SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST CHURCH, WHANGAREI
SUNDAY, MAY 29th 2011
(SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER)
Readings: Acts 17.22-31
Ps 66.8-20 (ish)
1 Peter 3.13-22
John 14.15-21
Reverberating through the commands and instructions of God (in both testaments!) there is that powerful construction that is known to grammarians as the conditional tense. For Māori speakers here the same constructions is generated by use of the ka … ana formula, while in English it is usually generated by the combination of “if” and “then”. If you love me, then you’ll buy me an ice-cream. The “then”, though, is often hidden: if you love me, buy me an ice-cream.
In that childlike sentence, as in our biblical gospel passage, there is another hidden construction that we are going to have to take seriously if we are to extrapolate meaning for a twenty-first century multi-cultural, multi-dimensional, multi-optional world. For there, both in the child’s manipulative tantrum and our gospel-reading lurks that strongest of all tenses, the imperative. Often it is rendered in English with an explanation mark – and in spoken language with a raised or otherwise emphatic voice. In some forms it will earn a green wiggly line from Bill Gates, particularly when used with the verb “to be”: “be healed”, often appearing in the gospels, is an imperative, a command, whether or not Mr. Gates understands that to be so.
In our passage Jesus, as rendered by John, does not render the command to love as an optional extra. The construction is not a soft “if you love (aroha) me then perhaps you might give consideration to keeping my commandments”, which would be a conditional but not an imperative. Nor is it what we call an indicative, “because you love me you are keeping my commandments”. This is a conditional imperative, and as such it allows no wriggle room for the hearer or observer of the words of Jesus. It has a mathematical symmetry, too. “If you do not love me then you will not keep …”, and “if you do not keep, then you do not aroha”. These are stern, hard words of Jesus – so stern that some early scribes fudged and weakened them as they reproduced John’s writings.
They are stern words, but they are words issued with what a former prime minister of Australia somewhat bizarrely called “incentivization” – more normally known as incentive. They are words that lay a gauntlet at the feet of those who would follow Jesus. But – as some of us noted a week or so ago – the apostle John, like the apostle Paul, is well aware of the enormity and indeed impossibility of the interconnected tasks of loving and following Christ. To follow Christ is inevitably to fail – unless you rate better on the perfection scale than anyone else! Jesus, though, provides a promise: “I will not leave you orphaned”. It is of course a metaphorical promise – Jesus effectively picturing himself, in a rare departure from his norms, as our father who will provide, uncannily, an alternative parent. Language breaks down – our human parents can provide substitute guardians, but not, technically, alternative parents. John’s gospel is striving towards the Trinitarian language that became the language of faith in the centuries that followed, language that we jettison only at the cost of jettisoning orthodoxy. But – and the difficulties in the first and second centuries were not greatly different to our own – the emphasis is on the presence of the one John records as being called Paraclete, the one called alongside to make known to us all that we need of Jesus to carry on the journey to which he commissions us.
By opening ourselves up to receive that Spirit, by disciplining ourselves to obey the imperative of aroha – aroha well described by Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians, the famous thirteenth chapter – we can experience the life-transforming benefits of relationship – eternal relationship, transcending even our mortality – with the Creator of heavens and earth. We will know ourselves to be immersed in that aroha, embraced by that aroha, and indeed channels of that aroha to those around us.
TLBWY
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Monday, 27 June 2011
Don't Worry, Mene
SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST CHURCH, WHANGAREI
SUNDAY, MAY 22nd 2011
(FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER)
Readings: Acts 7. 55-60
Ps 31.1-5, 15-16
1 Peter 2.2-10
John 14.1-14
The story of the network of early Christian communities was not all one glorious narrative of victories and of harmonious co-existence, despite the attempts of Luke, which I discussed a fortnight ago, to harmonize all in the service of his story. If (as most scholars say!) John’s was the last of the more-or-less eye-witness accounts of Jesus to be related it is also the most the most obviously theologized. It is a document carefully shaped to meet the needs of the author and his perceived needs for his faith community. That much is true of each of the documents of the New Testament: we need to be honest about this if we are going to extrapolate genuine meaning from these documents today.
This does not mean we all need to be at theological college. It does however mean that those who have responsibility to preach and teach in the faith community must be well trained and must be prepared to be intellectually honest. The kind of gnosticism I have referred to elsewhere, practiced by scoundrels like Harold Camping, preying on the vulnerable, is best avoided by application of a modicum of intelligent understanding. Unfortunately this is no trivial issue: peddlers of false expectation sometimes have on their hands the blood of those whose lives are shattered.
The hallmark of John’s telling of the Jesus-story is that he wrote for a community in which the rule of love was the rule of life. Basing his Jesus story on the original eyewitness John’s experience of Jesus, both incarnate and risen, seen and experienced as the embodiment of divine love, the author (John or someone who knew him) founded and nurtured a faith-community built on principles of re-embodying, re-enacting that love.
“They’ll know we are Christians by our love”, some of us sang, occasionally and with unfounded optimism, in the 1960s and ’70s. But that unfounded optimism was exactly the problem faced by John’s community, too: as time went on the quality of love began to founder and dissipate, and the gloriously optimistic community degenerated into an all-too human narrative of power plays and the strife and jealousy I also spoke of in recent weeks. We see something similar in Paul’s bitter experience, as we watch in particular the Corinthian community stray from his idealized pathways.
Rules such as “love one another” or today’s “do not let your hearts be troubled” are, if we are to be honest, easier said than done. It is not some sign of epic spiritual failure if we fall short of their demands. Most of will experience a failure to love from time to time – I am reminded of the mother who once told us of placing her baby just a little more firmly than usual on the change table after being woken for the umpteenth time in one single night (this controlled but human response to the seemingly endless broken nights is a long way removed from tragic statistics of domestic and infant violence that so mar New Zealand’s contemporary society). Similarly, who does not worry from time to time as bills come in or the teenage children or grandchildren play up?
These sayings of Jesus are not mere guidelines, but they are (as Paul recognized) perfections to which we must strive yet by which we will always fall short. If we recognize that inevitability we need not be ashamed at our humanness. At the same time, as we hear Jesus’ command not to worry, held in tension with our knowledge of our humanness, we need not strain for the false optimism satirized by Bobby McFerrin in the late ’80s: “Don’t Worry Be Happy”.
In his telling of the Jesus story John emphasized what we might call the grace of abiding – the Greek word mene appears no fewer than 40 times in John’s gospel-account, albeit not always with full theological weight. The sign that a believer was abiding in Christ – I have tended to prefer the later phrase “practicing the presence of Christ” – was the quality of his or her ability to fulfill the demands of Jesus. Demands to love, demands not to worry – there are not many of them, in John’s gospel-account, but they are not to be taken lightly. They are in the end, though, the result of, not the prerequisite to, exposure to faith of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one who draws all people to himself, not the brutal examiner who ensures that a certain percentage haplessly fail. So often in our proclamation of the gospel we make it appear that the latter is the priority.
We do this not least when we turn to the passages that were in their original context intended to be passages of invitation. Too often we turn the words of Jesus, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” into words not of invitation but of condemnation. Too often these become words that proclaim not the theological miracle that a way of access to the Creator has been gained in Christ, but a condemnatory claim that those who do not appear to us to be on that way will stand eternally condemned – like those of us who missed the so-called rapture of last evening in the thoughts of a small minded preacher-man from California. This saying of Jesus was designed to invite and not to terrify: for those who do not join us on the journey we pray nevertheless the grace and love of Christ in God’s time, that for them, too, may await the experience of seeing, as Paul put it, the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”.
