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Pope Francis
by Jaime R Vergara 10 May '13

10 May '13

Subject: A Roman Catholic Recognition Here is the latest from our newly ordained Pope Francis. If you are Catholic, particularly a Filipino Catholic who takes controversial issues to the side of levity, you'll appreciate this. Pope Francis recently finished his sermon. He ended it with the Latin phrase, "Tuti Homini" - Blessed be Mankind. A Woman's Rights Group approached the Pope the next day. They noticed that the Pope blessed all Mankind, but not Womankind. So the next day, after his sermon, the Pope concluded by saying, "Tuti Homini, et Tuti Femini" - Blessed be Mankind and Womankind. The day after, a Gay Rights Group approached the Pope. They said that they noticed that he blessed Mankind and Womankind and asked if he could also bless gay people. The Pope said, "Sure." The next day the Pope concluded his sermon with, "Tuti Homini, et Tuti Femini, et Tuti Fruiti." ***** With apologies to those who might receive this as beyond the pale of hilarity. j'aime la vie Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate!

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5/09/13, Spong: The Birth of Jesus, Part XIII. Introducing the Lucan Story
by Ellie Stock 09 May '13

09 May '13

Homepage My Profile Essay Archive Message Boards Calendar The Birth of Jesus, Part XIII Introducing the Lucan Story Somewhere six to ten years after the Gospel of Matthew was written, another gospel, the one we call Luke, makes its appearance. Both Matthew and Luke had Mark as a common source although Matthew used it more extensively than Luke. Some scholars also believe that Matthew and Luke had a second common source, a collection of the sayings of Jesus that they call “Q.” This source, however, has never been discovered in any independent way, so that its only existence appears to be in the common usage Matthew and Luke made of it. There are a few scholars who do not accept the existence of “Q” as a separate source. They account for the non-Marcan similarities in Matthew and Luke by suggesting that these similarities exist because Luke not only had access to Mark, but to Matthew as well, which suggests that what people have called “Q” is nothing more than Matthew’s redaction of Mark. I will not solve this debate, but just want to identify the issues and state that the conviction that there once existed a now lost document called “Q” is the overwhelming consensus of most American biblical scholars. For our purposes, we only need to note that there is substantial agreement in content beyond having Mark in common between Matthew and Luke. This also means that where Matthew and Luke diverge sharply, we need to enquire as to why. At least one of the sources of the primary differences between Matthew and Luke can be found in understanding the audiences for which each gospel was created. Matthew’s audience constituted a much more traditional Jewish community that saw Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish hopes and dreams. Luke’s audience was more a community of dispersed Jews, who had adapted significantly to the predominantly Gentile world in which they found themselves living and who saw Jesus in much more universal terms as the one who transcended all human barriers and brought human life into a deeper sense of “Oneness.” When we survey the books of the New Testament we discover that Matthew and Luke alone provide us with stories about the birth of Jesus. Then we discover that these two birth narratives differ significantly from each other reaching the level of overt contradictions. Matthew introduces the birth narrative with a genealogy of Jesus that roots him deeply in Jewish life and history. Luke introduces his narrative of Jesus’ birth with a story set in a Jewish context, but then moves quickly forward to its more universal meaning. For example, Luke also has a genealogy, but he uses it not as a preamble to the birth of Jesus, but as a way to open Jesus’ adult ministry. Unlike Matthew’s genealogy that begins with Abraham, the father of the Jews, Luke’s genealogy goes back to Adam, the father of the entire human race. Luke’s genealogy is a number of generations longer than Matthew’s. He also avoids the royal line of kings of Judah, going not from David to Solomon to Rehoboam as Matthew does, but from David to Nathan to Mattatha. The two genealogies also differ as to who was Joseph’s father. Matthew says it was Jacob; Luke says it was Heli. Those who try to force the Bible into literal harmony cannot get past these dual genealogies. Luke also gives us a story of the birth of John the Baptist that is found nowhere else in the New Testament. The purpose of this particular nativity narrative is to indicate the subservience of John the Baptist to Jesus, which Luke does at every point. John’s birth was spectacular in that he was born to postmenopausal parents, a repeat of the Abraham and Sarah story. Jesus’ birth, however, was even more spectacular in that he was the son of a virgin with the Holy Spirit acting as his father. When John the Baptist was born, the neighbors all gathered to celebrate his birth, but that celebration pales beside the fact that when Jesus was born, angels broke through the darkness of the night sky to celebrate and to announce the birth of Jesus. Indeed, Luke goes so far as to say that while John and Jesus were both in the wombs of their respective