[Dialogue] 2/09/2-23, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Frantz: Rising Above the Darkness of These Times; Spong revisited

Thu Feb 9 06:03:01 PST 2023

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screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv1428665525 #yiv1428665525templateBody .yiv1428665525mcnTextContent, #yiv1428665525 #yiv1428665525templateBody .yiv1428665525mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv1428665525 #yiv1428665525templateFooter .yiv1428665525mcnTextContent, #yiv1428665525 #yiv1428665525templateFooter .yiv1428665525mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} By Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Frantz  
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Rising Above the Darkness of These Times
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|  Essay by Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Frantz
February 9, 2023
 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee
proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time
is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near ... .   Mark 1:14-15

In everything do to others as you would have them do to you,
for this is the law and the prophets.  Matthew 7:12
   I don't know about you, but in recent times, I can hardly bear to watch the news.  It's simply too depressing.  Gun violence continues to spin out of control with scant hope of any sensible resolution in sight.  Putin's unprovoked, unjust war with Ukraine makes our hearts ache for the suffering of the Ukrainian people.  Then, in our nation's capital, we have a rogue Supreme Court, totally out of touch with the American people; and the 118th congress, which, with dauntless ease, sold its soul to the devil on the way to nominating a new Speaker of the House. 

This new Republican-majority congress has already made their agenda for the next two years abundantly clear: to practice grievance politics wherever they can, making life as miserable as possible for the Biden White House and for Democrats everywhere. Indeed, it’s not exactly a wonderful day in Mr. Roberts' neighborhood. 
How did we get here?The Founding Fathers and the malignant narcissism of Donald Trump.  How we got here is, of course, complicated.  To begin with, our Founding Fathers did not anticipate someone with Donald Trump's narcissistic tendencies ever occupying the oval office.  If indeed, there are codes of conduct for U.S. Presidents (and I think there are), he violated them again and again.  The most serious violation, of course, was his denial of the 2020 Presidential election results.  No losing presidential candidate had ever done this before.  His stubborn unwillingness to accept the results caught most Americans off guard.  But it didn't stop there.  On January 6, 2021, he fomented a failed coup of our democratic government. 

Can we even begin to get our minds around this?  Just think about this in light of the World Wars we have fought and won in defense of our freedom as a republic.  Our national cemeteries are filled with fallen heroes who died for this freedom.  As all of this played out, by the time of the 2020 Presidential election, it became clear that Trump and MAGA Republicans posed the greatest threat to our democracy since the Civil War and the greatest threat to our Constitution ever. 

Meanwhile, coupled with this, we have the rise of the Trump personality cult kneeling at the feet of Trump's messaging strategy of endless lies, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake news.  The strategy is to repeat the lies--over and over and over--until, eventually, the lies and misinformation begin to sound like the truth.  This is the sinister side of untruthfulness.  Over time, listeners hear the falsehoods so often they begin to think there must be something to them.  The evil of lying (and this is magnified when the lying is incessant) is that it introduces a distortive element into our relationships; and these distortions breed chaos that often overflows into anger, unrest, and even violence. 

Race relations.  Now, add to this the long and sordid history of race relations in America.  In trying to get a handle on this, it's helpful to look at Isabel Wilkerson's excellent book, Caste.  Caste offers a fresh explanation for the rising polarization of these times--particularly since the ascendance of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States some fourteen years ago.  According to Wilkerson, the backlash to "the Obama phenomenon" became visibly more strident and pointed after Donald Trump entered the White House.

Part of the backlash is related to the symbolism of the year 2042 for white America.  2042 is the year after which the majority of Americans will be non-white.  In any event, in the aftermath of the 2008 Presidential election, millions of white people woke up to a country where blacks were rising up and browns were coming in and they freaked out--particularly the men.  This demographic shift--particularly with the reminder of what 2042 symbolized--sent deep fissures of anxiety and distrust across huge swaths of white America.   

In the caste system of America, there is a hierarchy of humanity, global in nature.  In this hierarchy, the upper rung are the descendants from Europe, with English Protestants at the very top.  The ranking continues downward, through Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans, down to the very bottom--Africans brought over to build the New World.

Wilkerson shows how caste involves the "granting or withholding" of status, privilege, honor, respect, or resources based on one's perceived ranking in the hierarchy.  Central to the reality of this caste system is the maintenance of your own ranking by making sure those beneath you in the hierarchy are "kept in their place."

In summation, as we seek to better understand our current state of affairs as a nation, where do we turn?  How do we move forward?  Indeed, how do we make it through this long night of discontent?        
How do we work through this? Rediscovering our common humanity.  Amidst the current polarization of our country, there are no easy answers.  However, to rise above the darkness of these days, as a nation, we're going to need inspired leadership--leadership that can lift us to the best that is in our spirit; leadership that lifts us to the spiritual high ground where we discover, together, the best of our common humanity.

