holiday last year– in the mountains near Dayton, TN.  In Dayton there are TONS of churches, but no UCC or MCC or UU… sad face.

Repentance

There are many ways in which healing may need to take place in our lives.

Sometimes we need literal, physical healing. Sometimes we need to heal our emotions, our relationships… Sometimes the relationship that needs the most healing is the relationship with ourselves.

Sometimes our spiritual relationships need healing.

A balanced life needs support in more ways than one. I don’t advocate spiritual practice to cure cancer or fix your relationship with your mother. I do believe, however, that a healthy spiritual life can positively affect our lives and relationships by bringing us focus and balance.

I-- perhaps like you-- often struggle with the things that religion does in the world and the theologies that are often put forth by religious institutions. Repentance is something I have struggled with because I don’t want to advocate a form of religion that requires us to beat ourselves up all the time, but I’ve come to understand repentance a bit differently than I used to.

I think a spirit of repentance can allow us to have an honest relationship with God.

Sometimes when we feel guilty or insecure or like we’re not our best selves, it can inhibit our relationship to the Divine. When we adopt a repentant spirit, a spirit that is honest with God and ourselves, we can break the self-destructive cycles of guilt.

We often shut God out when we feel we aren’t “good enough” for God, but the reality is that we need God most in our times of self-doubt.

God is more present in our lives when we allow God to be. When we stop shutting God out, feeling bad about ourselves, we let God back in.

We deny ourselves grace when we shut God out– and God is full of grace. We deny God when we refuse the extravagant love and grace that Divinity offers us. Sometimes we dislike ourselves so much that we are afraid God does, too. When we can’t believe in the love of God, it’s hard to love ourselves and others. The beautiful truth is, though, that God keeps on loving. Infinitely. When we can believe that– really believe it– that the spirit of Divinity in this world is love and loves us unconditionally, we can let God back in.

I want us to let God in.

Sometimes we want to deny God. It can be very hard to accept love. Sometimes our guilt and refusal to accept help, love, and acceptance from others keeps us from receiving God’s grace. Sometimes our intellect prevents us from talking about God, because we feel as though it makes other people disregard us as a social sheep.

This is where repentance comes in. Repentance can be freeing and loving in ways that we might not expect.

So repent. Repent if you feel like you’re not who you should be, or who people expect you to be, because such feelings will do little for your soul. They further your self-hatred, but they do little for your relationship with God. You can talk to God. You don’t need to feel ashamed. You don’t need to feel like you don’t live up to God’s standards.

Guilt builds up. It drags on our souls and makes us hate ourselves and creates little encouragement to help us change ourselves or the things around us.

God is able to provide symbolic reciprocity.

Feeling guilty is not enough because, although it seems counter-intuitive, there is pride in guilt.
Guilt requires nothing.
We feel bad and get down on ourselves, but guilt affects no one but ourselves.
Guilt is ME talking to ME and saying, “Me, you suck.”
That doesn’t do anything.

Humility comes when we openly speak to God and others, when we have enough willpower to take our feelings past guilt to repentance. The willingness to be honest, to open our feelings and transgressions in complete shamefulness, to say, “I am not perfect. Praise for the life of Jesus and his example to us all.”

In realizing our limitations, in opening our guilt to God, in repenting, our relationship with God becomes real. Our relationship is realized, not just something we want. We need willingness to be honest with God. Repentance goes beyond guilt, because it is honesty, acknowledgment, and commitment. So today I want to ask us to be open– really open– to God. I pray that in opening ourselves in honesty to the spirit of the Divine, we will find grace and healing in our lives that will free us to be co-Creators in the world and to bring the justice and peace that are so desperately needed. Let us be open to God and bring Grace into the world.

Dayton, Tennessee

Trail of Tears

Expression

"Exercising the right to speak says something about the power and value of authorizing one’s own perspective. To be author of our own reality is to claim the value of our experience, to trust our ability to reason and reflect, and to accept ourselves as we really are. This is central to the meaning of “voice” as authoritative expression."
Mary Donovan Turner and Mary Lin Hudson, Saved from Silence: Finding Women’s Voice in Preaching (Lucas Park Books, 2014), 12.