mothers, Elizabeth and Mary, the fetus of John actually leapt to salute the fetus of Jesus, to demonstrate that, even prior to the birth of either, John’s secondary role to Jesus’ primacy had been established. This reveals the high probability that in the community for which Luke wrote, there was considerable tension between the movement that grew up around John the Baptist and the movement that grew up around Jesus. Luke was weighing in on that debate in order to claim the priority for Jesus. As we noted earlier in this series, in Matthew Joseph tends to be the focus of the story. In Matthew the annunciation is made to Joseph in a dream by an unnamed angel, while in Luke the annunciation is made to Mary by a specific angel named Gabriel and not in a dream, but in real time. In Matthew the initiative is consistently in the character of Joseph, while in Luke Mary is the focus. Luke’s story includes a number of songs that are sung by the principals in the drama, thus turning what might have originally been a nativity play into a kind of “operetta.” Zechariah, at the birth of his son John, is made to sing the words that have come to be called the “Benedictus.” Mary sings the words that we now call the “Magnificat” on her visit to Elizabeth, her kinswoman, who lives, we are told, in the hill country of Judea. The angels sing the words we now call the “Gloria in Excelsis” to the hillside shepherds. Finally, an old priest named Simeon sings the words that we know as the “Nunc Dimittis” when he sees the baby Jesus for the first time and recognizes him as the fulfillment of the promise for which his entire life had yearned. While Matthew has Jesus fleeing from the wrath of Herod into the land of Egypt, Luke has him being circumcised on the eighth day after his birth, being presented in the Temple forty days later and then leisurely making his way with his family back to his Nazareth home in Galilee. While Luke certainly asserts a virgin status for the mother of Jesus, he never tries to ground that reality in the scriptures of the Jewish people and once the story of Jesus’ birth is told, Luke constantly refers to Joseph as the father of Jesus. Luke’s birth story is by every measure the more popular and the best known of the two. It is Luke’s story line, not Matthew’s, which is followed in our traditional Christmas pageants. These pageants normally begin with the appearance of the Angel Gabriel to a virgin in Nazareth causing her to go to visit Elizabeth, her “kinswoman,” in Judea. These pageants then proceed with the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem to be enrolled. On this journey, Mary is described as being “great with child.” When they arrive they discover there is no room at the inn, so she probably had the baby in the open country and placed him in a conveniently located feeding trough. No stable is ever mentioned in Luke’s text, but human imagination has created that stable and populated it with cows and sheep. No animals are found in Luke’s narrative, however, not even one who says: “Do you see what I see?” There is no star and there are no wise men in Luke. Luke apparently did not care for “magi.” In the book of Acts, which is authored by the same person who wrote the gospel that we call Luke, he reveals that he has little use for either kings or magi. So Matthew’s three kings or magi are replaced in Luke by humble shepherds. Matthew’s star is replaced by a heavenly host of angels. The symbols Luke employs are not gold for a king, incense for a deity or myrrh to mark Jesus’ path toward death, but rather “swaddling cloths” and a “manger.” Luke appears to have taken both of these symbols from the Hebrew Scriptures. In the apocryphal book known as the Wisdom of Solomon, Israel’s most opulent king was made to say: “When I was born, I was carefully swaddled for that is the only way a king can come to his people.” The manger or feeding trough seems to have been lifted from the first chapter of Isaiah, where the people of Israel are criticized for not knowing that they eat from God’s feeding trough. They do not recognize that God is the source of everything that sustains them. Luke will thus introduce the story of Jesus by saying that from the moment of his birth this messianic figure will recognize his relationship with and his dependence on the God of Israel. He will be placed in the feeding trough and will relate to God as a symbol of faithfulness, unlike the historic witness of the Jewish nation. Through this Jesus, not only the Jews, but the people of the entire world, will learn of God’s infinite love for all that God has made. There is one other echo from the Hebrew Scriptures found in Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth and that is found in the figure of Samuel. In the story of Samuel, his mother Hannah is unable to conceive a child and she is found weeping in the sanctuary of God by the high priest, a man named Eli. Eli tells her that her prayers have been answered and that she will bear a son. Samuel’s birth is thus also surrounded by supernatural events. Hannah then in gratitude pledges her son Samuel to the service of God. When Samuel is born, Hannah sings a song that is very similar to the Magnificat sung by Mary; indeed most scholars think the Magnificat is based on Hannah’s song. When Samuel is of age, Hannah takes him to the worship center of his nation and dedicates him to the service of God under the tutelage of Eli, the high priest. That story finds an echo in Luke when Mary and Joseph take the twelve-year old Jesus to the Temple for Passover, probably in a kind of Bar Mitzvah ceremony. Finally, to return to the genealogy of Luke in which Jesus’ relationship to God is publicly announced, we now note once again that Luke says the father of Joseph was one named Heli. “Heli” is the Greek spelling of the Hebrew “Eli,” the name of the elderly high priest under whom Samuel served. Perhaps Luke was signaling in this name that he was drawing on the story of Samuel to tell his story of Jesus. Luke did that with other names, as we shall note when this series continues. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Frederick Somerville, from Sweden writes: Question: I wish to comment on the situation in Europe (being a resident of Sweden) described in your recent column. In Russia there is a re-emergence of religious power walking hand in hand with the political power. Heresy laws are being introduced. This is a state where religion was considered "for the masses" not too long ago. Anti-Semitism is on the rise in Hungary (have they forgotten WWII?) In Poland the Catholic Church is gaining political power. So you could say that with increasing uncertainty the religions are regaining their position as "reducers of angst" (angest in Swedish). This is not a positive thing to those of us who see the gospels as literary documents. I am personally lending our local pastors copies of your books and this is triggering some healthy debate. My goal is to have them carry the theological debate to the pew sitters in our area. With an average of perhaps ten persons in church on a Sunday, they have to do something. I have noticed that I can have a very deep theological discussion with a pastor and they openly admit that they too have problems in believing in the literal scriptures. However, the moment they stand before the congregation, they are back in Sunday School theology mode. It is as if they are programmed to state the standard point of view. For me this creates a huge credibility gap. I fully believe that if they dared to take their own doubts to the altar and be honest about them, pew sitters would feel much more at home. Answer: Dear Frederick, I am aware of some of the things about which you write but I am not convinced that they represent new trends so much as an attempt to reclaim the past, which some people almost inevitably do, especially in times of rapid change or a shift in consciousness. I see no evidence that Russia is about to become an Orthodox religion state. I do see Eastern Orthodoxy evolving, if ever so slowly, into a new and relevant self-understanding. My experience in Hungary is that major shame embraces the anti-Semitism of the past. I see no evidence that the Catholic Church is regaining political power in Poland. The Catholic Church was the ally of Lech Walesa, but the people strongly resisted any attempt on the part of that Church to regain political dominance. Europe is moving in an increasingly secular direction. A Christianity that can engage secularism rather than trying to convert secularism to yesterday’s religious forms is the direction I think Europe will go. I am glad you are engaged with the pastors in your community on a new way to look at Christianity. I am not surprised that when they return to their small and, I presume elderly, congregations, they revert to the patterns of the past. Until questioning people darken the Church’s doors, there are few churchgoers who are capable of hearing a new message. For Christianity to be revived in Europe, I think we must take it out of the churches; wrest it from domination by the various hierarchies and present it in a new form to those who have departed from the churches. Of all the nations I’ve visited, I think Sweden has the best chance to do this because of great leaders in the past and the present. I think of such heroic bishops in the past as K. G. Hammar, Claes-Bertal Ytterburg, and modern leaders like Hans Ulvrebrand and Marianne Blom. ~John Shelby Spong Announcements Bishop Spong's new book, The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic, is available for Pre-Order NOW! John Shelby Spong, bestselling author and popular proponent of a modern, scholarly and authentic Christianity, argues that this last gospel to be written was misinterpreted by the framers of the fourth-century creeds to be a literal account of the life of Jesus when in fact it is a literary, interpretive retelling of the events in Jesus' life through the medium of fictional characters, from Nicodemus and Lazarus to the "Beloved Disciple." The Fourth Gospel was designed first to place Jesus into the context of the Jewish scriptures, then to place him into the worship patterns of the synagogue and finally to allow him to be viewed through the lens of a popular form of first-century Jewish mysticism. The result of this intriguing study is not only to recapture the original message of this gospel, but also to provide us today with a radical new dimension to the claim that in the humanity of Jesus the reality of God has been met and engaged. Pre-Order Here! Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. Copyright © 2013 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have a membership at our website. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 3530 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Unit 1 Portland, OR 97214 Add us to your address book

