What an interesting day! I seem to be on a Tea Party e-mail list and have received invitations to attend Town Hall meetings with members of congress in Grand Junction, CO and El Dorado, AR. Both invitations emphasize that HR 3200 would enable massive federal tax subsidies for abortions and demand that members of congress who have not been listening will be forced to listen now. I’ll say this for them, they have thoroughly read and learned well from Saul Alinsky (that nasty old South-side Chicago Socialist), and they just might pull off killing this legislation. It will be a shameful moment and drive America further toward becoming a former great power, but they will have won.
Month: August 2009
Cannibal Sundays
For those of us using the lectionary, the next two Sundays are what I call cannibal Sundays. They are Sundays that I hope we get few visitors coming in to see what Christianity is all about. Let’s face it, John’s language about Jesus requiring the eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood seems pretty strange. Even otherwise loyal disciples couldn’t take it and turned away. What could possibly have been more repulsive to them? The devil himself was sometimes known as “the flesh eater.” Moreover, the laws of Moses were clear – no blood is to be eaten under any circumstance. The blood of every living creature was sacred to God. Why then would it be surprising that early Christians were sometimes accused of cannibalism, as in this famous citation from a Roman commentator on the new religion:
Now the story about the initiation of young novices is as much to be detested as it is well known. An infant covered over with meal, that it may deceive the unwary, is placed before him who is to be stained with their rites: this infant is slain by the young pupil, who has been urged on as if to harmless blows on the surface of the meal, with dark and secret wounds. Thirstily – O horror! they lick up its blood; eagerly they divide its limbs. By this victim they are pledged together; with this consciousness of wickedness they are covenanted to mutual silence.
From Minucius Felix, Octavius, R. E. Wallis, trans. in The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, N. Y.: The Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887), Vol. 4, pp. 177-178.
I’ve experienced a few visitors who loved everything about Christianity but this part of John’s gospel sent them running for the exit. Even life long members of the church wonder at the language of these passages. For the most part, they hope the preacher focuses on the Epistle reading, or simply close their ears and wait for the return of sensible, no-nonsense Mark. I’m supposed to be a reasonably well educated and well read theologian of some kind, and I wonder what the heck John was thinking.
Ray Brown, among others, believes that John 6:52-59 is authentic Eucharistic Jesus language associated with early traditions of the Last Supper dialogue. But John does not have a Eucharistic scene in his recollection of that last meal, so it is likely that a later editor, not wanting to lose it, stuck it into the bread of life dialogue of John 6. Considering that John 6 makes perfect sense without 52-59 lends considerable credence to that idea. So the language of 52-59 is really Eucharistic not cannibalistic. Try to work that into a teaching sermon for wannabe Christians if you can!
It brings me back to my question. What the heck was John, or a later editor, thinking? Didn’t he recognize right away how difficult this would be to explain? Maybe it was just ordinary editorial incompetence. I certainly see enough of that in our city’s local daily. Maybe there were local conditions among John’s people that made this passage easily understood. After all, they already had at least one of the synoptics, and maybe all three. They already knew the story of Jesus quite well, including the setting of the Eucharist. John’s gospel had no intention of repeating all of that, being more focused on demonstrating Jesus as Word of God made flesh.
For my part, I would prefer to introduce seekers to Christianity through a different door, and will spend the next few weeks explaining these peculiar passages to a very confused congregation of life long believers.
Town Halls and Health Care
I’ve been watching the news clips featuring the rampages at some Democratic town hall meetings. I also watched the Rachel Maddow interview with Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, one of the leading organizers of opposition to health care reform. Two things struck me.
First, Mr. Phillips is quite proud of his organizing skills, and unabashedly asserts the evils of health care reform without the slightest embarrassment at the falsehoods used to make his argument. Claiming, without fear of contradiction, that the Democrats are out to ration health care, deny treatment, increase costs, mandate government care, put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor and so on, his self confidence is both impressive and, for some, persuasive. One is inclined to be speechless in the face of the brazenness of it all.
