[Oe List ...] 12/03/2020, Progressing Spirit: Kevin Forrester: Grateful & Communal Creatures: ZOOM & The Dynamic Reality Of Being Saved; Spong revisited
Ellie Stock
elliestock at aol.com
Thu Dec 3 08:26:43 PST 2020
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Grateful & Communal Creatures:
ZOOM & The Dynamic Reality Of Being Saved
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| Essay by Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D.
December 3, 2020
Surprising Reality of Being in Covid
When you gaze up into the night sky, perhaps from the sateen darkness of Glacier National Park, or the cozy vestibule of your backyard, what do you see? Pin-wheeling galaxies? Endless expanse of interstellar space? Familiar special neighbors such as Orion or Ursa Major?
Whatever your eyes behold is received through story, probably intertwining and commingling narratives. A story of 13 billion years of expanding evolution whose ancient light is landing just now upon your retina. A story of cosmos-as-creation, dynamically unfolding, moment-to-moment, each arising a surprise and replete with mystery. For some, this is a narrative of the power of pure chance at work on both cosmic and microcosmic scales; for others, a story of the bodying-forth of Holy Mystery in which Being emerges from the emptiness of non-Being. Yes, chance is at play but within the wider and deeper Reality of Love.
When the beauty of evolution is received and understood within the larger, or meta-, narrative of the bodying-forth of Being, what we behold when we truly behold anything is the Presence of Holy Mystery. Spirituality and science are twin offspring of the same mother – the dynamic Reality of Being – offering complementary understandings and appreciations of Reality. Without spirituality, science can readily devolve into a scientism that flattens Reality, unable to account for the bountiful Mystery of Being; without science, spirituality thins out into naïve spiritualism, a magical thinking divorced from the dynamic laws of nature. Together, spirituality and science can open our consciousness to surprising ways Being manifests in this time of Covid.
Grateful (Eucharistic) Creatures
It is Moses – representing humanity’s spiritual awakening – who begins to realize that the name of Reality he has been encountering is “I am who I am.” Moses and the Israelites, and through them the people of the West, are initially discovering the truth that Being is the Reality we refer to as “God.” God is not a thing, or a law, or a ritual, but simply “I am,” which means Being. Moses and the people are afraid that as they continue their journey, they will be alone. But Moses, listening to the voice of his heart (which is humanity’s heart), realizes that “I am who I am” will be with them – is with them – as Being. So, they may be at rest.
2300 years later the Irish theologian and philosopher, John Scotus Eriugena, would, in his own way, deepen our understanding of Moses’ realization. Being, or God, is our true nature as human creatures. Our bodies are from dust, but even this dust is not absent of Being. The 20th century German Jesuit theologian, Karl Rahner, deepened further the implications, enabling us to speak of creation itself as the Ursakrament, which simply means the fundamental sacrament. Why? Because creation, simply as it is, only exists because Being is its true nature. Nature is and always has been supernatural, or a graced-Reality. Holy Mystery is the essence of creation. Not the essence only of human beings. Not the essence only of mammals. Not the essence only of animals. Not the essence of only select bits and pieces. No. Holy Mystery is the essence of all that is. Spiritually, the evolving cosmos is telling the sacramental story of the gracious unfoldment of creation.
Albert Einstein’s scientific theory of relativity, so elegantly and simply expressed in E=mc2, also enriched our appreciation further. What appears as solid and inert to our senses is actually energy, dynamic and fluid. All that is, regardless of its form, is spiritually speaking a manifestation of arising Being. There are no exceptions: from comets to computers, from insects to internet.
Since everything is a manifestation, a bodying-forth, of Being, the cosmos – known in the Christian story as the Body of Christ – is sheer gift as the womb of unfolding life. Each creature is a Christ by nature and by calling, as it lives into and slowly realizes the truth of its Being.