For us, then may this be a passage not of exclusion but of joy-filled inclusion, as we rejoice in the encounter with the one who leads us on the way.
TLBWY
SUNDAY, MAY 22nd 2011
(FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER)
Readings: Acts 7. 55-60
Ps 31.1-5, 15-16
1 Peter 2.2-10
John 14.1-14
The story of the network of early Christian communities was not all one glorious narrative of victories and of harmonious co-existence, despite the attempts of Luke, which I discussed a fortnight ago, to harmonize all in the service of his story. If (as most scholars say!) John’s was the last of the more-or-less eye-witness accounts of Jesus to be related it is also the most the most obviously theologized. It is a document carefully shaped to meet the needs of the author and his perceived needs for his faith community. That much is true of each of the documents of the New Testament: we need to be honest about this if we are going to extrapolate genuine meaning from these documents today.
This does not mean we all need to be at theological college. It does however mean that those who have responsibility to preach and teach in the faith community must be well trained and must be prepared to be intellectually honest. The kind of gnosticism I have referred to elsewhere, practiced by scoundrels like Harold Camping, preying on the vulnerable, is best avoided by application of a modicum of intelligent understanding. Unfortunately this is no trivial issue: peddlers of false expectation sometimes have on their hands the blood of those whose lives are shattered.
The hallmark of John’s telling of the Jesus-story is that he wrote for a community in which the rule of love was the rule of life. Basing his Jesus story on the original eyewitness John’s experience of Jesus, both incarnate and risen, seen and experienced as the embodiment of divine love, the author (John or someone who knew him) founded and nurtured a faith-community built on principles of re-embodying, re-enacting that love.
“They’ll know we are Christians by our love”, some of us sang, occasionally and with unfounded optimism, in the 1960s and ’70s. But that unfounded optimism was exactly the problem faced by John’s community, too: as time went on the quality of love began to founder and dissipate, and the gloriously optimistic community degenerated into an all-too human narrative of power plays and the strife and jealousy I also spoke of in recent weeks. We see something similar in Paul’s bitter experience, as we watch in particular the Corinthian community stray from his idealized pathways.
Rules such as “love one another” or today’s “do not let your hearts be troubled” are, if we are to be honest, easier said than done. It is not some sign of epic spiritual failure if we fall short of their demands. Most of will experience a failure to love from time to time – I am reminded of the mother who once told us of placing her baby just a little more firmly than usual on the change table after being woken for the umpteenth time in one single night (this controlled but human response to the seemingly endless broken nights is a long way removed from tragic statistics of domestic and infant violence that so mar New Zealand’s contemporary society). Similarly, who does not worry from time to time as bills come in or the teenage children or grandchildren play up?
These sayings of Jesus are not mere guidelines, but they are (as Paul recognized) perfections to which we must strive yet by which we will always fall short. If we recognize that inevitability we need not be ashamed at our humanness. At the same time, as we hear Jesus’ command not to worry, held in tension with our knowledge of our humanness, we need not strain for the false optimism satirized by Bobby McFerrin in the late ’80s: “Don’t Worry Be Happy”.
In his telling of the Jesus story John emphasized what we might call the grace of abiding – the Greek word mene appears no fewer than 40 times in John’s gospel-account, albeit not always with full theological weight. The sign that a believer was abiding in Christ – I have tended to prefer the later phrase “practicing the presence of Christ” – was the quality of his or her ability to fulfill the demands of Jesus. Demands to love, demands not to worry – there are not many of them, in John’s gospel-account, but they are not to be taken lightly. They are in the end, though, the result of, not the prerequisite to, exposure to faith of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one who draws all people to himself, not the brutal examiner who ensures that a certain percentage haplessly fail. So often in our proclamation of the gospel we make it appear that the latter is the priority.
We do this not least when we turn to the passages that were in their original context intended to be passages of invitation. Too often we turn the words of Jesus, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” into words not of invitation but of condemnation. Too often these become words that proclaim not the theological miracle that a way of access to the Creator has been gained in Christ, but a condemnatory claim that those who do not appear to us to be on that way will stand eternally condemned – like those of us who missed the so-called rapture of last evening in the thoughts of a small minded preacher-man from California. This saying of Jesus was designed to invite and not to terrify: for those who do not join us on the journey we pray nevertheless the grace and love of Christ in God’s time, that for them, too, may await the experience of seeing, as Paul put it, the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”.
For us, then may this be a passage not of exclusion but of joy-filled inclusion, as we rejoice in the encounter with the one who leads us on the way.
TLBWY
Sunday, 15 May 2011
Bashing Gays for Jesus?
SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST CHURCH,
WHANGAREI
SUNDAY,
MAY 15th 2011
(FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER)
Readings:
Acts 2.42-47
Ps 23
1 Peter 2.19-25
John 10.1-10
When we turn to the letters bearing the name of Peter we are given a glimpse of the life of the early church community of which some aspects are as pertinent as at any time since. (For those who know the author’s recommendation of the subjection of wives to their husbands’ authority – more often attributed to Paul but here narrated in Peter’s name – those are not the passages to which I refer). This author’s instructions to a generalised Christian community, unlike Paul’s, which were written for specific communities facing highly topical issues, were written to a world in which Christianity was an unimportant sideshow, a minority perspective, quaint to the most of the masses, downright subversive and destructive to others.
Our community has many similarities to that of our author, whether that author was Peter or someone writing in his name. We too are increasingly marginalised, parodied or ignored, trying to find voice and identity for ancient wisdom in a changing world. As part of his attempt to establish security amidst change, Peter (for such I shall call him, though I suspect these letters were written some 30 years after the death of the Fisherman of the gospels) reaches back and anchors his message in the scriptures we know as Old Testament. Peter knew only one Testament, for our “New” Testament was not yet compiled: he knew, though, the importance of written testament, of story, and he anchors his instruction deeply in that bedrock.
Peter challenges his audience to live exemplary lives in the community, shunning the standards that were coming to dominate his world and which he felt were objectionable to God. We, too, need to look at our world and see what within in is likely to be incompatible with the aims and purposes of God. Many Christians however, having said that, tend to major in the minors, dwelling on the obvious matters of difference between the speaker’s life and the lives of the various designated sinners. It is so much easier to use the gospel as a platform for minority-bashing, picking on ethnic and behavioural minorities than it is to look at the hard questions more frequently addressed in the scriptures (old and new). Only yesterday in Adelaide a group of Christians stalked a gay pride march, allegedly waving banners berating the marchers with declarations of God’s wrath against gays, lesbians, transgendered people: was this a proclamation of the values of God’s reign, or public out-workings of private and collective phobias? The protestors, possibly after some less than peaceful corrective directives from the marchers, were taken away by police.
Even if just a statistical analysis of biblical references is used, it would appear that God is far more concerned at those who cause division and strife and jealousy and social iniquity than with those who don’t follow the hetero-sexual “mum, dad and the kids” models of family living. This is not to say that God approves of family life in which a child knows nothing of his or her biological whakapapa, of families in which partnerships are swapped as often as many of us change our shirts. Broken lives, broken families, substance and emotional and financial and sexual abuse deeply grieve the heart of God, now as then, now as two thousand years ago. But dedicated love can appear in forms not imagined by the New Testament world in which women were property and children an investment commodity.
