[Oe List ...] 11/26/2020, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Roger Wolsey: Ball of Confusion; Spong revisited
Ellie Stock
elliestock at aol.com
Sat Nov 28 10:18:42 PST 2020
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Ball of Confusion
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| Essay by Rev. Roger Wolsey
November 24, 2020
“Ball of Confusion – that’s what the World is Today – Hey Hey” ~ The Temptations, 1970
The strangest experience during my four years of studies at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver took place in the autumn of 1995. Dr. Ed Everding taught Religious Education and on that particular day, we students discovered that the door to our large classroom was locked and the glass on the sides of the doors had been covered with dark construction paper. We waited out in the hallway until we heard the door click and we slowly entered the room.
The lights were off, weird music was playing on a boom box, there was a strobe light flickering, a lava lamp or two propped up on stools, and we saw that most all of the tables and chairs were either upside down or on their sides. There were strange things suspended from the ceiling tiles, there were odd posters randomly posted to the walls, most upside down… , and there were a few mannequins, as well as a couple of people who sort of looked like mannequins. One of them was our professor, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, complete with a lei around his neck, holding what appeared to be a Mai Tai drink in one hand – ignoring us completely. The other mannequin may or may not have been a person, one student felt bold and gave “it” a wet willie. It wasn’t a mannequin, the person shifted, yet kept their aloof composure. Oops.
After 10 minutes or so, the professor turned down the strange music and he invited us to turn the desks right side up and we sat down. As we did, he went to the chalkboard and wrote a word upon it that I’d never encountered before, “A N O M I E” and then he underlined it, saying it aloud, “An-O-Mee.” He went on to explain that the concept of anomie was coined by sociologist Émile Durkheim in 1893. It’s the idea that there can be conditions in which the norms, values, and assumptions within a society are no longer in place and the people feel a profoundly unmoored dis-ease. This dis-ease about things tends to lead to a felt sense of alienation, estrangement, and uncertainty about, well, everything. And, in many cases, it can lead persons to feel devastated and even to self-harm and suicide.
“Man [Humankind] can’t become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him of all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.”
Such alienation and estrangement from self, friends, family, community, and institutions is rampant at present in the U.S. and it is affecting many people’s ability to seek or be in relationships and to seek or maintain jobs. There is no doubt a correlation to the recent rise in suicide we’ve been witnessing.
I would suggest that the United States in 2020 is experiencing anomie, Indeed, a case can be made that many Americans were experiencing it upon the U.S. waging an unjust and senseless war in Iraq; followed by the election of president Barack Obama. The phenomenon of having a black person elected to such a high office, coupled with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that honors marriage for same sex couples in all 50 states – in tandem with many working class people struggling as manufacturing jobs were disappearing – created a perfect storm for the populist movement that culminated in the unabashedly bigoted, xenophobic, and anti-intellectual administration of Donald Trump.
This sense of anomie only increased over the four years of the Trump era – and reached fever pitch this year with the arrival of the twin pandemics of civil unrest in response to a mismanaged criminal justice system and to a mismanaged response to the highly contagious Covid-19 virus. Many hard working people who had fancied themselves as empowered by the current president (including his boorish and uncivil rhetoric and behavior) were loathe to discover that their ability to keep working their way up the social ladder and pulling themselves up by their respective bootstraps had been undermined by forced shutdowns of the economy. Many of these same people felt indignant when seeing mass protests and the (sort of) related riots and looting and found themselves rallying against the possible rise of a “socialist state” whereby the “values of the elites” will be imposed onto them.
While many of us may well feel that such fears are unfounded and indeed irrational and baseless, as Bishop George Berkeley put it, esse est percepi - what people perceive is the reality that they experience. Which brings to mind another Latin phrase, horror vacui – “nature abhors a vacuum” (attributed to Aristotle).
