April 2014 - Dialogue - lists.wedgeblade.net

Invitation to google Archives project Spring 2014
by Sojourn 2014 16 Apr '14

16 Apr '14

We want to invite your participation in the Global Archives Project Spring Sojourn, beginning April 28 & ending May 9, 2014! We've expanded the ways to participate - either in Chicago or on your home computer screen. Please click the link below and tell us: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/19ohmYMiiXfM6ajcJ2DsCIlEjOyPKAZH550pheGjtMr… What's a topic we should work on at the Sojourn and make a Collection - especially one where you have some experience to share Can one of the Collection working groups email or phone you and ask for insights or help? Should we send you an event schedule of Live On-Air YouTube broadcasts? If you are participating in person, should we send you a room reservation for Chicago GreenRise building housing? Please click the link above and share your preferences, we will share Spring Sojourn information with you. Jack Gilles and Beret Griffith, For the ICA Global Archives Project Global Archives Project (GAP) Background & Forward Direction The Archive project began years ago. There are currently four areas in which work is going on: I – Accessioning: Preserving materials & indexing them in a database. II - Collections: Making key aspects of ICA's historical work available online. III - Global Research: Designing and launching the first Virtual Global Research Assembly (VGRA) later this year. IV - Network Outreach: Collections will be available to anyone; the VGRA will target specific communities around the world to invite conversations and collaborations.

1 0

ICAI Winds and Waves magazine April issue
by ICA International 16 Apr '14

16 Apr '14

Any problem reading this message please click or paste this URL in your browser's address bar http://ica-international.org/windswaves-mag/2014-april/vol-4-april-2014.htm Greetings, ICA International is again delighted to send you the link to the latest Winds and Waves magazine - April 2014 edition. Winds and Waves is published 4 times a year and is now beginning its fourth year. This is a global project and is making many connections. The magazine this month emphasizes 'NETWORKING' and is again filled with reports and stories from the many ICAs around the world. We now have a readership of well over 1500 persons. Winds and Waves is available through the ICA International website in several formats to download or to read on line, (compatible with tablets and smart phones), also a high resolution PDF to download for printing. We encourage you to send Wind and Waves on to your networks. and to contact the authors of the stories you read, to learn more, and to become more involved. If the author's email address is not included with the story, send an email to: hutchinsonsydney13(a)gmail.com Please follow this link: Winds and Waves Volume 4 No.1 April 2014 Saludos, ICA Internacional se encuentra encantado nuevamente de enviarle el enlace de la última edición - 04 2014 de la Revista Vientos y Olas. Se trata de un proyecto global que ha ido logrando muchas conexiones. Esta Revista se publica cuatro veces al año , esta edición es la que comienza el cuarto año de existencia. En la presente edición de la revista se destaca el 'Trabajo en Red' y posee nuevamente informes e historias de muchos ICA Nacionales de todo el mundo. Ahora contamos con un público lector de esta Revista de más de 1.500 personas. Todas las versiones de la Revista Vientos y Olas están disponibles en el sitio web de ICA Internacional en varios formatos para descargar o leer en línea, (compatible con los tablets y teléfonos inteligentes), también en un PDF de alta resolución que puede descargar para imprimir. Le animamos enviar Viento y Olas a sus redes. También se pueden poner en contacto con los autores de las historias que lea, para aprender más e involucrarse más profundamente. Si el correo electrónico no se encuentra en la historia que eligió envíe un email a : hutchinsonsydney13(a)gmail.com y se le enviará el contacto que necesite. Para poder leer la Revista siga este enlace: vientos y olas volumen 4 N°1 Abril 2014 Bonjour, A nouveau, ICA International a le plaisir de vous envoyer le lien qui vous offre accès à l'édition la plus récente du magazine Winds and Waves - celle du mois d' Avril 2014 . Winds and Waves est publié 4 fois par an et, à cette époque, commence sa quatrième année de publication. Il s'agit là d'un projet global qui crée de nombreuses connexions. L'édition de ce mois met l'accent sur 'NETWORKING', la mise en réseaux, et elle est à nouveau remplie de rapports et d' histoires provenant d'un bon nombre d' ICAs autour du monde. A l'époque, nous avons un lectorat de bien plus de 1500 personnes. Winds and Waves est accessible par l'intermédiaire du site web de l' ICA International et il est disponible en différents formats; vous pouvez le télécharger ou lire en ligne (compatible avec les tablettes et les smart phones), il y a aussi un PDF à haute résolution que vous pouvez télécharger et imprimer. Nous vous encourageons à envoyer Wind and Waves à travers vos réseaux et à contacter les auteurs des articles que vous lisez, afin de vous informer mieux et de vous impliquer davantage. Si l'adresse électronique de l'auteur n'est pas incluse avec l'article, veuillez envoyer un émail à: hutchinsonsydney13@gmail,com Veuillez suivre ce lien: Winds and Waves Volume 4 No.1 Avril 2014 http://ica-international.org/windswaves-mag/2014-april/vol-4-april-2014.htm Published by The Institute of Cultural Affairs International, 655 Queen Street East, Toronto, Ontario M4M 1G4, Canada. All rights reserved. For more information or to unsubscribe, email: subscriptions(a)ica-international.org

