New Testament - The Body 04/03/09
First century Israel was a culture under pressure – a period of great crisis. It was threatened by the military power of the Romans and the steadily increasing impact of Greek thinking, which was approaching its peak. Greek culture was city-based - political and cultural centers with baths, theaters and athletic arenas. In the second century BCE Jerusalem had a gymnasium. Jesus grew up in Nazareth, just four miles from the wealthy, cultured Hellenized city of Sepphoris (rebuilt in his early twenties), and fifteen miles from Capernaum (where Jesus hung out with his disciples) was the Hellenized city of Tiberias. Yet the Gospels do not mention Jesus visiting these Hellenic centers – in fact he seems to have avoided them.
History shows that Christianity was quickly affected by Greek culture and thought, but Jesus was not. Jesus had a direct and immediate healing relationship with people. This relationship that Jesus had with the body reflects the Hebrew, not the Greek, world view. The world is the arena of human existence. There is nothing else – this is it! The Hebrews did not actually have a word for “body”. Instead they used “flesh”, “soul” and “spirit”. Flesh refers to the concrete existence of human beings that would in due course die – it was a morally neutral term (not good or bad). “Soul” is the phenomenon of life – the experience of living. “Spirit” refers to God’s spirit or breath that dwells in you and gives you life, like a starter motor. When God removes his spirit your “soul” dies. For the Jews, God is the source of life. Without God’s spirit you return to the dust.
This contrasted with the Greek idea of the body as the vessel for the immortal soul – the body is like an empty shell. In classic Greek thought the soul pre-exists, enters the body for a short while and after death returns to the immortal heavenly realm. This life and world are just pale shadows. This Greek idea has led to the dualism of body and soul that has so impacted Christian thought. The body is less important than the soul. This world is less important than the hereafter. This is evident in beliefs such as punishment of the body for the sake of the immortal soul, a disregard for this natural world and the idea that after death our soul is released from our body and goes to heaven. These do not find their basis in the Bible.
The Christian Nicene creed talks of the resurrection of the body – it does not mention the soul. In the New Testament Paul uses the word “flesh” in a specialized sense. He uses it to express a death-oriented worldly style of humanity. It therefore attains a negative aspect. In contrast he uses the word “body” the same way that the Old Testament uses “flesh” – but now open to the possibility of endless life in the Spirit. The coming of the Holy Spirit means that this flesh/body has been opened up to endless life. God’s Spirit is poured out on all flesh (cf. Peter’s speech in Acts quoting the prophet Joel) and will not be taken away. At Lk 3: 6 John the Baptist quotes Isaiah: “And all flesh shall see the salvation of God”. The body is no longer doomed to die, but is now destined for fullness of life. In Romans 8:9-11 Paul says, “You are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you….If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” Now a choice is available – between the way of life based upon a humanity that is going to die or a new humanity that is going to live.
When Jesus heals people he uses their bodies as signs that things are changing. In LK 7:22 Jesus’ response to John the Baptist is “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them.” These are signs of God’s kingdom when the body is no longer going to die but to live.
MK 5:21-42 recounts the healings of the woman with a hemorrhage and Jairus’ daughter. At Jairus’ home Jesus criticizes the noise and mourning – signs of the old order that no longer apply. When the woman touches his robe she connects with Jesus – enters into relationship. Jesus identifies her in the midst of the crowd pushing in from all sides. He makes the personal connection, making the healing a sign of something more, i.e. a relationship.
We are invited into this life-giving relationship. At the last supper (Jn 13:23) the beloved disciple (with whom the reader is invited to identify) leans on the breast of Jesus. The same words are used in Jn 1:18 – “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known”. The words translated as “close to the Father’s heart” are the same as those used in the last supper passage. So, just as the Son leans on the Father’s breast, we also lean on the breast of Jesus. There is a direct connection to the Father through Jesus. The language is physical. At the Last Supper Jesus says that the bread is his body for us. Just as the healed bodies are signs of the new order – that death is no longer the ultimate meaning – so his body also becomes a sign of what is the ultimate meaning of life –a profound intimacy of love.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Sign Hunting With Jesus
When I was leaving the Roman Catholic priesthood my superiors—the people in charge--said I was emotionally too immature to get married. No less than ten years earlier these same guys ordained me a priest. Figure that one out. I’ve tried to, and in the process I’ve come up with this little bit of a personal reflection on the meaning of “church.”
I should be gracious. It was easy for those who were charged with discerning my vocation to make a mistake and give me the green light. I gave every sign of unreservedly seeking Christ in my life. So why not think this person “has a vocation.” But there, there, was the problem. A vocation in this thinking is an ontological thing, a stone dropped out of heaven so that it doesn’t matter what kind of state you’re in emotionally or spiritually, so long as you’ve got it you’re good. Yes, I know, seminaries etc. have tightened up their procedures a lot, producing the correct psychological grid to measure the ontological thing. These days with proper testing I would probably not have got through (perhaps, so hold that thought for a moment.) Meanwhile, although generally the seminaries may be more careful, narrowing the human slipper to guage the heavenly foot, the essential thinking—precisely—has not changed. Certain select males have vocations. God drops it on them. Forget the richness of human existence. That’s it.
Back to the perhaps of me not getting through. My superiors didn’t see my radical alienation. The church always encouraged something like that, a degree of alienation—flight from the world, as it was called—so on most days I’m sure I looked pretty good to them. At the same time, as an institution the church was/is deeply worldly. It’s lived in collusion with armies and governments since the fourth century, and sometimes you just have to take your hat off to it for doing such an incredible job of defining itself against the world and surviving very much in it. One of the things that used to get to me about this murky deal was the nukes, i.e. nuclear weapons and their real ability to destroy the planet, all that “good” stuff that God had made back in Genesis 1. The bishops said it would be wrong ever to drop the bomb, but not to use it for “deterrence,” i.e. to threaten to drop it. Another one of those having-it-both-ways that takes some figuring out. The come-back to my kind of criticism of this was: “Well what would you do if the Nazis (or the Soviets) were taking over?” My inclination was always to answer “Whatever.” Not because I think it’s fine to do nothing about the Nazis but because I think the question is disingenuous, just finding the latest pretext for business as usual.
Whatever.