Our author, Peter, was expecting the imminent return of Jesus, Christus Victor, striding as it were across the heavens to set history to rights. Perhaps, despite those pundits who have decided that next Sunday is to be the day of the Second Coming (!), we are less likely to see the parousia and the end of time in these terms. We are called to live our lives in the shadow of judgement, but to place our lives before God, to be the subject of that judgment, rather than expecting the wrath of God to fall on those whose lifestyles differ to our own.
As the gay, lesbian and transgender marchers of Adelaide encountered their Christian antagonists, they were confronted by declarations of God’s hatred. As one of the marchers, Uniting Church Minister Sue Wickham said, any placard beginning with the words “God hates …” is unlikely to have been written in the Spirit of Christ.
Peter’s expectation of the imminent triumph of God and end of history gave him a sort of anti-revolutionary perspective, cajoling slaves and wives and others to remain acquiescent in their social place. By and large I do not believe in revolutionary interpretations of the Gospel, those proclaimed by the more radical liberation theologies: political triumphs tend to breed new forms of political oppression or neglect, as the Egyptian populace may currently be discovering: with the tyrannies of Mubarak gone, they are faced with the realization that military rule is no utopia either. Instead I believe we are called to revolutionise our own lives so that we stand out, even if at great personal cost, in contrast to anti-divine standards and practices in our world: die to sin and live to righteousness. This, as the charismatic movement of the 1960s, ’70s and early ’80s reminded us, is something we cannot do in our own strength, but only in the strength of the Spirit of God. It is arguably much harder than the grind of overthrowing governments, though perhaps I say that only because I would probably never be brave enough to stand in protest against an armed Syrian government. I thank God I get a chance to overthrow governments peacefully every few years, though I often lament the detail that those who control and manipulate the media and therefore popular perspectives will not always lean address the concerns of the social underdogs.
To allow ourselves to be opened up to personal revolution by the scrutinizing gaze of God is to participate in the process of what John and Luke in our other readings call ‘being saved’. The language of salvation is often translated as though it were a solitary event, getting saved. Only the other day I was in a conversation with a friend who asked when I ‘got saved’. I was tempted to answer ‘two thousand years ago’.
For the only way in which salvation is a solitary event is in the moment of the Cross, and even that is not altogether event, but process. It is that great process of Incarnation that culminates in what that John calls the ‘lifting up’ of the Saviour. That saving event is a unique passage, standing alone in God’s dealings with humanity. For those of us who are the sheep of the shepherd there is a life-long process of what the Orthodox call divinization, and what Protestants traditionally called sanctification, the long slow process of becoming what we are called to be. It is to that process that we are invited by the Shepherd. To that process of healing and transformation of abuse and of the ordinariness of being fallen humans in a fallen world we are invited by Jesus, and in that process we are shepherded by Jesus, known to us in the Spirit of Pentecost. By submitting to that transformational process we can be the advertisement of resurrection hope that we are called to be in a resurrectionless world. Jesus called it ‘having abundant life’, and showed that for those who ‘abide in him’ it can be possibility for us and for those we love and live amongst.
TLBWY
WHANGAREI
SUNDAY,
MAY 15th 2011
(FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER)
Readings:
Acts 2.42-47
Ps 23
1 Peter 2.19-25
John 10.1-10
When we turn to the letters bearing the name of Peter we are given a glimpse of the life of the early church community of which some aspects are as pertinent as at any time since. (For those who know the author’s recommendation of the subjection of wives to their husbands’ authority – more often attributed to Paul but here narrated in Peter’s name – those are not the passages to which I refer). This author’s instructions to a generalised Christian community, unlike Paul’s, which were written for specific communities facing highly topical issues, were written to a world in which Christianity was an unimportant sideshow, a minority perspective, quaint to the most of the masses, downright subversive and destructive to others.
Our community has many similarities to that of our author, whether that author was Peter or someone writing in his name. We too are increasingly marginalised, parodied or ignored, trying to find voice and identity for ancient wisdom in a changing world. As part of his attempt to establish security amidst change, Peter (for such I shall call him, though I suspect these letters were written some 30 years after the death of the Fisherman of the gospels) reaches back and anchors his message in the scriptures we know as Old Testament. Peter knew only one Testament, for our “New” Testament was not yet compiled: he knew, though, the importance of written testament, of story, and he anchors his instruction deeply in that bedrock.
Peter challenges his audience to live exemplary lives in the community, shunning the standards that were coming to dominate his world and which he felt were objectionable to God. We, too, need to look at our world and see what within in is likely to be incompatible with the aims and purposes of God. Many Christians however, having said that, tend to major in the minors, dwelling on the obvious matters of difference between the speaker’s life and the lives of the various designated sinners. It is so much easier to use the gospel as a platform for minority-bashing, picking on ethnic and behavioural minorities than it is to look at the hard questions more frequently addressed in the scriptures (old and new). Only yesterday in Adelaide a group of Christians stalked a gay pride march, allegedly waving banners berating the marchers with declarations of God’s wrath against gays, lesbians, transgendered people: was this a proclamation of the values of God’s reign, or public out-workings of private and collective phobias? The protestors, possibly after some less than peaceful corrective directives from the marchers, were taken away by police.
Even if just a statistical analysis of biblical references is used, it would appear that God is far more concerned at those who cause division and strife and jealousy and social iniquity than with those who don’t follow the hetero-sexual “mum, dad and the kids” models of family living. This is not to say that God approves of family life in which a child knows nothing of his or her biological whakapapa, of families in which partnerships are swapped as often as many of us change our shirts. Broken lives, broken families, substance and emotional and financial and sexual abuse deeply grieve the heart of God, now as then, now as two thousand years ago. But dedicated love can appear in forms not imagined by the New Testament world in which women were property and children an investment commodity.
Our author, Peter, was expecting the imminent return of Jesus, Christus Victor, striding as it were across the heavens to set history to rights. Perhaps, despite those pundits who have decided that next Sunday is to be the day of the Second Coming (!), we are less likely to see the parousia and the end of time in these terms. We are called to live our lives in the shadow of judgement, but to place our lives before God, to be the subject of that judgment, rather than expecting the wrath of God to fall on those whose lifestyles differ to our own.
As the gay, lesbian and transgender marchers of Adelaide encountered their Christian antagonists, they were confronted by declarations of God’s hatred. As one of the marchers, Uniting Church Minister Sue Wickham said, any placard beginning with the words “God hates …” is unlikely to have been written in the Spirit of Christ.
Peter’s expectation of the imminent triumph of God and end of history gave him a sort of anti-revolutionary perspective, cajoling slaves and wives and others to remain acquiescent in their social place. By and large I do not believe in revolutionary interpretations of the Gospel, those proclaimed by the more radical liberation theologies: political triumphs tend to breed new forms of political oppression or neglect, as the Egyptian populace may currently be discovering: with the tyrannies of Mubarak gone, they are faced with the realization that military rule is no utopia either. Instead I believe we are called to revolutionise our own lives so that we stand out, even if at great personal cost, in contrast to anti-divine standards and practices in our world: die to sin and live to righteousness. This, as the charismatic movement of the 1960s, ’70s and early ’80s reminded us, is something we cannot do in our own strength, but only in the strength of the Spirit of God. It is arguably much harder than the grind of overthrowing governments, though perhaps I say that only because I would probably never be brave enough to stand in protest against an armed Syrian government. I thank God I get a chance to overthrow governments peacefully every few years, though I often lament the detail that those who control and manipulate the media and therefore popular perspectives will not always lean address the concerns of the social underdogs.