1 0

CLIMATE MARCH UPDATE
by David Zahrt 13 Apr '14

13 Apr '14

Y'all, I've posted info about the Great Climate March on the List-Serves: < climatemarch.org> will give you daily info if you go to ROUTE. You can get more details if you go to <wagn.climatemarch.org>. I considered training to be a TOP facilitator but decided that my hearing impairment would make it impossible. I had hoped that some facilitators along the route would step up and help us get our battle-plan. Linda Hamilton might have helped when we were in Redlands if her Mother hadn't been ill and passed on. Jim and Judy visited when we stayed at the ASU west campus. I'd like to get the group--approximately 35 Marchers to do some brainstorming/battle-planning and define our Objectives. I don't think I'm the one to do it. Last night we had a Massachutets resident, Rosa, who did a conversation with the group. She asked us to share our concerns. Sometimes she would ask for clarification to get people to elaborate their concern. She also scribed all the concerns. So we'll have that info for tonight's meeting. >From my point of view there were Objectives, Strategies, Tactics, Implementaries, and odds and ends. I suppose she began with an effort to get the group talking with each other. Time will tell! We're in Payson, AZ today--Sun Apr 13. We're headed up through New Mexico. We seem to be keeping our schedule. I'd be delighted if some colleagues would Link-Up and contribute some expertise. I think the person to get in touch with is John Abbe. He continually posts info on FACEBOOK. As soon as I get WiFi I'll see if I can find his actual Email address Peace, David