It wasn’t just the nukes. My alienation went deeper than that. And here we’re really beginning to talk, I mean about “church.” Ultimately it was the positive content that seemed to be missing. I was looking for meaning, significance, and the whole complex of signs to which I had originally committed myself was fading faster than Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel on a summer’s day with a million tourists popping flash bulbs at it. It’s the signs that count. Intellectually I understood what was intended and basically believed the package. But the signs by which it all was communicated, i.e. the lived semiotics which people could see and say “ah yes, I know what that this is about,” it was this that was eroding. It was all two dimensional, like the world had become paper thin. I was inside a room with nothing outside it, and progressively the inside was collapsing too so that all that was left was a single molecular surface with the traces of an image on it, and that was evaporating same as everything else. Pretty soon there would be nothing but airless flat extension, and madness. I had to punch a hole into life and get out.
Outside “in the real world” the signs of Christ were completely absent, or so it seemed at first. The world was thick with its own signs, with survival, sex, work, politics. My first job with homeless people made survival top of the list, the main meaning. I would look across the Mile End Road after my shift in a halfway-house for traumatized, alcoholic men. I would stare at the chain-link fence guarding vacant lots, the faded Edwardian houses, and my own thoughts of those unhappy volatile people. But there was no Christ, just survival and work. Later I got married, and later still we came to the U.S.
Ah, the good ol’ U.S. Here I was dumped headfirst in a world of signs. Britain had advertizing and T.V., but nothing like the endless highway of billboards and signs, the riot of channels and stations, the relentless competition to get yourself noticed and be significant in other people’s eyes that happens here. A semiotic frenzy. Here it’s not just survival, sex, work etc., the sign has achieved an existence in its own right, the famous “fifteen minutes of fame.” But now here came the twist: at the heart of American semiotics something both terrifying and wonderful was happening. The sign of Christ I was desperately looking for all those years ago was slowly revealing itself
I attended church here. It has a different meaning than in Britain. U.S. Christianity is itself a mode of survival. It takes place within the maelstrom of competition as a place of reprieve and affirmation from where you can gather yourself one more time to enter the fray. In Britain and Europe generally people don’t go to church half so much because they don’t feel nearly as exposed and in need of divine affirmation. Alongside church, however, there is one other significant mode of affirmation that Americans make use of--the gun. It is of course incredibly scary where people combine these two together and have both Jesus and guns as spiritual props, but we can’t go down that road just now. (But, for reference, check out a book called Deer Hunting With Jesus by Joe Bageant, a raucous read but too true for comfort.)
The meaning of the gun in U.S. culture was brought home to me a couple of months back when I had a tradesman working in our house and it turned out he was carrying a loaded 45. He was a nice guy, talkative and well-read. It was very unlikely he would use the weapon—he said he had it for protection against pit bulls—but it was clear for him to be able to carry the gun meant a lot. It was a potent sign for him, pressed there against the side of his body. It meant he was strong against all-comers. Here in the North East, since Obama got into office, applications for gun permits have gone up over 50% and it’s probably true all across the country. People say it’s because they’re scared the man with the funny name will bring in sweeping gun-control legislation. But I think it’s much more basically a matter of self-affirmation when the riot of signs says generally we’re not doing so well. The gun is the semiotics of last recourse here in the U.S. It is individual divine sanction when there are no kings or priests to provide it collectively. It is sure and certain transcendence within a second’s reach.
Which brings me back to what I’ve been talking about all along this circuitous narrative. As I said, I attended church here in the U.S., partly initially for our children, and partly because I sensed the slightly more edgy role of the church, standing in this weird symbiosis of sign-giving with a sign-ridden culture. In other words, churches were more about providing meaning in the midst of chaos than keeping together a metaphysical world order. However, there was still plenty of that, and the church’s signs remained existentially shallow at a more or less terminal level. But at length—and here finally is the real point—in the slow years of experience I have understood the sign of Christ as coming to greater and greater clarity and visibility precisely as a true and radical alternative to the gun. If you want Christian meaning then observe the crisis of violence all around and then see Jesus as its true and generative other way. And this is not in my head, in the way I intellectually grasped Christian meaning back when I was a priest. No, this is something rising concretely in the world, like blossom on a Spring morning.
How do I know? Well, it’s what I’ve been telling you! Everything in my life has been a sensitivity to the absence or presence of meaningful signs. The sign system of the Roman Catholic priesthood was evacuated for me as surely as if someone has placed a vacuum cleaner at the door and sucked everything out of it. I then embarked on a twenty year pilgrimage looking for where those signs might have landed in the world. And now I know. For me at least, it’s here in the U.S. over against the growing and growling crisis of violence all around us. Exactly over against it. It’s not focusing on life hereafter, or justification, or moral rightness, anything like that. It’s the astonishing, wonderful, loving, creative, restorative, life-giving and forgiving new humanity of Jesus in the midst of a world where humanity is an endangered species. Closer even than the cold pistol with its ten shells filled with hurt lying to that guy's heart the Risen One from the long-empty tomb stands between the world and all its death.
This sign, or set of signs, has a thickness to it that speaks to me every time I turn on the Internet or open the bible or speak to a neighbor. And I cannot be happy in any church situation that does not fully release this meaning, that plays instead to some fuzzy inherited Greek version of Jesus’ message to keep everything ticking along. In fact I have doubts as to whether the actual physical architecture of the churches (their primary pre-reflective sign system), compromised as they are by about 1500 years of metaphysical doctrine as opposed to anthropological restoration, are able to communicate this new humanity. But more on this another time.
Tony Bartlett
I should be gracious. It was easy for those who were charged with discerning my vocation to make a mistake and give me the green light. I gave every sign of unreservedly seeking Christ in my life. So why not think this person “has a vocation.” But there, there, was the problem. A vocation in this thinking is an ontological thing, a stone dropped out of heaven so that it doesn’t matter what kind of state you’re in emotionally or spiritually, so long as you’ve got it you’re good. Yes, I know, seminaries etc. have tightened up their procedures a lot, producing the correct psychological grid to measure the ontological thing. These days with proper testing I would probably not have got through (perhaps, so hold that thought for a moment.) Meanwhile, although generally the seminaries may be more careful, narrowing the human slipper to guage the heavenly foot, the essential thinking—precisely—has not changed. Certain select males have vocations. God drops it on them. Forget the richness of human existence. That’s it.
Back to the perhaps of me not getting through. My superiors didn’t see my radical alienation. The church always encouraged something like that, a degree of alienation—flight from the world, as it was called—so on most days I’m sure I looked pretty good to them. At the same time, as an institution the church was/is deeply worldly. It’s lived in collusion with armies and governments since the fourth century, and sometimes you just have to take your hat off to it for doing such an incredible job of defining itself against the world and surviving very much in it. One of the things that used to get to me about this murky deal was the nukes, i.e. nuclear weapons and their real ability to destroy the planet, all that “good” stuff that God had made back in Genesis 1. The bishops said it would be wrong ever to drop the bomb, but not to use it for “deterrence,” i.e. to threaten to drop it. Another one of those having-it-both-ways that takes some figuring out. The come-back to my kind of criticism of this was: “Well what would you do if the Nazis (or the Soviets) were taking over?” My inclination was always to answer “Whatever.” Not because I think it’s fine to do nothing about the Nazis but because I think the question is disingenuous, just finding the latest pretext for business as usual.
Whatever.
It wasn’t just the nukes. My alienation went deeper than that. And here we’re really beginning to talk, I mean about “church.” Ultimately it was the positive content that seemed to be missing. I was looking for meaning, significance, and the whole complex of signs to which I had originally committed myself was fading faster than Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel on a summer’s day with a million tourists popping flash bulbs at it. It’s the signs that count. Intellectually I understood what was intended and basically believed the package. But the signs by which it all was communicated, i.e. the lived semiotics which people could see and say “ah yes, I know what that this is about,” it was this that was eroding. It was all two dimensional, like the world had become paper thin. I was inside a room with nothing outside it, and progressively the inside was collapsing too so that all that was left was a single molecular surface with the traces of an image on it, and that was evaporating same as everything else. Pretty soon there would be nothing but airless flat extension, and madness. I had to punch a hole into life and get out.
Outside “in the real world” the signs of Christ were completely absent, or so it seemed at first. The world was thick with its own signs, with survival, sex, work, politics. My first job with homeless people made survival top of the list, the main meaning. I would look across the Mile End Road after my shift in a halfway-house for traumatized, alcoholic men. I would stare at the chain-link fence guarding vacant lots, the faded Edwardian houses, and my own thoughts of those unhappy volatile people. But there was no Christ, just survival and work. Later I got married, and later still we came to the U.S.
Ah, the good ol’ U.S. Here I was dumped headfirst in a world of signs. Britain had advertizing and T.V., but nothing like the endless highway of billboards and signs, the riot of channels and stations, the relentless competition to get yourself noticed and be significant in other people’s eyes that happens here. A semiotic frenzy. Here it’s not just survival, sex, work etc., the sign has achieved an existence in its own right, the famous “fifteen minutes of fame.” But now here came the twist: at the heart of American semiotics something both terrifying and wonderful was happening. The sign of Christ I was desperately looking for all those years ago was slowly revealing itself
I attended church here. It has a different meaning than in Britain. U.S. Christianity is itself a mode of survival. It takes place within the maelstrom of competition as a place of reprieve and affirmation from where you can gather yourself one more time to enter the fray. In Britain and Europe generally people don’t go to church half so much because they don’t feel nearly as exposed and in need of divine affirmation. Alongside church, however, there is one other significant mode of affirmation that Americans make use of--the gun. It is of course incredibly scary where people combine these two together and have both Jesus and guns as spiritual props, but we can’t go down that road just now. (But, for reference, check out a book called Deer Hunting With Jesus by Joe Bageant, a raucous read but too true for comfort.)
The meaning of the gun in U.S. culture was brought home to me a couple of months back when I had a tradesman working in our house and it turned out he was carrying a loaded 45. He was a nice guy, talkative and well-read. It was very unlikely he would use the weapon—he said he had it for protection against pit bulls—but it was clear for him to be able to carry the gun meant a lot. It was a potent sign for him, pressed there against the side of his body. It meant he was strong against all-comers. Here in the North East, since Obama got into office, applications for gun permits have gone up over 50% and it’s probably true all across the country. People say it’s because they’re scared the man with the funny name will bring in sweeping gun-control legislation. But I think it’s much more basically a matter of self-affirmation when the riot of signs says generally we’re not doing so well. The gun is the semiotics of last recourse here in the U.S. It is individual divine sanction when there are no kings or priests to provide it collectively. It is sure and certain transcendence within a second’s reach.
Which brings me back to what I’ve been talking about all along this circuitous narrative. As I said, I attended church here in the U.S., partly initially for our children, and partly because I sensed the slightly more edgy role of the church, standing in this weird symbiosis of sign-giving with a sign-ridden culture. In other words, churches were more about providing meaning in the midst of chaos than keeping together a metaphysical world order. However, there was still plenty of that, and the church’s signs remained existentially shallow at a more or less terminal level. But at length—and here finally is the real point—in the slow years of experience I have understood the sign of Christ as coming to greater and greater clarity and visibility precisely as a true and radical alternative to the gun. If you want Christian meaning then observe the crisis of violence all around and then see Jesus as its true and generative other way. And this is not in my head, in the way I intellectually grasped Christian meaning back when I was a priest. No, this is something rising concretely in the world, like blossom on a Spring morning.
How do I know? Well, it’s what I’ve been telling you! Everything in my life has been a sensitivity to the absence or presence of meaningful signs. The sign system of the Roman Catholic priesthood was evacuated for me as surely as if someone has placed a vacuum cleaner at the door and sucked everything out of it. I then embarked on a twenty year pilgrimage looking for where those signs might have landed in the world. And now I know. For me at least, it’s here in the U.S. over against the growing and growling crisis of violence all around us. Exactly over against it. It’s not focusing on life hereafter, or justification, or moral rightness, anything like that. It’s the astonishing, wonderful, loving, creative, restorative, life-giving and forgiving new humanity of Jesus in the midst of a world where humanity is an endangered species. Closer even than the cold pistol with its ten shells filled with hurt lying to that guy's heart the Risen One from the long-empty tomb stands between the world and all its death.
This sign, or set of signs, has a thickness to it that speaks to me every time I turn on the Internet or open the bible or speak to a neighbor. And I cannot be happy in any church situation that does not fully release this meaning, that plays instead to some fuzzy inherited Greek version of Jesus’ message to keep everything ticking along. In fact I have doubts as to whether the actual physical architecture of the churches (their primary pre-reflective sign system), compromised as they are by about 1500 years of metaphysical doctrine as opposed to anthropological restoration, are able to communicate this new humanity. But more on this another time.
