[Dialogue] 3/16/2023, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Jess Shine: I’m tired of giving to charities; Spong revisited

Thu Mar 16 07:21:06 PDT 2023

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screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv0237014684 #yiv0237014684templateBody .yiv0237014684mcnTextContent, #yiv0237014684 #yiv0237014684templateBody .yiv0237014684mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv0237014684 #yiv0237014684templateFooter .yiv0237014684mcnTextContent, #yiv0237014684 #yiv0237014684templateFooter .yiv0237014684mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} By Rev. Jessica Shine  
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|  I’m tired of giving to charities.  |

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|  Essay by Rev. Jess Shine
March 16, 2023Let me say that again for the people in the back. I’m tired of giving money to charities. I’ve served the church in development and parish life for over 20 years. I don’t believe giving is wrong. The Bible tells us God loves a cheerful giver and infers that we can’t out give God. So why do I say I’m tired of giving to charities?You may have heard the story of a family from the rural countryside (I first heard a version of this story from financial planner Dave Ramsey). On special occasions, Mom cooks up a particular cut of meat. She cuts off the end and prepares it in her beloved skillet. The kids grow up learning this tradition, and eventually, a son moves out and starts his own family. On special occasions, he repeats his mom’s tradition. Brings home the same cut of meat, cuts off the end, and cooks it in his mom’s favorite cooking pan now inherited. One day his partner asks ‘why are you cutting off so much of that meat?’ The son replies, ’so it will fit in the pan.’ Confused his partner says ‘maybe we need to get a bigger pan?!’Maybe one reason I am tired of giving to charities is that many organizations struggle to dream of a bigger pan, a greater mission. Maybe it’s because they don’t have a clear vision or strategy to get there. Often, we view giving to charity as giving only the parts we don’t want. The piece we cut off and throw away. The old clothes we don’t want, the old cans of food we won’t eat, the household items we can’t sell. How often do we give and think, “they should be grateful?”Sometimes we give because we’re resigned to the fact that unless we give, we’ll have to deal with ‘those people’ in other ways. Like sleeping in our neighborhoods, or jogging through them. Maybe we give because we assume that everyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. But what if they have no boots, to begin with?Giving away something and then telling the recipient how to use it is like giving something with a closed fist. Nothing can flow in or out. Sometimes in progressive circles, we’re so good at ‘doing for’ that we objectify the very people we are giving ‘to’. This inhibits our shared experience of liberation and I’m tired of giving in those ways. The Reverend Dr. Yvonne Delk recently reflected on this phenomenon when speaking on the history of Afro-Christian Churches within the United Church of Christ. She shared how communities of color, specifically the Afro-Christian Connection, weren’t (and still often aren’t) included in the origin stories of the denomination because they were seen as a mission priority. People to ‘bring into’ rather than ‘co-create with’. This is also true of the Indigenous peoples and Latin liberation movements that influenced American congregationalism (and continue to do so in beautiful and life-giving ways).In other words, despite labeling ourselves progressive we protect historic missiology rather than examining our personal theology. We avoid asking why we have believed or continue to believe certain things that manifest in our liturgy, organizational structures, financial systems, and outreach. This keeps our siblings from true and full inclusion, from denominational origins until today. Church we need to tell our story with a bigger pan and include all our Siblings who are the Body of Believers!I’m tired of giving money to charities whose leadership doesn’t include the folks with whom there is a disparity. I’m tired of giving to charities that spend more money on the symptoms than addressing the root causes. I’m tired of giving to charities where the ‘power’ is held by a few who ‘know better’ or at least a few who remember how we used to do things in the good ole days.Maybe you’ve committed to being anti-racist or to being radically inclusive of all God’s Beloved. Thank you! And perhaps you were taught that when you saw someone drowning you jumped in the river to help them out, nothing wrong with that. Sometimes we give to save someone, or something, an institution perhaps, a church, a building. The Late Bishop Desmond Tutu said, “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”So what if there’s a better way to focus our giving and our mission? Better than our leftovers, our guilt, our savior-ism. What if there’s a bigger pan? What if there’s more to generosity than contorting our offerings into a small vision?Micah 6:8 often posted on banners and bulletins is part of a conversation where the prophet Micah is specifically speaking towards the city of Jerusalem. To prophesy its destruction and then restoration. But the destruction he foretold wasn’t brought on by an oppressive external enemy, it was an internal corruption of the people’s dishonesty and idolatry. Their vision was too small.According to Micah, the city of God was doomed because its beautification was financed by dishonest business practices, which impoverished the city's citizens. In chapters 6 and 7, God wasn’t angry because they wanted beautiful things. God was angry because of how they got beautiful things, namely the extortion of their siblings.Through Micah’s voice, it becomes clear that these people have lost their vision and have settled for a smaller pan. He asks the people, remember how God freed you from slavery in Egypt? You are enslaving people, your system is corrupt and your relationships are broken. Remember liberation is your story, it's where you’ve come from, he says to them.People who are liberated don’t enslave other people.In this passage, the people of God have become disconnected from each other, from the land, and Creator. How does God know they have become disconnected? Because they enslave each other rather than work cooperatively to build together. Because they justify the very financial practices that once entangled them. It’s easy to do that when we are disconnected from each other’s experiences.Micah is speaking from a broken heart. He speaks to his people knowing and feeling all the fears, all the worries, spoken and unspoken. He’s been awake in the middle of the night wrestling with his grief, anger, and disappointment. You’ve felt it too, haven’t you? During these years of pandemic and uprisings where we’ve become more and more aware of the needed changes in our financial and social systems.How might our generosity lean into liberation for All? Are we capable of giving more? Are we ready to give in more focused ways or to live on less than we earn? Liberation can be a guide for our generosity and a reminder to look beyond our church building for how the kin-dom of God is on the move. What does life begin to look like if liberation is the guide in how we share resources? Divine abundance? Enough for all? Joyful re-examination of our mission and the pan we’ve inherited to serve others?When we begin with liberation for all, we stay connected to ourselves, our bodies, our planet, our siblings, and our divine intuition. We know deeply why we are doing what we are doing. A space where I'm learning to listen to others and tend to the cacophony inside myself is with a cohort called Sacred Conversations to End Racism, led by the Rev. Dr. Velda Love. The monthly practice of reading, listening, and sharing is helping me shift the scarcity narrative I’ve inherited and love better through my living and giving. You can find more resources for your journey at jointhemovementucc.org.Liberation for all is the bigger pan, the bigger vision. Enough living and giving in to a small vision. I’m tired of giving to charities whose vision is anything less than Liberation for All.~ Rev. Jess Shine
Read online here