For some time now--certainly going back at least to 2016--the divisions in our country
have been widening.  Both sides of the divide have increasingly looked at the other with antipathy and disdain: Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives.  Often, it seems to be at a boiling point where we cannot co-exist.  More and more, our hearts become hardened and our minds more closed. 

Together, we must uncover ways to stop this spiraling downturn.  We must find the size of spirit to start looking at each other through different eyes--eyes that acknowledge our common humanity.  Again, we need inspired leadership to challenge us and lead the way.  Indeed, for all of humanity the spiritual high ground beckons.  It beckons with the humble greeting, namaste (from Hindu sanskrit), often announced at the beginning and end of yoga class: May the divine in me bow to the divine in you! 

This sacred greeting, namaste, acknowledges how the light in me recognizes the light in you.  It is a greeting of mutual love, peace, and unity.  Namaste affirms the spiritual high ground that reminds us how we are all in this life together; indeed, all bound together as brothers and sisters in the Kingdom of God announced by Jesus: 
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee 
proclaiming  the good news of God, and saying "The time is fulfilled,
 and the Kingdom of God has come near."  Mark 1:14-15
 Indeed, the Kingdom of God comes near when we affirm the common humanity in one another.  It comes near when we seek to treat others the way we want to be treated ourselves.  
In everything do to others as you would have them do to you,
for this is the law and the prophets.  Matthew 7:12
 Truth be told, we're going to have to find ways of relating to people whom we don't trust or respect and perhaps even do not like.  And in the process, we'll be challenged to look for the divine in them, as the namaste greeting suggests, and hope they do the same to us.  Together, we need a strong infusion of namaste--an infusion that brings healing on both sides and rising hope for a shared, more conciliatory future.

In working through this, the darkness will only be dimmed when the light of our shared humanity shines with a brightness that cannot be put out.    ~ Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Frantz
Read online here

About the Author
The Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Frantz is a retired United Church of Christ minister.  He had long-term pastorates in San Diego County and in Miami Lakes, Florida.  His service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Panama in the late sixties spurred his commitment to social justice ministries and to a spirit of ecumenism as a local church pastor.  He holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from the Pacific School of Religion. He is the author of The Bible You Didn’t Know You Could Believe In and his just-published book: The God You Didn’t Know You Could Believe In. Dr. Frantz and his wife, Yvette, are now retired and living in Florida.  |

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Question & Answer

Q: By Roy

I have seen Catholics praying to the Virgin Mary and saints, kissing and honoring statues, using rosary beads, and observing many rituals that they say are a part of Christianity. When I remind these people that being a Christian means living by the message Jesus preached about being kind, loving, and accepting of others, they become judgmental towards me. I wonder how have Christians have drifted away from the true meaning of being a Christian and instead embraced meaningless rituals and beliefs. 

A: By Rev. Lauren Van Ham
 Dear Roy,Within the tradition of Christianity, there are many interpretations of what the teachings mean as well as various understandings of which aspects of Jesus’s life are to be emphasized or ritualized to best follow his example.  It is not accurate to say that Catholic Christians have drifted away from the true meaning of being a Christian, nor is it fair to point to Catholic practices and worship as meaningless.  Some Christians are strongly moved by baptism, while others emphasize the Last Supper and communion.  Some stress the importance of prayer and quiet, while others take to the streets to feed the hungry and advocate for justice.

When Jesus modeled the importance of being kind, loving and accepting of others, he often did so by reaching across societal assumptions to be in relationship with people who were making different life choices, some out of desperation and others simply because of the customs practiced where they were born.  Jesus modeled relationship by taking time to ask questions or to share a meal.

We all have examples of rituals we have attended that felt empty or compulsory.  But it is also true that most of us create and participate in all sorts of “everyday rituals,” because they help us appreciate the gift of being alive – a walk at sunset, a hot mug in the morning, expressing gratitude at the dinner table.  When rituals – formal or spontaneous – coax us away from life’s busyness and into sacred time, we are connecting with the holy.  Whatever our practice – quiet or ecstatic, still or animated, solitary or with others -- when it comes with our intention to become more aware, more kind, more loving, then we are exercising much of what Jesus wanted for everyone.  Given the many ways to pursue a Christian path, it is good to bring our curiosity to situations that feel new or different.  If visiting a Catholic parish is a new experience for you (or maybe it has been a long time), I hope you will consider attending a mass or evening vespers sometime soon. God has a wonderful way of stretching us, surprising us, and showing up in places we could not have imagined.~ Rev. Lauren Van Ham
Read and share online here