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Friend of friend needs a place in NYC
by LAURELCG＠aol.com 08 May '13

08 May '13

This is from a friend on the D.Min., University of Creation Spirituality, list. If anyone has a helpful suggestion. e-mail me at _laurelcg(a)aol.com_ (mailto:laurelcg@aol.com) and I'll pass it on. Thanks. Jann McGuire Greetings All, I have local musician friends whose son is very gifted musically and was accepted at the New School in Greenwich Village. We were chatting yesterday about their struggle to find a place in NYC area for him to live starting August. Do any of you have suggestions, networks? I sure would appreciate it - and in the meantime express my gratitude for this group and send you all good, Spring wishes, Peggy Short (D.Min., 2006)

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Climate Change Concerns #2
by David Zahrt 08 May '13

08 May '13

Y'all *(spent just enough time in Pace, MS to get it!)* * * * CLIMATE CHANGE—2nd Project I’ve found myself in despair about the way our US ‘consume-and-throw-away-society’ is influencing the entire world and the trend it has established and maintained and perpetuated in changing the climate. I anticipate that the end result is Global Suicide! I think that our grandchildren’s future is in jeopardy, and suspect that our great-grandchildren will have a planet that is uninhabitable. Some things that I am currently doing to counter the trend: --using the lawn for garden vegetables --collecting solar electricity for house use --riding my bicycle for all in-town trips --re-cycling paper, cardboard, plastic and aluminum But more needs to be done. I have at least 2 projects In mind. #2 The MARCH Friends of mine in Iowa are organizing something big and important. On March 1, 2014, 1,000 climate patriots will set-out from the west coast, walking across America to Washington, DC, inspiring and motivating the general public and elected officials to act now to address the climate crisis. This will be the largest coast-to-coast march in American history. The idea was initiated by my friend, Ed Fallon, a former Iowa lawmaker who also ran for Governor and US Congress. He now hosts a talk show--Fallon Forum website. Ed and his Team of people working on the March need as much help as possible using the grassroots and social media across the country to let people know of this opportunity. I would be willing to ask Ed to add your email address to a once-week email update the March organizers send out? Or you can get in touch with the project through the website. If you'd like to check out the March website, here's the link:http://climatemarch.org/.* * * *David* * * *PS. if you have other list-serves this should go to please let me know.*

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Climate Change Concern #1
by David Zahrt 08 May '13