To allow ourselves to be opened up to personal revolution by the scrutinizing gaze of God is to participate in the process of what John and Luke in our other readings call ‘being saved’. The language of salvation is often translated as though it were a solitary event, getting saved. Only the other day I was in a conversation with a friend who asked when I ‘got saved’. I was tempted to answer ‘two thousand years ago’.
For the only way in which salvation is a solitary event is in the moment of the Cross, and even that is not altogether event, but process. It is that great process of Incarnation that culminates in what that John calls the ‘lifting up’ of the Saviour. That saving event is a unique passage, standing alone in God’s dealings with humanity. For those of us who are the sheep of the shepherd there is a life-long process of what the Orthodox call divinization, and what Protestants traditionally called sanctification, the long slow process of becoming what we are called to be. It is to that process that we are invited by the Shepherd. To that process of healing and transformation of abuse and of the ordinariness of being fallen humans in a fallen world we are invited by Jesus, and in that process we are shepherded by Jesus, known to us in the Spirit of Pentecost. By submitting to that transformational process we can be the advertisement of resurrection hope that we are called to be in a resurrectionless world. Jesus called it ‘having abundant life’, and showed that for those who ‘abide in him’ it can be possibility for us and for those we love and live amongst.
TLBWY
Saturday, 26 March 2011
I'm thinking I might change this into a sermon blog - or maybe both. After all, I'm the only person who reads it! So: thoughts on Lent Three, Year A, 2011 (or some such catchy title):
In the reading of scriptures, no less than any great works of literature, it is important to seek passages, sentences and words that provide a key to the author’s aims and intentions. There will always be debate about the keys and about interpretation, but that is precisely where understanding grows, in the dialogue between perspectives. It has been so since John put down his quill, and all the more so since, thank God, his creative masterpiece of Jesus-story-telling entered the canon of Christian scripture a century or so later. It cannot be emphasized too much that the verses 39-42 provide a critical key by which to understand this moment in the life of Jesus.
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.’
More than anything else, this is a story about belief. It is a commonplace in Johannine interpretation to note that all that will be of importance in the fourth gospel is foreshadowed in the Prologue, the opening verses of chapter one: one scholar, Simon Ross Valentine, neatly observes ‘the Prologue is nothing less than the theological matrix from which the themes of the gospel arise’ [Simon Ross Valentine, “The Johannine Prologue – a Microcosm of the Gospel” (Evangelical Quarterly, 68:3, 1996, 291-304), 292]. Remember the resounding words, He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him? Here, by contrast, Jesus comes to those who are not, in ethnic terms, his own, and they do believe him. We are meant to hear the contrast, meant to observe above all that this is a litmus test of our own response to Jesus: belief, or unbelief? This is, paradoxically, about us.
The believers, those who believe, are in this passage the outsiders. The themes of outsider and insider run throughout the scriptures of our faith, often with a complex, porous ambiguity. Like an Escher sketching (or a Hogwarts stairwell!) in which up-side becomes down-side, the biblical outsider often becomes the insider, and, perhaps of even greater concern, the insider becomes outsider. Perhaps we are warned that we should not be afraid when we see greater faith and Christlikeness in those outsider the boundaries of the faith community than we do from those within. The Spirit of God goes always before, ahead and around us, and here appears to be at work in the life of the Samaritan woman long before the followers of Jesus were willing to be so progressive (if ever they have).
In this scene, as always in John, there are key words floating around, appropriate to the characters’ lives, but appropriate too to ours. There is much about water, living or otherwise, that clearly signifies something more than merely a means of rehydration, as the woman first interprets it. We will find later in the gospel that water, signifying it seems new life, flows from then side of the crucified messiah, and that waters of rebirth are a key motif: there are some 20 references to water in John’s gospel-account, and half or more of these appear to represent something far more eternal than mere H20. There are suggestions of immorality – though a deeper scratch may suggest that this woman’s five husbands may have far more to do with Samaria’s relationship with what were known at the time as the ‘five idolatrous peoples of the East’ of 2 Kings 17 than to any individual serial monogamy, despite the later lifer-choices of Elizabeth Taylor! There is language about reaping and sowing, language about hospitality and rejection, all of which has clear implications for our own applications of this scene to our individual lives.
There is above all language about Jesus venturing into unexpected and unclean places – and finding belief there. We often tend to expect to find God within the comfortable armchair zones of society and faith, rather than in the exposed, risky and unpleasant places. Would we find God in a brothel, or does God belong only in nature walks and churches? The witness of both New and Old Testament is clear: God will escape our comfort zones, as God-in-Christ here clearly demonstrates. But this is not merely about comfort zones: this is about hatred zones. Here it is as though a Benghazi Gaddafi-opponent were chin-wagging with a Tripoli Gaddafi-loyalist. This is the stuff of God at deep risk, a risky edginess that continued on into the life of the Christian community, for it is almost certain that this story is told to both Jewish and Samaritan, as well as gentile Christian members of John’s faith-community.
For ultimately this is a story about belief that transcends of hatred and the healing of hurts. This is the story of belief that transcends ethnic barriers, gender barriers, even creedal barriers, and all those artificial barriers that forget that we are one and all created in the image of the Creator. This is not a story about a wimpish anything goes love-in, a hippie commune or Helen Steiner Rice lovefest of meaningless platitudes, ignoring destructive behaviour and letting it ride on unabated. This is the story of a socially challenging God and openness to God that transcends deep-seated human hatreds. This is a story that challenges us not to plastic platitudes but to transcendent culture-changing belief. Does our belief transcend prejudice?
TLBWY
Thursday, 1 July 2010
Peter Jensen as Magisterium?
Dr. Peter Jensen's address last year, to the Evangelical Fellowship of Irish Clergy (E.F.I.C.) is presented in his usual indomitable style; http://vimeo.com/4457514. It is measured, reasonably well researched albeit within a very narrow range of interpretative boundaries, and delivered of course to an entirely sympathetic and uncritical audience. This means that, from my point of view, I might rate some 20% of his analysis, particularly early in his speech where he deals with some aspects of contemporary culture and its sexual mores, as very good.
The remainder however ranges from mediocre to downright deceptive. There are some major concerns that stem out of his rather simplistic Reason / Church / Scripture / Experience quadrant: like a Myers Briggs quadrant I believe that there needs to be a sliding scale of 16 main position possibilities on that quadrant rather than his implied four (perhaps just for the sake of simplification, as he acknowledges after a fashion at 7'30"). His bald statement 'I belong to the "S" group here, and I believe that is where Anglicanism truly is to be found' dismantles any nuances to the grid structure, and he builds the remainder of his argument on that un-nuanced position. It may for example come as a surprise to some that some of the best biblical scholarship in the Christian world (I put it that way because of course the Jewish scholars provide outstanding contributions to interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and indeed powerful insight into the Christian writings too. I will turn to the writings of the late Rabbi Jacob Milgrom below) stems from Roman Catholic academics, such as, for example, the late Raymond Brown, or Luke Timothy Johnson, both by and large unsurpassed in both their scholarship and their faith-integrity. This would suggest that such scholars stand on a more nuanced position than Jensen's four alternatives, recognizing Reason, Tradition (as I would prefer to call it), Scripture and Experience in a different balance (to one another and) to Jensen's.
Like most Sydney evangelicals, Jensen neglects to build into his public thought what might be called a 'theology of canon' - a public understanding of the process by which the scriptures came to be 'scripture'. This leads to a disturbing degree of intellectual and spiritual chicanery. So, for example, in rightly referring to 'the paramount place of Holy Scripture' in the 39 Articles and Book of Common Prayer there is no acknowledgment of the socio-political forces that impacted on the shape of those definitive documents. Such acknowledgment does not deny the formative impact of the documents, but it recognizes that the Church, too, is outside Eden. If Jensen is to be critical of the Catholic doctrine of Infallibility, and I suspect he is (certainly his brother is: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=8318&com_mode=thread&com_order=1&com_id=91171&com_rootid=91148), then he needs to be careful here. Scriptures infallible? 39 Articles Infallible? Book of Common Prayer Infallible? Who decides and by what process?
Nevertheless, Jensen's analysis of sexuality as the West's greatest drive, and the reasons for that (we are all fed, all housed, by and large) is a good one. As a more or less value neutral statement it provides a basis by which to understand for example the dominant ECUSA and for example New Westminster and New Hampshire approaches to human sexuality (see e.g. around 16'15"). So too does the primary place of the individual, the 'cult of the individual' as it is often called (see http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/449579/the_cult_of_the_individual.html), that has grown in post French Revolution, indeed post-Reformation Europe. Jensen is careful to avoid this language though, because of his belief that the primary source of spiritual authority and discernment is the individual transaction of understanding between reader and scripture. Late in the address (47'45") he makes this quite clear. He does however assert than in the 'non-Scriptural' traditions 'individual rights have become the gospel' (17'30").
This is a partial truth: the cult of the individual, especially when imposed on the scriptures, can be deeply dangerous. Unfortunately he goes on to embrace forms of individualism in his own analysis, by emphasizing individualistic biblical interpretation over forms of interpretation that engage with a wider resource pool (whether the cathedra, or academia, or both, or tradition, or all of these in nuanced balances). Nevertheless, he avoids the post-modern belief that 'the reader is author': he is right to do so - and he and I could join in agreement that we thank God that post-modernity, already dating rapidly, is not the gospel! The notion of authorial intention is, unpopular though it is, central to my own analysis. I would argue, however, that authorial intention rather than the subsequent processes of canonization and the interpretations of the magisterium should be given first priority in interpretation. This (unfashionable) emphasis on authorial intention is a factor absent in Jensen's claims for scriptural priority, as is consideration of the 'site' and circumstances of original intended audiences. These elements insofar as they can be ascertained should have interpretative priority in the process or transaction of interpretation. That's called honesty.
This is a partial truth: the cult of the individual, especially when imposed on the scriptures, can be deeply dangerous. Unfortunately he goes on to embrace forms of individualism in his own analysis, by emphasizing individualistic biblical interpretation over forms of interpretation that engage with a wider resource pool (whether the cathedra, or academia, or both, or tradition, or all of these in nuanced balances). Nevertheless, he avoids the post-modern belief that 'the reader is author': he is right to do so - and he and I could join in agreement that we thank God that post-modernity, already dating rapidly, is not the gospel! The notion of authorial intention is, unpopular though it is, central to my own analysis. I would argue, however, that authorial intention rather than the subsequent processes of canonization and the interpretations of the magisterium should be given first priority in interpretation. This (unfashionable) emphasis on authorial intention is a factor absent in Jensen's claims for scriptural priority, as is consideration of the 'site' and circumstances of original intended audiences. These elements insofar as they can be ascertained should have interpretative priority in the process or transaction of interpretation. That's called honesty.
Like any good orator Jensen sets up a (false) 'if you are not for me you are against me' dichotomy. George Bush did this, too! From 19'30" to around 20'30", with emphasis, and again at 26'oo", Jensen invites those who oppose his presuppositions, to 'go to sleep' (20'30"), to tune out. This is a favourite dramatic ploy of Jensen that I have seen him use elsewhere, and can be a highly effective oratorical ploy when preaching to a like-minded audience - as E.F.I.C. certainly is! In effect the false dichotomy is between what he calls a 'conformist Christian' and a 'biblical Christian' - and the audience are cosily comforted in their status as 'biblical Christians' (they have, after all, invited Jensen!). Like all false dichotomies this one is deeply jaundiced. It also distracts from the claims he is about to make that 'biblical authority is at stake here' (21'45"). He goes on to make his own interpretations, proposing what he interprets as scriptural attitudes to sexuality as an antidote to western society's sexual malaise. He takes a line that he attributes (rightly or wrongly - neither Jensen nor I are sure) to Four Weddings and a Funeral to build a case for a socio-sexual malaise, and he is right to do so. There can be little doubt from a Christian perspective, and even by an large from a sensible psychological perspective, that living a life of transitions through multiple sexual partnerships is fundamentally life denying rather than life enhancing (see around 22'40"). Jensen rightly underscores what might be called 'the cult of lost virginity' in our adolescent culture: all of this I heartily endorse. However he then extrapolates from promiscuity as 'an outright assault on our humanity' (23'00") to homosexual union, and herein lies a huge ideological shift. I am even more than willing - to a point - to agree that 'any human being who tries to find their identity outside of Jesus Christ is doomed to failure' (see 23'40"), though I might argue the 'eternal' aspects of that claim.
He makes the ideological shift partly when he states (24'39") 'what is at stake here is salvation itself'. This is a dangerous claim to make, especially when he begins to identify the attributes of 'those who practice ...greed ... covetousness... fornication'. The question primarily to ask here is 'who does not?' 'Who then can be saved?' we might ask. Fortunately even greedy, idolatrous, promiscuous - whatever - people can be saved. A quick glance at the history and practice of Christians through history, including the history of evangelicals, including the practice of Sydney evangelicals, suggests that while, by and large, promiscuity has not been an on-going sin, greed and avarice and covetousness have not altogether been abandoned. So Jensen's address goes on to focus on one behavioural subset of one portion of those practitioners listed in the biblical records, those practicing sexual promiscuity.
At one point early on he does ask questions as to why sexuality rather than, for example, hymn-choices should be a point of schism in the church, but here again he creates a fatuous parallel. Perhaps the question might be why sexual issues? Why not greed, or envy or strife or some of the other 'works of the flesh' that Paul hastily but wisely lists in the first century? In the case of sexuality Jensen differentiates between 'practice' and repentance (25'00") - but by now he is moving away from any similarity, in the purported eyes of God, between sexual and other sins. It has been well stressed that Jesus - surely and certainly the voice of God! - has far more to say about fiscal greed than sexual practice! There is more than one way to sanctify sin (25'20"). Or, to put it another way, to fail to point the finger at greed and avarice with us much energy as finger-pointing at sexual sin (and here we are still talking about promiscuity, not the same-sex monogamous unions envisaged by the Diocese of New Westminster) is equally or more to condemn our neighbours to live without God (22'50").