1 0

4/10/14, Spong: The Reverend Fred Phelps, 1929 - 2014
by Ellie Stock 11 Apr '14

11 Apr '14

Homepage My Profile Essay Archive Message Boards Calendar The Reverend Fred Phelps, 1929 - 2014 “I believe that all homosexuals should be castrated with rusty barbed wire.” Those words came at me from a television screen a number of years ago. The spokesman was identified as an ordained Christian minister, who headed a Baptist Church in the mid-west. I then learned that this church’s website was “godhatesfags.com.” It was in this manner that the Rev. Fred Phelps, founder and recently deceased pastor of Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church, first entered my consciousness. During the following years, we would confront each other many times. Westboro Baptist Church was not a typical Christian community. Not only was it founded on hate, but its membership barely stretched beyond the bloodlines of a single family. Fred Phelps was the father of 13 children, the grandfather of more than 50 and the great-grandfather of an ever rising number. At the time of his death about two weeks ago the Westboro Baptist Church claimed only about 70 members. It could be and was characterized as a fundamentalist church, by which I mean that its members clearly resisted any new ideas and quoted a literal Bible as the ultimate source of authority for their version of truth. This justified in their minds their visceral hostility toward homosexual people. They had apparently memorized the nine verses out of the entire Bible that have been regularly used to justify a virulent homophobia. First there is the Sodom and Gomorrah story from Genesis 18, which together with two later references to it, one in II Peter and one in Jude, constitute three of the nine aforementioned biblical texts. The Sodom and Gomorrah story is basically about a violation of the hospitality code of the Middle East, but it has been incorrectly interpreted to have been a story about rampant misbehavior thought to be homosexual in character. This was the “sin,” homophobic people have said, which brought down the wrath of God in fiery destruction upon these cities. From this biblical story, the pejorative terms “sodomy” and “sodomite” have their origin. If those who quote this story to justify their prejudice ever took the time to read it in its entirety, they would find it very strange. It winds up defining Lot, who at the end of this story impregnates his two daughters while in a drunken state, as “righteous.” It seems that an incestuous orgy is OK! Homophobic prejudice has had a way of relativizing any other moral weakness. I recall a television interview in 1992 when candidate Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, won a sweeping victory in the Georgia Democratic primary, even while allegations about his sexual indiscretions with more than one female were dominating the media. A reporter asked a voter from rural Georgia, that conservative, Bible-quoting, church-attending state, why it would give its vote to a candidate of questionable moral character. The answer given by this Georgia voter was: “Well, at least we know he ain’t no ho-mo-sexual!” In addition to the Sodom story, these people quote two verses from Leviticus, which brings the count to five. These two verses define homosexuality as “an abomination” and prescribe the death penalty for those who practice it. This is the text (Lev.20:13) that inspired Fred Phelps’ best known poster: “God said, fags should die!” Fundamentalists, who like to cherry pick their proof texts, fail to recognize that Leviticus also prescribes the death penalty for those who have sex outside of marriage, those who worship a false god and even those who have sex with their mothers-in-law! Another book in the Torah, Deuteronomy, prescribes the death penalty for disobedient children. Fundamentalists never quite get around to quoting these verses for few of them would still be alive if society took them literally! Three other verses of the Bible (that brings us to eight) are equally flimsy when examined, since the word that has been translated “homosexual” in those texts now appears to refer to male prostitutes in Pagan Temples. The final of the nine texts, and the only verse in the authentic writings of Paul that clearly condemns homosexuality, is found in Romans 1. It is probably the weirdest verse in the entire Bible. There, Paul calls homosexuality a God-given punishment imposed on those who do not worship God properly. When one notes how passionate Paul was before his conversion about keeping the law and worshipping properly, one has to suspect that when Paul wrote this verse, he was being autobiographical. Fred Phelps’ church had as its primary “outreach ministry” the task of picketing any church or Christian leader who gave support to the cause of justice for gay and lesbian people. This “ministry” was not always rationally exercised. For example, when the national Episcopal Church began in the 1990’s to take a non-condemnatory stance on gay issues, Fred Phelps and his friends decided to retaliate by picketing the Episcopal Cathedral in Topeka. At that time, the Episcopal Bishop of Kansas was a very fine, but deeply conservative, man named William Smalley. The Phelps’ picketers were so constant, so hostile and so offensive that Bishop Smalley, in reaction, became more and more liberal on the issue. Insensitive prejudice is frequently not just revolting, but it is also counter-productive. I endured and engaged this man and his picketers physically on four different occasions. The first time was in Rockford, Illinois, where one of his operatives placed his face within one inch of mine, while he shouted obscenities and assured me that hell was my ultimate destination. Phelps was also a lawyer and his strategy was to elicit a physical response so that he could bring a personal injury lawsuit against his victims. One learned strong personal discipline in the presence of his abuse. The second occasion was at Lee’s Summit, Missouri, at the national headquarters of the Unity Movement. The third was at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Indianapolis in 1995, where I joined with twelve other bishops to celebrate the Eucharist at a gathering for Integrity, the Episcopal organization for gay and lesbian Christians founded by Dr. Louie Crew. I had incurred Fred Phelps’ wrath when the diocese I served as its bishop, passed tradition-shattering resolutions in favor of gay equality in both ordination and marital status in the 1980’s. On December 16, 1989, in Hoboken, New Jersey, I had, quite deliberately and publicly, ordained an openly-gay man living in a publicly acknowledged partnership, to the priesthood. At that service I introduced the two of them as a family. At that 1995 Indianapolis General Convention, the picketers and the Indianapolis police were both out in force. The Integrity service had a police barricade around it, yet no one was prevented from worshiping. Hostility and even fear was in the air, but the church was packed. My wife, Christine, was seated in the congregation as the bishops processed in to begin the service. She noticed that the people in the pew in front of her were not participating in the worship, displaying hostile body language in the process. One of them held a note in his hand. Christine moved close enough to be able to read it. It said, “Which one is Spong?” The man next to him identified me to him. A few minutes later this note-bearing man left his pew and went out of the door. Somewhat anxious, Chris spotted one of our diocesan clergy, a bright, attractive, athletic priest, named Edward Hasse, who had been a member of the Ithaca College football team and who is today a regular marathoner, and she asked him to follow that man, He did so, notifying security of the possible danger. The security in that church tightened perceptibly. Nothing happened, but in that atmosphere of violence it was almost expected. My final picketing experience with Fred Phelps and his church family came at the 1998 General Convention of my church meeting that year in Philadelphia. It was my last General Convention as an active bishop. On this