Close to half of the U.S. population have apparently been swayed by the propaganda coming from certain quarters and they no longer believe in the veracity of the mainstream news, the legitimacy of political institutions, the credibility of scientists, nor do they even allow for any goodwill, wisdom, or merit from the mainline Church (including from the Pope). Many, too many, of these persons are painting the mainstream press and media as “fake news”; and many, too many, of these persons are exiling themselves from Facebook and shifting instead to alternative platforms such as Parler which ironically claim to be forums that “don’t censor” – when in reality, they are echo chambers for ideologues who don’t wish to be challenged by inconvenient truths or dissenting opinions – thus, filling the perceived vacuum.
Such persons have been persuaded to believe that a frankly right of center neo-liberal such as Joe Biden (and the Democratic Party) is “socialist” and/or “communist.” And many of these people have also been convinced that true Christianity means being opposed to abortions, homosexuality, and universal health care. Indeed, that belief has effectively become a shibboleth for the testing of who is and who isn’t a “real Christian.”
It isn’t an overstatement to suggest that the U.S. hasn’t been this polarized and divided since the Civil War in the 1860s.
The truth is, many Americans would not consider Bishop John Spong – nor we, his readers, fans, and followers – to be authentic Christians, nor as good Americans (for those of us who happen to reside in the U.S.).
What to do? Well, we could do the typical human thing and respond to “their” tribalism with increased tribalism of our own – battening down the hatches, and shoring ourselves up for what “true progressive Christians believe” etc. – effectively creating creeds, dogmas, and shibboleths of our own. However, I am writing to advise against that. The last thing our society (in the U.S, and in the larger world) needs is another increase in harsher demarcations between “us” and “them.” The last thing we need is increased polarization. The last thing we need is more lines drawn in the sand.
We could even attempt to seek ways to engage with people who think and believe differently than we do with enhanced skills and techniques – see “Ending the Civil War.”
Over the past decade, however, I’ve grown to be less religious, and more, “spiritual and religious.” I’ve come to embrace mysticism as part of my life and way of being a Christian follower of Jesus. And from this place of connection to Divine Source, I’m encouraging us to not so much seek demands, platforms, and agendas lobbying the incoming Biden administration - as good and sensible to us as they may seem - instead, to deepen into ourselves and our divinity.
Now this isn’t a firm either/or, it’s of course a both/and, but what I’m urging is a prioritized emphasis that has us centering and grounding ourselves in the Divine - more than in ceaseless activism that comes from a cerebral place. I’m inviting us to feel into ourselves, embody the love that we seek to see in the world, and from this place of love engage in mindful, conscience, and prayerful action.
Dr. Cornel West famously said, “Never forget that justice [politics] is what love looks like in public.” True enough. But activism for justice that isn’t centered in Divine love may not be just at all. As Gandhi put it, “there is no way to peace, peace is the way.” And as the apostle Paul put it, “ If I speak in the tongues of [humans] or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”
I’m hoping we are all sensing bells of truth and recognition when we hear those words. With these profound insights in mind, I urge us all to devote the next 12 months to deepened inner-work. To increased spiritual practice. To spiritual disciplines. To embracing the mystic truth of our divinity. To remembering who and Whose we are. To truly knowing, deep in our guts, that we “live and move and have our being” in the God who is Love - and that ultimately who we are is love.
I’ve written on this forum in the past urging progressive Christianity to not “be so high/heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good.” Example, “Where the Rubber Hits the Road”, and “Putting the Shark back in the Tank”. And I’ve also shared in the past about the beauty and merits of progressive Christians embracing spiritual practice, spirituality, and mysticism (seeking direct connection to Source) – e.g. "A Call to Spirituality and Religious Participation" and, “Making Friends with Silence”.
Yet, I’m now feeling called to restate this as an ardent *need* for progressive Christians and the cause of progressive Christianity. If we are to be relevant – to ourselves, our loved ones, our churches and/or communities, we need to do our work. They need us to shift from our heads and more toward our hearts. More toward a felt sense of authenticity and compassion that others can palpably feel – that isn’t coming from a place of “new wording” or “re-branding”, but rather, from the hearts, our guts, our very beings – the authentic truth of who we are. And this isn’t just “light” work – it also means engaging in some shadow work of our own. People won’t trust us unless they know that we really know ourselves – including our darkness. As Carl Jung put it, “People will do anything no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” Moreover, people who we disagree with won’t trust us unless we recognize that there is that of God within them too – unless we too recognize their divinity.