About the Author
The Reverend Jess Shine, MDiv (they/she/elle) served most recently as Associate Minister at First Congregational UCC in Eugene, Oregon. Jess earned degrees in theology and divinity, but says, "I still haven't figured out how to walk on water.” In 2021, they completed the Privilege of Call process while serving at the national setting of the United Church of Christ. Jess was ordained to ministry by the Seventh-day Adventist Church and has continued offering spiritual care as a clergy member of The CHI Interfaith Community (based in Berkeley, CA). With over two decades of experience pastoring church communities, police officers, hospice patients and staff, teenagers, and as Community Minister of The Chaplaincy Institute, she brings a passion for people and a skill for communicating in transformative ways.

Jess is a descendant of Mexican, Indian, and Northwestern European immigrants. Their spirituality began in childhood and continues through expansive relationships, reading, music, wine, travel, theological processing, sports, and food! Shine co-hosted a podcast on death and dying called “Done For”  also available on iTunes, and Google. Shine has written for ProgressiveChristianity.org and Progressing Spirit, and serves as CHI Seminary Guest Faculty. Jess celebrates life with their wife, Deshna (an ordained interfaith chaplain), bonus daughter Kaila, and their four-legged friends.  |

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Question & Answer

Q: By John

What is the difference between religion and spirituality?

A: By Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox
 Dear John,Thank you for your question.  It seems especially pressing today since so many people, especially young people, are identifying as “spiritual but not religious.”  What is behind this particular sign of our times?  I hear you asking.

The word “religion” today conjures up dogmas, doctrines, institutions, hierarchy, buildings, organized worship, rules, positions on topics of the day ranging from extreme right (“Christian nationalists” or “Opus Dei”) to a more thoughtful effort to discern how to apply values to complex moral issues. 