Tony Bartlett
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Celebrate!
In celebration of the Risen One I include here a short summary I wrote for the end of the Celebrations study.
What does it take to make the world happy? To give our world life and peace?
Is it for everyone, each to have everything? A mind-boggling concept. And yet it seems the principle we collectively go on.
Or, is a happy world a real party where everyone shares everything? Jesus worked on this latter model.
He demonstrated it in practice, calling people together around his table, around the food he provided. He was the master of the feast, giving everyone a seat, and through his attitude of unconditional welcome he brought about a world where everyone shared everything.
There was always enough and more. And when there just plainly wasn’t enough, just a few loaves and fishes, he worked a miracle, bringing forward a new cosmos of limitless gift.
This was where he was, in his mind and his body, in the Father’s kingdom of endless giving. And so, now and again, he brought it forth to view in the world of hard facts. With a feast in the desert.
What happiness that must have been! To be there among the stones and thorn bushes where only scorpions lived and migrating animals might pass, and suddenly an absolute abundance, a feast for kings and queens! A real holiday, a Sabbath!
And the same thing happened for the outcast, the worthless ones, those excluded from the righteous kingdom. Jesus welcomed them for no reason except this was the character of his Father's kingdom. Reaching out in absolute giving to those who had nothing to give. The only condition, that you joined in the same thing, the giving, not trying to rebuild a personal castle in this new grace-filled terrain.
Then, on the last night of his life, he sat down to eat one final time. He turned the sign of the feast to what it always implied, his presence at table, his love for all who came. See this bread, it is me! And now it is me in a new way. Because of tomorrow I give you everything of myself, with nothing held back. An endless feast of love.
Come, come, let us eat and drink. Let us learn this wisdom and live!
What does it take to make the world happy? To give our world life and peace?
Is it for everyone, each to have everything? A mind-boggling concept. And yet it seems the principle we collectively go on.
Or, is a happy world a real party where everyone shares everything? Jesus worked on this latter model.
He demonstrated it in practice, calling people together around his table, around the food he provided. He was the master of the feast, giving everyone a seat, and through his attitude of unconditional welcome he brought about a world where everyone shared everything.
There was always enough and more. And when there just plainly wasn’t enough, just a few loaves and fishes, he worked a miracle, bringing forward a new cosmos of limitless gift.
This was where he was, in his mind and his body, in the Father’s kingdom of endless giving. And so, now and again, he brought it forth to view in the world of hard facts. With a feast in the desert.
What happiness that must have been! To be there among the stones and thorn bushes where only scorpions lived and migrating animals might pass, and suddenly an absolute abundance, a feast for kings and queens! A real holiday, a Sabbath!
And the same thing happened for the outcast, the worthless ones, those excluded from the righteous kingdom. Jesus welcomed them for no reason except this was the character of his Father's kingdom. Reaching out in absolute giving to those who had nothing to give. The only condition, that you joined in the same thing, the giving, not trying to rebuild a personal castle in this new grace-filled terrain.
Then, on the last night of his life, he sat down to eat one final time. He turned the sign of the feast to what it always implied, his presence at table, his love for all who came. See this bread, it is me! And now it is me in a new way. Because of tomorrow I give you everything of myself, with nothing held back. An endless feast of love.
Come, come, let us eat and drink. Let us learn this wisdom and live!
Sunday, April 5, 2009
From Heather
Heather put this as a comment under “Journey with Jesus #3.” It’s repeated here as her first blog.
I'm finally overcoming my technical handicaps and getting connected to the web...my first blog! Thank you Tony and Linda for your commitment to finding and loving Jesus in the world, in the chaotic abyss of our lives. You make the bible passages come alive by peeling away the layers of culture and religion to find the Living Christ within me and within all creation, all people! It seems a better word for 'sin' is 'violence' and a better word for 'God' is 'love 'or 'light' and a better word for 'christian' is 'follower-of-Jesus-in-the-abyss'. Talking about Jesus (outside of our bible study) is hard for me because the language is covered in all these meanings and associations that are not alive! There are a lot folks thinking they have the last word or they think they know everything there is to know about Him. Jesus is boxed in like His life and breath are being restrained. That's why I so appreciate wood hath hope and our small community. There is a space to talk about the wounds I've suffered from other Christians, the wounds the world and Jesus suffers from other Christians,for example. I feel I've been able to truly meet Jesus or come closer than I ever have before. I need and want community to share in the love and forgiveness of Jesus. I need the freedom to explore and discover what is He doing? What is He about? It makes sense to me when you say that looking to the heavens for a violent divine intervention to save us from our enemies is just projecting our own violence onto God and that a new creation comes from getting in the abyss/chaos and dealing with it. That seems the more difficult thing because we have to go within and face ourselves. How do I deal with it? How do I deal with my own hatred and violence? How do we heal our broken world, our broken hearts, broken bodies, broken relationships? Definitely not with more of the same old same! Jesus is bringing something totally new to us. I pray that I could get out of His way and allow Him full reign but here's the tricky part. I'm so wrapped up in all the chaos and violence that I need to be quiet. I need to be still and empty myself like the contemplatives do. I need to wait and watch for Him. I want to practice being very close to Him as much as I can because I'm habitually forgetful of His life-giving presence. I forget all the time how He poured Himself out in love on the cross and dealt with this core human problem once and for all. What's left is to remember, to practice remembering in my everyday life, moment to moment, breath to breath. I'm happy to be practicing this together with you all. thank you and I love you!