The late Catholic (and rather progressive) theologian Karl Rahner said “The Christian[s] of the future will be a mystic or he [we] will not exist at all.” I agree.
I’ll close with some inspiration from the mystic poet Rumi,”You are not but a drop of the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” “I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.”
May we know that God is with us and within us as we do our sacred work.
~ Rev. Roger Wolsey
p.s. Here’s a mystic pondering of a passage in the Gospel of John from a progressive Christian perspective. Enjoy. “Holy Yogi Jesus Was a Walrus and so are You” .
Read 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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Question & Answer
Q: By Dean
Can’t say I disagree on your article: A White Man Makes the Case for Reparations, but it raises at least one question. When God’s people chased inhabitants out of the ‘Promised Land’ I don’t recall any discussion of reparations for the displaced people. Perhaps that is our rationale (excuse) for claiming reparations as a non-issue.
A: By Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer
Dear Dean,
Thank you for this question. It is an interesting one. My response will reveal my overall view of Scripture.
I see our sacred texts not as God’s literal words revealed to some human scribe who simply served as an empty vessel recording all that God poured into her.
I see them as the faithful and authentic testimonies of those who experienced something sacred in the otherwise profane matters of human existence.
I see them as creative, poetic, and memetic – products of human experience and imagination with the purpose of shaping hearts and minds and of generating a fundamental faith in a God with whom we entered into covenant and from whom we received the promise of protection, comfort, and eventually the promise of eternal life.
There were no cameras to record events, no journalists trained to record history without bias.
With every story told, there was an agenda – a need to perpetuate along with the story a bias, be that legal, moral, or ecclesial. In the best of circumstances, that bias reflected the perceived will of God – but not always.
Biblical records of the conquest of the land we call promised are far from historically accurate. They are idealized accounts filtered through the lens of the victors who wanted to attach to their victory and conquest both the aid of God and the approval of God.
White slave owners did the same thing. They attached divine mandate and approval to their conquest and enslavement of captured African natives. They mythologized their white skin and dehumanized black skin. That myth will survive as longs as whites maintain control of the public narrative.
In the same way, Biblical authors justified the conquest and enslavement of another people by attaching God to the story and making their God the agent of their bloodlust. Passages that describe God as commanding the enslavement and slaughter of innocent children and livestock does not sound to me like the God we would come to know in the writings and teachings of Jesus.
What does sound more divine to me are the invitations for peoples of the Earth to love their neighbor, to turn the other cheek, to pray for those who persecute you, to love your enemy, to give to the poor and the widow and the orphan. When it is written in the epistle of John that “God is love,” I take that as instructive. Scripture that reveals a God whom we know as love I receive as authentic and revelatory. On the other hand, passages that cannot be reconciled with the God whom we know as love are little more to me than the human attribution of our capacity and lust for evil to God.
~ Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer
Read and share online here
About the Author
Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer is the author of two published books, Beyond Resistance: the Institutional Church Meets the Postmodern World and Steeplejacking: How the Christian Right Hijacked Mainstream Religion. He is a recipient of Eden Seminary's "Shalom Award," given by the student body for a lifetime of committed work for peace and justice. John currently serves as the 9th General Minister of the United Church of Christ.
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This year, it may seem odd to talk about gratitude. For many of us, it has been hard to stay focused on being thankful when it feels like we have given up so much. Yet, perhaps we can use this time to assess what is really important in our lives and ensure that we are appreciating every moment. Indeed, tasks —like going to the grocery store —that once seemed mundane can now be a major outing!