Second, I don’t think it took much organizing to turn out the hysterically anti health care reform zealots to try to shut down any form of democratic assembly at Democratic Town Halls. These are people who are truly scared, but of what? I suspect they are the same ones who participate in tea bag parties, believe that Obama is not an American and are certain that the federal government wants to kill the elderly. They believe that “their America” is being taken away from them. The elderly among them railing against government health care insurance are happy they are on Medicare and have no idea what a contradiction that is. Those who claim to be happy as can be with our current health care system are like persons content with oppression because they have never known freedom from it. Those who are frightened that the Constitution is under threat by the Obama administration seem to have no recognition of the damage done to it by the Bush-Cheney gang and how close we came to De facto dictatorship. There is no more deadly threat to democracy than ignorance combined with a generous proportion of fear, and these are truly frightened people, but frightened of what?
Are they afraid of a “black” man in the White House? I’m not sure it can be reduced to something that simple, and yet I believe it does strike at the truth. A huge population shift that brings people of color and non-European ethnic heritage into positions of power and influence is threatening to those who never questioned their own exclusive right to power and influence. Or, having little of either, never questioned their superiority over those others who are not like them.
As one of my very conservative friends said the other day, “Everything I’ve feared about this president has come to pass; it’s even worse than I thought.” What is it that he feared? A recovery plan that prevented a depression and is slowly leading us out of the worst recession in history? Renewed respect for America in the community of nations? More support for troops in harms way and assistance to returning veterans? An effort to reduce costs and increase options for health care? Tax reductions for the middle classes? No, to the contrary, all of these things are seen as nothing more than cleverly designed camouflage for the real agenda of turning us into a socialist state ruled by people who are not like us.
I feel sorry for these people. I know that the fear they have is genuine and raises their anxiety levels of astronomical heights. On the other hand, if their fear is allowed to dictate public policy we will all be the losers.
Jesus the Bread of Life. What’s the Bread of Life?
Jesus said that he is the bread of life. No doubt John intended a strong Eucharistic symbolism, and I don’t think there is anything more important than that, but I also think there is something additional. It begins with a question: What is the source of foundational nutrition? Most cultures that are close to the land have a food that is symbolic of life itself, most often not bread. Whatever it might be, it is a food so basic to that culture that life cannot be imagined without it. Jesus as the bread of life is a perfectly understandable and instantly understood metaphor in those cultures. John goes on to make it not just a powerful metaphor but a claim on the reality of Jesus as the one on whom life itself depends and through whom life comes.
We Americans, and, for that matter, all of the OECD nations, have a hard time apprehending the power of John’s message because we have nothing that is culturally representative of life itself. Blessed with an abundance of inexpensive food in many varieties, there is not one that is the “bread of life.” To be sure there are foods that have powerful symbolic meaning for ethnic heritage and pride, but not as the very stuff of life itself.
However, what we cannot claim as a culture or nation, we can claim as individuals. I imagine that in each of us is something symbolic of life itself, something so basic that life cannot be imagined without it. Whatever that is, it is that which provides the foundational nutrition for our lives. I guess that was what Jung was after and sometimes thought he found. That’s what the advertising industry is after, what motivates fear driven politics, and probably what makes it so difficult for us to ‘sell’ the idea of Jesus as the bread of life to the skeptics that have occupied my thinking about evangelism. It’s why I’m inclined to believe that the best any national church evangelism program can do is to raise awareness and no more than that. I’m inclined to think that for Anglicans, and probably for most churches of the Reformation, real evangelism works best one-on-one or in very small groups. It works best when we take the time to get to know the other well enough to recognize that which is his or her own personal symbolic bread of life.
We’ve had programs that were supposed to do that. Alpha was a program that got its start as a grass roots phenomena back in England and became very popular in the U.S. and Canada. It lost its way when it got packaged and merchandised with videos looking a bit too much like theological “Sham-Wow” commercials. Most of the people who attended congregation sponsored Alpha gatherings were already members of the congregation with a few strangers strong-armed into coming for the free meal and fellowship. As I think about it, they were more like AmWay parties than anything else. I wonder if that’s where the idea came from?