March 31, 2009 8:43 AM
I'm finally overcoming my technical handicaps and getting connected to the web...my first blog! Thank you Tony and Linda for your commitment to finding and loving Jesus in the world, in the chaotic abyss of our lives. You make the bible passages come alive by peeling away the layers of culture and religion to find the Living Christ within me and within all creation, all people! It seems a better word for 'sin' is 'violence' and a better word for 'God' is 'love 'or 'light' and a better word for 'christian' is 'follower-of-Jesus-in-the-abyss'. Talking about Jesus (outside of our bible study) is hard for me because the language is covered in all these meanings and associations that are not alive! There are a lot folks thinking they have the last word or they think they know everything there is to know about Him. Jesus is boxed in like His life and breath are being restrained. That's why I so appreciate wood hath hope and our small community. There is a space to talk about the wounds I've suffered from other Christians, the wounds the world and Jesus suffers from other Christians,for example. I feel I've been able to truly meet Jesus or come closer than I ever have before. I need and want community to share in the love and forgiveness of Jesus. I need the freedom to explore and discover what is He doing? What is He about? It makes sense to me when you say that looking to the heavens for a violent divine intervention to save us from our enemies is just projecting our own violence onto God and that a new creation comes from getting in the abyss/chaos and dealing with it. That seems the more difficult thing because we have to go within and face ourselves. How do I deal with it? How do I deal with my own hatred and violence? How do we heal our broken world, our broken hearts, broken bodies, broken relationships? Definitely not with more of the same old same! Jesus is bringing something totally new to us. I pray that I could get out of His way and allow Him full reign but here's the tricky part. I'm so wrapped up in all the chaos and violence that I need to be quiet. I need to be still and empty myself like the contemplatives do. I need to wait and watch for Him. I want to practice being very close to Him as much as I can because I'm habitually forgetful of His life-giving presence. I forget all the time how He poured Himself out in love on the cross and dealt with this core human problem once and for all. What's left is to remember, to practice remembering in my everyday life, moment to moment, breath to breath. I'm happy to be practicing this together with you all. thank you and I love you!
March 31, 2009 8:43 AM
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Journey with Jesus #6
Old Testament - Feast 03/13/09
Jesus’ table fellowship was a distinctive part of his ministry. Two strands in the Old Testament impacted this practice and gave it added meaning. They arose from the Wisdom and Prophetic traditions. Ecclesiastes is a relatively late Wisdom book. It contains no prophecy, covenant or worship – instead it writes about how to live well. Eating and drinking are things of goodness of which God approves. Ecclesiastes 9:7-10 describes food and wine as pleasures in this life that passes all too quickly. Death is ultimate and the best we can hope for in this life is good work and a good wife/husband, a respected name and food and drink to give us pleasure. (See also 8:15 and 5:18). Food is necessary for life; good food provides much of life’s satisfaction.
Proverbs (Chapter 8-9) personifies Wisdom. God’s wisdom wishes us to live well and do well. In Ch9:1-6 she invites people to come and eat – a metaphor for learning wisdom. She urgently invites people to her table, sending out her servant girls as messengers of the invitation. Her “bread and wine” are wisdom that brings life.
The prophetic tradition develops the idea of the Messianic banquet – particularly the prophet Isaiah. Is 25:6-10 – Zion is the focus of the prophecy. It becomes the location of the future feast that the Lord will provide for all peoples. A feast of “rich foods and well-aged wines,” plenty for all. At this feast death will be destroyed forever. In 2nd and 3rd Isaiah this banquet is linked to the Messianic figure who will bring it about – the Servant . In Is 55: 1-13 the prophet invites everyone who thirsts to “come to the water”. This passage mirrors Wisdom’s call in Proverbs. Here the two traditions begin to merge, Wisdom’s feeding with life and Prophecy’s hope for universal life.
While there is no table fellowship as such in the Old Testament, the significance and function of food is recognized. It is used as a metaphor for learning and becomes a symbol of future hope and promise in a time of scarcity. The Messianic feast becomes the occasion for the overcoming of death. Jesus builds on each of these themes. Isaiah 65:17-25 contains one of the most beautiful images of the Old Testament. A vision of the golden age when premature death is abolished, when people will inhabit houses they have built, when the wolf will lie down with the lamb and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain”. This is an image of the earth at peace and with plenty, without a hint of supernatural dualism. It is the biblical hope for the future and completes the prophetic arc. But one more passage takes it a step further: Chapter 66: 5-13 where Zion is portrayed as a mother and as Wisdom – nourishing and life-giving “from her consoling breasts.” Feeding is now intensely personal and relational. Also time collapses – birth takes place without labor, the future is immediately at hand. The passage teaches us to live within this collapsed sense of time, replete with blessing. See also Revelations 21:5-6; 22:16 -17 where these themes of being nourished in God’s city are reprised. Christian hope is for this world transformed, not for some “spiritual” world in the heavens.
Jesus’ table fellowship was a distinctive part of his ministry. Two strands in the Old Testament impacted this practice and gave it added meaning. They arose from the Wisdom and Prophetic traditions. Ecclesiastes is a relatively late Wisdom book. It contains no prophecy, covenant or worship – instead it writes about how to live well. Eating and drinking are things of goodness of which God approves. Ecclesiastes 9:7-10 describes food and wine as pleasures in this life that passes all too quickly. Death is ultimate and the best we can hope for in this life is good work and a good wife/husband, a respected name and food and drink to give us pleasure. (See also 8:15 and 5:18). Food is necessary for life; good food provides much of life’s satisfaction.
Proverbs (Chapter 8-9) personifies Wisdom. God’s wisdom wishes us to live well and do well. In Ch9:1-6 she invites people to come and eat – a metaphor for learning wisdom. She urgently invites people to her table, sending out her servant girls as messengers of the invitation. Her “bread and wine” are wisdom that brings life.
The prophetic tradition develops the idea of the Messianic banquet – particularly the prophet Isaiah. Is 25:6-10 – Zion is the focus of the prophecy. It becomes the location of the future feast that the Lord will provide for all peoples. A feast of “rich foods and well-aged wines,” plenty for all. At this feast death will be destroyed forever. In 2nd and 3rd Isaiah this banquet is linked to the Messianic figure who will bring it about – the Servant . In Is 55: 1-13 the prophet invites everyone who thirsts to “come to the water”. This passage mirrors Wisdom’s call in Proverbs. Here the two traditions begin to merge, Wisdom’s feeding with life and Prophecy’s hope for universal life.
While there is no table fellowship as such in the Old Testament, the significance and function of food is recognized. It is used as a metaphor for learning and becomes a symbol of future hope and promise in a time of scarcity. The Messianic feast becomes the occasion for the overcoming of death. Jesus builds on each of these themes. Isaiah 65:17-25 contains one of the most beautiful images of the Old Testament. A vision of the golden age when premature death is abolished, when people will inhabit houses they have built, when the wolf will lie down with the lamb and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain”. This is an image of the earth at peace and with plenty, without a hint of supernatural dualism. It is the biblical hope for the future and completes the prophetic arc. But one more passage takes it a step further: Chapter 66: 5-13 where Zion is portrayed as a mother and as Wisdom – nourishing and life-giving “from her consoling breasts.” Feeding is now intensely personal and relational. Also time collapses – birth takes place without labor, the future is immediately at hand. The passage teaches us to live within this collapsed sense of time, replete with blessing. See also Revelations 21:5-6; 22:16 -17 where these themes of being nourished in God’s city are reprised. Christian hope is for this world transformed, not for some “spiritual” world in the heavens.