I think many people find these sociological and complex versions of religion to be a heavy weight to carry at this time in history when so much is shifting beneath our feet.  We are moving from the age of Pisces (symbolizing dualism by two fish swimming in the opposite directions) to the age of Aquarius, which is much more mystically based, water being a sign of depth and panentheism (fish in the water and water in the fish, God in the water and the water in God) and therefore spirituality.  Think of John of the Cross: “Launch out into the deep.”
In a nutshell, spirituality is our experience of the Divine.

Religion and spirituality do not have to be at odds.  But in a time of cultural upheaval that we are living through, many see them as such. 

Thomas Aquinas actually defines religion this way: As a habit of “supreme thankfulness or gratitude.”  This definition of religion avoids much of the sociological burdens named above.  His definition zeroes in on spirituality, for the first step in spirituality is the awe, wonder, beauty and delight of existence itself—and “supreme thankfulness or gratitude” follows from that.  As Heschel says, “awe precedes faith.”  These experiences are what the mystics call the Via Positiva.  Gratitude for existence itself.  “Isness is God,” says Meister Eckhart.

Spirituality is about living our lives from a deep place.  A place of Yes (William James called mysticism the “Yes” faculty).  And No—the prophetic work that Rabbi Heschel calls “interfering” with injustice.  Both taken together are a root or radical response to life which is my definition of what prayer is all about.

How does one renew religion when it has gone sour or irrelevant, boring or insipid?  Carl Jung says, “only the mystics bring what is creative to religion itself.”  One looks more deeply into the depths of one’s soul, what St. Paul and Meister Eckhart call the “inner person” or the “new self” as distinct from the “old self.”  In today’s parlance, the “true self,” as distinct from the “false self.”

Heschel says that “there lies in the recesses of every existence a prophet.”.  How get to those recesses? The Via Positiva names the depths of joy and gratitude.  The Via Negativa names the depths of silence and letting go, suffering, grief, and the dark night of the soul.  The Via Creativa names our giving birth from our depths.  And the Via Transformativa names the depths of justice-making, compassion, healing and celebration.

When religion is healthy, it is assisting us to travel this deep spiritual journey.  When it is enfeebled, it takes love (mystics are lovers) as expressed in these four paths of creation spirituality to bring the real meaning of religion back.  All forms evolve.  Of course.  That is what evolution means, the living, dying and rebirth of forms.   Religion, like all else, is subject to evolution. ~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox
Read and share online here

About the Author
Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 40 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 78 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship (called The Cosmic Mass). His work is inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and has awakened millions to the much-neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. Among his books are A Way To God: Thomas Merton's Creation Spirituality Journey; Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times; Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times;  Order of the Sacred Earth; The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times; and Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic – And Beyond; Original Blessing; The Coming of the Cosmic Christ; A Spirituality Named Compassion; Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality. To encourage a passionate response to the news of climate change advancing so rapidly, Fox started DailyMeditationswithMatthewFox.org  |

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An Easy Way To Make a BIG Difference 
I bet you, like me, get more than a bit overwhelmed with all the injustices in the world. We want to do something about it – and, more times than not, we try to. It's just that there are so many things we'd like to help make better. It's easy to get frustrated and feel like what you are doing isn't enough – at least, I feel that way, at times.

Being that many of these injustices come from folks calling themselves Christians, some of the best tools we have for countering them are hearts of compassion and theological education based on the hermeneutic of love. It just so happens that those are some of our highest values here at ProgressiveChristianity.org and we are passionate about giving others the tools to promote them.

That's where you can easily make a BIG difference. We count on donations from folks like you to keep our vital theological and spiritual tools available. A simple donation from you can help make a big difference to someone else and even to the world.

Please consider being a part of helping make the world a better place, make a donation today. Or, consider a monthly gift to help in our ongoing efforts.

Thank you, you are why we are here.

PEACE!