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Origins of the New Testament, Part XVIII:
Mark, The First Gospel
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
April 1, 2010
The original gospel, the one we know as Mark, was written, I believe, after the fall of Jerusalem and its subsequent destruction by the Roman army under the command of a general named Titus, in 70 CE. It was the climax of a war that began in Galilee in 66 and would finally culminate in a mass suicide of the final defenders of the Jewish cause at a place called Masada in 73. The echoes of this fall of the “eternal” city are heard in a number of places throughout Mark’s text. The apocalyptic words recorded in Chapter 13 seem to describe the pain endured by the residents of the holy city in that catastrophe and includes the suggestion that they must flee into the hills of Judea and perhaps even to Galilee. The story of Jesus being transfigured on a mountain in Chapter 9 also suggests that in the minds of his disciples he has now replaced the Temple as the meeting place between God and human life. On him the “shekinah,” the light of God, that once was believed to have enveloped the Temple as a sign of God’s presence now shines on him. I do not believe that a story like that of the Transfiguration would have been written unless the Temple itself had not already been destroyed. Even the rise of the story of a traitor named Judas, introduced for the first time in Christian history by Mark’s gospel, suggests that those Jews, who were followers of Jesus, wanted to put some distance between themselves and the Temple authorities. To make the name of the traitor identical to the name of the now defeated nation, Judah, over which the Temple authorities had once exercised authority, accomplished that task. These are just a few of the things that cause me to date the writing of the first gospel around the years 71-72.
We have previously suggested that the synagogue had to be the setting in which the story of Jesus was remembered, recalled and retold during the time that we call the “oral period” of Christian history. That assertion is based on the fact that when this first gospel appears the story of Jesus has already been wrapped inside the sacred scriptures of the Jews. This could only have happened in the synagogue, since that would be the only place in which first-century people would ever hear the Jewish Scriptures read, taught or engaged. There was no such thing in that day as a “family Bible.” Books, which had to be copied by hand, were far too expensive to be individually owned, so the scrolls of the Hebrew Scriptures were community property — treasured, kept and read only in the sacred setting of the synagogue.
When Mark’s Gospel appeared, its text revealed that the memory of Jesus had already been incorporated into those Jewish scriptures. The story of Jesus had been orally transmitted in and through the synagogue. Mark reveals this in the first verse of his gospel when he announces that this is the gospel of Jesus Christ “as it is written in the prophets.” Then he starts his story by quoting first Malachi and then Isaiah. When this gospel introduces John the Baptist for the first time it is clear that John has already been interpreted as the Old Testament figure of Elijah, who in the expectations of the Jews had to precede the coming of the messiah. John is clothed by Mark in the raiment of Elijah, camel’s hair and a girdle around his waist. He is placed in the desert where Elijah was said to dwell. He was given the diet of locusts and wild honey that the Hebrew Scriptures said was the diet that Elijah ate. Then Mark relates the story of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River at the hands of John the Baptist. That was the moment, Mark asserts, when the power of God in the form of the Holy Spirit entered into the human Jesus and he was acclaimed to be God’s son. Mark has obviously never heard of the story of the virgin birth, which offers a different way for this divine presence to enter Jesus. Next Mark moves on to tell the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness for forty days, but he gives no content to those temptations. That was destined to come in later gospels that expanded Mark with developing stories. One can see the oral period at work here, for in the synagogue on the Sabbath first the law was read, then the prophets and then the disciples of Jesus would relate Jesus stories that seemed appropriate to those readings. Increasingly they saw in the Hebrew Scriptures the anticipation of the messiah’s life and when they became convinced that Jesus was the expected messiah, they began to interpret these scriptures as anticipatory of their day and the life of Jesus became more and more the one to whom all the Hebrew Scriptures pointed.
The second clue that reveals the synagogue as the place in which the story of Jesus was remembered, told and retold is that the gospel of Mark reflects the liturgical year of the Jews and thus has an appropriate story about Jesus designed to be read at each of the great liturgical observances of that year. One cannot see this, however, if one is not familiar with these liturgical synagogue patterns relived annually by the Jews. So let me file, almost by title, the major events recalled in the worship life of the Jewish people during their liturgy.