occasion Fred Phelps bestowed upon me one of my highest compliments. The poster these demonstrators carried through the streets of Philadelphia announced: “Spong and Tutu are fag lovers!” Desmond Tutu had been a friend of mine for years. I, indeed, was one of the bishops who laid hands on him in 1976 in Johannesburg, South Africa, to make him an Anglican bishop. I admired both him and all that he had endured in the struggle for justice in that country. Fearing for his life and health, I had on several occasions made arrangements to get him out of South Africa to come to the Diocese of Newark. Ostensibly he came to serve as “assisting bishop,” but in reality, those trips were designed to give him a chance to escape for at least a brief time the threats and hostility, which were his “daily bread.” When his Apartheid government revoked his passport, I personally called on the South African ambassador in Washington to make my protest known. I recall to this day the contempt in which that ambassador held this great human being. For me, to be linked on a poster with the name of Desmond Tutu while fighting against prejudice, was an occasion of both joy and pride. In 2000, when Harper-Collins published my autobiography under the title Here I Stand: My Struggle for a Christianity of Integrity, Love and Equality, I insisted that among the photographs included in that book would be Fred Phelps and his picketers carrying that sign. Fred Phelps later picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, the young Wyoming man who was beaten into unconsciousness, hung on a fence post in sub-zero weather and left to die. It was that incident, the Republican Senator from Wyoming, Alan Simpson, told me later that changed his attitude on homosexuality. Then Phelps began to picket at military funerals to protest the revoking of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of the armed services. Now with his death this twisted voice of hatred has been silenced for ever. I am not moved to celebrate his death for I carry no animus toward him for the things he did, not just to me, but to my gay and lesbian friends. In the last analysis, I think Fred Phelps probably did more good than harm. Sometimes overt prejudice creates its own even more powerful counter-negativity. So my prayer for Fred Phelps is that he will rest in peace and experience the unbounded love of God, which he obviously never felt in his earthly pilgrimage. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Charles Loving, via the Internet, writes: Question: I am a curmudgeon and have become an atheist after 73 years as an Anglican. Of course, the first ten years were a wash. In those days I believed in Jesus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas. From ten on, however, I began to doubt the veracity of the Bible and its legends. It started to drive me crazy. I wandered to other churches and none gave me any solace. None of the stories made sense. The ark and Adam and Eve just didn’t make sense. My father was a student of religion and took me to every church he could think of. He introduced me to opera with his transvestite brother who was a good Anglican. As an adult I taught Sunday school, telling lies to children. I lied to myself. I read a lot of books and my faith eroded away to nothing. I still go to church every Sunday for some unknown reason, maybe just habit. My vicar just doesn’t get it. My bishop pretty much doesn’t like me because I am a pain in the neck at council. Answer: Dear Charles, I have always liked 73 year old curmudgeons, but that self-definition is not your problem. Neither is the fact that you are an atheist. If believing in God required me to treat Adam and Eve and Noah’s flood as if they were literally described and historically correct events, I would be an atheist too! Your problem is rather that in all your years as an Anglican, you were never educated by the church you attended. You were instead propagandized by biblical non-sense masquerading as Christian Education. No reputable biblical scholar in the last 200 plus years has treated many of the stories of the Bible as if they were literally true. In this brief column, I cannot rescue the Bible from the fundamentalist mentality in which it appears to have been captured for you. I tried to do that in this column over a period of three years by going into the background, issues and context of every book in the Bible. Those columns were later published by Harper-Collins under the title Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World. It was recently re-released in a paperback edition. What I can do in this column, however, is to state some facts about the Bible that you should have been taught years ago. 1. The Bible in its entirety was written roughly between 1000 BCE and 135 CE. It reflects the level of knowledge and the level of consciousness that people possessed in that period of human history. 2. The four gospels were written roughly between the years 70 CE and 100 CE, or 40 to 70 years after the crucifixion. They were written in Greek, a language that neither Jesus nor his disciples spoke much less wrote. They are not written by eyewitnesses. 3. Paul, who wrote between the years 51-64 CE, never seems to have heard of Judas Iscariot, the Virgin birth or the idea that Jesus performed miracles. The creeds and doctrines of the Christian Church, which were developed in the 3rd and 4th centuries, would have been totally foreign to Paul. 4. Of the five major writers in the New Testament, only two, Matthew and Luke, include the story of Jesus having had a miraculous or virgin birth; the other three do not. The last gospel to be written, John (95 CE-100CE) not only has no supernatural birth story in it, but it also refers to Jesus on two occasions (chapters 1 and 6) as the “son of Joseph.” 5. Most of the miracle stories told about Jesus appear to have been either Moses or Elijah stories magnified and wrapped around the memory of Jesus or prophetic “signs of the Kingdom” that were placed into his life and memory in order to designate him as the expected messiah whose task it was to inaugurate the Kingdom. 6. There are almost no details of the Easter stories found in one gospel that are not contradicted in another gospel. This list hardly scratches the surface of the biblical data that might be included. My point in relating these biblical bullet-points to you is to let you know that these are not just my private opinions, but the attested conclusions of most biblical scholars. I know these things because I have been taught them as a student and I have taught them as a member of the theological faculty of some of the finest theological seminaries in the world. I have shared these ideas in lectures and through my books all over the world throughout my entire career. I have served my church actively as a priest for 21 years and a bishop for 24 years and have continued to do so for 14 years now in retirement. All clergy, who have been educated in a competent theological seminary, would also know these things. Of course, there is a lot of superstition and ignorance in the way Christianity is publicly proclaimed, but that is not Christianity’s fault. It is the fault of some poorly informed Christians. Without doubt, for the uninformed public God gets confused with Santa Claus and Jesus with the Easter Bunny, but that is because the leaders of the Christian Church have been too lazy to teach what they know and are unwilling to challenge the 4th grade Sunday School level of knowledge, which a large number of church-goers have not yet outgrown. I want for you the chance to know what Christianity is all about and how to read and study the Bible. Your letter reveals only the profound ignorance that you have assumed to be Christianity and that, quite rightly, you cannot bring yourself to accept. Please do not stop being a curmudgeon, but be an educated curmudgeon. The church has a great need for some people to play exactly that role. ~John Shelby Spong Announcements Discover more of Bishop Spong's writings and books here and support our mission as well. Copyright © 2014 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved.