But I digress. For the time being I think I’ll stick to preaching and teaching with the aim of encouraging the formation of disciples who can be all but unconscious of their effectiveness as evangelists just in the ordinary ways they go about their daily lives.
One Reason Why the Episcopal Church will Always be Small
A local Four Square Gospel pastor was a recent guest columnist in our local Sunday paper. He posed a challenging question: Where do you want to spend eternity? And gave the options: heaven or hell. And gave the answer: only by accepting Jesus as your personal savior certified by your baptism in the Spirit can you qualify for heaven. That can be a very compelling argument for some people.
As an Episcopalian deeply rooted in our Anglican tradition, it’s not an argument I am much interested in. It’s been said that we have a tendency toward an incarnational theology, which means, at least in part, that we don’t worry much about where we will spend eternity. As followers of Jesus Christ we take that as a given. What concerns us more is a question such as: What does it mean to be a follower of Christ in this world and during our lifetime? The question itself implies that we are also not much interested in worrying about the Second Coming, the Rapture or Armageddon. For most of us, the end of time as we understand time coincides with the time of our own death, and there is not much point in worrying about what may, but probably won’t, come before then.
What is very important is to recognize that each of us who claims the name of Christ is a part of the continuing Body of Christ, the Church, commissioned to go on with the work of Christ healing, making whole, reconciling, and proclaiming the good news that the kingdom of God is near.
In the parable of The Good Shepherd, the sheep that was lost was searched for, found and restored to the flock from which it had strayed. However powerful that story is, it is about a sheep that was already a member of the shepherd’s flock and not a stranger to him or the other sheep. But when Jesus claimed the title of the Good Shepherd for himself, he also announced that he would gather other flocks of whom we know nothing, who are strangers to us, but who are known and loved by him. Both are important. The flock we know must be tended, but the flocks we do not know, the flocks that Jesus is off gathering by his own authority and power, the flocks Jesus never asked our permission to save, those flocks we cannot cast into the outer darkness or consign to hell. In the first place, we are utterly ignorant about the matter. In the second place, it is God and not us who has the authority to gather them in whatever way God chooses.
That forces a major change in the way we, or at least I, approach evangelism. It is no longer a matter of confronting someone with the challenge that if you want to avoid going to hell here is what you have to do. It is a matter of proclaiming that you are already saved by the power of God through the love of Jesus Christ, here, now, in this life and for all eternity. Accept this gift and join with us as disciples of Christ continuing in his work of bringing the light of the kingdom of God into our own time and place. Good grief, that sounds like work.
The problem, as I see it, is that the Four Square approach has more sales appeal through a really good and very simple scare message. It fits in better with contemporary political propaganda techniques and plays more effectively into anxieties about life sensationalized by talk radio, television and movies. It avoids all the difficulty of apprehending the central place and meaning of the Eucharist. It sidesteps the Greek gobbledygook of the Nicene Creed. It does not have to explain the role of tradition, especially the messy parts around the Reformation. It doesn’t care what makes an Anglican different from a Catholic or Lutheran (Garrison Keillor claims we are all Lutherans, just in different clothing). It’s more culturally relative even though that idea would be anathema to them. Either you’re in or you’re out, and here are the rules for getting in. It just makes a hell of a lot more sense to a great many people.
I think that means that we Episcopalians will always be a rather small denomination whose primary mission is the formation of disciples out of people who have no particular interest in becoming disciples but who stick with it anyway.
A Brief Hiatus Again
Two suicides, the grave side service for one of them, my minor participation in one of the investigations and hundreds of thoughts about family dynamics, lost sheep, the Good Shepherd and more are tumbling through my mind crowding out any writing I might otherwise do. And these are things I cannot write about without jeopardizing confidences and the well being of others. I think I’ll pet the dog, do a crossword and finish reading Callahan’s book on stewardship.