Tennessee

View from the front window of the in-laws’.

Repentance

Although many forms of Protestantism can corrupt the idea of repentance with their sola fide thought, I believe it is our actions that truly tell our person. That is why Christianity is getting a bad name right now– because Christianity is represented by theoretical belief in the teachings of Jesus and dogmatic interpretations of a text that was meant to be argued.

Jews argue over text because you’re supposed to ask questions and get involved with the text. God never wanted us to surrender our minds. God gave us free will for a reason.

God never wanted us to surrender our minds. I often feel as though I can’t talk about my faith in secular settings. It affects the way people interpret my interpretations. It means I have a bias. It means, it seems, that I follow my faith blindly and am ignorant to science and analysis.

I’ve always felt that way, in any case. In order to be a scholar, I cannot speak of my religion. It affects people’s views of the way they think I study.

After reading and learning to be honest with myself, I understand differently. It is because I am a Christian that I must express myself. I have to show our society that all Christians are not a stereotype.

Inbreaking

Inbreaking.

Traveling

Views from the bluffs near the camp Sara’s grandfather started as a Bible camp.

The Prologue of the Fourth Gospel: Wisdom, Word, and Unity

The Prologue of the Fourth Gospel: Wisdom, Word, and Unity

The Fourth Gospel begins with one of the most beautifully written passages in the whole of the Bible and sets the tone for the encounter with Jesus. Using language laden with symbol and scriptural parallel, the authors of the Fourth Gospel paint a picture of Jesus as connected to God in a uniquely revelatory way. As Genesis begins with the Word bringing life, so does the Fourth Gospel. However, Jesus brings life not as a creative force, but as revelation of life’s potential fullness and the divine connectedness that can make such expanded life possible. In understanding the “Word,” the scriptural parallels that convey the author’s understanding of Jesus, and the Jewish context of the Gospel, we can bring out the mystical meaning of the text that offers expanded life to those who can widen their circles of compassion and seek the divine within themselves. The Prologue also hints at the tensions and real-world issues that challenged the community from which this text comes: tension with their synagogue community, whom they feel wronged by and whom they considered suppressors of the Jesus narrative who missed the truth manifest in the life of Jesus. The Fourth Gospel is a unique theological perspective not offered by the synoptic authors and often missed by modern Gentile interpretation.

The Prologue’s most obvious literary parallel is with that of the first chapter of Genesis. Both documents begin with the words, “In the beginning.” The author, calling Jesus the “Word,” connects him to the voice that speaks creation in Genesis. John Ashton argues that “creation is indeed one of [the Prologue’s] themes, but it would be closer to the mark to say that it is a hymn about revelation that culminates in incarnation– the incarnation of the revealing logos” (Ashton, 528). I would like to suggest that Ashton is indeed correct about the revelatory nature of Jesus in the gospel, but that Jesus revealed not incarnation but the fused nature of God with Humanity. In calling to the books of Proverbs and Genesis, the author fuses the identity of Jesus with the feminine Wisdom, God-as-verb, and the scriptures of the Jewish tradition and their ongoing capacity for life-giving creativity.

While many Christian circles emphasize the use of “Word” as a sign of Jesus’ fulfillment of scripture, such a suggestion is a misleading representation of the Prologue. The Greek word Logos, translated as “Word,” is “the divine principle of reason that gives order to the universe and links the human mind to the mind of God” (Meeks, 2013). This mystical understanding of divine connection is expanded upon and is a major theme of the Fourth Gospel. Jesus uses “I Am” sayings (the divine name of God) and is called “light” (a common symbol of God in scripture) throughout the gospel narrative, two of the most obvious connections made between the identities of Jesus and God. While such symbols are often interpreted as evidence of incarnation, given the signs of the Jewishness of the author and the consideration that the community from which the text came was primarily Jewish-identifying, it makes more sense to give precedence to a Jewish explanation of such language. The Jewish mystical tradition offers an alternative paradigm that more aptly encompasses the themes and symbols used in the Gospel.