1 0

HELLO
by Lucille Chagnon 08 Apr '14

08 Apr '14

Hi, How are you doing. I hope all is well with you and your family. I'm in a mess right now and I'm very sorry for involving you in my present situation but I was left with no choice but to contact you. I would have called you but my phone keeps showing No signal here due to no network...I had a trip to Portugal to see my cousin she is suffering from Kidney disease and she needs a Kidney transplant. Kidney transplant is very expensive here, I want her to come back with me to have the surgery. I need to take care of this, but I traveled with little money due to the short notice I never expected things to be the way they are, my debit and credit card can't work here. I need a loan of $1,800 from you and I'll refund you when I return. I will appreciate whatever amount you can come up with,if not all get back to me. I'll advise on how to transfer it. Lots of love, Lucille

1 0

HELLO
by Lucille Chagnon 08 Apr '14

08 Apr '14

Hi, How are you doing. I hope all is well with you and your family. I'm in a mess right now and I'm very sorry for involving you in my present situation but I was left with no choice but to contact you. I would have called you but my phone keeps showing No signal here due to no network...I had a trip to Portugal to see my cousin she is suffering from Kidney disease and she needs a Kidney transplant. Kidney transplant is very expensive here, I want her to come back with me to have the surgery. I need to take care of this, but I traveled with little money due to the short notice I never expected things to be the way they are, my debit and credit card can't work here. I need a loan of $1,800 from you and I'll refund you when I return. I will appreciate whatever amount you can come up with,if not all get back to me. I'll advise on how to transfer it. Lots of love, Lucille

1 0

blogging about The Fourth Turning Conference in Boulder. Ken Wilber's talk
by David Dunn 06 Apr '14

06 Apr '14

Hello colleagues. Here's a shortlink to the blog that is beginning to have content worth reading: http://wp.me/pCtdB-7y Today's great quote from Ken Wilber: "The era in which there are only fixed ideas from the mind of God is over. The surf is coming in and everyone has to be on a surf board. There has never been an era that has been more exciting and important. We have a chance to create real humans for the first time in history. What an opportunity to die proud of having been involved in this enterprise. Let’s hope we can do that." Davd — "Mystery, possibility, and the power to choose" David Dunn 740 S Alton Way 9B Denver, CO 80247 720-314-5991 dmdunn1(a)gmail.com

3 2

Global Buzz April 2014
by ICA International 04 Apr '14

04 Apr '14

Enjoy catching up with what is happening in ICAs across the globe.....If you wish to SEND a report...send to your ICA contact person OR...go to the members section on the ICA International website Please click the link below for the April issue of the Global Buzz Global Buzz Report: April 2014 or copy and paste this URL into your browser's address bar http://ica-international.org/buzz/7dayreport-14/2014-04-01.php ICAI Communications

