It's amazing to me how timely and timeless is this speech by Joe. Forty something years later contemporaries like Harvey Cox and Richard Rohr and others (maybe even Spong and Forrester) are saying something very similar, in a nutshell, that faith is far more about what we do, how we live, where we throw our bodies into the breech, and on behalf of what than about "belief" as intellectual ascription to some dogmatic ideology contained in a creed. Randy

On Jul 21, 2017, at 9:21 AM, James Wiegel via OE <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

THE BAREFOOT JESUS

Today I am going to talk about the barefoot Jesus. When you talk of the shape of the Church to come, you are talking much more deeply than just external structures. You are finally talking about the depth understanding of the People of God themselves. That means that you and I must not only sever ourselves from Christian bigotry completely. We also have to understand how that bigotry came about. I am convinced that the Church of Jesus Christ in the early Hellenic period slipped into abstraction. She has struggled against ­ that abstractionism for the 2000 years of her history but never really conquered it until this moment. That is one of the reasons why I believe the hour at hand will be seen in years to come as the Church's finest hour, since it was impelled into history by forces that cannot finally be located in temporality.

The event is that the shocking happening which the church talked about as the Christ happening turned into an idea about the Christ happening. The tendency of the Church was to substitute a belief in that happening for the happening itself. Now I have already indicated that I believe the Church has struggled against that throughout 2000 years. She never won until this hour. And when I say won, I mean the fact that the Church universal has become to one degree or another, aware of this fact. That means the victory is at hand. Going through this awareness for the Church at large still lies ahead before all of us.

The key to what has happened in our day is that the Church has become slowly aware that the meaning of Christian faith is rooted in profound empiricism and not in ideas about life. I wrote an article one time called "The Christ of History". If I were going to write again, it would be "The Jesus of History". I wouldn't really call it that, because modern theology stole that term and ruined it. I would say that up to now I have thought mostly of the Christ happening. These days I am thinking of the Jesus event.

I still like to play, as I did in that paper, with the Jesus­Christ and then the Christ­Jesus. This time put the emphasis on the Jesus. This has to do with a deepening awareness of the spirit journey in myself from that happening of profound awareness, which is something of a gateway into the Other World that's in the midst of this world. The Jesus­event is maturation within the Other World, or learning to be at one with the Other World right in the midst of this world every day, every hour, every hour of your existence. But I mean more than that relative to the reason why I am concerned with the Jesus­figure. I believe that herein lies the key to the multi­form yin­yang which we sometimes call the third campaign. The third campaign lies ahead. I have said many times before that our task here is to find the social vehicle for the nurture of those who care, who have become aware in the Awakenment and engagement campaigns. But in order to build such a functional vehicle one has the overwhelming task of working through his spiritual bowels the meaning of having recovered from the abstract doctrinal approach or understanding of life to the understanding that's rooted and grounded in what­I call radicality or depth empiricism. To put that another way it means, as we have said together many times, that each and all bodies of those who care must find a way not simply to stick their fist through but to thrust their being through the glorious, but reductionistic poetry that is ingrained in them until they are consumed by universal humanness. This is behind the statement that our colleague made that he no longer feels like an Aussie, but like a human being; or the statement I made that I no longer feel like a man, but I feel like a human being. Somebody later said, why didn't I go the rest of the way. I felt with that audience that I dare not. But with this audience I can. I no longer feel like a Christian, I feel like a human being. Now, mark you, I say that I don't feel like an American. But I want you to understand that I am an American, and I am extremely proud to be an American. I hope that if our Australian colleague were up here he would admit what I know, that he is an Australian. I would hope that he would also admit that he is proud to be an Australian. What I'm talking about is on the other side of that. I want to bear testimony today that I am a Christian. In one sense, I was born a Christian and I intend to die a Christian. I am proud to be a Christian, to participate in the glorious heritage that ministered to the whole wide world, directly or indirectly. But I don't feel like a Christian; I feel like a human being. Now to come at this, to get it articulated, we cannot go with the rubric of Christ unless we go through the rubric of Jesus. That's why I am interested in the barefoot Jesus.

Most of you know that we went to Israel this year in order to study their comprehensive cooperative. There is no nation in the world that knows more about that than Israel. We had a fine time. I had never been to Israel. I could have gone there before, but I have avoided going to Israel like the plague, for I never felt that I was ready to put my feet in the Holy Land which is the source of many memories which are like realities in my own life. I was reluctant to go to the Holy Land now, for I was not prepared to go. But I was there. Being the Pharisee that I am, I tried to see nothing that was not a part of the mission of why I was there. I do not recommend this kind of phariseism to you. For instance, I passed within 10 kilometers of Bethlehem and never veered off the road. But fortunately, powers beyond my moralistic control sent me to a kibbutz that was at the foot of the Golan Heights. The Golan Heights are on the west side of the Sea of Galilee. And so, of necessity we drove through the famous Jezreel Valley, or Jezreel Plain. What a wonderful experience. For there across one way and then the other, the great armies of ancient history marched. The coastal plain is flat, and down the middle of Israel is a long rough mountain chain running north and south. But there is a break in that chain up along the sea of Galilee that cuts through. So the armies of Mesopotamia would come down to Egypt and the Egyptian army would cut through that valley to get to Mesopotamia. Alexander the Great marched his armies back and forth through this valley. On the south side of it is a famous Biblical town and later mighty fortress built called Megiddo, from which the book of Revelation got the fantastic symbolism of Armageddon. On the far side of the valley, high in the mountains and hard to reach, rests what in ancient days was the little village of Nazareth where the barefoot Jesus grew up. Now the reason that Nazareth was up high in the hills was the same reason that Termine is up high in the hills. For that valley, until close to the last half of this century, was malaria-infested, and the only way anybody had any hope of living in that area was to get up high. Also, in a secondary sense, it was good protection from those armies that moved back and forth through Israel's plain. The plain to the south is very frequently filled with fog and mist, and billowing clouds cover over what is supposed to be the Mount of Transfiguration. It has the strangest mountain shape of any I know in the world save Fujiyama. It looks just like a huge, man­made, evenly smooth, coal mining slag heap. And oftimes I would judge that you see just the bare top of that mountain sticking out from the clouds. Never was I anyplace in the world where I felt the kind of weirdness that I felt there. This even includes the moors of Scotland which would run a close second for me.

I went up to Nazareth on the way over to Galilee and stopped on top of the hill. I began to reflect, and it seemed to me like the heavens opened and there was a voice. And the term that was in my mind from then on was "barefoot Jesus". I began to understand how, in the midst of this kind of terrain and environment, something like a twelve year old Jesus came to be. I believe that that story of his sitting with the scribes and priests and confounding them was based on some kind of truth. That means that before he was twelve years old, something radical happened to a barefoot boy. And he remained that barefoot boy for twenty years before he did anything about what happened to him when perhaps he was ten years old. Twenty years is a long time to get into being some overwhelming profound awareness. I began to look back through my own being and I began to look back through your own being. For not only are your creative insights at my disposal, everybody's creative insights in this group are at anyone's disposal who wishes to appropriate them. Not only are your mighty deeds for you to rehearse this morning; they are for me to participate in if I dare to. And they are there for everybody in the world to participate in. But even more than that, I participate in the tremendous awareness of the profundity of life which you possess.

And as I stood there and thought and we talked together, two things came to the forefront of my mind. One thing that happened to that barefoot boy was that he became aware there on the edge of the Jezreel valley, of the awesome mystery of life. The clouds became the external manifestation of the awe that he experienced as he became aware of what for him, became the absolute finality of reality. And the clouds enabled him to grasp the fact that this awe was not something that came forth out of his subjectivity, but the awe itself had great, compelling objectivity. I know not how it happened. But then this ten­year­old boy became aware of the fact that this mystery, which was final reality, was his father. Now I do not mean he was drawing some kind of a silly analogy that most of your Sunday School teachers talked about and too many of us grew up with. I mean, he became aware that he was the offspring of final being, of this strange mystery that seemed closer to him than any temporal reality that he was able to experience.

I am trying to say that this young boy literally came to believe that Joseph was not in his father, but that which sired him was the Mystery itself. As a matter of fact, Jesus talked very little about "our Father" but very frequently about "my Father".