As we gaze up into the night sky, or into the endless depths of our lover, or at the resplendent shimmering beauty of a sea anemone, how then do we receive what and who we behold? Our heart, when honest and vulnerable as an open womb, receives the beauty with grateful thanksgiving (which is to say, eucharistically). We are awed and humbled beyond words that this cosmos is the intimate bodying-forth of Holy Mystery. When we grow callous or forgetful, our heart longs once again for the moon to press its face against ours and remind us of this truth of who and what we are.
Spiritually, to the degree we are awake to Reality as the Body of Christ, we are grateful, eucharistic, creatures. The universe nourishes us without reserve and without thought because its nature is effusive Being. The liturgical eucharist is not a magical exception to life within a barren and inert universe, but rather is an embodiment, an expression in, of, and through which we recognize and celebrate that Being is the Reality of creation, and we are humans of Being. To be human is to be a eucharistic being.
Communal Creatures
Being bodies-forth as dynamic and evolving energy. Reality, never stagnant, is continually changing in its myriad modes of manifesting. No particular manifestation is ever without Being as its true nature, even when distorted and destructive. To draw upon Paul, there is no “height, nor depth, nor any other created thing” that can separate us from Being, or from the love which is God made manifest in Christ. The life of Jesus clarifies for us that the nature of Being is Boundless Love even in the cold, dark, vacuum of interstellar space or interpersonal relationships.
As our species evolves and our awareness matures, new circumstances give rise to new modalities not experienced previously. In this time of Covid, so-called “virtual” reality is one of these relatively new modes of manifestation. Often, I hear leaders and members of religious traditions, for whom the practice of liturgical Eucharist is integral to their spirituality, lamenting the doctrinal “fact” that “Communion” is not possible because we can no longer be present together. All we have is the “virtual” gathering, utilizing “virtual” as a synonym for “not real.”
But that is neither my experience nor understanding. Over many years of being with persons on Skype and Zoom, there is clearly a sense of Being’s Presence when we are consciously present with one another. This “created thing” of the internet is not a wall inhibiting real presence but a new threshold. Being is creatively manifesting itself in a mode that is novel and must be learned through experience. Too often prejudicial doctrine prevents us from listening to and learning from what our own hearts and bodies are experiencing. I continually encounter via Zoom participants feeding and really being fed by one another, as they learn to become attuned to the Presence of Being manifesting here and now in a new way.
The Dynamic Reality of Being – Nothing “Virtual” about It
“Virtual” is not simply a misnomer when it comes to accurately describing “being with one another” via a new modality, it is deeply mistaken about the very nature of Reality. When we are consciously present with one another, whatever the modality, we are Really with one another. There is nothing “virtual” about the experience. The modality, such as the internet, significantly shapes the experience. That is true. And we must learn to discern the Presence of Being, of Holy Mystery, within this new form. How we are present to Being adapts with the circumstances – but that is always the case. Each modality of the presence of Being has its strengths and weaknesses. However, as humans of Being, our hearts, minds, and bodies are always already in union with one another (communion). Our task is to discover how that is happening in this new modality.
Gaze gratefully up into the heavens above or deep within the one lying beside you. Share a congregational meal via Zoom, or coffee for two within a six-foot arc of loving-kindness. As humans of Being we are eucharistic by nature and communion is our relational Reality. The grace within Covid is the discovery of learning to respond and be attuned to the circumstances that the dynamic Reality of Being offers. We are gratefully learning to participate in real communion in a new modality. Our maturation lies in our practice of sensing into this new modality of Being’s presence and discovering how to awaken to its vitality.
~ Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D.
Read online here
About the Author
Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. is an Episcopal priest, a student of the Diamond Approach for over a decade, as well as a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. He is the founder of the Healing Arts Center of in Marquette, Michigan, and the author of five books, including I Have Called You Friends, Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms, and My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You and Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland. Visit Kevin’s Blog: Essential Living: For The Soul’s Journey.
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Question & Answer
Q: By Matt
I'm an interested non-believer who is very fond of progressive faith traditions and their communities. I just finished reading the chapter in the book Kissing Fish on "Evil and Theodicy" because that is one of two biggest stumbling blocks to faith of any kind for me (the other is that I am extremely hesitant to infer any kind of divine being as an explanation for anything, out of fear that it might prove to be a god-of-the-gaps argument). I have to say that I have more respect for panentheism than classical theism because it at last respects the problem of evil and suffering more than classical theism. However, I want to ask a question: can God (from a panentheistic view) perform a miracle in history such as the bodily resurrection of Jesus?
A: By Rev. Roger Wolsey
Dear Matt,
I'm delighted that you're reading my book and that you are resonating with the theology I am suggesting in that chapter. Different panentheists may answer your question differently. Many progressive Christians embrace the idea of a spiritual resurrection of Jesus instead of a physical one. It was a spiritually resurrected Jesus that Saul encountered on his famed road to Damascus, and if it was good enough for Paul, it's good enough for us!
As a panentheist who embraces process theology, I would say, no - God isn't able to violate the laws of physics and "do a physical resurrection" - at least not as that's traditionally understood. I would say, however, that God and certain humans co-creatively "resurrected" Jesus within the life of those early followers of Jesus who were grieving his death - through remembrances and epiphanies such as the one that happened on the road to Emmaus. They came to realize that the truth of the Way that Jesus had been teaching (the way of compassion, unconditional love, forgiveness, restorative justice, mercy and loving-kindness) really and truly does provide vital and transformative life - abundant and eternal. And that it can't be killed. Those who came to this realization are those who Jesus continues to "live in" and as such, they, collectively, are the living Body of Christ. So, in a way, that is a physical resurrection - embodied in the lives of the community of believers.
~ Rev. Roger Wolsey
Read and share online here
About the Author
Rev. Roger Wolsey is a United Methodist pastor who resides in Grand Junction, CO. Roger is author of Kissing Fish: Christianity for people who don’t like Christianity and blogs for Patheos as The Holy Kiss and serves on the Board of Directors of ProgressiveChristianity.Org. Roger became “a Christian on purpose” during his college years and he experienced a call to ordained ministry two years after college. He values the Wesleyan approach to the faith and, as a certified spiritual director, he seeks to help others grow and mature. Roger enjoys yoga; playing trumpet; motorcycling; and camping with his son. He served as the Director of the Wesley Foundation campus ministry at the University of Colorado in Boulder for 14 years, and has served as pastor of churches in Minnesota, Iowa, and currently serves as the pastor of Fruita UMC in Colorado, and also serves as the "CRM" (Congregational Resource Minister/Church Consultant) for the Utah/Western Colorado District of the Mountain Sky Conference.
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| Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook! |
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| Advent is here!
The season of Advent begins tomorrow. Each year, as we hear the familiar stories of Jesus’ birth, we are challenged anew to see how radical they really are. Matthew lifts up women in Jesus’ genealogy and portrays the Holy Family as refugees who flee to Egypt. Luke portrays Jesus’ birth in a manger surrounded by animals and lowly shepherds. Regardless of the historicity of these events, reading the stories reminds us each year that Jesus’ ministry was to those who were marginalized by society. Advent acts as an invitation for us to reflect on how we relate today to those who find themselves in similar circumstances to the people in the birth narratives. How is it that we care for those who are oppressed or impoverished on both personal and system levels?
At Progressing Spirit and ProgressiveChristianity.org we strive to give you resources so that you can engage with these questions on a deeper level, personally or within your faith community. However, to continue to do this, we need your support. This Advent, we hope that you’ll consider supporting the work of Progressing Spirit and ProgressiveChristianity.org.
May you have a meaningful Advent that is filled with hope, peace, joy, and love.
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Origins of the New Testament, Part XIX:
How the Synagogue Shaped the Gospel of Mark
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
April 8, 2010
Has it ever occurred to you that Mark, the first gospel to be written, was in fact a Jewish book created in the synagogue and organized according to the liturgical pattern of synagogue worship? Such an idea sounds very strange to modern Christian people for it carries our imaginations far beyond the boundaries inside which we Christians are comfortable. I would like, however, in this column to show you that this claim is in fact accurate.
The first thing we need to embrace in order to study the gospels properly is the history of anti-Semitism in the Christian Church. I learned most of my anti-Semitism in my Sunday school as a child. In my printed Sunday school material I was never introduced to a good Jew! All of the Jews in the Jesus story appeared to me to be sinister and hostile; the bad guys in the drama, always out to get Jesus. They had names that I was taught to disrespect like Judas Iscariot, Annas, Caiaphas, Sadducees, Pharisees and scribes. No one in my Sunday school ever told me that Jesus was a Jew. When I saw pictures of him, he looked rather Nordic, with blond hair, blue eyes and a fair skin. I thought he must have been a Swede! I was also never told that the twelve disciples were Jews, that Paul and Mary Magdalene were Jews, that all of the writers of the books in the Bible were Jews, with the only possible exception being Luke, who appears to have been born a Gentile, but to have converted to Judaism.
Our cultural anti-Semitism has actually served to blind us to the deep roots in Judaism that the Christian story possesses. All Christians are “spiritual Semites.” Judaism is the womb in which we were conceived and the faith tradition in which Christianity was nurtured until the church and the synagogue parted company in a rather unpleasant manner around the year 88 CE. Embrace that date if you will. The Christian movement did not separate itself from Judaism until some 58 years after the crucifixion of Jesus! This means that, at the very least, the gospel of Mark and the gospel of Matthew were written before the Christians separated from the synagogue. While Luke’s gospel may have come after the split, it is based so deeply on Mark that it too bears the stamp of the time when Christians and Jews both worshiped together Sabbath by Sabbath in the synagogue. The disciples of Jesus at this time were not called “Christians” but “The Followers of the Way,” and they were regarded by the Orthodox power center of Judaism as a group of Jewish Revisionists who were dedicated to incorporating Jesus into the ongoing Jewish story as prophets like Isaiah, Amos and Micah had themselves once been incorporated. All of this means that the primary place the stories of Jesus were remembered and recalled during the “oral period” of Christian history was in the synagogue at a Sabbath day service. In that liturgy, first the Torah and then the prophets would be read, interspersed with Psalms. Next, the assembled worshipers would be solicited for their comments on the scripture readings. In this manner, the disciples of Jesus recalled events and teachings in Jesus’ life and related these to the lessons just read. Soon the scriptures began to be understood by these disciples as pointing to Jesus and even to being fulfilled in Jesus. Inevitably, these Jesus stories were also incorporated into the annual cycle of feasts and fasts regularly observed in the synagogue. Ultimately, forming a consistent and set body of material, these stories were gathered together in the order of the Jewish liturgical year. It was this custom that ultimately shaped the gospel of Mark.
With this order in place in Mark, when Matthew and Luke used Mark as the basis of their volumes they inevitably adopted the same liturgical frame of reference. Even with Mark in common, Matthew and Luke differed since they reflected two very different Jewish world views, Matthew being traditional and Luke reflecting the world of dispersed Jews into whose life gentiles were constantly coming. Still the first three gospels had so many similarities that the three of them came to be known as the “synoptic gospels,” the reflections of those who had seen (optic) with (syn) their own eyes. While that eyewitness claim is now dismissed as factually accurate, the essential unity and internal dependency of these three gospels is still widely asserted. Matthew has in fact included about 90% of Mark in his narrative and most of it almost verbatim. Luke, a bit less dependent on Mark, has still included about 50% of Mark’s content in his narrative. Both of these later gospels also adopt Mark’s outline, which was the telling of the Jesus story against the background of a one-year cycle of synagogue liturgical observances. That is why each of these gospels presents Jesus’ public ministry as a one year phenomenon — not because that ministry was one year long, but because the story of his public life, from his baptism to his crucifixion, was told against the background of a one year synagogue cycle. Unfortunately, this background material is not seen unless and until a reader is knowledgeable about that liturgical pattern. Let me try to lift it to the awareness of my readers.