1 0

4/3/14, Spong: Part XVIII Matthew - Matthew's Flashback to John the Baptist
by Ellie Stock 04 Apr '14

04 Apr '14

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Part -----Original Message----- From: Bishop Spong <support(a)johnshelbyspong.com> To: elliestock <elliestock(a)aol.com> Sent: Thu, Apr 3, 2014 4:02 am Subject: Part XVIII Matthew - Matthew's Flashback to John the Baptist HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Part XVIII Matthew Matthew's Flashback to John the Baptist We suggested last week that Mark, the author of the first gospel to be written, introduced his story of Jesus with a narrative appropriate to the Jewish New Year celebration, a festival called Rosh Hashanah. In that narrative, Mark developed one Rosh Hashanah symbol after another. Jewish New Year was the celebration in which these people focused on the hope that the Kingdom of God would soon dawn in human history. So Mark portrayed John the Baptist as the “New Elijah,” the mythical figure, who would come before the messiah to prepare his way and thus the herald of the arrival of the Kingdom of God. At Rosh Hashanah the shofer, the ram’s horn, would be blown to gather the people together in order to hear the proclamation that the Kingdom of God is drawing near and to urge upon them repentance as the way to prepare for its arrival. John the Baptist was thus portrayed as a human shofar. To cement the identification between John the Baptist and the “New Elijah,” Mark also dressed John the Baptist in the clothing that in the Old Testament was identified with Elijah, “a garment of camel’s hair with a leather girdle about his waist.” He placed John the Baptist in the wilderness, which was the location identified with Elijah and, finally, Mark gave him Elijah’s wilderness diet to eat, “locusts and wild honey.” There was to be no mistake. If the messiah was at hand, Elijah, the promised forerunner, had to come first to prepare the way and to announce the arrival; John was clearly being cast in this “Elijah” role. So Mark opened his gospel with John acknowledging Jesus as messiah, baptizing him and proclaiming himself quite secondary to Jesus. He then went on to tell us what might actually have been a fact of history, namely that John was arrested and imprisoned by King Herod. With John thus removed from the stage it was, Mark proclaimed, time for Jesus to step out of John’s shadow and to launch his public career. Jesus did so, said Mark, with these words: “The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” With the work of the forerunner now complete John the Baptist literally disappeared from Mark’s gospel. We do need to note, however, that while John the Baptist would not be seen again physically in this gospel, he would be mentioned by Mark when he described the rhetoric of Herod and when he described the rhetoric of Jesus. Both of these references will be of crucial importance to our understanding the way that the gospels of both Mark and Matthew were organized. This portrait of John the Baptist as the “New Elijah” was understood by Mark’s original Jewish readers because they were themselves familiar with the Jewish Scriptures. It would not have occurred to them to think that Mark thought he was describing literal history when he wrapped John inside this series of Elijah symbols. Even the narrative of the beheading of John the Baptist was itself simply the retelling of an unfulfilled vow uttered by Queen Jezebel against Elijah. Mark would suggest that Queen Herodias carried out this vow on John, the “New Elijah,” thus solidifying the Elijah connection. In Matthew’s gospel the story of John the Baptist being imprisoned by Herod and remaining there until his execution would provide Matthew with a way to re-introduce John, which is exactly what he did when he arrived at the celebration of Rosh Hashanah and needed a new John the Baptist story. What John the Baptist had done for Mark, namely to serve as his primary Rosh Hashanah figure, he would now do for Matthew, even though for Matthew it would have to come much later in his narrative and would constitute a backward look. Let me put this difficult concept into its Jewish context. Mark did not write his gospel as an exercise in either history or biography, but as a liturgical document designed to relate the memory of Jesus to the liturgical year in the synagogue. Because Mark’s gospel was written to be read in worship, he began it with a story that illumined the Jewish holy day of Rosh Hashanah or the Jewish New Year, which was where Mark determined his proper starting place should be. That was why he turned John the Baptist into the “New Elijah,” a Rosh Hashanah figure. Elijah’s purpose, fulfilled in John, was to prepare the way for the messiah’s arrival by announcing that the Kingdom of God was at hand. Then, as Mark’s gospel unfolded, he concluded his story by relating the details of Jesus’ crucifixion against the background of the Passover observance. By making these two Jewish celebrations the background for both his opening and his closing narratives about Jesus, he reveals that the book he was writing was designed to be used in synagogue worship. If Mark, however, opened his gospel with a Rosh Hashanah story and closed it with a Passover story, his gospel would have covered