08 May '13

Y'all *(spent just enough time in Pace, MS to get it!)* * * * CLIMATE CHANGE—2 Projects I’ve found myself in despair about the way our US ‘consume-and-throw-away-society’ is influencing the entire world and the trend it has established and maintained and perpetuated in changing the climate. I anticipate that the end result is Global Suicide! I think that our grandchildren’s future is in jeopardy, and suspect that our great-grandchildren will have a planet that is uninhabitable. Some things that I am currently doing to counter the trend: --using the lawn for garden vegetables --collecting solar electricity for house use --riding my bicycle for all in-town trips --re-cycling paper, cardboard, plastic and aluminum But more needs to be done. I have at least 2 projects In mind. #1 The Meta-Fours I enjoy singing—singing was an essential part of life in the Order Ecumenical. I seem to remember songs that set the stage for change and changed the public mindset. Didn’t BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND, and WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE contribute to the end of the war in Viet Nam? I’m proposing to create some Metaphors that give a new message for future options. I’ve brainstormed a list of issues and selected a ‘Song Book’ that has some of the old familiar tunes to choose from.(Old MacDonald Had a Farm, etc). [ I can forward this info to you on request ] I don’t know where to go from here. I know what I’d do if I had a Metaphorical song. I’d create a vocal quartet (Barbershop or Mixed) and start delivering performances. The quartet would be named The Meta-Fours. I’m sure I could get the quartet together. I need a lot of help—or suggestions—on how to pick the issue, write the metaphorical message, and put it to a tune. It may be that once the issue is picked the metaphor and the melody must be melded. I welcome— --help/suggestions on creating/composing the music --anyone interested in being a member of The Meta-Fours David *

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Little Richard/Fats Domino
by John Cock 08 May '13

08 May '13

Marshall, I'd never heard that version. We youth went down the mountain to Carolina, you way, to hear Little Richard sing "Tutti frutti, aw rutti" (not the words you sent, and thought nothing of the ones he sang-just rock n' roll) and Fats Domino's "I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill," which was obviously suggestive to most any youth past fifteen. Anyway, almost sixty years later it is a surprise to read the verse you sent. I guess more goggling than I just now did before I send jokes a'flyin'. John

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Passing of Peter Whitney
by George Holcombe 07 May '13

07 May '13

We grieve with Ken and Claire Whitney at the passing of their son, Peter. George Holcombe 14900 Yellowleaf Tr. Austin, TX 78728 Mobile 512/252-2756 “...we have the choice: we can gratefully cultivate the relationships that make us part of a vast network, or we can take them for granted and allow them to wither and die.” Brother David Steindl-Rast, Deeper than Words Sent from my iPad

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Moscow flash mob "Puttin' on the Ritz"
by LAURELCG＠aol.com 04 May '13

04 May '13

“What a crazy, delightful ever changing world! Who could have thought that in 2012 young people in Moscow would put on a "flash mob" happening, dancing to an 83 year old American song written by a Russian born American-Jew (Irving Berlin) whose last name is the capital of Germany...” click below http://www.youtube.com/embed/KgoapkOo4vg?rel=0

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French for the song you requested
by Sunny Walker 02 May '13

02 May '13

Thanks to Jim and OliveAnn Slotta, I'm attaching the French for "The Fire Across the Snow" (Le Feu Dans Le Niege), written for one of their campaigns in Lorne, to tune Windmills of the Mind. Let me know if you have any problems with the Word doc - I can copy content into an email, if needed. Sunny Sunny Walker SunWalker Enterprises 303-671-0704 Cell: 303-587-3017 sunwalker(a)comcast.net for ToP facilitation training information: registrar(a)icadenver.org www.icadenver.org <http://www.icadenver.org/> "I love my life!"