The climax of Mark is the story of the passion and crucifixion of Jesus. In Mark, almost 40% of his gospel deals with the last week in the life of Jesus. Of Mark’s 16 chapters, chapters one to ten are dedicated to the life of Jesus from his baptism up to his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, five days prior to Good Friday and just seven days prior to the story of the resurrection. That last week becomes the context of chapters 11-16. To draw the contrast even more sharply, the story of the last twenty-four hours of Jesus’ earthly life consumes 105 verses of Mark’s text, while the Easter story is relegated to only eight verses.
The first and most obvious fact is that the crucifixion of Jesus is told against the background of the Jewish observance of the Passover celebration. Jesus had been identified as the new paschal lamb by Paul when he wrote some fifteen years before Mark that “Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed for us (I Cor. 5:7).” People have assumed for centuries that the crucifixion had occurred during the Passover season when the fact was that it was more probable that the Passover had been used by the followers of Jesus to interpret the death of Jesus and that this is what pulled the two observances together. There is a body of data in the gospels that suggests that the crucifixion occurred not in the spring, but rather in the fall of the year. (That data is beyond the scope of this column, but for those who might be interested I outlined it in my book: Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes) The death of the paschal lamb was believed by the Jews to have broken the power of death at the time of the Exodus. The death of Jesus was believed by his disciples to have broken the power of death at the time of his cross and resurrection. So, the story of the death of Jesus was purposefully designed to be observed during the Passover season. That was not history so much as it was liturgy.
Once we connect the Passover with the crucifixion, it is possible to see that, in the whole gospel of Mark, the story of Jesus is being retold against the events of the Jewish holy days. So place the crucifixion of Jesus at the time of the Passover and then roll Mark’s gospel backward across the synagogue’s liturgical year and it becomes obvious that this is how Mark organized his gospel. The Jewish celebration, about three months prior to Passover, is called Dedication or Hanukkah. This holy day recalls the time when the light of God was restored to the Temple during the period of the Maccabees. The story in Mark’s gospel that occurs at exactly that time is the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration in which the light of God falls not on the Temple as the Jews asserted, but on Jesus first and then Moses and Elijah, transfiguring them all. This story further suggests that Moses, a symbol for the Law, and Elijah, a symbol for the prophets, are subsumed into the meaning of Jesus, who is then interpreted as the new Temple. Presumably, the old Temple, which had been destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, was no more and the disciples of Jesus were interpreting him as the new meeting place between God and human life.
If one keeps rolling Mark backward, the next Jewish feast is Sukkoth or Tabernacles which was the eight-day celebration of the harvest. The Jesus story which Mark relates in chapter four comes exactly at that place where Sukkoth is being observed. It is the parable of the sower, who sowed the seed on four different kinds of soil, yielding four different types of harvest, and is then followed by Jesus’ explanation of that parable. Indeed, this chapter with its clear harvest theme contains sufficient material to cover the eight days of the harvest festival.
Keep rolling Mark backward and one comes next to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, observed some five days before Sukkoth begins. Here one discovers in Mark’s chapters two and three a series of healing, cleansing stories, including the call of Levi into discipleship from the unclean world of being a tax collector for the Gentile conqueror. These are perfect Jesus stories to carry the meaning of Yom Kippur. Once again, Mark’s order fits the synagogue’s liturgical year. Finally, Mark runs out with chapter one that occurs at the time when the Jews were celebrating Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. The Jews observed that day by blowing the shofar, gathering the people, announcing that the Kingdom of God was at hand and urging them to prepare for it by repenting. Here, Mark’s gospel opens with the story of John the Baptist, portrayed as the human shofar, gathering the people, announcing to them that the Kingdom of God is dawning in the life of Jesus and urging them to prepare for his coming with repentance.
The unrecognized organizing principle in the first gospel to be written reveals that Mark has crafted Jesus stories for use in the synagogue from Rosh Hashanah to Passover, or for six and a half months of the Jewish liturgical year. Have you ever wondered why Mark is shorter than Matthew or Luke? Mark only covered six and a half months of the calendar year. Both Matthew and Luke would stretch Mark by providing stories for the other five and a half months. First, grasp the concept. Then we will fill in the details.
~ John Shelby Spong
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