At one point early on he does ask questions as to why sexuality rather than, for example, hymn-choices should be a point of schism in the church, but here again he creates a fatuous parallel. Perhaps the question might be why sexual issues? Why not greed, or envy or strife or some of the other 'works of the flesh' that Paul hastily but wisely lists in the first century? In the case of sexuality Jensen differentiates between 'practice' and repentance (25'00") - but by now he is moving away from any similarity, in the purported eyes of God, between sexual and other sins. It has been well stressed that Jesus - surely and certainly the voice of God! - has far more to say about fiscal greed than sexual practice! There is more than one way to sanctify sin (25'20"). Or, to put it another way, to fail to point the finger at greed and avarice with us much energy as finger-pointing at sexual sin (and here we are still talking about promiscuity, not the same-sex monogamous unions envisaged by the Diocese of New Westminster) is equally or more to condemn our neighbours to live without God (22'50").
With the focus now primarily on sexual practice Jensen refers to what he calls 'a fellowship problem' (27'00"). One might well raise a similar issue about fellowship, for example, with proponents of the obscenely anti-christian prosperity gospel, the heresy of apartheid, or the acquiescence of some African Christians in regimes' decisions to execute those who they deem to be sexually deviant. These too are 'fellowship problems'. But Jensen has focussed on just one. He cites the pain western promiscuous practice causes to those Christians living in the shadow of Islam, and rightly so. If we cause our brother or sister to stumble ... the privileged West must take this seriously. At this stage his emphasis is primarily still on promiscuity. Sexual statistics from Christian African nations such as Burundi and Rwanda, Nigeria and the southern African nations suggest that there is a vast cleavage between Christian adherence and conversion to traditional non-promiscuous Christian mores. For that matter the history of Burundi and Rwanda suggests that there has been a radical cleavage between traditional Christian prohibitions of xenophobic hatred and slaughter and the brutal bloodlust that was the reality of genocidal practice - in a region that claimed amongst the highest percentage of Christian profession in the modern world.
But Jensen is moving towards a new theme of fellowship and hospitality - surely one of the fundamental doctrines of both testaments (see for example Lk. 10.6, from this Sunday's reading). 'Who do you have fellowship with?' (27'49"). Coincidentally my eucharistic reading today was Mt. 9.9-13, and the Morning Office reading was Lk. 19.1-10. 'Who do you have fellowship with?' Surely, at least at the level of the koinonia question, there is an irony developing here, a disparity between Jensen's ideals and his practice? 'To what extent am I in fellowship with sin?' (28'50"). Jensen should reflect on Mt. 9.11, albeit, obviously, held in tension with, for example, 1 Cor. 6.9-10 (to which he would appear to be alluding).
He goes on to hold up the GAFCON Jerusalem summit as a paradigm of appropriate response. Never mind, as has been pointed out by the Bishop of The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, Bishop Suheil Dawani, that GAFCON leaders never so much as sent a greeting to their host bishop, nor invited him to be present, or invited him to express his opinions on the matters raised. Unlike the 72 sent out by Jesus these 200-300 or so bishops (34'20'-34'50") did not wish God's peace on the local Anglican Christian community.
Similarly, at 29'20", Jensen speaks of a 2009 primates' meeting at which several participants refused to receive communion from the soiled hands of those with whom they disagreed 'because of this issue'. Never mind that, for some, the ordination/consecration of women to the priesthood and episcopate was likely to have been an equally serious and divisive issue. It's no accident of lazily exclusive language that the 'leaders' referred to at 47'55" are to be humble men! Jensen is using this word with all the weight of gender specificity). 'To what extent am I in fellowship with sin?' The additional information that 'some men wouldn't appear in the photograph' is little more than petty 'because they didn't want to associate with those who had taken this pro-cultural, anti-scriptural attitude' (29'40); 'To what extent am I in fellowship with sin?' (28'50").
Jensen then extrapolates from the exclusivist behaviour of the Primates' minority group to make comparison with the case of St John's Shaughnessy, now more often called St. John's, Vancouver. He uses this example of a church community that has broken communion with its surrounding diocese as a lever by which to shift from questions of sexual promiscuity addressed earlier to the question of same-sex union. Assuming that this is a fair logical shift - and it is not -, and putting aside for a moment the question of pro-culturality, to what extent is the attitude of, for example, New Westminster anti-scriptural? Still referring to the decision of St. John's, Vancouver, Jensen links 'biblical authority, human identity, and salvation' (31'10"). But who determines biblical authority? What are the texts touted in the war of words surrounding same sex union - and who decides how they should be interpreted? The claim Jensen then bases his argument on is that 'they' (St. John's, Vancouver) haven't shifted their theology.
This may well be true, but is it spiritually laudable? Is it fundamentally true that theology must never shift? Must, for example, Mrs. Jensen continue to wear a hat in church, because, as far as Paul could see, that was of the very order of things? Must all Christian women wear long hair, because, as far as Paul could see, that was of the very order of things (1 Cor. 11.6). Or is this a 'culturally determined' option - and, if so, who decides which scripture is culturally determined and which is a timeless truth? Me and scripture, with no magisterial authority: me alone and scripture alone, me alone with scripture. What if my interpretation of the verse says 1 Cor. 6.9-10 is culturally determined, and 1 Cor. 11.14 is not? Who decides? It's highly likely that Mrs. Jensen dresses herself 'modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with her hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes' (1 Tim. 2.9), but should a bible believing Christian disassociate him or herself from a woman who does not? Whose idea of biblical authority is to be strengthened (41'20")?
While Jensen somewhat dismissively suggests that it is a 'policy of the liberals' (35'20") or 'the strategy of the liberal establishment (36'10") to play for time, to wage a quiet war of attrition until evangelical opinions change, may this not in fact rather be the policy of the Holy Spirit? What exactly is the 'unbiblical behaviour' that good Christians must oppose (37'40") and who, what magisterium, will dictate that the human use of genitalia is of greater concern to God than the human use of bank accounts? There is more than one form of 'official Act that endorses sin' (38'40"), and the Church has put its seal of approval to many such demonic moments. It took Wilberforce a lifetime to enact - with others - the work of God's Spirit and thus dismantle the injustices of slavery. He did so in opposition to the prevalent wisdom of the Christian community of the time.
Might not the slow change that Jensen sees as 'culturally driven' be indeed the same slow and patient work of the Spirit waiting for the community of faith to wake up to its own perpetration of injustices? Might not the Spirit 'go before' us, outside the boundaries of so-called orthodox belief? Isn't this the warning of texts such as Lk. 9.49? Jensen himself notes that the under-20s in the church community are revealing a growing liberal attitude to sexuality. Obviously many of us would have liked to have had opportunity, or did have opportunity to explore the so-called liberated sexuality that has been the norm in a post-pill world, and I don't think I or many would, as I observed above, recommend sexual promiscuity. But my observation is that many young people, practicing Christians of all persuasions as well as those without faith, are increasingly tolerant of their committed, monogamous homosexual neighbours.
Might this not be a move of the Spirit, and a moment in which those of us who are no longer young should listen very carefully to the Spirit's voice? Might not it be the progressive young who are breaking out of the 'cultural enslavement of the church' (38'06") and are the 'slumbering giant' (45'45") that will carry out the transformative work of God? Strangely it has often seemed to me that the Nike-wearing prosperity gospellers of Hillsong, often held up by Jensen as a credible alternative denomination for those offended by Anglicanism, or even the Nike-wearing youth of Jensen's own diocese, are far more culturally enslaved than the progressive youth that I have observed in more liberal circles, and that it is the latter that are breaking out of a slumber while the former snooze on complacently excited only by their own salvation.