only six and a half months of the Jewish liturgical year, roughly from Early October to late March. That is the realization that helps us to understand why Matthew felt compelled to expand Mark. Matthew wanted to provide Jesus readings for the entire year. So Matthew had to front end load Mark to cover the five and a half months that came between the Passover story of Jesus’ final days and Rosh Hashanah, which had served as Mark’s starting place. We have already looked at the way Matthew filled up that time by adding the genealogy, the birth narrative, the content of the preaching of John the Baptist and expanding the story of Jesus’ temptations so that they corresponded to the trials of Moses in the wilderness. By this time Matthew had arrived at the Jewish Festival known as Pentecost, which as its name implied came fifty days after Passover. Pentecost, which was also called Shavuot, marked the Sinai moment of Jewish history when the Torah was supposedly given to the people through Moses. Here Matthew portrayed Jesus against the background of Shavuot. That is what the Sermon on the Mount was all about. Jesus was the new Moses on a new mountain, giving a new interpretation of the Torah. That carried Matthew’s front end load of Mark up to the beginning of chapter 8. The next major Jewish celebration in their liturgical year was Rosh Hashanah, which was where Mark had begun. When Matthew arrived at Rosh Hashanah, however, he had to deal with the fact that he had already used Mark’s Rosh Hashanah story to inaugurate Jesus’ public ministry. So while Matthew had finally caught up with Mark he still had to find a different way to deal with Rosh Hashanah. So what did he do? He borrowed a page from the technique of Cecil B. DeMille, the famous early 20th century Hollywood producer of religious films, and did a flashback! He took the data about John the Baptist contained in Mark’s account of his being arrested and imprisoned and with it created a new John the Baptist story to serve him as his Rosh Hashanah story in the same way that John had served Mark at the opening of Mark’s gospel. Matthew had John the Baptist from his prison cell send a message to Jesus asking him to clarify his messianic credentials: “Are you the one who is to come or do we look for another?” Jesus in Matthew’s account does not answer him directly. He rather tells John’s messengers to go tell John what you see and hear and then he recites a text that every Jew reading this material would recognize. It came from the writings of Isaiah and had long been used as the reading from the prophets at the celebration of Rosh Hashanah. Isaiah had written about the signs that would become visible when the kingdom of God dawns. Jesus quoted and expanded Isaiah’s words from chapter 35, to make this be a Rosh Hashanah story. Go back and tell John that “the blind receive their sight and the lame walk; lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the good news preached to them.” So Matthew now has his Rosh Hashanah story in place and John the Baptist has been reintroduced. What he has to do next is to provide Jesus stories to connect Shavuot, which ends with the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5, 6 and 7), with his new version of a John the Baptist story appropriate to Rosh Hashanah with which he opens chapter 11. That connecting material is what we find from Matthew 8:1 to 10:42. First there is a series of miracle stories, which not coincidentally illustrate the Isaiah text. In these stories Jesus is shown acting out the signs of the Kingdom. He cleanses a leper, cures a centurion’s servant, heals Peter’s mother in law of a fever, casts out demons, stills a storm, loosens the tongue of one who is both deaf and mute, restores the withered limbs of a paralytic, stops the flow of blood from a hemorrhaging woman, raises from the dead the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue and gives sight to two blind men. This string of miraculous deeds is interspersed with sayings that reflect the urgency of the time for the Kingdom is about to arrive. When these miraculous stories are complete then Matthew has Jesus go into the second of his five long teaching segments, which begins with the reminder that the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few and continues with Jesus giving his disciples instructions about how to live in that interregnum between the first coming of Jesus and the day when he will come again to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. Both the miracles and the teaching segment are designed to provide Jesus stories for the Sabbaths between Shavuot and Rosh Hashanah. Matthew is now ready to move into his flashback and to begin to tell his Rosh Hashanah story. Please observe that this is how what we now refer to as “miracles” came to be associated with Jesus in the gospel of Matthew. Miracles for Matthew were not remembered deeds, but signs of the Kingdom embodied in Jesus to establish his messianic credentials. It is interesting for us to note that miracles do not get associated with the memory of Jesus in the Christian tradition until the 8th decade of the common era. Paul gives us no hint that miracles, understood as supernatural events, were ever associated with the life of Jesus. If, however, Jesus was