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5/02/13, Spong: The Birth of Jesus, Part XII. Making Sense of the Wise Men
by Ellie Stock 02 May '13

02 May '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR The Birth of Jesus, Part XII Making Sense of the Wise Men Having now described the miraculous birth of Jesus in chapter one of his gospel, Matthew turns next to his account of how the birth of Jesus was divinely “rolled out” to bring it to the attention of all the people of the world. His vehicle for this is to tell us a story of magi who follow a star that moves across the sky. This star, they are purported to believe, will lead these wise men to discover the meaning that Matthew has found contained in the life of this Jesus. Was this narrative the product of someone’s historical memory? Of course not! That is never the source of powerful interpretive legends. Matthew went, rather, to the Hebrew Scriptures, which were his traditional source for material, in order to tell his story of Jesus. In those scriptures he found all the elements he needed to weave together the familiar narrative that we now know as the story of the “three wise men.” So, following Matthew’s example, I invite you to come with me to look deeply into these Hebrew Scriptures. First, let me direct your attention to a passage in Isaiah 60, which calls to its readers thusly: “Arise, shine, for your light has come.” The point that Matthew was seeking to make in the entirety of his gospel was that in Jesus of Nazareth that light, which was destined to interrupt this world’s darkness had in fact arrived. Please note the universal quality of the star, which serves as his symbol of this light. A star is visible to all the people of the world. A star is trans-national and it has the mystical power, he believes, to draw all nations toward its light. “Following a star” is a familiar mythological reference to seeking the fulfillment of one’s dreams. The birth of Jesus was exactly this for Matthew. The light of God dawned in the darkness of the entire world. Kings, Isaiah asserts, will therefore “come to the brightness of your rising.” In Matthew’s creative mind, the wise men begin to emerge out of the shadows as he is inspired by this passage. Isaiah goes on to say that these kings will come “on camels.” Then he says they “will come from Sheba” and guess what they will bring? Gold and frankincense, says Isaiah. Does that not begin to sound just a little bit familiar? There are always among us, however, those who are religious literalists. So inevitably they will ask: “But where is the myrrh?” To get only two out of three gifts of the wise men from this text hardly makes a conclusive case. That is correct, but let me take you back to this text from Isaiah (60:1-6) and ask you to read it again, but this time even more carefully. The Isaiah narrative states: “Those from Sheba will come.” Sheba? Can you not hear the Jewish minds seeking connections by ranging over the entirety of their Jewish history? Matthew is telling us of kings “who will come to the brightness of God’s rising” that he is certain will occur in the land of the Jews, which is due, he believes, the homage of the world. He is proclaiming Jesus to be that new king of the Jews. The word “Sheba” in the text then immediately reminds him of another celebrated occasion in Jewish history when another royal visitor came to pay homage to another king of the Jews. So, back into his memory of the scriptures he goes until he brings forth the story of the Queen of Sheba visiting King Solomon (I Kings 10:1-13). Reading that story he discovers that this queen also comes with camels, bearing gifts. The author of II Kings tells us that these gifts consisted of gold, precious stones and spices. That text emphasizes the spices. It was, the text says, “an abundance of spices” that the Queen of Sheba brought, wagonloads of them, to be specific. The only spice familiar to the people of the Middle East at this time was myrrh, a sweet smelling resin derived from a bush. The Jewish people used it first as a deodorant. Cleanliness and personal hygiene were in short supply in that day. Myrrh tempered the body odors of the time. Secondly myrrh came to be used as the spice of death. The Jews did not embalm their dead. They simply wrapped the deceased body in a cloth or shroud and then filled the shroud with sweet smelling myrrh to drown out the odors of death and decay. Burial was not postponed for very long in that time and place. So, out of the Hebrew Scriptures, Matthew discovers a text in which a light shining in the darkness attracts kings on camels to come to that light and that these kings bring gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. The essential elements of the story of the wise men are thus found in the Jewish Scriptures. The three gifts, which Matthew has the wise men bring to the Christ child, were also symbols used by this gospel writer to introduce the adult Jesus to his readers. Gold was a gift appropriate to offer a king. “Born a king on Bethlehem’s plain,” says the hymn writer John Henry Hopkins (1820-1891), who more than anyone else put the story of the wise men into the life of our culture with a hymn known and loved by all. Because Jesus was perceived as a king, the