Ultimately the apparent biblical prohibitions of homosexuality do not envisage the kind of monogamous relationship to which the Diocese of New Westminster and other so-called liberal dioceses have given assent. The late Rabbi Jacob Milgrom, (he died just three weeks ago) mentioned above, has, for example, written of the prohibition of homosexual practice, asking 'does the Bible prohibit homosexuality:
But Jensen is moving towards a new theme of fellowship and hospitality - surely one of the fundamental doctrines of both testaments (see for example Lk. 10.6, from this Sunday's reading). 'Who do you have fellowship with?' (27'49"). Coincidentally my eucharistic reading today was Mt. 9.9-13, and the Morning Office reading was Lk. 19.1-10. 'Who do you have fellowship with?' Surely, at least at the level of the koinonia question, there is an irony developing here, a disparity between Jensen's ideals and his practice? 'To what extent am I in fellowship with sin?' (28'50"). Jensen should reflect on Mt. 9.11, albeit, obviously, held in tension with, for example, 1 Cor. 6.9-10 (to which he would appear to be alluding).
He goes on to hold up the GAFCON Jerusalem summit as a paradigm of appropriate response. Never mind, as has been pointed out by the Bishop of The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, Bishop Suheil Dawani, that GAFCON leaders never so much as sent a greeting to their host bishop, nor invited him to be present, or invited him to express his opinions on the matters raised. Unlike the 72 sent out by Jesus these 200-300 or so bishops (34'20'-34'50") did not wish God's peace on the local Anglican Christian community.
Similarly, at 29'20", Jensen speaks of a 2009 primates' meeting at which several participants refused to receive communion from the soiled hands of those with whom they disagreed 'because of this issue'. Never mind that, for some, the ordination/consecration of women to the priesthood and episcopate was likely to have been an equally serious and divisive issue. It's no accident of lazily exclusive language that the 'leaders' referred to at 47'55" are to be humble men! Jensen is using this word with all the weight of gender specificity). 'To what extent am I in fellowship with sin?' The additional information that 'some men wouldn't appear in the photograph' is little more than petty 'because they didn't want to associate with those who had taken this pro-cultural, anti-scriptural attitude' (29'40); 'To what extent am I in fellowship with sin?' (28'50").
Jensen then extrapolates from the exclusivist behaviour of the Primates' minority group to make comparison with the case of St John's Shaughnessy, now more often called St. John's, Vancouver. He uses this example of a church community that has broken communion with its surrounding diocese as a lever by which to shift from questions of sexual promiscuity addressed earlier to the question of same-sex union. Assuming that this is a fair logical shift - and it is not -, and putting aside for a moment the question of pro-culturality, to what extent is the attitude of, for example, New Westminster anti-scriptural? Still referring to the decision of St. John's, Vancouver, Jensen links 'biblical authority, human identity, and salvation' (31'10"). But who determines biblical authority? What are the texts touted in the war of words surrounding same sex union - and who decides how they should be interpreted? The claim Jensen then bases his argument on is that 'they' (St. John's, Vancouver) haven't shifted their theology.
This may well be true, but is it spiritually laudable? Is it fundamentally true that theology must never shift? Must, for example, Mrs. Jensen continue to wear a hat in church, because, as far as Paul could see, that was of the very order of things? Must all Christian women wear long hair, because, as far as Paul could see, that was of the very order of things (1 Cor. 11.6). Or is this a 'culturally determined' option - and, if so, who decides which scripture is culturally determined and which is a timeless truth? Me and scripture, with no magisterial authority: me alone and scripture alone, me alone with scripture. What if my interpretation of the verse says 1 Cor. 6.9-10 is culturally determined, and 1 Cor. 11.14 is not? Who decides? It's highly likely that Mrs. Jensen dresses herself 'modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with her hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes' (1 Tim. 2.9), but should a bible believing Christian disassociate him or herself from a woman who does not? Whose idea of biblical authority is to be strengthened (41'20")?
While Jensen somewhat dismissively suggests that it is a 'policy of the liberals' (35'20") or 'the strategy of the liberal establishment (36'10") to play for time, to wage a quiet war of attrition until evangelical opinions change, may this not in fact rather be the policy of the Holy Spirit? What exactly is the 'unbiblical behaviour' that good Christians must oppose (37'40") and who, what magisterium, will dictate that the human use of genitalia is of greater concern to God than the human use of bank accounts? There is more than one form of 'official Act that endorses sin' (38'40"), and the Church has put its seal of approval to many such demonic moments. It took Wilberforce a lifetime to enact - with others - the work of God's Spirit and thus dismantle the injustices of slavery. He did so in opposition to the prevalent wisdom of the Christian community of the time.
Might not the slow change that Jensen sees as 'culturally driven' be indeed the same slow and patient work of the Spirit waiting for the community of faith to wake up to its own perpetration of injustices? Might not the Spirit 'go before' us, outside the boundaries of so-called orthodox belief? Isn't this the warning of texts such as Lk. 9.49? Jensen himself notes that the under-20s in the church community are revealing a growing liberal attitude to sexuality. Obviously many of us would have liked to have had opportunity, or did have opportunity to explore the so-called liberated sexuality that has been the norm in a post-pill world, and I don't think I or many would, as I observed above, recommend sexual promiscuity. But my observation is that many young people, practicing Christians of all persuasions as well as those without faith, are increasingly tolerant of their committed, monogamous homosexual neighbours.
Might this not be a move of the Spirit, and a moment in which those of us who are no longer young should listen very carefully to the Spirit's voice? Might not it be the progressive young who are breaking out of the 'cultural enslavement of the church' (38'06") and are the 'slumbering giant' (45'45") that will carry out the transformative work of God? Strangely it has often seemed to me that the Nike-wearing prosperity gospellers of Hillsong, often held up by Jensen as a credible alternative denomination for those offended by Anglicanism, or even the Nike-wearing youth of Jensen's own diocese, are far more culturally enslaved than the progressive youth that I have observed in more liberal circles, and that it is the latter that are breaking out of a slumber while the former snooze on complacently excited only by their own salvation.
Ultimately the apparent biblical prohibitions of homosexuality do not envisage the kind of monogamous relationship to which the Diocese of New Westminster and other so-called liberal dioceses have given assent. The late Rabbi Jacob Milgrom, (he died just three weeks ago) mentioned above, has, for example, written of the prohibition of homosexual practice, asking 'does the Bible prohibit homosexuality:
Of course it does ([Lev] 18:22;, 20:13), but the prohibition is severely limited. First it is addressed only to Israel, not to other nations. Second compliance with this law is a condition for residing in the Holy Land, but is irrelevant outside it (see the closing exhortation, [Lev.] 18.24-30. Third, it is limited to men; lesbianism is not prohibited. Thus it is incorrect to apply this prohibition on a universal scale. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus, (A Continental Commentary. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 196.
Whose interpretation is correct? Is Milgrom, for example, wrong, because Jensen's interpretation disagrees with this learned and prolific conservative Hebrew scholar? Who is to say so? Whose orthodoxy?
