Weakness

Peephole into the Bible

WEAKNESS

“ . . . God decided to save those who embrace God’s world-transforming news ( “evangellion” in Greek and “gospel” in English) through the “nonsense” we preach. At a time when Jews expect a miracle and Greeks expect enlightenment, we speak about God’s Anointed (“Messiah,” “Christos” or “Christus”) crucified! This is an offense to Jews, nonsense to Greeks . . .” (Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians 1:21-25)

Dr. John Caputo talks about “the weakness of God” or what he calls “soft theology,” as a better picture of God than the view of God as “supreme being,” all-powerful” (omnipotent), and all-knowing (omniscient.) Not being much of a philosopher, I have always tended to equate those superlatives with limitations of God and ask: “If God is “the most - - -”, how can God be anything more than that?”
Instead, “Jack” Caputo, following Thomas Aquinas, describes God as “being itself.” He calls this “soft theology” or “theo-poetics” as opposed to a “hard theology” God as judgmental, punishing, and violent, even militant. Thinking of God as the source and base of existence makes sense to me, especially as I read the Old Testament laws to care for and be just to the disadvantaged, the widow, the orphan, and the alien, and the New Testament narrates that the ideals of love and justice could not be stopped by the execution of God’s Anointed One. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed it this way: “The arc of justice is long, but it bends toward justice.”
May we trust in God’s weakness rather than the world’s strength to accomplish Jesus’ vision of God’s kindom on earth.

Lyn Pickhover, Trusting in God’s Weakness to Heal the World

Eating Together

Eating Together

The Franklin Federated Church family likes to eat together, not just our symbolic Communion rite, but in collations, receptions, and pot luck meals. We tend to think this is the “fun” part of being a church, but we are actually imitating the full-meal communion of the early followers of Jesus.
However, like today, some of those who assembled in Christ’s name in the city of Corinth thought they were better than others, more privileged, more entitled to power, prestige, and the good things in life. In these excerpts from his first extant Letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul wrote to chastize members of the group for using sacred meals as a way of showing their status instead of modeling the community of loving equals he wanted them to be. These are excerpts from that letter:

Regarding this next item, I’m not at all pleased. I’m getting the picture that when you meet together, it brings out your worst side instead of your best! First, I get this report on your divisiveness, competing with and criticizing each other . . . And then I find that you bring your divisions to worship – you come together, and instead of eating the Lord’s Supper, you bring a lot of food from the outside and make pigs of yourselves. Some are left out, and go home hungry. Others have to be carried out, too drunk to walk. I can’t believe it! Don’t you have your own homes to eat and drink in? Why would you stoop to desecrating God’s church. Why would you actually shame God’s poor? I never would have believed you would stoop to this . . . If you’re so hungry that you can’t wait to be served, go home and get a sandwich. But by no means risk turning this Meal into an eating and drinking binge or a family squabble. It is a spiritual meal – a love feast. (1 Corinthians 11 in THE MESSAGE)
The old labels we once used to identify ourselves – labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free – are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive. I want you to think how all this makes you more significant, not less . . . but I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from being blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it’s only because of what you are part of . . . and yet some of you keep competing for so-called “important” parts. (1 Corinthians 12 in THE MESSAGE)

May we take to heart Paul’s warning not to think we are better than anyone else or to treat the poor or disadvantaged differently than we ourselves want to be treated.

Lyn Pickhover, Trying to Follow

A Gift of Love

Peephole into the Bible

A Gift of Love

Reading about the outpouring of food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities when the residents of Martha’s Vineyard were confronted with an unexpected influx of desperate Venezuelan refugees, I was reminded that the Apostle Paul equated loving and sharing. These are the words of Paul in two of his letters.
To the gathering in Corinth: “We want to remind you, brothers and sisters, about the divine favor bestowed on gatherings of the Anointed (Christ) in Macedonia. In the midst of terribly trying circumstances, their exuberant joy and their desperate poverty have yielded a surpassing generosity. They gave what they could afford. Without any prompting, they begged us most urgently for the privilege of participating in this generous service for the Anointed’s people.” (2 Corinthians 8:1-4.)
And to the gathering in Philippi: “You Philippians indeed know that in the early days of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you alone. For even when I was in Thessalonika (in Macedonia), you sent me help for my needs more than once.” (Philippians 4:15-16.)
In keeping with their Jewish roots, Jesus and Paul both envisioned a community of love and care that includes strangers. No more needs to be said.

Lyn Pickhover, Trying to Follow

Our Apostles

OUR APOSTLES

My college Greek isn’t what it used to be. It now takes a minimum of five books – a concordance, a Greek lectionary (dictionary,) at least one Bible in Greek, one or more English Bible translations, and whatever text has sent me on a quest – to understand an author’s linguistic point. Sometimes, however, there is something else to learn along the way, and that is what is being shared with you here.
In the lectionary, the word “apostello,” (to set apart or send out, from which we get the word “apostle”) was just above “apostereo,” (to despoil or defraud), the word being researched, and that set off a whole new train of thought.
We often use the words “disciple” and “apostle” interchangeably for the big players in our New Testament, but they are not the same. A disciple is a learner or a trainee (from Latin “discipulus” – add another dictionary) while an apostle is someone who is sent out on a mission. Calling myself a follower of Jesus is a claim to be a disciple, but not necessarily an apostle.
One tradition I love in our denominations is the concept of “the priesthood of all believers.” That means each of us, priests together, form the church, the body of Christ. As such, we imitate Jesus when we commission(another Latin word) or send out chosen individuals (apostles) to represent us in taking love (“agape”, Greek again) into the world through good deeds and generosity.
Thanks to our Missions Team for being apostles.

Lyn Pickhover, Still Learning

Peephole for Pentecost

“Did it really happen?” All too often we Christians try to fact check our Biblical texts as if they were newspaper accounts. (As a student of history, I plead guilty to such exercises, even as I argue they are futile.) If we insist on factual accuracy, we can miss the really important point: the meaning of the story.
So it is with the story of Pentecost which we find in Chapter 2 of the Acts of the Apostles, long believed to be a sequel written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke. Current research concludes that Acts was written about 125 C.E., too late to be a first-hand account by someone who actually knew Jesus. According to the author of Luke-Acts, the disciples were in Jerusalem for Shavuot, the Jewish Feast of Weeks, the beginning of the grain harvest seven weeks or fifty days after Passover. Shavuot was celebrated as God’s giving the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai, in effect the birthday of Judaism.
According to Acts, Peter and the other disciples spoke with tongues of fire over their heads while their words were heard in many languages, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This “event” is considered to be the birthday of the Christian church (although “Christian” and “church” were not actually used until long afterward.”)
Pentecost is Christianity’s foundation myth, the first fruits of Jesus’ ministry and sacrifice. (Remember that “myth” does not mean falsehood; it points to something greater than literal truth. It embodies an idea, a principle, something huge and all-encompassing.)
Does it matter whether Pentecost really happened that way? I don’t think so. The important thing is that the disciples, grieving and confused after the traumatic loss of their leader, squared their shoulders and took up the burden of spreading the life-giving message far beyond the small group who had actually known the human Jesus.
Sunday, June 5 marks the birthday of Judaism and the birthday of Christianity. I’m going to wear red to celebrate the day. I hope you will, too.

Lyn Pickhover, Celebrating

It's Not Easy

Then Peter came and said to him: “Lord, if another member of the church sins* against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” (Matthew 18:21-22, NRSV).

Forgiving is sometimes simple, even when it is not easy. Separating parents do it for the sake of children; children love parents in spite of abuse; even victims sometimes forgive perpetrators. In the legal system, it’s relatively easy to assign blame; a judge or a jury of six or twelve listens to evidence and sides either with the accused or with the victim. Once decided – that’s the “truth”, folks, no matter what actually happened.
For us as Christians, however, sometimes forgiveness can be complicated, especially when forgiving a perpetrator further victimizes the injured person or someone else. Some behaviors even threaten the fabric of society, and they sometimes uncover ways in which others have been victimized. Shunned perpetrators have no incentive toward reform and unrecognized victims develop maladaptive and sometimes anti-social coping habits. Some injuries cannot be repaired, and everyone must carry on under this burden. These conundrums are common in a world of troubled families, and, as de facto lawyer-in-residence, I’ve even participated in some agonizing discussions within our own church family. It’s not easy to forgive, to be fair, to be a Christian.
The Saturday AM Bible study considered the ramifications of forgiveness in the story of a man and his two sons, commonly called “The Prodigal Son.” The questions raised are many: Who is to blame? What would the father’s forgiveness look like? What happens to the younger son who has spent his inheritance? What about the older son, has he been hurt? Will he have to share his part of the inheritance? What will happen when the father dies? Can you imagine the buzz of conversation after Jesus told this parable? (Which, of course, was the point of the parable.) Forgiveness can be complicated, and sometimes not everyone can be made whole. We do the best we can.

Lyn Pickhover, Trying

* Did you catch it? “Member of the church”? Really, this is carrying inclusive language too far! The Greek word is “adelphos” which old versions accurately translate as “brother,” and some modern language renditions try for something genderless like “colleague.” The drafters of the NRSV – our pew Bibles – should have known better. There was no “church” in Jesus’ time, or probably in Matthew’s time, either. A further observation: This translation also divides the world into “church” and “not church,” just another “us and them” duality, this time, ironically, in the name of inclusiveness. Read your Bible carefully, no matter which translation you choose.

Empire

For some time I have been translating the Biblical phrase “basileia tou theou” as the “empire of God” instead of the “kingdom of God.” I appreciate the word parallel with “basileia romaion,” Greek for the Roman Empire. This week, on Westar’s “Inside Scoop,” someone made a negative comment that using “empire of God” suggested the empire in Star Wars. George Lucas’ evil Galactic Empire supposedly mirrored the fascist rule of Nazi Germany, but it could just as well have been the powerful, violent, dangerous Roman Empire which Jesus and his followers opposed. The Galactic Empire followed a republic, just as the Roman Empire replaced the Roman Republic, and Darth Vader’s storm troopers were employed to accomplish the Empire’s priorities, just as elite legions had enforced the dictates of the Roman emperor. In his “Histories,” the Latin writer Tacitus made the defeated British leader Calgacus say of the Romans: “To robbery, slaughter, and plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make desolation and call it peace.”

In the twenty-first century, the “kingdom of God” can suggest peace and love, but calling it the “empire of God” expresses the seriousness of the battle Jesus was quietly waging against the forces of evil in his day. Three hundred years later, the Roman emperor Constantine turned the Christian church into a support of his empire, and the irony of the phrase was lost. Jesus’ words were highly subversive: the empire of God opposed the empire of Rome.

Jesus’ listeners understood that the God’s loving community was a powerful force for good. May we strive to be part of God’s empire and not that of Rome.

Lyn Pickhover, Striving

Friendship

The Book of Genesis recounts that in a time before history,Abraham, whom Jews,Christians, and Muslims all claim as forefather, was visited by three men. (We know they are G-d and two angels.) The two men go on to investigate stories of wickedness in the city of Sodom (crimes unspecified, but possibly preying on travelers on a trade route.) G-d stays behind and tells Abraham he intends to destroy Sodom. Abraham argues that good people should not be punished with evildoers, and G-d agrees that if there are fifty good men, he will spare the city. Abraham argues the number down to forty-five, then forty, thirty, twenty, and finally G-d agrees that if Sodom holds only ten righteous men, the city will not be destroyed. (Genesis 18:26-33)

In 1839, the United States and Great Britain had outlawed slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean, but Spain had not. The movie “Amistad” (meaning “friendship”] recounts that a group of men and women were captured in West Africa and transported in the Portuguese schooner Amistad to be plantation slaves in Cuba. The captives mutinied. The ship was seized by the US revenue cutter Washington, and the Africans were incarcerated in Connecticut. Officers of the Washington claimed the Amistad and its cargo (including the African captives) as salvage. The Spanish were charged with enslaving Africans. Spain requested that the captives be returned to Cuba under international treaty. The movie recounts the efforts of US citizens to learn communicate with the captives and support their quest for freedom instead of slavery. Our religious forebears were among those supporters.

All of the men of Sodom tried to rape the strangers who were really G-d’s angels, and the city was destroyed (Genesis 19:1-13, 23-25.) The human issues presented by the Amistad involved national and international laws and treaties and were finally resolved by United States Supreme Court in 1841 (United States v. The Amistad, 40 U.S. 518, 1841.) These stories provide examples of good people whose ideas of friendship extended to protecting even strangers who were in danger. May we always be ready to do the same.

Lyn Pickhover, Trying

Good

I was rereading John Shelby Spong’s book Born of a Woman, to get ahead on planning the next Advent Bible study, and found the latest Westar 4th R magazine in my mailbox. The entire issue was devoted to memories of Jack Spong, whom many have credited with making it possible to return to church after being disillusioned by unbelievable teachings from their childhood. Then I watched Rev. Marlayna’s Sunday sermon about a need to engage in politics, that is, the business of the community. (I hereby admit skipping the service and watching the video later.)
Jack Spong made a name for himself by challenging religious interpretations (including Biblical passages) that created “us and them” divisions and subtly dehumanized the “other.” He would have been front and center cheering Rev. Marlayna’s presentation that both the Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament) and the story of Jesus celebrated good news to the poor, release to captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed. How right to conclude that Jesus focused more on our earthly mission of community responsibility rather than earning individual access to a heavenly afterlife. (Or maybe taking care of others was the way to “earn” heaven.)
I whole-heartedly agree that it is our Christian duty to confront evil and stand with its victims. But sometimes evil is so sneaky that we tend to miss it. Last week the Bible study topic was the parable usually called “The Good Samaritan.” You know the story: A resident of Jewish Jerusalem takes a long walk through barren and dangerous hills down to Jerico on the west bank of the Jordan River. (Yes, think a modern reference.) Set upon by robbers, he is found, half-dead, by a Samaritan, an enemy who goes out of his way to care for the victim. In good Jesus fashion there are surprises: indifferent priest, indifferent Levite; the expected caring Jew turns out to be a hated Samaritan.
Today we celebrate the “Good Samaritan,” naming all sorts of admirable works after him.” But wait! We don’t talk about a “Good Canadian” or a “Good Franklinite” because such designation would imply that other Canadians or Franklinites were not so good. Calling a single Samaritan “good” is a way of asserting that, to the Jews of Jesus’ day, Samaritans in general were bad. They were “others” to be feared because they were not part of the favored tribe. Unfortunately, our scriptures and history are full of such veiled disparagements.
May we be vigilant against such hidden disrespect.

Lyn Pickhover, Trying to Be More Aware

DISCOVERY

Rev. Marlayna read a story sermon from the point of the innkeeper who missed Jesus’ birth because he was busy with everyday concerns. I noticed several anachronisms – such as the innkeeper “doing the books” at a time when a “book” (“biblos” in Greek and “liber” in Latin) would have been a painstakingly handwritten manuscript, and accounts, if kept at all, would have been scratches on reusable clay tablets. Anachronisms can help move the story along – as long as you don’t take them as hard facts.

It was a weekend of small earthquakes, and I thought of predictions that movements of the North American tectonic plate would eventually cause “the big one” in the Boston area. Fast forwarding a few thousand years, I imagined archaeologists digging in rubble of our church building which would be covered with a many feet of dirt, decayed plant life, and junk accumulated over post-earthquake centuries. I imagined that the building’s stones and metal siding collapsed in a way that sealed off the contents of the Faith Development Room, saving part of the library there.

The future archaeologists discover partially preserved copies of books, including The Five Gospels and The Acts of Jesus. These contain explanations that different colored print indicates the authors’ conclusions about the historical accuracy of each passage. There is a letter revealing the donors’ connection to the scholars. They also find a copy of the story sermon about the innkeeper. Once these treasures have been preserved, deciphered, and read, future researchers conclude that the innkeeper’s story is part of the scholarly collection and adds important factual information about the time of Jesus’ birth. They start looking for other evidence to support someone’s theory that formal account-keeping was much older and wide-spread than had previously been assumed. The innkeeper becomes a sophisticated businessman whose bottom line depended on taking advantage of ignorant travelers. A new study subject has been born.

This may sound far-fetched, but it is probably not much different from how “facts” have been added to the original stories memorialized in our Bibles. How difficult it is to know what really happened two, three, or four millennia ago! But, really, the facts do not matter as much as the ideas and lessons we find preserved in the collection that we, today, call “The Bible.”

May we search for meanings instead of facts in our holy books.

Lyn Pickhover, Digging

DID YOU NOTICE . . . ?

Did you ever notice that our Christmas Eve service uses passages from the Gospel of Luke while the service devoted to Epiphany quotes from the Gospel of Mark?

Did you ever notice that Luke brings Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem where there is no room in the inn with accommodations for labor and birth, so the couple is directed to a stable where there are animals, but no people, and angels deliver the good news (gospel or evangellion) to lowly shepherds? (No wise men, Kings, or magi., only poor and marginalized herders who wanted to know what the fuss was about.)
Did you ever notice that Mark places Joseph and Mary in their own house in Bethlehem where, some days after their baby is born, star-gazers are drawn from the east by astrological signs of an impending birth? (Israel is on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, so exotic magi could not come from the west.) A single angel warns Joseph to take his family to Egypt to escape the wrath of King Herod who wants to eliminate a rival king. (There are no shepherds here and no camels in either story.)

If you read these two stories of Jesus’ birth side-by-side, you will notice that the only things they have in common are a mother, Mary, a father, Joseph, and a baby, Jesus. Even the genealogies are different. And if you read these two stories with the Hebrew Bible open, you will note that Luke’s story is about a shepherd king who cares for the poor and lowly in accordance with God’s instructions to his chosen people. Matthew, on the other hand, presents Jesus as the new and greater Moses who will lead his oppressed people to the safety of a new promised land.

I love Christmas as we know it, with shepherds, animals, kings – and a camel – worshiping the baby while the star shines and angels sing. However. I am always left with a sense that combining the two stories deprives us of important references that Jews of the first century would have seen in the separate versions. Both stories are important, and it does not matter that they disagree.

My New Years’ resolution is to try to understand stories in the Bible as Jews in Israel/Palestina and scattered across the known world would have received them in the 1st century C.E. and then apply the lessons to our 21st century world.

The winter-spring Bible Study will mine Jesus’ parables for meanings we don’t see but would
have been apparent to Jesus’ audience. If you would like to join us via Zoom on Saturday mornings at 9:00 AM, please contact me at lyn@pickhover.net. No homework assignments and no prior Bible knowledge necessary, but I will send out material to help with our explorations.

Happy New Year!
Lyn Pickhover, Still Looking

Making Way for God

Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth
Isaiah 40:3-4, Luke 3:4b-5

Guest preacher Rev. Emma Brewer-Wallin began her sermon on protecting our environment
with John the Baptizer’s call to repentance and forgiveness.

As I listened to these well-known verses from 2nd Isaiah, my mind flashed to gravel pits and heavy equipment tearing into hillsides for material to fill low spots for construction. No! No! No!
That’s not how to interpret this passage!

We need to transport ourselves back to the time when the Babylonian captivity was coming
to an end, a time when imagination still had God walking on the earth. Since the principal method
of transportation was one’s own legs and feet, this poetry was a call to straightening out the mixed-
up parts of our lives to make it easier for God to reach us – and for us to reach God.

May we see these words as a challenge to make God’s world a better, brighter place.

Lyn Pickhover, Challenged

After Jesus, Before Christianity

When my children were small, I used some of Jesus’ teachings as models of behavior modification,ways of acting to gently influence behavior in others. Little did I expect that early realization would begin a book review.

Deeper study of the Bible brought about the realization that Jesus was helping his followers act out a vision of love in the face of the violence of the Roman Empire of the first century of the Common Era (C.E. instead of A.D.) But then, in the 4th century, the Emperor Constantine co-opted the message to further his hold on peoples Rome had conquered over several centuries. What happened in the centuries between Jesus and Constantine? What happened to Jesus’ message of love and cooperation before it was over-written to support a violent domination system?

The discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library in 1945 proved to be a treasure trove of information about the development of Christianity in those intervening centuries. These 52 texts, many only small fragments, augmented by other archeological discoveries, revealed a range of practices in Jesus’ memory that had been systematically suppressed, first by the early church “Fathers” and later by Constantine’s insistence that Christianity present one unified message to the empire he ruled.
Contributors to the Westar Institute’s Christianity Seminar dug deep into the Bible and other available material from the 1st and 2nd centuries and noted it did not support the traditional party line that Early Christianity presented a single, unitary story about Jesus and his early followers. In fact, they realized that there was no organized “Christianity” until the 4th century C.E. Instead, different groups devised powerful and distinctive ways of remembering the dangerous teachings of an itinerant peasant from Galilee in the early years of the Roman Empire. One thing these early writings had in common was the very creative and courageous ways these illegal gatherings remembered Jesus the Anointed (Christ) in the face of fear, violence and persecution.

Our New Testament and other early “Christian” writings become more powerful and inspiring when read as underground literature opposing the might of the Roman empire.

The Christianity Seminar’s findings are now available as a very readable book, AFTER JESUS, BEFORE CHRISTIANITY (HarperOne, 2021). It’s available in hard back and Kindle. You can find a copy in the Faith Development Room, along with many of the papers and publications on which the book is based. Feel free to sign it out (and please remember to bring it back so other can read it, too.)

Happy reading!

Lyn Pickhover

We Stand with Our Jewish Neighbors

The Hebrew Bible, what we call our Old Testament, is the story of God’s designation of Israel as His chosen people. Jesus was a Jew and is quoted in the Bible as saying: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish, but to fulfill .” (Matthew 3:17) As a way of establishing his qualifications to declare his allegiance to “Christ Crucified,” the apostle Paul bragged about his background as “a member of the people of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews, as to the law, as Pharisee.” (Philippians 3:4-5) In the years after Jesus’ death, many Gentiles called “God-fearers” wanted to be associated with the Jews because of their stellar reputation.

In the 20th century, the Catholic Church found it necessary to declare that Jews were not “Christ-killers”? Today we see a need to display a sign saying: “We Stand with Our Jewish Neighbors” on the front lawn of the Franklin Federated Church. How did we get here? What happened to the Jewish Jesus’ instruction to love our neighbors?

The answer is complicated, starting with different groups of Jesus’ early followers, each insisting their interpretation was the only right one. Two Jewish revolts against Rome changed favorable treatment of the Jews to ostracism, exile, and worse. During the next two centuries there was no cohesive message that could be called “Christian” and no uniform organizational structure of what came to be churches.

In the early 4th century, the Emperor Constantine decided to impose a state religion as a way of unifying his vast empire, and, ironically, the movement Jesus began in opposition to Roman imperialism was co-opted by the Roman Empire.

A common enemy is always a unifying factor, so Eusebius, Constantine’s “historian” (actually a storyteller from the Latin “historia” meaning story or tale) advocated a doctrine of “supersessionism” which asserted that God was so angry at the Jews for not accepting Jesus as the Messiah (Christ, Anointed One) that He withdrew his promise that the Jews would always be his people and transferred His blessing to Constantine’s organized Christian Church. For over fifteen centuries, the Jews were blamed for most of the ills of the world, making them fair game for discrimination, abuse, and persecution.

Unfortunately, this “us versus them” attitude still persists and can only be countered by repeating and modeling Jesus’ message of love. That is why in the 21st century, the FFC has expressed its vision as “A community of abundant welcome to all, growing together in Christ and serving with love.”

May we always strive to live up to this vision.

Lyn Pickhover

A Different Peephole

In Memoriam
BISHOP JOHN SHELBY SPONG
June 16, 1931 – September 12, 2021

Those who participated in our Sunday AM
Discovery Group will remember his interesting,
clear, and provocative presentations. Over the
years, many people have commented that Jack
Spong’s writings enabled them to remain in the
church. He will be missed, but our Faith Develop-
ment Library has a number of his recordings that
you can sign out to enjoy.
Lyn Pickhover, Saddened

Are we there yet?

Serendipity again! (And thanks to Geico for popularizing this lovely word!) A conversation at Book Group on Tuesday led to a phone call with Rev. Marlayna on Thursday, and that contributed to the conversation at the Deacons’ retreat on Saturday. Sunday I was planning this peephole when I looked at the day’s scripture, and the pieces for this peephole fell into place.

In his most memorable speeches, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” closely paraphrasing words spoken by minister and noted Transcendentalist Theodore Parker a century before. The Hebrew Scriptures and Jesus’ own message focused on our ability and our responsibility to participate in that arc toward justice. Sunday’s responsive Call to Worship contained words of the Apostle Paul to the emerging church in Rome: “Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable, and perfect.” Paul was an apocalyptic who believed the world was going to send soon, so keeping apart from the world to be perfect would have made sense to him, However, reading Jesus’ words, as brought to us in the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke,) I think Jesus would have told his followers to conform the world to the vision of God’s Kingdom on earth.

In reality, history is never a smooth arc. Jesus’ disciples included many women, most notably Mary Magdalene, and Paul praised several influential women in his letters. About the time that early church organizers were trying to silence women, Pliny the Elder wrote to the Emperor Trajan that two deaconesses – early church leaders who at the same time were slaves – had revealed under torture that Christians gathered in defiance of Roman law to sing, pray, eat together, and care for the sick. Some civil disobedience! Through the ages, Christian slaughtered Jews, Muslims, indigenous peoples, and even other Christians to enforce their preferred brand of orthodoxy. It used to be that women could not own property and only property owners could vote. My mother could not teach school after her marriage, and I could not teach when pregnant. Many of these practices have been rectified, so I see lots of progress, but the arc toward justice still has a long way to go.

We are not there yet.

Lyn Pickhover, Would-be Perfecter

Getting my Mind around a Different Idea

In a recent sermon, Rev. Jean Southard reminded us that the Bible says God created humankind in God’s image and we should live up to that image. At the time, I was grappling with an old idea that was new to me: What was God’s image in which we were created? Our New Revised Standard Version pew Bibles (recent English translations of Greek translations of ancient Hebrew scriptures with some help from St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate translation) reads: “Then God said (apparently to a heavenly court): ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness . . .’ So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:26-27). Then, having created the other living things in pairs, in the next chapter God separates Eve from Adam (“Of the earth”) by by splitting off a rib. (Gen. 2:21-22). “Wait!,” we say; “God created man and woman in God’s image and then God had to separate the two? What’s going on?” The traditional, patriarchal explanation is that God (think an old man with a flowing white beard in the sky) created a male human and then adjusted his mistake by making Eve from Adam’s rib – or maybe these are two creation stories that have been cobbled together.

Today many of us do not think of God in anthropomorphic, purely masculine terms; we pay attention to the Genesis 1's intimation that God’s image was also female. Is there any way to reconcile these two pictures which our antecedents combined into one story? I was intrigued – and initially dismayed – at the suggestion that the ancients thought of God “in the round” so to speak, with male features on one side and female features on the other, and the Adam side was split from the Eve side so they could see each other, function independently but side-by-side, and be in relationship with each other. At first this seemed like a really weird idea, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it: God’s image encompassing everything, adjusted for life on this planet where many species function in pairs; that’s a view I can live with.

I take the Bible seriously, but not literally, so what matters to me is concepts, not scientific facts about which the ancients knew nothing. They did pretty well with a general idea of the developmental sequence the universe and our world, even if they didn’t understand the details of evolution. I’m willing to give them credit also for an imaginative, non-discriminatory vision of an unknowable God. My understanding of God just got a whole lot bigger!

Lyn Pickhover, Awe-struckl

Serendipity

     Sometimes disparate elements come together to form a whole! At Marianne Borg’s recent Second Saturday gathering, there was a discussion that God’s love for us is unconditional, not transactional. That is, God loves us without expecting anything in return, and we should carry the same love into the world. The next day, Rev. Marlayna talked of finding new ways of displaying God’s love out in the community as well as within the church walls.