hymn continues by having one of the wise men say: “Gold I bring to crown him again.” Matthew was thus introducing Jesus at the beginning of is gospel as the expected messianic king, who was “heir to the throne of David,” and destined to be born in David’s city of Bethlehem to a virgin and her betrothed. No, there were no birth records that he could have searched for corroboration. This is not researched history; this is a Jewish interpretive legend, a fact that Matthew’s original readers would surely have understood. Frankincense was thought of as a gift to be offered to a deity, so the hymn writer can say: “Incense breathes a deity nigh.” The Hebrew Scriptures contain 129 references to incense used in worship. It was supposed to be pleasant to God’s nostrils. It was to be burned in the Temple. The Torah is filled with references to incense. In Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, this prophet suggests that the sign of universalism is that “in every nation incense shall be offered to my name.” So with the symbol of incense Matthew signals the divine presence that would be met in Jesus. Finally, Matthew adds myrrh to the gifts brought to Jesus at his birth. The gospel of Mark, on which Matthew was basing his story and to which he was adding for the first time a birth narrative, had devoted about 40% of his gospel to the passion story of Jesus. He had begun the account of Jesus’ final week with the narrative of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. He then traced the details of his last week, which was to culminate in his crucifixion, burial and resurrection. For Matthew it was to be through the death of Jesus that his meaning was to be revealed. So he felt the need to signal this climax by introducing his death into the story of his birth. That is exactly what the presence of myrrh in the story of the wise men does. Perhaps we can now understand what Matthew was trying to tell us in the story of the wise men. He begins his gospel by saying, in effect, let me tell you the story of Jesus, who was born to be the king of the Jews and who in that role was to reveal the presence of God in human form through his crucifixion and the subsequent resurrection, which was to serve as the transformation of death itself. He does this by turning Isaiah 60 into a narrative of magi or kings coming on camels to the place of Jesus’ birth and bringing with them the symbols of Jesus’ kingship, Jesus’ divine nature and Jesus’ death. I suspect, and this is obviously just a guess, that behind this story lay a sermon, preached in a synagogue by a follower of Jesus, learned in the Hebrew Scriptures. I suspect that this sermon was delivered on the Sabbath when the lesson, taken from the latter prophets, came from Isaiah 60. His sermon was an interpretive story. Both he and his audience in the synagogue knew that his sermon was never meant to be thought of as literal history. When Christianity moved out of its Jewish womb and into the Gentile world, however, a vast ignorance of the Jewish Scriptures became a mark of the Christian Church. That was when they no longer saw the connection between the stories told about Jesus and its Hebrew antecedents. Having no other frame of reference, with which to interpret the gospel narratives, these Gentile Christians simply began to literalize the stories. They did this through their art, in sermons, in their hymns and in their liturgy. Rescuing the Bible from this kind of fundamentalism is now one of the necessary steps that Christianity must adopt on its pathway to survival in the 21st century. Being able to see the Jewish antecedents of these stories is the first major step in accomplishing this task. A few more facts that are frequently missed need to be noted by the readers of this gospel, so let me point them out. There is no mention of camels in Matthew’s story of the wise men. Camels are only mentioned in Isaiah 60. Nowhere in Matthew are the wise men said to have been three in number. We read that into Matthew’s story from the list of three types of gifts that the wise men were supposed to offer. The text of Matthew says that “opening their treasures, they offered him gifts (note the plural) of gold, frankincense and myrrh.” It does not say one gold gift, one frankincense gift or one myrrh gift. Finally, read Matthew’s story carefully and you will see that the wise men came to a house in Bethlehem over which their guiding star rested. In that house lived Joseph with Mary and her baby. There was no stable. There was no journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be enrolled. There was no census ordered by Caesar Augustus when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Those are details from a later source and one that we have blended into Matthew’s story. Our task thus far is to see Matthew’s original birth of Jesus story in its own integrity. This was the first story of Jesus’ birth ever to be written and it did not enter the Christian tradition until the 9th decade! About ten years after Matthew’s first birth narrative a second and quite different birth story would be added to the tradition by a gospel writer we call Luke. To his narrative we will return when this series resumes. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Nico Knottnerus, from the Netherlands writes: Question: I have a question. I learned that “survival of the fittest” meant that those who fitted, i.e. adapted, best to the circumstances of life would survive, not those who were the most powerful or the strongest. Am I right as your text is more in the last way? I apologize since English is not my mother tongue. Answer: Dear Nico, I am guessing that your question arose from a column some time ago when I sought to find a new way to discuss life after death by going deeply into life itself. There I talked about the origins of our universe and about the evolution of life on this planet earth, which began in the form of single cells and moved into self-conscious human beings over a period of about 3.8 billion years. When we discovered DNA about fifty years ago we learned that life is one connected, unfolding whole. Now we must ask about the things we have in common with all living things: plants, vines, trees, insects, creatures of the sea, reptiles, mammals and other human beings. That shared connectedness is revealed in many things, but chief among them is that to be alive in any form is to be survival-oriented. In the plant and non-self-conscious world of living, animate things this drive for survival is innate, instinctual and unconscious. That is what Darwin was referring to and people interpreted him to be saying that the driving force of evolution was the “survival of the fittest.” He was pointing to the quality of adaptability, which marks all living things. Part of what drove Darwin to this conclusion was his study of the size and shape of the bills or beaks of the finches on the various islands of the Galapagos chain. The way the beaks received food on each island over the centuries had changed the shape of their beaks. Those who were capable of adapting to the food source survived; those who were not able to adapt did not. Eventually the beaks were shaped to serve that bird’s survival. Human beings are the only creatures of whom we are aware, who, because we are self-conscious, know that survival drives us. In turn, this gives us the opportunity to direct, more than any creature has ever been able to do so before, the process of our own evolution. The down side in our humanity is, however, that if our own survival is our deepest driving value, we cannot escape being self-centered. We view all things and all people from the perspective of whether or not they aid in our survival. This is the quality of our humanity that I believe the early fathers of the Christian Church observed and they interpreted it to be “original sin” and subsequently developed the “Myth of the Fall” to explain that our presumed original perfection was ruined by sin. This in turn provided the definition of human life against which the Jesus story was ultimately told. Jesus was God’s rescue operation sent from “heaven” to pay the price for our sinfulness on the cross and to lift us back to that status of perfection which was presumably ours before the “Fall.” My sense is that these ideas are now bankrupt. Darwin revealed that there never was a perfect and finished creation and the absence of “original perfection” making the story of the fall into “original sin” nonsensical. One cannot fall from a perfection one has never possessed. Creation is ongoing, unfinished process. If original sin has lost its claim to validity then so has the story of Jesus rescuing us from that fall. So, the way we tell the whole Christian story is consequently in flux and must be changed dramatically. Can we modern Christians lift the Jesus experience out of the dated explanations of antiquity and find a new way to communicate that experience? The future of the church hangs on how we answer that question. Thanks for writing. ~John Shelby Spong Announcements Bishop Spong's new book, The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic, is on it's way and is available for Pre-Order NOW! John Shelby Spong, bestselling author and popular proponent of a modern, scholarly and authentic Christianity, argues that this last gospel to be written was misinterpreted by the framers of the fourth-century creeds to be a literal account of the life of Jesus when in fact it is a literary, interpretive retelling of the events in Jesus' life through the medium of fictional characters, from Nicodemus and Lazarus to the "Beloved Disciple." The Fourth Gospel was designed first to place Jesus into the context of the Jewish scriptures, then to place him into the worship patterns of the synagogue and finally to allow him to be viewed through the lens of a popular form of first-century Jewish mysticism. The result of this intriguing study is not only to recapture the original message of this gospel, but also to provide us today with a radical new dimension to the claim that in the humanity of Jesus the reality of God has been met and engaged. Pre-Order Here! Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. Copyright © 2013 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have a membership at our website. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 3530 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Unit 1 Portland, OR 97214 Add us to your address book

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