Then something else happened to him. I am not so clear how this happened. But I think that in those twenty years he found that you know the mystery in the eyes of another person. That seems to me by far the most important thing about him. You don't intend that; it just happens. And you discover that you can look through eyes, and when you look through eyes you become aware of mystery. And out of this came the awareness that it was not only my Father, but it was your Father. And perhaps, (and this depends on thinking later in his ministry) this became most clear to him as he beheld the hunk of humanity's eyes in human suffering. I think he became particularly concerned with the eyes that have no eyes, the blind. Until he had the immediate experience, not some anological abstraction, that this which sired me, sired you, not only you, but all, and not only all, but everything. Remember the story that happened later when somebody came to him and said, "your mother and brothers and sisters are outside" and he looked at the crowd and said "What do you mean? These are my brothers and these are my sisters!?" I want to repeat that this wasn't drawing a conclusion from some abstraction called the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. For twenty years he lived simply in relationship to these inseparable awarenesses. That is the barefoot Jesus.

Now the next picture I have is Jesus walking out of the desert and bumping into a man named John Baptist. They became friends. Maybe John was the closest thing to a friend Jesus ever had. And he was baptized by John. There really wasn't anything before that apart from the reflection the Church did later upon the story that had happened.

John had a movement going, and Jesus submitted himself to that movement. Then it is in the movie ("The Gospel According to St. Matthew") that you see the picture that none of you can forget of Jesus starting his stride. He walked down the road flinging over his shoulder, "The Other World is at hand, turn yourselves around and believe this." And he never stopped. He didn't pause to see whether anyone was impacted, and by no means whether there was some kind of follow­up to it. He flung it over his shoulder and moved on for the rest of his life, three very short years. Or were they very long years? And, as another aspect of the drama, as he strode along he would fling over his shoulder, "Come on, follow me." He never stopped. He could care less; if he cared he was no longer about his Father's business. Now the interesting thing is that he looked back and saw two or three, five or six. I don't know how many be asked, maybe a couple of hundred. All the details are not there. Did he expect to get 100 out of a 1000, and then to lose all but 10 out of the 100, and then to discover that only one out of the ten had guts enough to stand? I don't know how that happened.

When he saw the little group behind him he began an exercise called the training of the twelve. This is the next thing beyond the barefoot Jesus. Now take a look at that training of the twelve. He always walked, and as he walked he seemed to be talking always. He was throwing over his shoulder sayings, not teachings, but sayings. What do I mean by that? Well, he had no code to transmit, no creed to transmit. What he was doing was jarring these people into the awareness of the Other World in the midst of this world, which these people had always known about. He was jarring them into existential decisional awareness. That was his first job of training. It was not to prove that there is another world in the midst of this one, but to jar them into the awareness that here was the deeps of life itself.

The second aspect of his training of the twelve is more astounding to me. It's like he took each one of those men who walked along behind him and he stuck their nose, literally, into the human suffering that had been around them all their lives, that they had taken for granted. I'm talking about myself, who got far too old before I became being­filled aware of the suffering, the incredible suffering of humanity that I have lived with and in the midst of all my life. Like it wasn't enough just to pass a blind man on the way. He halted the troops and stuck their noses into the suffering. It wasn't enough to walk by a lame man; he stopped and stuck their noses in it. It was by no means enough that they walked by the leper's cave. No, he grabbed them all by the ear and dragged them down into the midst of that leprosy until they saw, with their own eyes, with their whole being, the suffering of those who were sired by the same Father.

And later he was to say in his wrathful "woe oration" upon the establishment that not only would they not enter the Other World, but their woe lay in the fact that they spent their lives preventing others from entering the Other World. I remember when John wondered "Is he the one?" and sent his men to inquire. Jesus, with a kind of nonchalant and low-key style, just said, "I have no answer. But you go back and tell my friend John exactly what you saw: the blind see, the lame walk, and the good news being preached to the poor." No abstraction. He merely indicated the reality of the moral issue that they knew. And that was the training of the twelve.