Continuing to dissect the “Word” identified in the prologue, we can further delve into its meaning for the theology put forth by the author. Dabar, the Hebrew corollary of logos, “had power to shape the world, to reveal the presence of God, to call people to a heightened sense of selfhood, a heightened consciousness” (Spong, 44). Again, the Hebrew understanding of the word supports an understanding which sees Jesus not simply as preexistent, but intimately connected to the mind of God and revealer of the presence of God. Jesus’ work “has two aspects, life and light, and these correspond to the two facets of God’s work: creation and revelation” (Ashton, 528). This revelation through Jesus, as the author will show through sign and symbol throughout the rest of the Gospel, breaks down the barriers between human life and the ultimately life-giving light of God, enfolding us into the creative verb, into the oneness of God. Jesus represents the height of human potential. “…In him was life, and the life was the light of all people” (1:4) (Meeks, 2013). In essence: what is manifest in the person of Jesus, the divine quality of selfless love and a deep connection to God, is within each of us and is the ultimate truth toward which Jesus’ life points and which is revealed through his person in the Fourth Gospel. In Jesus, Wisdom, Word, and God are flesh. The boundary, the distance we perceive between God and ourselves, dissipates.

The narrative form of the Prologue calls to Proverbs and parallels the Word with Wisdom. Wisdom, in the Jewish tradition, is feminine. I believe that this connection offers yet another barrier to be broken: the conception of gender. The author here brings together the masculine Word with the feminine Wisdom, bringing their sentiments into a singular form. While Jesus may have been male, the light, the divinity which he reveals, encompasses the feminine. The author of John challenges us to rid ourselves of our dualistic ideas regarding divinity and life and to open ourselves to the reality of a God that is “all and more,”– a God that brings fullness of life and is yet beyond our capacity, unboxed. “God must be understood as a verb, calling, informing and shaping us and all creation into being all that we were created to be” (Spong, 57).

Without considering the narrative form of the Prologue and the claims made by these connections, “we are not in the world of the Fourth Gospel” and we miss the intent of our author (Ashton, 249). Bultmann proposes that “Jesus does not reveal the mysteries of God or man or the cosmos, but one thing and one thing only: that he is the revealer” (Bultmann in Ashton, 53). Jesus does not reveal these “noun” qualities– literalistic understandings– of God. Jesus does not draw a map of the universe or the pathway to Heaven, nor does he box God in an easily digestible way. Instead, the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel displays the life-giving power of God by continually destroying the barriers we’ve constructed and living in the reality of God. This light, this God within, cannot be extinguished or overcome.

Opening our eyes to these ways of interpreting the Gospel allows us to adopt a non-literalistic framework that compels us to see the Fourth Gospel as primarily symbolic in nature. Kasemann asserts that “… John is ‘the first Christian to use the earthly life of Jesus merely as a backdrop for the Son of God proceeding through the world of man and as the scene of the inbreaking of the heavenly glory’” (Kasemann in Ashton, 72). Indeed the author’s goal in storytelling is to offer us a transcendent truth beyond the narrative creations of his Gospel. By drawing from the Genesis creation narrative and the Proverbs Wisdom, we are offered a clearly nonliteral lens through which to find a theology that breaks down our constructs of God and asks us to seek God within ourselves.