to establish his messianic credentials and to inaugurate the Kingdom of God, then the signs of the Kingdom had to be identified with his life. A closer look at these stories of human wholeness replacing human brokenness and health replacing sickness will reveal that Matthew believed that both Jews and Gentiles would be recipients of the kingdom. Jesus was the expected messiah of the Jews, but the Kingdom of God would break down all boundaries until Gentiles would be united with Jews. Matthew is painting a magnificent portrait and telling a powerful story of what the presence of God can do in human history. It is a Jewish story, not a literal story. If we can develop Jewish eyes and look at this gospel through Jewish lenses, it can once again be an invitation for us to journey into life, love and wholeness, rather than to remain on our journey into the pits of religion. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer David Hare, via the Internet, asks: Question: I have been listening to you for some time and enjoy you greatly. I just found a message of yours at a church in Florida that I haven’t heard so I thought I would give it a listen. And, once again, you start by saying how it’s wrong to think “God hated Egyptians.” I don’t have issues with your views, as I said, I listen often. But this one thing you harp on irritates me. If any people (not to mention a people “God loves”) were held against their will and suffering then why is it wrong for God to care? If it were blacks as it was and God smote America for the torture and captivity of Africans, would we say, “Oh, those poor slave owners?” Of course not. Exodus isn’t about a people God loves versus a random people God hates. It’s about oppression, slavery and God’s justice, which in this case is mercy for an oppressed people. Why do you perpetually misrepresent this passage? Again, I’m not against you. In fact, I enjoy you very much. But if Exodus means anything at all, it’s not that God hates Egyptians and so, we can assume, God hates Egyptians now or any other people. The story isn’t about God hating anyone. But if I were held captive, I would want to know that God has seen the oppression of his people. I get the concept of “a tribal God” believe me, I get it. But this “poor Egyptian” point you make totally misses the point. Answer: Dear David, Thank you for your letter. I am sorry you experience “irritation” at my understanding of the biblical portrait of God’s dealing with the Egyptians as described in the book of Exodus. I suggest that you might want to read that Exodus account a bit more carefully. This is tribal literature – not the word of God. First, the idea of a chosen people is bizarre. It assumes a tribal definition of God not a universal understanding. If you read the Torah carefully, you will discover that the Jews are not forbidden to own slaves, they are only forbidden to enslave fellow Jews. “You are to take your slaves from neighboring countries,” the Torah states. Second, if you read the Exodus narrative carefully, you will discover that several times during the reign of terror, that we benignly call “the plagues,” the Pharaoh is portrayed as coming to Moses with the willingness to let the Hebrew people go free if Moses will only ask God to stop the plagues. Moses agrees. Then the Bible says “God hardened the Pharaoh’s heart,” so that God could pound the Egyptians with further plagues. The final plague is God “murdering” the first born male in every Egyptian household. That is hardly the activity of a deity who is only concerned with stopping the oppression of the chosen people. Of course, slavery and oppression are wrong. So is divine indiscriminate punishment and divine murder. The Bible does in fact portray God’s disdain not just for the Egyptians, but for Ammonites (remember God stopped the sun to give Joshua more daylight in which to slaughter more Ammonites) and the Amalekites. In I Samuel the prophet urges King Saul to go to war against Amalek and to conduct genocide against the Amalekites. Through the ages, Christians have justified in God’s name their own prejudices against people of color, against women, against left-handed people, against homosexuals. Please separate the reality of God from the human portrait of God which fills the Bible. They are not the same. My best, John Shelby Spong Announcements This month, ProgressiveChristianity.org is having a $10 book sale on these following excellent resources!* Thank God for Evolution, Michael Dowd I Want to Be Left Behind, Brenda Peterson Dishonest Church, Jack Good The Emerging Church, Bruce Sanguin Patience with God, Frank Schaeffer Help us clear our shelves to make room for new resources and support our mission at the same time. Thanks for your support! (*while supplies last) ProgressiveChristianity.org 708 Broadway Suite 105 Tacoma, WA 98402

1 0

Re April Issue of Winds and waves magazine
by Robyn Hutchinson 01 Apr '14

01 Apr '14

April Issue of Winds and waves magazine Pleased be advised that the final deadline for submitting articles for the April issue of Winds and Waves magazine is now Thursday 3rd April, 5pm Sydney Australia time. For those still planning to submit, please ensure that your articles arrive before this final deadline. Thank you, The Winds and Waves editorial team.

1 0