The next part that got played is what I call "the anointed one". It begins by one of the most nauseating things that I can think of. I'm talking about the absolutely ridiculous killing of John. I haven't found the right words to describe the silliness of John's death. A kind of silly brutality, an insane death. The picture of course is Herod's court. And he has some of his buddies in high places sitting down to lunch. Now, Herod was not just a mean old guy. He had a daughter that was pretty and talented, and he was proud of her like you yourself are proud of your children. And so he sat there trying to impress his relative peers. And he thought, "Now I will really give them something; I will show off my daughter." So he asked his daughter to dance. And she was like most daughters who you spend a lot of money on teaching them to play the piano and dancing lessons; when you ask them to perform, they invariably say "no". So Herod, like most of us fathers, decided to bribe her. He said if she would dance he would give her anything she wanted. And I bet he had in mind the prettiest thorobred Arabian stallion or a little villa set aside in the countryside. But the last thing he had in mind was that this performance would demand the head of John the Baptist. I cannot tell you about the vicious old lady who must have been extremely bright, far more intelligent than her husband who sat on the throne. For she saw in John the Baptist, this innocent, non­political, non­revolutionary figure who was just going up and down talking about religion, she saw in him a depth her husband never dreamed of. She saw her own demise. And so she whispered in the ear of her daughter. I hardly know how to account for the fact that her daughter was so enslaved by her mother, but there was something going on. And then the shock on Herod's face. There­were his­peers. So with great reluctance, he gave the sign, and John's head fell.

The next scene of the movie shows Jesus. He heard. And he shed just one tear, just one. At about that time, a man came by and said, "As soon as I bury my father, I am going to come and join you." With a kind of anger that you would not believe, Jesus threw back at him, "Let the dead, bury the dead." And he marched on. And from that time on until the day he died he was an angry man. Immediately, he took this little band of rovers who went with him up into the hillside for the scene of the great transfiguration. He gets up there, and he walks away from them a little bit and he turns around and asks, "What do people say about me?" "Who do they say that I am?" And there is no super-naturalness in this; they say, "Well, they think you are another Elijah." "Others think you are one of the other great prophets." "And some others think you are really the power behind John the Baptist's ministry." Then came the question. He turned to them and said, "Who do you say I am?" I imagine there was a bit of stuttering. And then they said, "Well, you are the anointed one." And, if you will forgive this, he said, not out loud, but to himself, "Why isn't one of you the anointed one?" But he knew, when they killed John, where the contradiction was. He also knew that if he dared touch that contradiction, he would end up exactly where John did. And he also knew that if that breech were not attacked, there wasn't any hope for the poor and the lame and the blind. Anointed to do what? You are the one anointed to splash your being against that which deters the possibility of profound humanness for everyman, and particularly the poorest of the poor. There is nothing mystical about the anointment. And then if you remember, "He set his face like flint toward Jerusalem, which was the citadel of the powers and the principalities standing in the way of profound humanness. From that day on he was a doubly angry man. From that moment on, I mean he really took on the scribes and the Pharisees and the saducees. And he whipped them to pieces.

And the prime act of his life was standing on the temple grounds and delivering his fantastic speech of "woe to you". And his attack was not on the religious establishment as over against the secular establish meet. Such a dichotomy did not exist in his day. And he wasn't against the establishment for the sake of being against the establishment but because it interfered with the establishment doing what it is called to do.

Jesus took upon himself the symbolism of the anointed one out of his tradition. He w­as very clear that the reason he rode an ass into Jerusalem was to coagulate the symbols unto himself, to amass the symbolic power that had to be amassed to in any way effectively throw his final life against the established powers. From that day on, he was like a broken record. He was interested in only two things.

The first is illustrated by the story of the fig tree. The fig tree was a powerful symbol. If you remember, he walked up to the tree and said, "You did not produce any fruit." And when you are called to be the People of God and produce no fruit, you wither away and God raises up new vines in the most unsuspecting places. You who should have known about the Other World did not enter into it. But more than that you stood in the way of the poor experiencing what it means to be a human being. Who are you, who are the 15% of the world in this room, who are you identifying with in this strange story?

The second, and he was almost insane­about this, was being humble. He used the children here. Occasionally, when someone would boast he would bring in the little children and say, "Save you are like one ­of these, you don't know anything about the Other World."

The anointed one. Anointed for what? To lay down your life at the point of the moral issue of your moment in time. The interesting thing about the anointed one was that Jesus never once said that he was the anointed one. In fact, you and you alone can say that you are the received one, that you are the one loved of God. But you cannot ever say that you are the anointed one. It is for a power far greater than you to say that.

It was all over in Jerusalem when he delivered his final great address, the great "Woe" speech, and the soldiers appeared. Then came that strange scene before the High Priest. "Are you the Christ?" he asks. And Jesus snaps back, "It is you that says it." It's like he said, "You said it; I didn't." The movie really ends here. He's done.

