-----Original Message-----
From: Jaime R Vergara <jrvergarajr2031@aol.com>
To: jayvee_vallejera <jayvee_vallejera@saipantribune.com>; mark_rabago <mark_rabago@saipantribune.com>; editor <editor@saipantribune.com>
Sent: Sun, Mar 24, 2013 1:26 pm
Subject: OpEd Tuesday

Tuesday's Temple Tour

Raised in mainline Reformation tradition of Christendom, steep in Biblical scholarship where we became clear that the paper idolatry reflected in the “Bible says” syndrome is an aberration rather than the rule, we were spared the literalism that bedevils many of fellow wayfarers on the footsteps of the carpenter from Galilee.

I will assume that the reader has a healthy appreciation of the Biblical stories but is in no way attached to the nit-picking, verse-quoting, authority-seeking user of holy writ. As far as the Biblos (literally, many books) is concerned, the writings took more than a century to accomplish covering more than two centuries of memory, meant to be rich in metaphor on the spiritual journey of the writers, but not in today’s sense of accounts of events. Nor is it similar to a document that showed up mysteriously in the hands of the Prophet Mohammed as told by some about the Koran, or of the Book of Mormons of Joseph Smith in upstate New York before his colleagues took off for Missouri and Utah.

The Gospels of the New Testament are four of possible 50 gospel writingsabout Jesus, decided to be canonical 300 years after the fact. The earliest account we have of Mark was written two generations after the event, seen from the perspective of a defeated people after the Romans sacked Jerusalem in AD 72.

The dramaturgy evolved from the incarnate baby Jesus in a manger (Matthew and Luke) through the transcendent perspective of humans distancing themselves from the demands of their bodies (we now observe a 40-day fast called Lent from the Medieval age), to the full engagement of the blessed chosen person into the plain of history we call the Holy (wholesome) Week; from the triumphant entry into Jerusalem to the victory of the empty tomb, preceded by the earthiness of a common meal and a wrenching Friday afternoon crucifixion affirming a resurrection back to Galilee and on to glory.

These are language of drama, not history. We do not always remember that the "nevertheless" story between the hosanna palm fronds on the entry to Jerusalem to the common meal in the Upper Room, into the third hour afternoon on Friday, have since been symbolized in the High Mass as the Eucharist.

Let’s recap. Incarnate is the perspective of the “I”, of each of us born a free and winsome creative individuals who are one out of two million sperms mysteriously chosen by an ovum to create one, unique, unrepeatable gift of humanity of which, there was none like it before, and there will never be another one like it ever again. The “it” that “I” am, is somebody. So are “you”!

Transcendence is the perspective of the Greeks’ “theos” (God) from the heights of Mt. Olympus. In our time, that would be from the farthest reaches of the Hubble telescope. From that perspective, we are not even a pixel in the HDTV of life. Our planet is but the third rock to the sun in a stellar solar system minuscule in the Milky Way, shadowed by the Andromeda giant next door, and we haven’t taken the trillion of light years perspective yet. “I” am clearly a nobody in the universal scheme of things.

History is the “human” perspective. The somebody that is “I” and the nobody that is “me” are merged in the historical “we” of which “I am” a finite part. The human perspective, BTW, is recent, perhaps, no more than 10,000 years in a planet that is 4.3 billion years old. This is where the story of the Jesus the Christ journey fits. His story is carried by a group of people who call themselves the “ecclesia”, the household of God (the theos, of the transcendent view). We might want to get clear that the word “Christ” is not the last name of Jesus; it is the role his disciples confessed he played, and the one his followers are to play as well.

My Christian reflection today is the practical implication of this week’s story, particularly on the account’s Tuesday of that Holy Week before the nightmares of Gethsemane. The book of Luke quotes Jesus saying: “It is written, my house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it ‘a den of robbers’” (NIV light edition).

Less we take the easy way out, gloss over this part of the story by piously going back to the portals of the temple and demonizing the taxman, we might look at it from the perspective of 2013, and ask the question: who in our time is demeaning persons just because of who they are? Who is making the household of God a palace of perdition? In the 60s, onward even today, they are the good folks who discriminate against persons of color. The Civil Rights movement took a chunk of our energy and awareness.

Today, members of the United Methodist Church of the Village in New York City rally to remind the nation that the Supreme Court is reviewing a case involving two ladies who vowed love and affection for each other 42 years ago and remained constant in their fidelity. They solemnized their vows in “marriage” in Canada later (there are now many places where the union is legal) while living through the challenge of multiple sclerosis that took the life of one of the parties. The surviving one inherited joint property against which the IRS (yes, Mathilda, the taxman is still with us) is levying a tax of more than $300 grand, a charge it would not make were the relationship hetero. Homophobia is entrenched deep in the official structures of our society, and into the recesses of our gentrified souls!

The United Methodist Church as a denomination is on record as being against samesex unions, but individual Church members from Bishops to laity take the other view, in spite of the official policy. We stoke the same flames with our renegade sisters and brothers.

Who shall fling their bodies into the prejudicial barbwires of history? Who dares march into the temple of our Jerusalems? My Nike shoes say, Just Do It! I do.

j'aime la vie

Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate!