Father Charles Notes
Thinking Faith #3: An ‘Epiphany’
First of all, I thank you one and all who’ve responded to the first two editions. I’d love to hear from all of you, and I’m still adding names as we locate email addresses, but I also ‘snail-mail’ about a dozen and that may grow. There have been lots of comments and a couple of folks were troubled by some of my comments on edition #2. I want to address everyone as I did to each of them individually. It has to do with my comments about “A Christmas Cross”. I want to add here a bit more theology behind my thinking which has to do with the New Testament meanings in both the Gospels of the Luke and Matthew authors about the deeper meanings of our Advent/Christmas seasons and Cross parallels.
#1: My point is that our Christian culture often “dumbs down” the Cross to make it more palatable. It’s painted, gilded, bejeweled, and in many ways domesticated. It is also precisely the complicated symbol described and full of hope. But, there are lots of people (incl. some clergy) who wear and talk about them who seem unclear as to what it really means to live out that cross in everyday life. When we’re actually living ‘cross-life’, there’s not much that’s bright and twinkling going on – except, when it involves giving comfort or care or love to someone, esp. the poor, or those occasional transcendent moments in prayer and worship. Consider what’s happened to Christmas in our culture – a business bonanza!
#2: To connect the Cross to Christmas and the Nativity – a religious, social, and political story/statement by the only two Gospel writers who report the birth and youth of Jesus in any detail, in my view, is to soften, even distort, the Gospel/Cross’ later impact. Because, the Cross is a huge religious, and social and political, statement about the threat the movement hurls in the faces of every social and political system in existence, unless it’s domesticated in many different ways by the church, society and institutions! As example and something to ponder, consider the only two Nativity stories – Luke [L] and Matthew [M], both very different narratives, yet with provocative and not-so-subtle political-historical-theological similarities. Notice these startling and provocative narrative references:
Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, the political shrine of King David! New king born? [M&L]
Foreign wise men (ambassadors?) bring gifts to Jesus and King Herod is anxious. [M]
Herod orders death of all children under two to prevent insurrection. [M]
Angelic (God’s) messenger moves Jesus & family to Egypt (place of Exodus!), then to Galilee/Nazareth where (“Nazorean prophet” is to emerge). [M]
John (later “Baptizer”, cousin and baptizer/herald of Jesus) born in Nazareth. [L]
Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem (above); shepherds (social outcasts) hear angelic (God’s) messengers and visit child (social equality?). [L]
Jesus circumcised in Jerusalem by “law of Moses” (credentials?) and two prophets (God’ voices) announced God’s intentions for this child and man. At age 12 (Judaism’s spiritual maturation for males in Jesus’ day) he studies with temple scholars! [L]
Having suggested these theological, spiritual and political issues and connections, we can see how the Cross and Christmas are not so distinct in biblical theology and history, and yet the way they are practiced in western cultures, it seems to me, could not be more different! The cross in the yard, around a neck, on a church wall, embossed on a Bible or Prayer Book, on a window decal, spray-painted on a ghetto wall, all have extraordinary, serious, and life-involving, even threatening implications. But, wrapped with twinkling lights, somehow to me, minimizes all the cross represents. And, Christmas itself and the way our culture celebrates it seems to me, really, really, needs a re-thinking - billions of dollars and all our energy, compared to that extraordinary Nativity story. We all need to rethink some things! Me too!
Having written all this theology, I feel so badly and helpless about Haiti! Our Episcopal Church has a thriving community and native Bishop in Haiti and that would be one place to earmark your contributions. Melynda and I did so by Episcopal Relief and Development (formerly Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief). I was so angry to hear tele-evangelist Pat Robertson's pathetic and hardened comment about the Devil having caused the earthquake because of a 16th century treaty between the French and African slave holders! Happily, however, I hope you saw Mike Luckovich's editorial cartoon earlier this week (Atlanta Journal Constitution). It portrays a take-off on Michelangelo's famous 'creation' fresco in St. Peter's Basilica. The wizened, bearded God is reaching a right arm and pointing finger from a heavenly cloud, to a male figure (not Adam in this one!), "Pat Robertson" printed on his chest, reclining nude with a paunch, leaning on his right elbow, left hand reaching out toward God who has just stuck a large cork in Pat's mouth! Divine justice reigns, even if a cartoon! Chat with you all again soon, and write anytime! Charles +
Thinking Faith # 5: Church Of Who’s Tellin’ The Truth!
Who could forget Flip Wilson’s “The church of what’s happenin’ now”? His comedy and satire reflected the 60’s drive for ‘relevance’ in faith as in every other aspect of American life. How should one characterize the church of this new millennium, the second such age since the church was founded upon the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth?
As this age dawned, some mainline Christian denominations were stagnant or declining in influence and membership while others, some new to the ecclesiastical scene, prospered. I happen to belong to one of the former struggling groups - the Episcopal Church. When I went to seminary in 1967 it was a breath of fresh air, because I had grown up in central Texas and most all of my church experience was conservative, evangelical and Protestant.
In our church’s seminary in Austin I was introduced to a new world of thought, prayer and worship, of personal interaction and social ethic that I did not know existed. I have since then characterized it as if, “I had died and gone to heaven!” Not that it was particularly comfortable, pious or affirming always, or whatever metaphor or emotion one might associate with ‘heaven’. What I felt, observed and had offered to me was a large dose of reality and truth-telling. That is, we were encouraged, indeed expected, to be candid and courageous with our living, studying and learning, and with our faith-ministry development.
I found this startling and richly invigorating because I had lived with the impression and memory of church-life and participation, albeit superficial (worship only), as somehow impractical for the realities of everyday living and irrelevant to realities of social and political life of human beings and their societies. Mind you, the fact that I was surprised by the seminary’s identity reveals my lack of depth and awareness of the real issues of either personal or social living. Even though I was college educated, married and the father of two when I went to seminary, the issues of a religious social ethic had escaped me, undoubtedly in large part because I lived in the conservative southwest and was raised in an ordinary middle class white family without much intellectual stimulation nor broad social experience.
The positive side of this kind of emotional and spiritual, social and intellectual ‘tabula rasa’, meant that I was like a spiritual sponge, soaking up everything that came my way! A problem with that kind of attitude and mentality is finding one’s own heart and voice, learning to sift and to find consistency, and to distinguish between competing truths. I had to learn to come down clearly on positions and their implications for human beings and for my own personal and professional way-of-life.
What I gradually found helpful and eventually embraced is the issue of honesty and truth-telling, without exactly knowing what the implications for such a position meant for my whole life. I found that if I embraced candor, truth (as I was able to see it and courageous enough to admit it), and a reality-based vision about life in general and theology and spirituality in particular, I could live better with myself and my decisions, more happily and deeply with others, and have a clearer sense of vocation, decision-making and action.
Which leads me to my current search and experience: where is the ‘church of who’s tellin’ the truth’? Who are the Christians who are ‘tellin’ the truth’, and living the truth, and surviving honestly and healthfully with their behavior and decisions? The biblical text question is the obvious one for the people of the Gospel: namely, the question Pilate asked Jesus: “What is truth?” (John 18:38). The author of the Johannine Gospel was apparently intrigued with the matter of ‘truth’ theologically, but also, by implication, personally, ethically and morally. According to Young’s Analytical Concordance, John’s Gospel has 22 references to the Greek word, ‘aletheia’, translated in English as ‘truth’; at least twice as many references as any other New Testament document, and far more than the other Gospels which together account for only six references.
To be truthful, it is the famous Jesus-statement in John that has intrigued and haunted me, even before I began this quest for the church, or Christianity, or even ordinary human ‘living, moving and having my being’ with the truth. In the eighth chapter Jesus speaks to a varied group of disciples and followers: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (v. 31b-32, NRSV). If I’m not mistaken, isn’t this last phrase chiseled into the stone façade of the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC? It is definitely an always relevant indictment that stares across at Congress and westward down the national mall!
All of which begs many questions, but at least this one: what does it mean today for the people of any faith and, especially, the people of the church, to live by the truth or with the truth, to be seeking the truth or telling the truth, in the church or elsewhere? Here are some talking, praying and acting points that come to mind concerning truth-telling:
ü Embrace the well-documented, centuries-old truth that Holy Scripture is not God’s hand-written diary, but the words, hopes and best guesses of centuries of faithful yet very human agents of Judaism and Christianity, and that an honest, informed and scholarly reading of the Bible is the calling of every believer.
ü Offer to God prayer that is brutally honest, self-revealing and realistic.
ü Offer to others one’s truly candid thoughts, including hopes and dreams, uncertainties and fears, visions and nightmares concerning faith and life.
ü Do not affirm, accept or agree with, but rather challenge, that which does not resonate with your clearly held sense and experience of spiritual truth.
ü Affirm, embrace and actively support your sense and experience of spiritual truth.
ü Be willing to say ‘I believe’, or ‘I do not believe’, and to give honest reasons for the faith that is in you.
ü Be willing to say ‘I don’t know’ – the first words of wisdom and faith.
ü Consider that faith is about hoping, not about knowing with certainty and without doubt, but about behaving faithfully and courageously anyway.
ü Consider this challenge: ‘The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty’. Honest doubt leads to truth and faith.
Where is the ‘church of who’s tellin’ the truth’? They’re around; I’ve heard tell of them. I’ve experienced them; I’ve watched them develop. And, I’ve watched them, and myself at times, turn away from the bright, sometimes burning reality that the truth requires and creates in its wake. That’s why the healthy and honest churches, the truth-telling churches, are often the churches that struggle and are wounded. They are often the churches with smaller numbers and budgets and buildings, with some obvious suffering, and with glaring imperfections. They are typically the churches in the middle of theological, social and political struggles. They are frequently the churches that will take chances, that will try to welcome anyone, and that will try to be free. Because, as John’s Jesus taught, these churches “will know the truth”, and these churches will seem strangely and compellingly “free”! Charles +