Rev. Dr. Mark Sandlin
President and Co-Exec. Director  |

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|  Don't miss the next Episode of PC.org's Executive Directors Mark and Caleb on:
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|   What is Progressive Christianity?A Panel Discussion with the Board of DirectorsTake a few moments and listen to the Board of Directors of ProgressiveChristianity.org talk about the Progressive Christian Movement and what it’s going to look like in the future.  READ ON ...   |

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

Part VII Matthew: The Shady Ladies of Matthew's Genealogy

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
November 14, 2013The audience for which Matthew wrote was conversant with the Jewish Scriptures, so when he mentions Tamar in the genealogy, they would know her story. The Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) was read in its entirety in the traditional synagogues on the Sabbaths of a single year. The 38th chapter of Genesis, where Tamar’s story is told would thus be read on the sixth or seventh Sabbath following the beginning of the liturgical cycle in the month of Nisan. Tamar’s story interrupted the familiar story of Joseph, so it stood out in clear relief. Listen now to her story.

Judah, the son of Jacob, had married the daughter of a Canaanite man named Shua and by her he had three sons, Er, Onan and Shelah. While in the land of Chezib, Judah took for Er, his oldest son, a wife whose name was Tamar. She too was a Canaanite. Er, we are told in the Bible, was wicked and “God killed him.” So Tamar, in accordance with Jewish practice, was given to Onan, Er’s brother, to be his wife. Onan, however, did not want to raise up children to his deceased brother, so he practiced “coitus interruptus,” which has given us the word “Onanism.” This so displeased God, the Bible tells us, that God killed Onan also. Shelah was next in line to take Tamar as his wife, but he was only a small boy and by this time Tamar’s reputation for being responsible for the deaths of her first two husbands was fixed. Shelah, therefore, was not interested in or desirous of doing his culturally-assigned duty. So, Judah, Tamar’s father-in-law, sent Tamar back to her father’s house in disgrace. She was now considered “damaged goods,” one who would not bring a proper “bride price.” Judah did promise her that when Shelah came of age, she would be sent for and would become his wife. Time passed and this promise was soon forgotten. During those years of passage, however, Judah lost his wife and thus became a widower.

After a period of mourning, Judah planned to go to the village of Timnah to have his sheep sheared. Tamar learned of this proposed trip and made her own plans. By this time, she was aware that Shelah, now grown, had not been offered to her as a husband. So Tamar took off her widow’s garments, put on a veil, wrapping herself in the garb of a prostitute and took a seat at the gate of her village. She knew that her village was on the road to Timnah and that Judah would have to pass her way. When Judah saw her, assuming that she was a prostitute, he went over to her to negotiate for her services offering her a lamb from his flock in payment for her “favors.” She demanded that he give her something of value to secure the promise; a pledge, if you will, until the lamb was delivered. She requested Judah’s signet ring, his cord and his staff. Judah gave them to her without debate and so the act was consummated.

The next day Judah, acting, he felt, in good faith sent the lamb with one of his servants and asked Tamar to return his possessions. Tamar, however, could not be found. The people of her village denied that there ever was a prostitute who solicited business at their gate. So the lamb came back to Judah. To avoid embarrassment, he simply charged this experience off as a bad business deal.

Three months later, the rumor came to Judah that Tamar his daughter-in-law was pregnant. He was angry and when this rumor was confirmed, he took action to have her put to death at the stake for the crime of “harlotry.” As Tamar was being brought forth to be burned, she sent a message and some gifts to Judah. “I am with child,” she said, “by the owner of this ring, this cord and this staff.” Judah recognized them as his own. He then repented of the way he had treated Tamar and took her into his home and harem. She produced twins and one of them, a boy named Perez, was in the line between Abraham and Jesus. By the standards of that day, sex with one’s father-in-law was considered to be incest and was condemned. In Matthew’s genealogy, however, the proclamation was made that the line that produced Jesus had flowed through the incest of Tamar. It was a strange and fascinating way to open the story of Jesus.

The second woman mentioned in this genealogy was named Rahab. Her story is told in chapters two and six of the book of Joshua. She lived in Jericho, a Canaanite city, where she ran a brothel in the red light district. She was known in the book of Joshua as “Rahab the prostitute.” When Joshua sent spies into Jericho, they went to the house of Rahab, which was built into the walls that encircled the city. When rumors of the presence of these spies spread throughout the city, Rahab hid them from the searching authorities and when the gates of the city were locked after dark, she let them down outside the walls in a basket so that they could make their escape. She exacted a promise from them, however, that when the invasion of Jericho came, she and her family, all of whom would be gathered in her house, would be spared. It was done and they were saved. Rahab married a Jew named Salmon, perhaps he was a soldier in Joshua’s army, perhaps he was even one of the spies. In this story Matthew now says that the line that produced Jesus flowed through Rahab, the prostitute. The intrigue grows.

