Brief Note for 3.9.09: Politics

Most of those blathering these days about "socialism" don't really know anything more about "socialism" than they know about the internal workings of an atomic bomb.  What they know about both is that if you throw them around you can expect big explosions, which makes them ideal to scare a lot of people.

And in another brief thought, my Best Beloved asked me recently, "Have all those folks who want to connect Christianity and capitalism just never read those parts of the Bible about how the early Christians gave "from each according to his ability to each according to his need?"  (Hint: for those who haven't, read the Acts of the Apostles.)  Of course, if your purpose is not to use capitalism to justify Christianity, but rather to use Christianity to justify capitalism....

More Food for Thought at the Episcopal Cafe

My newest piece is up at the Episcopal Cafe. You can read it here. Perhaps we can say it comes from watching all those cooking and cooking competition shows on cable. However, the issue is what we think is the purpose of God's gift of communion when expressed in the Anglican Communion.

On a related note, if you'd be interested in my take on where Archbishop Williams wants to take the Anglican Communion, you might look here and here and here and here.

Worker Sisters/Worker Brothers Lenten Quiet Day: 3rd Reflection

I had the honor this year of leading the Lenten Quiet Day for Worker Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Worker Brothers of the Holy Spirit in the Kansas City area. The Worker Sisters and Worker Brothers are a Christian Community recognized in, and with membership well beyond the Episcopal Church. The theme of study for this year has been about strengthening Christian faith through interreligious dialog. This was the third reflection for the Quiet Day.

And What of Those Who Don’t Want to Follow a Jew?

I have said that there were those who denied the Jewish heritage in the Christian tradition. The most important and perhaps most dangerous such a person was the heretic Marcion.

Marcion was the son of a bishop in Asia Minor. Most evidence is that he was not ordained himself. Instead, he was something of a shipping magnate. He is reported to have had a falling out with his father, perhaps over a sex scandal; and about 139 A.D. he moved to Rome. To establish a place for himself in the Roman church, he is said to have donated 200,000 sesterces to the congregation.

Marcion had a very dualistic sense of the world, focused less on “Good and Evil” per se than on “Law vs. Gospel.” He studied with Gnostics in Rome, although some of his beliefs differed from most Gnostics.

• He believed that there were two gods, the God proclaimed by the Jews, who was committed to Law and Justice; and the “Unknown God,” who was committed to Love and Grace. The God of the Jews was the creator of the world and all matter, which was corrupt and evil. That God was violent and could be brutal. The “Unknown God” was the Father who sent Jesus Christ. He loved all and saved by grace – although it was salvation from bondage in law and sin, and not a promise of resurrection.
• He couldn’t believe in the Incarnation. He couldn’t believe that Jesus had been born, because that would make him material, and make him subject to the God of the Jews. Instead, Jesus was a “manifestation:” visible, but not material.
• He accepted Paul’s writings, especially where he proclaimed Grace and condemned Law. Because the Jewish tradition in the Old Testament was the story of the God of Law, Marcion rejected it entirely.
• In fact, Marcion basically rejected any Scriptures Christians used that he thought were too accepting of, too corrupted by the Jewish tradition. For use by him and his followers he produced his own “Bible.” It consisted of a Gospel, based on Luke, and ten of Paul’s letters. For the book he cut out a lot, and even added a little, to eliminate anything too Jewish and to reinforce his belief.

In 144 the Roman church threw Marcion out. They even returned the 200,000 sesterces. He returned to Asia Minor and started his own church. While it wasn’t terribly important in the Western part of the Empire, in the East it was a serious competitor with the orthodox catholic Church and lasted for almost 150 years.

The success of Marcion provoked the Church to a reaction. That’s not to say that there was in those days a single institution that we might call “the Church” as we imagine it today. Instead, orthodox and catholic bishops wrote to one another and shared writings. There were local councils, and important writers wrote critiques of Marcion’s practices. Over time, they reached consensus on some important matters.

• They affirmed that the God Jesus proclaimed, whom Jesus made incarnate among us, was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God proclaimed by the Jews.
  o So, there was only One God, whom Jesus called Father, in both Old Testament and New.
  o The Old Testament, and those new Testament writings that reflected and affirmed the heritage of the Old Testament, were also inspired by God and could be used as Scripture.
  o So, Jesus was fully human, as the author of Hebrews said, “in every was as we are, but without sin.”Jesus was not displacing the Old Covenant, Instead, he fulfilled it so that he could offer the new Covenant of grace.
• To be as consistent in faith and practice as Marcion sought to be, Christians came to consensus about a body of literature, the foundation of what we now know as the Bible.
  o It included the Old Testament in the Septuagint, its Greek version.
  o It also affirmed all the books thought to be written by Apostles, and not only by Paul. That included the four Gospels we have received, and the letters of James, Jude, and John. They were believed to have been written by Apostles or by their disciples (so, Mark and Hebrews), and this was confirmed by content consistent with the faith as the Churches had received it.
  o That included even those writings that some then (and later) might have considered “too Jewish,” including Hebrews and the Letter of James.

With the ultimate failure of the Marcionite church, the consensus and ultimate canonization of the New Testament as we have it, and the thorough incorporation of our Jewish heritage in our faith and worship, we might think this matter was settled. However, it continues to be a concern that we need to address.

• How often have we heard, even in our own time, that dichotomy that God in the Old Testament is all Law, Justice, and Punishment, while God in the New Testament, as seen in Christ, is all Love, Grace, and Salvation?
• How recently was it that the Roman Catholic Church apologized for centuries of anti-Semitism, and stopped thinking of Jews as “Christ killers?”
• We need to recognize that even as great a theologian and scholar as Luther, who went to a rabbi to learn Hebrew to study the Old Testament, was still prone to see the Letter of James as “too Jewish,” to focused on works; and to express anger that the Jews would not see that the Messiah had already come in Jesus. We need to recognize that those sentiments have not disappeared, even if they are spoken less openly.
  

So, what does it mean for us now to appreciate the Jewish heritage of Christianity? What do we think is the most significant contribution of our Jewish heritage to our Christian faith? What new insights have we had this morning, and what new behaviors might those insights suggest? And where might we want to go from here in honoring the Jewish heritage in the Christian faith?

Worker Sisters/Worker Brothers Lenten Quiet Day: 2nd Reflection

I had the honor this year of leading the Lenten Quiet Day for Worker Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Worker Brothers of the Holy Spirit in the Kansas City area. The Worker Sisters and Worker Brothers are a Christian Community recognized in, and with membership well beyond the Episcopal Church. The theme of study for this year has been about strengthening Christian faith through interreligious dialog. This was the second reflection for the Quiet Day.

The Lord’s Prayer is a Jewish Prayer

Years ago, during one of my residencies in clinical pastoral education, one of my fellow students and good friends was a rabbi. She was a good student, and a good chaplain, and an enthusiastic participant in all the activities of the Pastoral Care department.

Well, all but one. She struggled with participation in worship. This was a Lutheran hospital, and she was the first non-Christian student they had ever had in the program. No one wanted to exclude her, and she didn’t want to be excluded; but as a Jew, and more particularly as a Rabbi, a representative Jew, she had some difficulties with participation – especially with the expectation of participation – in Christian worship.

Of course, not with everything: she said, “ I don’t have a problem with the Lord’s Prayer. There’s nothing in that prayer that a Jew couldn’t say. The only problem with the Lord’s Prayer is the Christian understanding that Jesus is the Lord.”

Jesus was a Jew; and when he prayed, he prayed as a Jew. He led Jews, and when he taught them to pray he taught them to pray as Jews. He taught them the Lord’s Prayer. (Matthew 6:9-13; Luke 11:1-4)

That thought may come as a bit of a surprise. We think of the Lord’s Prayer as Jesus’, and as ours; and it is ours. Jesus taught it when disciples asked him how to pray.

At the same time, there is nothing distinctively Christian about it, or there wasn’t when he taught it (remember, our departure from our Jewish forebears comes after the resurrection, and not before).

• There is honor to the Father, but no reference to the Son.
• There is a call for God’s Kingdom, but no suggestion that Jesus was bringing it in, as there is in Luke’s account of Jesus in the synagogue in Capernaum.
• There is prayer for God’s grace, but none for, say, our resurrection.

When scholars look at the Lord’s Prayer, they see this even more clearly. We think of Jesus’ address to God as Abba, “Father,” as distinctive; but in fact it was already known in the Hebrew Scriptures and in early synagogue prayers. There is a remarkable parallel between the various clauses of the Lord’s Prayer and a prayer long central to synagogue worship, the Amidah, also known as the Shemonah esre, “the Eighteen Blessings.” In that prayer God’s Name is declared holy, and there are prayers for the coming of the Messianic kingdom, for daily needs, prayers asking forgiveness and calling on the believer to forgive others. While Jewish scholars believe that the Amidah took on its current form in the generations after Jesus’ death, they believe that the separate prayers, and earlier versions of this prayer, were probably current long before.

The Lord’s Prayer has become central to all of our prayer, both in public worship and private devotion. But it is not the only prayer from our Jewish heritage that has become so central.

Consider the Psalms. For certainly the Psalms are prayers. We think of them more as hymns, chanted in public worship; and certainly many of them were. However, are not our hymns also prayers? For, as St. Augustine said, “For he who sings praise, does not only praise, but also praises joyfully; he who sings praise, not only sings, but also loves Him whom he is singing about. There is a praise-filled public proclamation in the praise of someone who is confessing, in the song of the lover (there is) love.” So, when one sings one’s prayers, one might accomplish more than one thing. Thus, the statement has come down to us in the distorted form of, “He who sings (or sings well) prays twice.”

We still hold that hymns are prayers. Thus we have a hymnal, and the hymnal of the Episcopal Church must be approved by General Convention. That’s not to say that we can’t use music outside what’s in the Hymnal; we can. But the Hymnal sets the standard of what the content should be of our hymns, whether we use those approved by Convention or from another source. The Hymnal sets the standard of the theology we express in worship; and so, like the Prayer Book, it must be approved by General Convention.

So, the Psalms are indeed prayers, some for public worship and some for private devotion, that have come to us from our Jewish heritage. And it is no surprise that they should have come down. For the first Christians were largely Jewish, or familiar with Jewish worship. Remember that the first Gentiles to embrace the faith were “God-fearers,” pagans who had embraced the One God as proclaimed by the Jewish people, without formally converting. They attended synagogue worship, even though they sat outside the sanctuary itself. Thus, whether Jew or Gentile, the first Christians were familiar with the chanting of the Psalms. Regular chanting of psalms continues to be an aspect of Jewish worship and devotion.

This is also important for us in Christian Communities and Orders. In his Rule, on which our various specific rules are based, St. Benedict quotes extensively from Scripture to justify his provisions. He quotes more from the Psalms than perhaps from any other portion of Scripture. Indeed, he considered them so important that he so arranged the Offices, the times of prayer during the monastic day, that the entire body of Psalms was read through every week. For each office there might be a portion of another part of Scripture – usually a brief passage, at most a few verses - but always a long portion of the Psalms.

And look how important the Psalms have become for our worship. In the Book of Common Prayer it is virtually impossible to find a public service or private devotion that does not incorporate some portion of the Psalter. Even the brief "Daily Devotions for Families" incorporate some small portion. Certainly, the Eucharist and the Daily Offices call for portions of the Psalms. We are not as rigorous as Benedict’s early monks. The Daily Office Lectionary repeats the Psalms through a period of about seven weeks; and within the Psalter itself in the Prayer Book there is a guide to read through them in thirty days instead of seven. The Order of the Holy Cross, of which I am an Associate, completes the Psalms over fourteen days, and then leaves out the unpleasant parts. However, extensive and repeated reading of the Psalms is central to the rules of professed religious and their associates and oblates in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican tradition.

And yet, why have they become so central? Like the Lord’s Prayer, we do not find the distinctive beliefs of the Christian faith in the Psalms. There is proclamation of the Messiah, but it relates more to the kingship of David and his descendents than to God the Son. There is some suggestion of resurrection, but not through the Messiah.

And there is so much in the Psalms that makes us uncomfortable – the bitter, angry, nasty parts. That’s why the Monastic Breviary of the Order of the Holy Cross has excluded certain passages. There is great violence in the Psalms. There are cursing and brutality in the Psalms, and cries of abandonment by God. Jesus himself, in his most desperate hour, quoted perhaps the most tragic verse in the Psalms: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1)

And yet I think that is why we continue to chant and to value the Psalms. They help us to proclaim the full range of our human feelings, and to share them in our relationships with God. For what sort of relationship is it that focuses on only the good stuff, the happy times? Our experience as human beings is not only good and happy. Sometimes it is indeed unpleasant, ugly, and violent. We would say a relationship that could not also incorporate those experiences was shallow, lacking in intimacy; and if we would say that of a human relationship, how much more true must it be of our relationship with God? Yes, God does indeed see and know all of that in our lives; but if we have not offered to God those parts of our lives, we have not really offered ourselves wholly to God. How shall we lay on God our troubles, if we’re not willing to share them even with God? That was true in ancient Israel, and it is true today.

And, like so much of the Hebrew Scriptures, we look at them through the lens of our Christian experience. And so, we see in the Psalms references to the Messiah as we know him, even if they who originally wrote them did not see those references. They are a part of our Jewish heritage that illuminates our Christian experience.

And so, what are these aspects of our Jewish heritage to us as individual Christians? What does it mean to us that these central prayers, the Lord’s Prayer and the Psalms, are both so Jewish and yet so pertinent? How to we appreciate these as aspects of our worship now? And how do they connect us to the experiences of the early Church, both those who walked with Jesus and the subsequent generations?

Worker Sisters/Worker Brothers Lenten Quiet Day: 1st Reflection

I had the honor this year of leading the Lenten Quiet Day for Worker Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Worker Brothers of the Holy Spirit in the Kansas City area. The Worker Sisters and Worker Brothers are a Christian Community recognized in, and with membership well beyond the Episcopal Church. The theme of study for this year has been about strengthening Christian faith through interreligious dialog. This was the first reflection for the Quiet Day.

The topic for February is “Jewish Prayer and Worship.” However, if this is not to be an abstract, academic exercise, we need to go a step further: what are Jewish prayer and worship to us?

So, let us begin at the beginning. Jesus was a Jew. Or, as one example of T-shirt theology has it, “My master is a Jewish carpenter.”

There are those who have tried to assert otherwise. There are those who have asserted that because he was the Christ he had to be a Christian, and couldn’t be a Jew. They do that, really, out of an intent to reject anything Jewish than a commitment to Scripture or to the faith as we have received it. For the evidence is clear, and affirmed by Christian and Jewish scholar alike: Jesus was a Jew.

We can say that with comfort based on the witness of the Gospels.

• Matthew and Luke alike, for all the differences in their Birth Narratives, agree that Jesus was a descendent of David. (Matthew 1:1-18; Luke 3:23-38)
• Luke asserts that Joseph and Mary followed established Torah rituals after his birth: circumcision on the eighth day, and a sacrifice of redemption on the fortieth. (Luke 2: 21-24)
• Through his childhood his parents participated in the major Temple festivals. (Luke 2:41)

Jesus was raised a Jew, the son of Jewish parents.

He continued to be a Jew as an adult.

• According to John he continued himself to participate in the annual Temple festivals. (John 2:13; 5:1; 7:2,10)
• He was recognized in his home synagogue, not simply as a reader but as a rabbi, qualified to teach on the Scriptures he read. (Mark 1:21-22; Luke 4:16-21)
• Indeed, he was not infrequently addressed as, “Rabbi.” (John 4:31)
• He quoted the Hebrew Scriptures readily, and reflected on them. Think especially of the how often he says in the Sermon on the Mount, “You have heard that it was said in ancient times…. But I say to you….” This was reflection, not on social custom, but on Torah and on past interpretations of Torah. (Matthew 5:21-48)
• Indeed, in the same context he says, “I have come not to abolish [the Law] but to fulfil [it].” (Matthew 5:17)
• His last and most important gathering with the disciples came in the context of the Passover, either as a seder, or as a chaburah meal for the eve of the Sabbath.

That is not to say that Jesus didn’t have an interesting relationship to Torah. He was more concerned with the intent, or more specifically, God’s intent as expressed in Torah.

• So, many scholars have suggested that Jesus affirmed the Law, the Torah, and then expected believers to exceed it. So, he called for his hearers to “righteousness [that] exceeds the scribes and the Pharisees.” (Matthew 5:17-20)
• When he allows his disciples to gather grain, essentially to harvest, on the Sabbath, he points to David’s use of bread dedicated to sacrifice to instead feed his troops. (Matthew 12:1-4)
• When he eats with sinners, which he apparently does quite often, he speaks not of purity but of outreach. (Matthew 9:9-13)
• He calls the Pharisees and scribes “whitewashed tombs,” beautiful on the outside but dead and corrupt on the inside, for being all style and no substance (Matthew 23:27-28)
• And so he says to do as the scribes and Pharisees instruct, but not as they do; for “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear,* and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.” (Matthew 23:4)

Remember especially the tradition of the Pharisees: in Torah, and in reflection on Torah, they had discerned more than 600 separate laws that the observant Jew was expected to follow. To do that, one practically had to be a person of leisure. The poor didn’t have the time or the resources to really meet that standard.

• So, when Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven,” his disciples responded, “Then, who can be saved?” (Matthew 19:24-25)
• Blessedly, we are saved by grace; and so Jesus said, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”

In fact, Jesus was oriented specifically toward those who could not meet those standards. The early rabbis spoke of a group or class of Jews called ‘Am ha-aretz. The phrase translates, “People of the Land,” or “People of the Earth;” but it was used to speak of those were poor and working class, and particularly that they had neither the education or the resources to be “good” Jews according to Pharisaic standards. Those were the “poor” whose backs bore burdens prescribed by the Pharisees: burdens of performance to the extent they could, and burdens of shame when they failed.

So, Jesus was a Jew – born and raised and practicing as an adult. He knew and affirmed the Law, even as he called his listeners to God’s purpose in it, instead of to scrupulous attention to detail. So, what does this mean for us as Christians, who are not Jews? What does Jesus’ Jewish heritage and practice mean for us? And what does it mean for us, both as individuals and as the Church, that he came not to abrogate Torah, but to fulfill it?