About the Author
Rev. Lauren Van Ham, MA, was born and raised beneath the big sky of the Midwest. Lauren holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, Naropa University and The Chaplaincy Institute. Following her ordination in 1999, Lauren served as an interfaith chaplain in both healthcare (adolescent psychiatry and palliative care) and corporate settings (organizational development and employee wellness). Lauren’s passion for spirituality, art and Earth's teachings has supported her specialization in eco-ministry, grief & loss, and sacred activism.  Her essay, "Way of the Eco-Chaplain," appears in the collection Ways of the Spirit: Voices of Women; and her work with Green Sangha is featured in Renewal, a documentary celebrating the efforts of religious environmental activists from diverse faith traditions across America. Her ideas can be heard on Vennly, an app that shares perspectives from spiritual and community leaders across different backgrounds and traditions. Currently, Lauren tends her private spiritual direction and eco-chaplaincy consulting practice; and serves as Climate Action Coordinator for the United Religions Initiative (URI), and as guest faculty for several schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.  |

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

Part II: The Gospel of Matthew.
Exploring the Shadow of Moses in Matthew's Portrait of Jesus

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
September 12, 2013I return to Matthew’s gospel today to lay out the case for its basic Jewishness. As I suggested in the opening column in this series last week, we must see all the books of the New Testament as Jewish writings before we can properly begin to understand them. Matthew is by every measure the most Jewish of the four gospels. He was also writing this gospel to a community of Jesus’ followers who were themselves Jewish. That is why he could and did use in his narrative the symbols of his Jewish faith story and illustrations drawn from his Jewish world view. He wrote in the confidence that his readers would both understand these symbols and interpret them correctly. In the first decades of the Christian movement this primary meaning of Matthew’s gospel was universally understood. No one at that time could have or would have pretended that Matthew was writing literal history or recording as an eye-witness an event that actually happened. That misunderstanding, however, would arise near the middle of the 2nd century, by which time Christianity had become primarily a Gentile movement. Because they were now Gentile Christians meant that they were no longer conversant with the Jewish past or with Jewish symbols. They did not read the Jewish Scriptures, thinking that they had been superseded by the Christian writings. They no longer worshipped in synagogues. They were thus blind to the Jewish meanings incorporated into the text of this gospel.

In addition to that their blindness had a second focus. By this time in Christian history, these Gentile Christians were so deeply infected with a virulent anti- Semitism, that they had no desire to understand anything Jewish. So the real and original meaning of this gospel was lost to them. Christianity had entered what I call its “Gentile Captivity,” which was destined to last until well into the 20th century when the first cracks in it began to appear. Having no other way to understand this gospel, they almost inevitably began to read Matthew as if it were a literally true biography of Jesus and they began to assume that Matthew’s narrative was intended to be read as literal history. That was when they made assumptions about this gospel that neither its author nor its original reading audience would ever have made. They suggested, for example, that there really was a star that traveled so slowly across the sky that wise men could keep up with it. They assumed that this star led the magi to find Jesus in Bethlehem. They assumed that since the sky was the roof separating heaven from earth, the way for God to send the Holy Spirit upon Jesus at his baptism was to open a hole in the roof to allow this divine invasion. They assumed that God literally spoke from beyond that sky to proclaim Jesus as his son, not recognizing that the divine words were actually lifted from Isaiah 42. They assumed that Jesus was literally tempted in a literal wilderness by a literal devil and that Jesus literally preached the Sermon on the Mount. None of these assumptions would ever have occurred to the original Jewish readers of Matthew’s gospel for they knew the Jewish background revealed in all of these narratives.

My task in this series will be to open the minds of my readers to this background. In doing so I hope to make it clear that biblical fundamentalism is a Gentile Heresy! It was created out of Gentile ignorance about Jewish sacred writings. The fundamentalism with which the Christian church is plagued in the 21st century rises from the same source. Gentile literalism and biblical fundamentalism are not benign, they are deeply destructive of Christianity. That is a strong, but accurate charge and it cries out to be documented. In this column and throughout this series that will be my primary agenda. So let me begin with lesson one.

The greatest hero in the Jewish faith story was Moses, so it should not be surprising that the life of Moses would be the template against which Jewish writers would tell the story of Jesus, and would thus serve as their primary clue in interpreting the life of Jesus. Surprisingly the name of Moses is not mentioned in Matthew until the 8th chapter of this gospel, but the shadow of Moses is present in every Jesus story.