The third woman in Matthew’s genealogy was Ruth the Moabite, whose story is told in the book that bears her name. A Jewish family, Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their two sons Mahlon and Chilion, moved from Israel to Moab to escape a famine. Both sons soon married Moabite women, whose names were Orpah and Ruth. Then tragedy struck and the three men in this family died, leaving a Jewish widow and her two Moabite daughters-in-law. Naomi urged her two daughters in law to return to the protection of their fathers. Orpah did so, but Ruth refused and she and Nomi returned together to the land of the Jews. Two widowed, and thus single women, did not constitute a viable family in the Jewish world. There were no jobs for women; they lived by begging and gleaning. Gleaning was the process of allowing the poor to scour the fields after the harvest for enough grain to keep one alive. This is what Ruth did each day for Naomi. In this capacity, she came to the attention of the owner of the fields, a man named Boaz, who was a distant relative of Elimelech, Naomi’s deceased husband. Boaz protected Ruth from the male workers in the field and ordered them to leave some grain deliberately in the field for her to gather. He also saw to it that she got water. Naomi, pleased when she heard of these signs, planned her own course of action.

A celebration was to be held when the crop was harvested. At this celebration there would be revelry and much wine. Naomi instructed Ruth to go to the celebration, bathed, perfumed and in her best dress. She was, however, not to make herself known to Boaz until “his heart was merry” with wine. Ruth agreed. When Boaz was well drunk, he lay down on the floor and went to sleep. Ruth put a pillow under his head and a blanket across his body and then climbed under the blanket with him. At midnight Boaz awoke and discovered Ruth under the blanket with him. “Who are you?” he asked, but Ruth having successfully seduced him, responded by saying, “Marry me,” for “you are next of kin.” Boaz protested that there was a kinsman closer than he. That kinsman, however, renounced that claim and Boaz married Ruth and they produced a son named Obed. The line that produced Jesus, said Matthew, now flowed through the seduction of Ruth. The mystery thickens.

The final woman in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus was “the wife of Uriah, the Hittite.” Her story is told in II Samuel 11. Her name is Bathsheba. She came to King David’s attention while bathing on the rooftop of her home in what she thought was privacy. David’s rooftop towered above hers, however, and he could and did look down on the bathing scene. Smitten by her charms, he sent emissaries to her house inviting her to come to the king’s palace for a “tryst.” She came. Whether she had a right to refuse is not stated, but it was improbable. A few months after this tryst, Bathsheba sent word to King David that she was pregnant with his child. David demurred. She was a married woman, how did she know in this pre-DNA world that it was his child? Bathsheba responded that her husband was away serving in the king’s army and that he had been gone for months. You alone, she said, can be the father of this baby. David sought to give Uriah a furlough so that he could come home, enjoy his wife and thus become the “presumptive father.” The baby just came early, people would say. Uriah, however, refused to cooperate. So David had Uriah killed in battle and took Bathsheba into his harem. Matthew was now saying that the line that produced Jesus of Nazareth flowed through the adultery of Bathsheba. We cannot help but wonder why he is introducing his story of Jesus in this way.

The incest of Tamar, the prostitution of Rahab, the seduction of Ruth and the adultery of Bathsheba were the experiences in his ancestry through which Jesus came to be born, as shown in the story of Matthew’s genealogy. All of these women were foreign, and by the standards of that day, all of these women were sexually compromised. This is the way Matthew introduces the story of Jesus’ birth. What was Matthew seeking to communicate? Surely he did not have birth records so that he could trace Jesus’ lineage with any degree of accuracy. Both Matthew and his reading audience would have known this. They would have been amused that anyone at any time would have thought of this family tree as literal history.

We need to recognize, however, that Matthew is the first gospel writer to suggest that the birth of Jesus was supernatural and miraculous. He introduced this tradition into Christianity, but it was not until the ninth decade of the Christian era that it appeared. Simultaneously he suggested that the line that produced Jesus passed through incest, prostitution, seduction and adultery. When this series continues we will begin to unpack this dramatic introduction.~  John Shelby Spong  |

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