     The Bible records many examples of God’s people trying to gain God’s favor by gifts, even bribes, from burnt offerings to slavish devotion to the Law and the Prophets, and sometimes even violence, in efforts to gain God’s favor. Jesus urged his followers to move away from this transactional model to one of love for everyone in imitation of God’s unconditional love. At the end of the Gospel of John, he makes clear to Peter that the way to show love for Jesus is to “Feed my sheep,” Today, most of us reject the image of God as an old man with a white beard up in the sky, but we sometimes revert to old transactional ways of praying and acting in time of distress: “I’ll do this, God, if only You will grant me what I want.” Even our prayers of thanksgiving sometimes verge on the transactional: “God granted our prayers because we prayed so hard.”

     Don’t get me wrong: I believe prayer works. However, I think it’s our unified efforts and energy, combined with trust in God’s care that make the difference in this world. Perhaps our prayer should be: “God, support our united efforts to make positive differences in this world and in people’s lives.” Can you think of ways we as a congregation can model God’s unconditional love?

Lyn Pickhover, Pray-er

Which Peace?

I started thinking about peace a longtime ago,in college,preparing my senior thesis on the concept of peace in the time when Rome was being transformed from a republic to an empire. That was a culture in which everything was “zero-sum” – only so much land,so much food,so much money,so much love – a culture in which someone had to lose if someone else gained. “Zero sum”meant you had to fight to get what you wanted, and then you had to fight to keep it. The success of Pax Romana or Roman Peace depended on continued expansion and absorption of the resources of other territories to satisfy the ever-growing demands of the Roman Empire. Those who had power got what they wanted at everyone else’s expense. The historian Tacitus put these words about the Romans into the mouth of the defeated British chieftain Calgacus: “They create desolation and call it peace.” The Romans believed in peace through power and victory.
That was the world into which Jesus was born. John the Baptist, who was probably Jesus’ mentor, saw things as so bad that God could only clean up the mess by destroying the earth and starting over again. However, Jesus had a different idea: he preached that love, kindness, and forgiveness could create a loving, caring community – God’s kingdom on earth – even in the face of Roman greed and brutality. He advocated peace though justice and love.
During our recent Bible study of the Book of Revelation, we read a prediction of horrors God will inflict upon earth and its inhabitants before Jesus comes to defeat his enemies, and the survivors can live with God in the idyllic New Jerusalem. A message of hope for those who believe they will be among the chosen, but desolation for those not so lucky.
Power or love? Which peace do we choose?

Lyn Pickhover, Peace-love

Paraclete for the Defense

Last Sunday’s Bible reading was about the Holy Spirit as the “Paraclete,” which was translated in the Gospel of John as “Advocate.” My Greek lexicon indicates the base word means “divider” or “intercessor” or perhaps one who stands beside another. As an attorney, an advocate for my clients, I immediately recognized this as the concept of “defender,” the opposite of the Satan, the tester, the tempter, the prosecutor. (Think of the crime shows where authorities are allowed to use misdirection and even falsehood to try to get people to tell the truth and show their true colors; that’s the job description of the Satan.)

Our on-going Bible study on Revelation is moving through a prophecy of horrible events to be inflicted by God’s angels on the earth and its people before Jesus rides in on a white horse (literally) to clean up the mess, initiate the final judgment, and inaugurate a new world order to be enjoyed only by true believers, so I envision a celestial courtroom with God on the throne (bench) and the Satan and the Paraclete as prosecutor and defense attorney arguing whether a soul will go to bliss or everlasting torment.

One inclusive language rendition of the concept of “Trinity” refers to the Holy Spirit (feminine in Greek) as “Comforter,” but, to the extent that one believes the prophecy in Revelation, the Holy Spirit as Paraclete becomes even more important: the understanding that God does not require us to stand trial alone, but provides a divine defender to intercede, protect and advocate on our behalf. I would call that an example of grace.

Lyn Pickhover, Pondering