Journey with Jesus #5
New Testament - Feast 03/06/09
The Pharisees were a relatively small group at the time of Jesus, located mainly in Jerusalem but cells were also found in Galilee. They had been in existence for about 150 years before Jesus came on the scene. The Pharisees were educated and knowledgeable about the Jewish Scriptures & faith. They believed that the troubles (such as the exile & Roman invasion) that had befallen the Jews had resulted from their failure to keep God’s Law. In an attempt to prevent further transgression, and alternatively to hasten the day of liberation and vindication by God, they built a safety net, a “hedge” around the Law. This was a collection of laws (largely concerned with ritual cleanliness, diet and the keeping the Sabbath) that if observed would protect the more important Torah. These Rabbinic laws were written in the two centuries before Jesus, and after. The Pharisees had a table fellowship – haberim – closed to outsiders (the impure) and many of the practices associated with the meal were dictated by these purity rules. The position and practice of the Pharisees were a logical reaction to Jewish history and experience, but they were not the only one possible.
Feasts were characteristic of Jesus’ ministry. In MK2:15-17 he is described as eating with tax collectors and sinners and as a result finds himself in conflict with the Pharisees. Their objection is not that these people are sinners and not worth Jesus’ attention; rather that Jesus is undermining their program. It is a religious issue – the tax collectors and sinners, in the minds of the Pharisees, are the ones that have created the problem. When Jesus says that “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” he is making a stand against the Pharisee’s main agenda, which is separation and purity in preparation for God’s final act of judgment.
LK 7:36-50 gives the account of the meal at Simon the Pharisee’s home. When Jesus allows the sinful woman to anoint his feet and wipe her tears away with her hair, he is offending against numerous purity laws. (Sinner, woman, bodily fluids…). Jesus reinterprets her action from disgusting to beautiful – transformed by love. Her sins are forgiven “because she has shown great love”. Jesus is not arguing legally, morally or ritually – but humanly. Because she has loved, her sins - the barriers that keep her from God –have been broken down and are no longer meaningful to her. She experiences forgiveness. Sin is a lived experience, not a legal judgment. Jesus uses feasts in his ministry as a symbol and practice of invitation to all, but particularly the outcast and sinner. In contrast to the Pharisee’s meals, all are invited to share the physical proximity and intimacy associated with a communal meal – a sign of the new human experience coming from him.
In LK 10:38-41 (the story of Martha and Mary) Jesus uses the meal setting to impart a different message. Here Martha criticizes Mary for not fulfilling her expected gender role. In supporting Mary’s adopting the role of disciple (a male prerogative) he is not offending purity laws – rather societal and cultural dictates.
The greatest feast in the New Testament is the feeding of the five thousand. It is the only miracle found in all four gospels. MK 6:30-44 tells the story – and also a similar feeding (of the four thousand) in chapter 8.1-10. In the first account Jesus blesses and breaks the bread and divides the fish; in the second account he gives thanks and breaks the bread. These expressions – giving thanks and blessing are found together in the account of the Eucharist in MK 14:22-25. These two meals act as forerunners to the last supper. In the Eucharist both of the themes – blessing from the feeding of the five thousand and forgiveness from Jesus’ table fellowship – are united. Jesus in his ministry has been the source of both blessing and forgiveness– so it makes sense that he would associate himself with the bread that represents both, and then with the pouring out of the wine which anticipates his pouring out of himself. In the feeding of the 5000 no one is excluded – just as no one is excluded from the Eucharist. In the Eucharist the elements of blessing and forgiveness are united with absolute self-giving which is at the root of both.
In MK8: 14-21 Jesus warns his disciples about the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod. Yeast is a generative principle – it is what gives life to the dough. For the Pharisees this was their focus on the wrath of God and purity, for Herod it was political power and violence. With the yeast of Jesus you don’t have to worry –his generative principle leads to life for all – with baskets of food left over.
John does not have a Eucharistic meal. Instead he has a long conversation of Jesus with his disciples and he washes their feet. Jesus does ultimately share a meal with his disciples – but it is after the resurrection and by the shore. In Jn 21:9 Jesus cooks fish on a charcoal fire with bread. There are echoes here of the feeding of the five thousand. The only other mention of a charcoal fire in John is the one in the High priest’s courtyard –the charcoal fire around which Peter denies Jesus (Jn 18:18). Peter is the link to both passages. In Chapter 21 Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him (“Simon, son of John, do you love me?”). The final time he changes the word for love from philos to agape. It is at this point that Peter becomes upset. It is at this point that Peter understands. Jesus asks him to “feed my sheep” – to continue Jesus’ work of self-giving feeding.
Finally the gospels look to the eschatological feast – MK 14:25. Jesus will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom comes. He looks forward to the definitive sharing of love.
The Pharisees were a relatively small group at the time of Jesus, located mainly in Jerusalem but cells were also found in Galilee. They had been in existence for about 150 years before Jesus came on the scene. The Pharisees were educated and knowledgeable about the Jewish Scriptures & faith. They believed that the troubles (such as the exile & Roman invasion) that had befallen the Jews had resulted from their failure to keep God’s Law. In an attempt to prevent further transgression, and alternatively to hasten the day of liberation and vindication by God, they built a safety net, a “hedge” around the Law. This was a collection of laws (largely concerned with ritual cleanliness, diet and the keeping the Sabbath) that if observed would protect the more important Torah. These Rabbinic laws were written in the two centuries before Jesus, and after. The Pharisees had a table fellowship – haberim – closed to outsiders (the impure) and many of the practices associated with the meal were dictated by these purity rules. The position and practice of the Pharisees were a logical reaction to Jewish history and experience, but they were not the only one possible.