While this message is appealing to our modern Christian ears, the evidence in the Prologue is clear: the Johannine community was rejected by their parent Jewish community. The author tells us that “his own people did not accept him” (1:11, Meeks, 2014). Despite the reality that the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel continues to pour out compassion and love even through his crucifixion, the Johannine authors clearly feel betrayed and hurt by their Jewish brothers and sisters whose “darkness” it seems tried to overcome the light of the Jesus story. Throughout the Gospel we find an unfortunate dichotomy drawn between “the Jews” and the followers of Jesus, who were also decidedly Jewish, although the text does much to suggest that Judaism need not be a qualifier for the path of Jesus. We can see, however, the Jewishness of the text and the flaws of a deeply hurt population whose community rejected their deeply-held convictions. With the distance we have from the time that the document was written, we can see that the Johannine community, while at odds with the orthodoxy of their synagogue, was none the less a Jewish community who certainly did not reject the whole of Judaism. We see believers hurt by their friends and family who react in human ways that have had a damaging impact on Christian relationship with our Jewish brothers and sisters and has led to anti-Semitism and an unfair portrait of the Jewish faith.

Despite the flaws of the author/s, they still convey a deeply Jewish identity and interpretive framework. In 1:17 of the Prologue, the Word is paralleled with Mosaic Law. As the Law entered the Jewish narrative in a particular time and place, so did Jesus (the Word). Jesus is clear that his glory must manifest only at the proper hour. An author without Jewish connection and respect for the Jewish tradition would certainly not draw a connection between Jesus and the paramount figure of Judaism. Jesus is, however, continually wrapped into the trappings of scriptural figures. It is impossible to reject Judaism and interpret the Fourth Gospel.

The Fourth Gospel’s Prologue offers a unique Christology and an interpretive framework often missed by modern readers, ignorant of the Jewish themes present in the text. Using language that overflows with layered symbolic meaning, the authors of the Fourth Gospel unveil a manifestly connected Jesus in whom is offered a pathway to seek the divine. The Prologue connects Jesus to the Genesis creation narrative, to the Wisdom of the book of Proverbs, and presents through him the great “I Am,” the light that exists within us and was revealed through the life of Jesus– a life overflowing with love and interpreted symbolically through the framework of the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus shows us a God that is in us and yet beyond. Connecting with the spirit of God, living aligned with the holy, we approach oneness with the totality; we break artificial, constructed barriers; we become part of God in a new and unique way. The Jesus of the Fourth Gospel offers us a God that is all and more and through which we can find the all and more within ourselves.











Works Cited

Ashton, John. Understanding the Fourth Gospel. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Meeks, Wayne A. The Harpercollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997.

Spong, John Shelby. The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic. 1st ed. New York: HarperOne, 2013.

MLK

Relevant.

Civil and Human Rights Museum

National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta.

Gospel of Mark

Mark hasn’t received enough credit. Mark is the earliest gospel and thus likely more accurate. Written in the 1st century by someone alive during Jesus’ ministry, Mark’s tale had less time to become embellished by history. 

It’s important to remember that Mark is not written by today’s standards. Early historians were less concerned about relating detailed imagery and more concerned with conveying what they believed was the point of documenting it to begin with. This can explain some discrepancies between the synoptic gospels and should also help us to be mindful of the larger picture. Whether or not Jesus stood on a rock or a log would have been of little importance to our gospel authors, except in situations where they are meant to draw parallel with another Biblical character. 

That said, this does not mean we cannot derive historical information from gospel texts. We need, simply, to be mindful of the differences between modern and 1st century scholarship, as well as the intentions and motives of the early writers. Whatever the early Jesus movement experienced with Jesus’ ministry had lasting effects because of the devotion of his followers. What did these people see that made them give up their wealth, their lives? Early followers faced persecution and death. If they were willing to risk this, Jesus’ ministry must have been profoundly affecting.

Liberation Theology

"While the many different liberation theologies reflect the places where they are found, they share a critical perspective on society and on Christian faith that often challenges the beliefs of other Christians. They remind us that the suffering of the poor is not an accident or an unfortunate fact of nature. It is the result of economic and political systems that deliver wealth and power to the people who control them at the same time that they exploit the poor. Often, it is difficult to understand how these systems work, especially for those in privileged groups whose self-interest lies in not seeing what is happening."