The infamous passage regarding the attempted rape of the angels in Genesis 19 is about many things, including violent, predatory and exploitative sexuality, but it is not about the sort of monogamous and loving homosexual relationship envisaged by the liberals of New Westminster. Even the Pauline horror at male prostitutes and 'sodomites' at 1 Cor. 6. (and I have heard few proclamations from Jensen and others about sinful associations with 'the greedy, revilers or robbers!') was I think envisaging the casual and promiscuous, and sometimes exploitative homosexuality of the Kings Cross variety, in its first century Corinthian guise, rather than the monogamous and loving homosexual relationships envisaged by the liberals of New Westminster. Whose interpretation is correct? Jensen has ruled out the role of the magisterium in interpretation, and I would respectfully suggest that many interpreters of as great a wisdom and experience as that of Dr. Peter Jensen (whose masters and doctorate are, in fact, in Reformation studies) have stood before the text, empowered by the unpredictable Spirit of God, and found an interpretation very different to his.
The infamous passage regarding the attempted rape of the angels in Genesis 19 is about many things, including violent, predatory and exploitative sexuality, but it is not about the sort of monogamous and loving homosexual relationship envisaged by the liberals of New Westminster. Even the Pauline horror at male prostitutes and 'sodomites' at 1 Cor. 6. (and I have heard few proclamations from Jensen and others about sinful associations with 'the greedy, revilers or robbers!') was I think envisaging the casual and promiscuous, and sometimes exploitative homosexuality of the Kings Cross variety, in its first century Corinthian guise, rather than the monogamous and loving homosexual relationships envisaged by the liberals of New Westminster. Whose interpretation is correct? Jensen has ruled out the role of the magisterium in interpretation, and I would respectfully suggest that many interpreters of as great a wisdom and experience as that of Dr. Peter Jensen (whose masters and doctorate are, in fact, in Reformation studies) have stood before the text, empowered by the unpredictable Spirit of God, and found an interpretation very different to his.
Monday, 30 November 2009
Mornings After
Millennia ago I was cox of an VIII that swept all before it (occasionally literally, thanks to my "get out of my way or die" attitude). At the end of the season we won the national championships, pocketed the Maadi Cup (half the crew, with another cox, pocketed the Springbok Shield, too, a rare double), and lapsed into oblivion. There was, perhaps fortunately, no opportunity for wild parties, for the race was won on our home course, our school operated a strict curfew, and we were in bed, nearly sober, by 10.00 p.m.
I was an atheist at the time. The next morning the universe was an empty, cold place. My coxing career had lasted five seasons, and was over. Over on a high note, but over. I had returned for a fifth year of high school only to cox: I had done so, and it was done. Finished. Over. Seven more months of meaningless existence at school, perhaps, for all I knew, seven more decades of meaningless existence on the surface of an irrelevant globe floating around a meaningless sun in a meaningless galaxy in a near-empty sea of nothingness: it wasn't a cheerful morning. Even without a hangover.
Gradually I dragged myself into some sort of being. Ennui ruled, but the alternatives, thank the non-existent god, were less attractive. I stumbled on, setting myself the modest goal of becoming the first 1st VIII cox, at least in my memory, to become a school prefect. I failed. I failed too, therefore, to become the first cox to become a prefect to become James K. Baxter or T.S. Eliot. Oh well.
More than three decades later it doesn't matter terribly much. Endings of eras are less interesting, solipsism less of a key by which to interpret the universe. Yesterday, after a journey of more than ten years, I finally received notification that I have been awarded a PhD. There was no curfew in operation, but I couldn't be bothered partying. I watered my garden (a rare event), mused that I would like to send a hug to the Creator and Sustainer of life, energy and nonchalant thesis writers, and drove to an appointment two or three hours away.
The universe remained unshaken, but on the other hand it seemed a whole lot more full of meaning and purpose than it had 32 years before. Tomorrow would be another day, full of the same meaning and purpose as yesterday. Maybe it's middle age (late middle age, according to the Seven Ages of Man), or maybe it's the faith that snuck up on me a few years after I pocketed my share of the Maadi Cup, but it all seemed rather routine.
A nice moment in a routine, though, for sure. Doctor Godfrey: it has a satisfying ring to it. I shall water my garden with new panache, I'm sure.
I was an atheist at the time. The next morning the universe was an empty, cold place. My coxing career had lasted five seasons, and was over. Over on a high note, but over. I had returned for a fifth year of high school only to cox: I had done so, and it was done. Finished. Over. Seven more months of meaningless existence at school, perhaps, for all I knew, seven more decades of meaningless existence on the surface of an irrelevant globe floating around a meaningless sun in a meaningless galaxy in a near-empty sea of nothingness: it wasn't a cheerful morning. Even without a hangover.
Gradually I dragged myself into some sort of being. Ennui ruled, but the alternatives, thank the non-existent god, were less attractive. I stumbled on, setting myself the modest goal of becoming the first 1st VIII cox, at least in my memory, to become a school prefect. I failed. I failed too, therefore, to become the first cox to become a prefect to become James K. Baxter or T.S. Eliot. Oh well.
More than three decades later it doesn't matter terribly much. Endings of eras are less interesting, solipsism less of a key by which to interpret the universe. Yesterday, after a journey of more than ten years, I finally received notification that I have been awarded a PhD. There was no curfew in operation, but I couldn't be bothered partying. I watered my garden (a rare event), mused that I would like to send a hug to the Creator and Sustainer of life, energy and nonchalant thesis writers, and drove to an appointment two or three hours away.
The universe remained unshaken, but on the other hand it seemed a whole lot more full of meaning and purpose than it had 32 years before. Tomorrow would be another day, full of the same meaning and purpose as yesterday. Maybe it's middle age (late middle age, according to the Seven Ages of Man), or maybe it's the faith that snuck up on me a few years after I pocketed my share of the Maadi Cup, but it all seemed rather routine.
A nice moment in a routine, though, for sure. Doctor Godfrey: it has a satisfying ring to it. I shall water my garden with new panache, I'm sure.
Monday, 8 September 2008
Dose Blues
There's nothing like a cold to whisper intimations of mortality. Call me a hypochondriac for sure, but at times like these a black hole swallowing solar systems, galaxies and bloody useless viruses seems a real winning idea. Does the promised new heavens and new earth and restoration of all things so beloved of biblical authors and Jürgen Moltmann include the resurrection of these bloody little things that crawl into unsuspecting available orifices and imbalance human existence?
Okay, so there's always someone worse off. Yeah right. So I care? Through a fog of schnozz and pressure on my eyeball that makes me feel like Mad-Eyed Moodie with a hangover I wonder if I really want to know. I bet Picasso really had a cold when he vomited Guernica onto canvas - it has nothing to do with Hiroshima. Or whatever.
So I think I should go out and blow up the universe, or something. But I haven't got the energy.
Blimey. Here's hoping The Creator never gets a cold.
Someone pour me a whisky.
Okay, so there's always someone worse off. Yeah right. So I care? Through a fog of schnozz and pressure on my eyeball that makes me feel like Mad-Eyed Moodie with a hangover I wonder if I really want to know. I bet Picasso really had a cold when he vomited Guernica onto canvas - it has nothing to do with Hiroshima. Or whatever.
So I think I should go out and blow up the universe, or something. But I haven't got the energy.
Blimey. Here's hoping The Creator never gets a cold.
Someone pour me a whisky.
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