Moses makes his first silent appearance in the Matthean text in the birth narrative with which Matthew opens his gospel. Here Matthew tells us that when Jesus was born, a wicked king named Herod tried to kill him. The wise men had come to Herod’s palace seeking knowledge as to the birthplace of the one they called “the King of the Jews.” A child born with such a title in the land of the Jews would be a direct threat to Herod’s throne, so Herod was not pleased. Herod conferred with his scribes and wise men as to where the new Jewish king was expected to be born and they discovered in the book of Micah what they believed was a prediction that the messiah must come out of Bethlehem, for he must be of the house of David. Herod then deputized the magi to return to him with a report of this new king’s identity and location: “so that I too might come and worship him.” Then Herod sent them on their way. The wise men in this story, however, were warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod and so they departed by another route. Herod was angered when he discovered that he had been duped and so he directed his solders to go to Bethlehem and there to kill all the boy babies up to two years of age in an attempt to destroy God’s new “promised deliverer.” Did any of this really happen? Of course not! That is a Moses story being retold about Jesus. When Moses was born, another wicked king named Pharaoh also moved to destroy all the Jewish boy babies, this time in Egypt, in a vain attempt to destroy God’s “promised deliverer.” Moses, that story tells us, was saved when his mother put him in a basket in the Nile River where he was later found by the Pharaoh’s daughter, who raised him as her son. The baby Jesus, like Moses, was also saved from his fate, when his father, Joseph, took him down to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod.

This is not history, it is an interpretive narrative in the Jewish storytelling tradition. All of Matthew’s original Jewish readers would have recognized this fact when they heard this text read to them for they would have listened with Jewish ears and Jewish understanding. They recognized Matthew’s Jewish style of writing. Later, Gentile readers, devoid of this ability, began to treat the stories as if they were literally true. That is how fundamentalism was born.

As Matthew’s story continued to unfold those who knew the Jewish Scriptures could still see Moses silently present in the background. Next Matthew told the story of Jesus’ baptism by bringing Jesus to the edge of the River Jordan. God’s power over water had long been a major theme of the Old Testament writers. That theme was illustrated most dramatically in the Exodus story where Moses was able to part the waters of the Red Sea so that the Jews could escape slavery in Egypt by walking across that sea on dry land. The tradition of splitting waters then became a recurring theme in the Old Testament. It was repeated in the life of Joshua, Moses’ successor, who split the waters of the flooded Jordan River so that the Jews could cross over on dry land and thus conquer the country that they claimed had been bequeathed to their ancestor Abraham. Later in the biblical narrative both Elijah and Elisha split the waters of the Jordan River so that they too could walk across on dry land. All of these traditions were in the mind of the author of Matthew’s gospel and of its first readers and that is why they recognized what Matthew was trying to communicate when he told this story. Look now at the details of the story of Jesus’ baptism with Jewish eyes.

Matthew first took Jesus to the edge of the Jordan River. In this story Matthew was trying to communicate his conviction, and the convictions of his audience, that in Jesus there was a God-presence like unto none other, not even to the God presence in the greatest heroes of their faith story: Moses, Joshua, Elijah and Elisha. How did Matthew do this? Read his gospel! When Jesus stepped into the waters of the Jordan River, he did not split those waters. Anyone could do that! That had happened several times before. So Matthew’s Jesus does not split the waters of the Jordan, he splits the heavens! What were the heavens to the Jews? The creation story tells us that the sky, which that story calls the “firmament,” was originally designed to separate the waters above from the waters below. So Jesus is portrayed as stepping into the Jordan, but splitting the heavenly waters, which then flowed down on him as the Holy Spirit. “Living water” is always a Jewish synonym for the Holy Spirit. Matthew was saying that Jesus split the boundary between heaven and earth, between the human and the divine, and a voice from heaven then designated Jesus as God’s “unique” son. Here the divine is experienced in the human. Is this a literal account of the baptism of Jesus? Of course not! It is an interpretation of Jesus as the one in whom God was as uniquely present beyond any God presence the Jewish people had ever known. Both Matthew and his Jewish audience would have understood this message. No one would have been tempted to view this story as literal history. Only uninformed Gentiles, reading this story a few generations later, would begin to think this was a literal story.

The shadow of Moses in Matthew’s story of Jesus does not end there, so, I will continue next week to probe Matthew’s gospel as he wrote it and as his first readers understood it. No one in the time when this gospel was written read or viewed it as literal history because they knew it wasn’t. Fundamentalism is the interpretive ignorance of those who do not understand that Matthew’s gospel was never meant to be a biography. It was designed to be an interpretive portrait painted by a Jewish artist to enable the meaning of Jesus to be grasped by his Jewish audience. As this story unfolds over subsequent weeks that will become abundantly clear.~  John Shelby Spong  |

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