— from An Introduction to Christian Ethics: Goals, Duties, and Virtues by Robin W. Lovin 

HR 3134: Defunding Planned Parenthood Act of 2015

HR 3134: Defunding Planned Parenthood Act of 2015

As a young girl, I dreamed about futures that many of us dream about: a marriage to the gorgeous tall-dark-and-handsome man of my dreams, 2 or 3 well-adjusted children, a job that I could love and could support me and my family, and a modest home in the suburbs.  We can call it the American Dream.  These days, as I navigate my adulthood, I find that accomplishing these goals is harder and harder to look forward to.  I face eternally rising housing costs in my hometown of San Mateo and every surrounding city.  I am pursuing education at 30 that was not affordable to me until now.  While I may have achieved the wonderful husband I dreamed about, our family planning has failed to meet the timelines that seemed so realistic when I was younger.

Today’s world is complicated.  Even “successful” young people like my husband and me struggle to manage our finances and needs as we face our futures.  The world that my parents, my grandparents, and many of our lawmakers grew up in is gone.  Life is precious; my husband and I feel a strong obligation to provide a life for our children that we know meets the kind of love and care that God wants to see in the lives of all children.  At a time when more families find themselves displaced, homeless, and hungry, it seems to me every pregnant person should be able to claim the right of their children to have the care and love they deserve-- and if that care and love do not seem feasible, for whatever reason, whether financial, psychological, physical, or whatever-- people should have the right to choose not to bring life into the world.  

In today’s world, many religious traditions, including my own, advocate for individuals to be able to choose when and how they start families and therefore, advocate for abortion rights and availability.  HR 3134 threatens to revoke those rights from conscientious, discerning individuals who seek to provide the abundance of life that God desires for us all.  HR 3134, which has passed the House and is projected to pass in the Senate as well, would remove funding from Planned Parenthood and other health organizations that offer abortion services with the exceptions of those which perform abortions in instances of rape, incest, or risk of death to the mother.  It neglects to consider not only the complicated nature of rape and incest.  It neglects to consider both physical and mental wellness of the child-bearer (with the exception of life-threatening issues).  It neglects minors in abusive situations who may not have the agency or resources keep their bodies or those of their children away from abusers.  It neglects the deep need for us to partake of the abundance of life.  In the first 2 chapters of Genesis, which begins my tradition’s sacred texts, God creates humans to flourish, to be well-fed and cared for.  That is not the reality for many of today’s children of God.  

In an imperfect world, we must provide room for people to be imperfect.  We must provide room for parents to choose whether or not they are ready, willing, and healthy enough (mentally, physically, and financially) to provide the abundant life that is exemplified for us at the beginning of Genesis.  As I have seen Planned Parenthood locations disappear from even my liberal corner of the country, I see how important it is that we continue to fund safe spaces for people to make informed choices about their futures and the futures of those they might choose to bring into this world, especially those who lack the privilege of affordable, comprehensive medical care.  While HR 3134 suggests that “many” state and county health facilities offer services to those in need, anyone who has faced financial difficulty knows that such services are not as accessible as they need to be, even with the help of organizations like Planned Parenthood, which provides not only abortion services, but a variety of other health services for communities in need.  

The abundant life is one that God desires for all of us-- for newborn babies, for minors in dangerous situations, for underemployed and impoverished people, and for all of us.  Planned Parenthood offers services on a sliding scale that help all of us to live abundantly.  We should see their work as a service to those in need-- just the kind of thing that I think God would want us to support.

Spong

"Rigidly defined theological concepts are doomed."

— John Shelby Spong (via churchtake-out)

Thomas Merton

"Violence today is white collar violence, systematically organized bureaucratic and technological destruction… abstract, corporate, businesslike, cool, free of guilt-feelings and therefore a thousand times more deadly than the eruption of violence out of individual hate."

— Thomas Merton

Dao De Jing

From today’s spiritual practice readings… One of my favorite passages from the Dao De Jing. Translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English.