Feasts were characteristic of Jesus’ ministry. In MK2:15-17 he is described as eating with tax collectors and sinners and as a result finds himself in conflict with the Pharisees. Their objection is not that these people are sinners and not worth Jesus’ attention; rather that Jesus is undermining their program. It is a religious issue – the tax collectors and sinners, in the minds of the Pharisees, are the ones that have created the problem. When Jesus says that “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” he is making a stand against the Pharisee’s main agenda, which is separation and purity in preparation for God’s final act of judgment.
LK 7:36-50 gives the account of the meal at Simon the Pharisee’s home. When Jesus allows the sinful woman to anoint his feet and wipe her tears away with her hair, he is offending against numerous purity laws. (Sinner, woman, bodily fluids…). Jesus reinterprets her action from disgusting to beautiful – transformed by love. Her sins are forgiven “because she has shown great love”. Jesus is not arguing legally, morally or ritually – but humanly. Because she has loved, her sins - the barriers that keep her from God –have been broken down and are no longer meaningful to her. She experiences forgiveness. Sin is a lived experience, not a legal judgment. Jesus uses feasts in his ministry as a symbol and practice of invitation to all, but particularly the outcast and sinner. In contrast to the Pharisee’s meals, all are invited to share the physical proximity and intimacy associated with a communal meal – a sign of the new human experience coming from him.
In LK 10:38-41 (the story of Martha and Mary) Jesus uses the meal setting to impart a different message. Here Martha criticizes Mary for not fulfilling her expected gender role. In supporting Mary’s adopting the role of disciple (a male prerogative) he is not offending purity laws – rather societal and cultural dictates.
The greatest feast in the New Testament is the feeding of the five thousand. It is the only miracle found in all four gospels. MK 6:30-44 tells the story – and also a similar feeding (of the four thousand) in chapter 8.1-10. In the first account Jesus blesses and breaks the bread and divides the fish; in the second account he gives thanks and breaks the bread. These expressions – giving thanks and blessing are found together in the account of the Eucharist in MK 14:22-25. These two meals act as forerunners to the last supper. In the Eucharist both of the themes – blessing from the feeding of the five thousand and forgiveness from Jesus’ table fellowship – are united. Jesus in his ministry has been the source of both blessing and forgiveness– so it makes sense that he would associate himself with the bread that represents both, and then with the pouring out of the wine which anticipates his pouring out of himself. In the feeding of the 5000 no one is excluded – just as no one is excluded from the Eucharist. In the Eucharist the elements of blessing and forgiveness are united with absolute self-giving which is at the root of both.
In MK8: 14-21 Jesus warns his disciples about the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod. Yeast is a generative principle – it is what gives life to the dough. For the Pharisees this was their focus on the wrath of God and purity, for Herod it was political power and violence. With the yeast of Jesus you don’t have to worry –his generative principle leads to life for all – with baskets of food left over.
John does not have a Eucharistic meal. Instead he has a long conversation of Jesus with his disciples and he washes their feet. Jesus does ultimately share a meal with his disciples – but it is after the resurrection and by the shore. In Jn 21:9 Jesus cooks fish on a charcoal fire with bread. There are echoes here of the feeding of the five thousand. The only other mention of a charcoal fire in John is the one in the High priest’s courtyard –the charcoal fire around which Peter denies Jesus (Jn 18:18). Peter is the link to both passages. In Chapter 21 Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him (“Simon, son of John, do you love me?”). The final time he changes the word for love from philos to agape. It is at this point that Peter becomes upset. It is at this point that Peter understands. Jesus asks him to “feed my sheep” – to continue Jesus’ work of self-giving feeding.
Finally the gospels look to the eschatological feast – MK 14:25. Jesus will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom comes. He looks forward to the definitive sharing of love.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Jesus Unplugged
As I continue in this little journey of mine I understand it’s been marked from early years by the cinematic figure of Jesus.
No, I didn’t go and see King of Kings when I was in kindergarten. When I say ‘cinematic” it doesn’t mean actual movies (although it doesn’t exclude them either). It’s more what people intend when they describe something and say “it was like in the movies.” For me the figure of Jesus was just that, larger than life, beautiful, embedded in imagination, and—most important, in the word at the root of "cinematic"—kinetic, which means he was moving amazingly in and through the human world.
For the longest time I used to think this experience was religious, and that had two consequences. One, I more or less kept it to myself. And two, I spent a large amount of my allotted years trying to find my vision of Jesus represented in and by religious organizations which claim him as their Lord. Now more and more I think what I saw was not religious, but actual and, yes, really cinematic.
So, let me explain. When we talk about cinema we know we’re talking about the most powerful contemporary medium of cultural imagination. As the saying goes, “The movies are truth twenty four frames per second.” And another one, “It hasn’t really happened until it’s on T.V. or in the movies.” So history isn’t just about who writes it, but also, and more and more, about who shows it and how they show it. What I’m saying about Jesus then is that he was the movies before the movies. He took hold of our cultural imagination not with the magic lantern and rolling frames but with two basic frames—the cross and the resurrection—which have played and played inside our world until little by little they have set the whole thing moving: toward something amazing, terrible, wonderful.
And I don’t mean this as just some kind of fancy metaphor. I mean it actually, concretely, dramatically, wholly. Here’s not the occasion to give a technical explanation of why this might be so. Enough to say that the thought of Rene Girard carries us a long way in this direction. But I’m not talking here about explanation, I’m talking about experience. The fact that I have connected with the thought of Girard has helped me understand a lot about my own world, but it didn’t give me my world in the first place. Jesus did. And I have spent my life trying to come to grips with it.
When I was twelve our family relocated from the Isle of Wight to Portsmouth on the south coast of England. It was Christmastime and there was no money, few and functional presents, and cold winter ferry rides across the strip of sea between the island and the mainland. My father was a corrections officer at Parkhurst, the maximum security jail on the island, and he’d got a job at another prison in Portsmouth. But we hadn’t yet found a permanent house, so we returned to Parkhurst for the break. I was walking home one night, under the fortress-like granite walls surrounding the prison. I’d walked that route all my schooldays but this time the walls towered to the stars and the stars were made of the same glittering, cruel matter. I was being sucked headlong into that gun-metal hole and I prayed God desperately to save me. Somehow, with the prayer, I made it back to the house, and there as always life went on. It was about two or three months later when a teacher in my new school made us read the Sermon on the Mount during Religious Ed. I’d never heard it or read it all in one piece before, and it completely blew me away. I could see the electric morning sky as Jesus talked. I could hear his voice, his cadent language, and its enormous confident authority. And I could feel the hard earth twist and reshape itself under the incandescent thrill of his words. It was cinematic, all the way. It moved and changed things in the world, and I knew then that the iron prison walls could never stand before the burning energy of his tongue.