The first worship event in the synagogue, which marked liturgically the birth of the Jewish nation, was called “the Passover.” It re-enacted annually the Jewish flight from slavery in Egypt and thus their beginnings as a separate and distinct people. Passover is to the Jews what the Fourth of July is to the citizens of the United States. It was celebrated on the 14th and 15th days of the Jewish month of Nisan which, according to the book of Leviticus, was the first month of the Jewish calendar, although Jewish practice was not consistent as to when the year began.
The second great observance of the Jewish year was Shavuot, or Pentecost, which comes fifty days after Passover, hence the name Pentecost, which means fifty days. On this day the Jews commemorated God’s giving of the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai, and it was observed in traditional Jewish circles with a 24-hour vigil dedicated to recalling and celebrating the beauty and wonder of the Torah. The law represented to the Jews God’s greatest gift to God’s people.
After Shavuot there were no major holidays in the Jewish year for about four months. Then in the seventh month of their calendar, a month known as Tishri, three major observances occurred in rapid succession. The celebration began on the first day of Tishri with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Rosh Hashanah was observed by blowing the shofar, the ram’s horn, to gather the people together. When they gathered the announcement was made that the Kingdom of God was at hand and the people were urged to prepare for its arrival. It was the promise of each new year that the Kingdom of God would someday come.
On the tenth day of Tishri came the observance of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This was a day of deep penitence that included both confession and sacrifice. Liturgically this was an attempt to cleanse the people of their sins and thus to allow them to have their sins borne away, which would, of course, leave them fit to enter the presence of God as only the High Priest could now do and he only once a year at Yom Kippur.
Beginning on the fifteenth day of the month of Tishri and lasting for eight days was the Festival of Booths, also called Tabernacles, or Sukkoth. This was the harvest festival, the Jewish day of Thanksgiving, but it also recalled the years of Jewish history when the people were homeless wanderers in the wilderness between Egypt and the land they regarded as their promised destiny. It was, therefore, observed by the erection of booths or temporary shelters, which recalled their wilderness years. Sukkoth was the happiest and most anticipated holiday of the Jewish year. It was also the last Jewish festival for about two months.
When the month of Kislev arrived, located as it was in the dead of winter, the Jews observed a “festival of lights” known then as Dedication, but known today as Hanukkah. This was a celebration born in the Maccabean period of Jewish history (167-63 BCE) and it recalled the restoration of the light of God to the Temple after it had been defiled by the Seleucid King of Syria, Antiochus Epiphanes, who was defeated in battle by Judas Maccabeus. The end of the Jewish year came in the early spring with the month of Adar, which brought the people back liturgically to the month of Nisan and its celebration of the birth of their nation.
Every year the people of the synagogue relived this cycle of feasts and fasts and every year for at least forty years the followers of Jesus, who were still part of the synagogue, thought of him and spoke of him inside this liturgical framework. When the first gospel of Mark was written, this liturgical framework was clearly present and it became, probably quite unconsciously, the organizing principle of Mark’s gospel — and because both Matthew and Luke built their gospels on Mark’s model it became the organizing principle of all three.
We know that Mark began the custom of setting the story of the crucifixion inside the celebration of Passover and because of this Jesus was increasingly seen as the new paschal lamb who, like the lamb of Passover, died to dispel the power of death. What we do not see so clearly is that if we attach Mark’s story of Jesus’ passion to the Jewish season of Passover and then roll Mark’s gospel backward across the liturgical year of the Jews, we will discover that an appropriate Jesus narrative falls at exactly the right spot in the gospel to fit the calendar to enable it to illumine the festivals and fasts of the Jewish year and in their proper order.
Next week I will develop that correlation, and then I trust it will become clear that Mark was written as a liturgical book to be read in the synagogue with the purpose of revealing Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. It is not a history book. It incorporates the memory of Jesus into the ongoing life of the synagogue. If you, my readers, are like me, then once this key unlocks the story, the gospel of Mark will never be the same.
~ John Shelby Spong
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