[Dialogue] 7/05/18, Progressing Spirit: Toni Reynolds: Refiguring the Birth of Christ; Matthew Fox; Spong Revisited

5 Jul 2018

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                            <h1 style="display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 26px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;text-align: left;">Refiguring the Birth of Christ</h1>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><img align="left" height="156" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 156px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" width="125" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/_compresseds/273ef481-896f-4bc4-8ef6-d38f1a4902ae.jpg">Column by Toni Reynolds on July 5, 2018</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Part of the struggle for 21st century Christians is that we have inherited a tradition formed many lifetimes ago, a key component being the virgin birth of the Christ. This tradition has been handed to us with little to no permission to rework the interpretations for ourselves. I am eager to follow Bishop Spong’s lead in doing so before more time passes by.

The leaders of the past fit the Jesus story into the scope of vision respective to their eras and cultures, giving us the creeds and doctrines while prohibiting us from doing the same shaping for our own present time. We need not continue with this prohibition if we aim to bring our most authentic selves to the timeline of Christianity.

To me, there is no question whether or not Christianity is capable of being relevant in this century. From kernel to husk of the tradition there is something with which we can work to better understand God, ourselves, and our relationship to all things God has made. What I worry about is whether or not the churches that currently house Christianity are willing to let the tradition live in ways that it wants to, leaving it free to metabolize in each new millennium so that the people learn to be good to one another in ways that make sense to their changing needs.

Clearly, Christians want to do this work. You reading essays like this one is a small testament to that. The fan base Spong amassed throughout his career is an even larger testament. So, our enterprise is to free ourselves of the ruling old school mindset that claims we have no right to understand these stories for ourselves.

For Christianity to grow into our 21st century lives we must take seriously our right to understand these stories and concepts for ourselves. We have no choice but to embody an understanding of the Jesus story that empowers us to recognize our generation of Christians as fundamental in the lineage of this tradition. An assignment within this enterprise is to be about the business of truth seeking and adapting it for now. To find ways to encourage developing pastors to reject the acquired myth that “your congregation won’t be ready for the truth about the Bible.” We must share resources and knowledge, wisdom and practices. We must live our lives in ways that reflect our priorities in all situations of life.

In each gospel, creed, and doctrine existent in Protestant traditions is something of a time capsule for us to better understand the theological and political convictions of our faith ancestors. Whatever happened in those nine decades separating Mark from Matthew necessitated a deeper understanding of how/why Jesus’s birth was significant. Perhaps this is part of why this birth story goes from absent to colorfully present.

It is worth questioning if the virgin birth accounts were some attempt to acknowledge the impressive role of Jesus’s mother in his life and ministry. As Spong notes, Mark takes care to name that Jesus’s mother was one who went to retrieve him as others were calling him crazy for his witness (p. 106). With implicit and explicit emphasis on Jesus’s maternal line we acknowledge the importance of honoring Mary in some significant way.

What modern understandings of genetics has done is explained a process with images and details that leaves us thinking we know full well how a human being comes to exist in the stomach of another human being. Just because we can explain the process doesn’t mean the process is devoid of miraculousness; it’s just a different type of miraculous than the virgin birth attempted to capture. Perhaps more exciting is that it is a miraculous process that each of us has experienced. We share an intimate experience with Christ by having first arrived in the womb of another person.

I defend the extraordinary nature of human conception and birth because birthing is an incredible symbol for the act of creating. I believe we are each called to create as a way of making offerings to the world and the Creator. Birthing is a symbol I believe has the power to preserve the gospel writers’ hope that the followers of Jesus would take their ability to create seriously.

Jesus’s birth and life is miraculous to us for different reasons than it was miraculous to the authors of Matthew and Luke. He was born into and killed by a ruthless empire. These facts are not disputable. We know that Rome was good at violent conquest and brutal crowd control, from physical to psychological forms of cruelty. Yet Jesus maintained his sense of purpose and his commitment to compassionate action despite the temptations of a violent culture. Mary begat Jesus and Jesus begat a ministry and legacy that prompted generations of compassionate care for one another and creation. This is our heritage.

Creating is an act that is available to each of us. No exceptions.

To matter in our present context, our understanding of the birth of Christ must fuel us as we resist the ills of our world today. A new interpretation of the virgin birth must focus on creating with clarity of heart and certainty of mind. After a day of personal challenges, in a week of stressful headlines in the news, through a year of ever-increasing crimes against humanity our understanding of Christ’s arrival to this world must fuel us in the direction of compassion. Regardless.

Like Mary and Jesus we are called to birth loving acts in our own day and age.

I propose that a contemporary version of Christ’s conception and birth be more explicitly linked to our call to co-create Holy works for the benefit of all beings. To do so in times that are resistant to Goodness will better align us with the priorities of Jesus. Through our words, thoughts, projects, prayers, relationships, memory making and future visioning we ought to be consulting the Holy Spirit as a creative partner in our lives. Never creating in isolation, forever creating so that all might experience the fullness of life on earth.

There are many ways to reinterpret the virgin birth of the Christ child. To my estimation, the only crucial component that ought to exist in each is that Christians be motivated to live as a radical creator of compassion and justice. Ready to offer healing to a social enemy as Jesus does to the Syrophoenician woman, and equally ready to flip a table where injustice has become the new norm.

A crucial hope of the birth of Christ narratives is that each reader be inspired to birth radical acts of loving justice that go along to birth their own radical acts of justice.

One thought at a time.

One relationship at a time.

One song, poem, article, book at a time.

Happy birthing.</p>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">~ Toni Reynolds

Click <a target="_blank" style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #2BAADF;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=a28a0f1469&e=db34daa597">here</a> to read online and to share your thoughts</p>

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<strong>About the Author</strong>

Minister Toni Anne Reynolds is committed to singing flesh onto the bones of the Christian tradition by incorporating recently found texts of the ancient world into liturgy, sermons, and poetry. Toni’s Christianity forms a holy trinity with the psychological medicine of Tibetan Buddhism and the eternal Life found in Yoruba traditions. Balanced in an eclectic faith and focused in theology, Toni’s ministry offers a unique perspective on life, theology, and spirituality.

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                            <h1 style="display: block;margin: 0;padding: 0;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 26px;font-style: normal;font-weight: bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing: normal;text-align: left;">Refiguring the Birth of Christ</h1>

<p style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><img align="left" height="156" style="border: 0px;width: 125px;height: 156px;margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;" width="125" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/_compresseds/273ef481-896f-4bc4-8ef6-d38f1a4902ae.jpg">Column by Toni Reynolds on  July 5, 2018</p>