That’s what I mean, and I have quite a few other stories like it. I am not a saint, by no means. Back then I was just some kind of scared kid with a strong imagination, and basically I’m the same thing now, just with a little more experience. I think there are many others like me, and steadily more and more of them. They are the people who are being drafted to play a part in the Jesus movie, by reading a book, by taking a class, by traveling to a country in the global South, by seeing a movie, by hearing a song, by surfing a website, by falling into a black hole which only Jesus can change into light. And by going to church? Ah, there’s the question.
There’s no doubt that many people who go to church connect to the cinematic Jesus. And they show up in the place that seems to know about this guy. But so much of the church tradition is to do with a negotiation with God for the sake of benefits, earthly or heavenly. The figure of Jesus gets sucked into a business deal with God, and the real/reel Jesus gets shut down in favor of a board meeting with the Almighty. I think the cinematic Jesus is really an unplugged Jesus, unplugged from the mainframe of the churches, perhaps showing up occasionally at coffee break or the local feeding program, but basically out of there. He’s out of there, playing and moving in the world where he can and does really change things.
I have come to think that we know nothing of God until we meet the cinematic Jesus, who is also the poor Jesus, the abandoned Jesus, the crucified Jesus, the changing-the-imagination Jesus. Everything else is religion and alienation. So what then is “church,” the ekklesia or “calling together” of the New Testament? Well, that’s just what it is, the calling together anywhere, anytime of some bit-part players of the Jesus movie who want to share a few of their favorite clips and celebrate. I really can’t think of a more fun thing to do!
Tony
No, I didn’t go and see King of Kings when I was in kindergarten. When I say ‘cinematic” it doesn’t mean actual movies (although it doesn’t exclude them either). It’s more what people intend when they describe something and say “it was like in the movies.” For me the figure of Jesus was just that, larger than life, beautiful, embedded in imagination, and—most important, in the word at the root of "cinematic"—kinetic, which means he was moving amazingly in and through the human world.
For the longest time I used to think this experience was religious, and that had two consequences. One, I more or less kept it to myself. And two, I spent a large amount of my allotted years trying to find my vision of Jesus represented in and by religious organizations which claim him as their Lord. Now more and more I think what I saw was not religious, but actual and, yes, really cinematic.
So, let me explain. When we talk about cinema we know we’re talking about the most powerful contemporary medium of cultural imagination. As the saying goes, “The movies are truth twenty four frames per second.” And another one, “It hasn’t really happened until it’s on T.V. or in the movies.” So history isn’t just about who writes it, but also, and more and more, about who shows it and how they show it. What I’m saying about Jesus then is that he was the movies before the movies. He took hold of our cultural imagination not with the magic lantern and rolling frames but with two basic frames—the cross and the resurrection—which have played and played inside our world until little by little they have set the whole thing moving: toward something amazing, terrible, wonderful.
And I don’t mean this as just some kind of fancy metaphor. I mean it actually, concretely, dramatically, wholly. Here’s not the occasion to give a technical explanation of why this might be so. Enough to say that the thought of Rene Girard carries us a long way in this direction. But I’m not talking here about explanation, I’m talking about experience. The fact that I have connected with the thought of Girard has helped me understand a lot about my own world, but it didn’t give me my world in the first place. Jesus did. And I have spent my life trying to come to grips with it.
When I was twelve our family relocated from the Isle of Wight to Portsmouth on the south coast of England. It was Christmastime and there was no money, few and functional presents, and cold winter ferry rides across the strip of sea between the island and the mainland. My father was a corrections officer at Parkhurst, the maximum security jail on the island, and he’d got a job at another prison in Portsmouth. But we hadn’t yet found a permanent house, so we returned to Parkhurst for the break. I was walking home one night, under the fortress-like granite walls surrounding the prison. I’d walked that route all my schooldays but this time the walls towered to the stars and the stars were made of the same glittering, cruel matter. I was being sucked headlong into that gun-metal hole and I prayed God desperately to save me. Somehow, with the prayer, I made it back to the house, and there as always life went on. It was about two or three months later when a teacher in my new school made us read the Sermon on the Mount during Religious Ed. I’d never heard it or read it all in one piece before, and it completely blew me away. I could see the electric morning sky as Jesus talked. I could hear his voice, his cadent language, and its enormous confident authority. And I could feel the hard earth twist and reshape itself under the incandescent thrill of his words. It was cinematic, all the way. It moved and changed things in the world, and I knew then that the iron prison walls could never stand before the burning energy of his tongue.
That’s what I mean, and I have quite a few other stories like it. I am not a saint, by no means. Back then I was just some kind of scared kid with a strong imagination, and basically I’m the same thing now, just with a little more experience. I think there are many others like me, and steadily more and more of them. They are the people who are being drafted to play a part in the Jesus movie, by reading a book, by taking a class, by traveling to a country in the global South, by seeing a movie, by hearing a song, by surfing a website, by falling into a black hole which only Jesus can change into light. And by going to church? Ah, there’s the question.
There’s no doubt that many people who go to church connect to the cinematic Jesus. And they show up in the place that seems to know about this guy. But so much of the church tradition is to do with a negotiation with God for the sake of benefits, earthly or heavenly. The figure of Jesus gets sucked into a business deal with God, and the real/reel Jesus gets shut down in favor of a board meeting with the Almighty. I think the cinematic Jesus is really an unplugged Jesus, unplugged from the mainframe of the churches, perhaps showing up occasionally at coffee break or the local feeding program, but basically out of there. He’s out of there, playing and moving in the world where he can and does really change things.
I have come to think that we know nothing of God until we meet the cinematic Jesus, who is also the poor Jesus, the abandoned Jesus, the crucified Jesus, the changing-the-imagination Jesus. Everything else is religion and alienation. So what then is “church,” the ekklesia or “calling together” of the New Testament? Well, that’s just what it is, the calling together anywhere, anytime of some bit-part players of the Jesus movie who want to share a few of their favorite clips and celebrate. I really can’t think of a more fun thing to do!
Tony
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