And now you can understand how the Church, in pointing out what life finally is all about over against ultimate reality, said it is anointment. Schweitzer, along about 1906 wrote The Quest for the Historical Jesus. In that his key phrase is that Jesus tried to "force the kingdom". Now, we wouldn't use the word "kingdom". We would use "the Other World". He tried to force the Other World ­into disclosing itself in his time in history. He tried to "force the kingdom" by throwing his own being against the stone wall.

Finally, at every moment in history, I think that the kingdom has to be forced by the anointed one. I have been trying for a long time to get my mind around the Hunter Warrior and The Saint and The Wise One and The General. Someone drew a diagram with these names we've used and put the Jesus­figure in the middle. For a long time I wondered what to rename that. Now I know. The anointed one. If you attempt to take the great historical religions of the world, I think you can organize them under the category of "the enlightened one" or "the illuminated one", as in Buddhism or Hinduism. And then Taoism is a little harder, but it might be "the victorious one" or "the effective one". Now, when you intensify aware ness and engagement, you have the third category of being, the profound core of human being­ness which is the anointment, to lay down your life on behalf of the mistreated of the time in which you live. That is what the Christ is all about. That is what Jesus is all about. In the overall framework of the play, it all begins with the virgin birth. The Church was trying to say that the way of Jesus is the way it is, period' The drama ends with the resurrection. Here the Church was trying to say with the resurrection of Jesus, that his resurrected life began with a ten year old boy who intensified his life to his 33rd year and that all may participate in this resurrection. Now, finally, did Jesus after all, force the Other World?

You just take a look at me. I am the answer. Unseemly as it may sound to you, I was sired by the Mystery as a result of Jesus forcing the kingdom. What he did broke loose something that vomited into being one of the most powerful spiritual thrusts history has ever seen, the Christian movement. Christianity is of course not the only spiritual thrust in history, time and time again the kingdom has been and still must be forced if men are to be human. But here I am. And turn around and look at yourselves if you can. And there you are. We are the residue of the life and death of the barefoot Jesus. And, mark well, hour is now come again when the kingdom is being forced across the world and the thing we have learned from the man of Galilee is that the kingdom is not forced with somebody's life. It's forced rather with somebody's death.

You remember that like Jesus, Paul was struck down with an indescribable awareness. Immediately after that, Paul disappeared for three whole years. Nobody knew where he was or whether he was still alive. He too, was three years out in a desert all by himself, where whatever he was after happened to him. He suddenly showed up again. And he had a word. For three years he stepped back from this story of Jesus I have just told you and he looked at it and tried to stick his fist through the meaning of it all. And finally it dawned on him. And he came back and built the Church. What he told them was this: "I've got it, I've got it, I've got it. ~ In this happening God was reconciling the world unto himself. In the midst of all this, the Mystery decided to show himself to all mankind so that there might be, once again, human beings." Now, I can also offer that statement of-Paul's. It was such a profoundly true statement, and it was the vulnerable point in Christendom which allowed abstractionists to take over, so that we were asked to subscribe to an idea that God was in Christ reconciling man unto himself, rather than looking through what Paul said about what happened to a barefoot Jesus. RS­1, God bless it well, is the beginning place into the participation of the profound awareness of profound anointment of Jesus that we call our Lord. Could it be, could it be that what you were telling me this morning, what you were describing to us as a body, was that there could be in our day, for the sake of all mankind, a corporate Jesus? Who do you say that we are? Who do you say that we are? All this razzle­dazzle about doing social demonstrations and town meetings has no meaning unless we get said, in the profound deeps, what we are really about.

Joseph W. Mathews

Jim Wiegel 401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353 Tel. 011-623-936-8671 or 011-623-363-3277 jfwiegel@yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. Ernest Hemingway

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On Jul 20, 2017, at 18:02, Ellie Stock via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR

What does it mean to speak of God’s reign? By Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D.

One of the most characteristic features of Rabbi Jesus’ teaching is his experience of the reign of God as present here and now. This manifestation of God’s reign is not a reality to be feared, but as we hear in the synoptic gospels, is to be received as “good news.” But why? What are some of the qualities of the reign of God that tell of its goodness in our lives? And what does it even mean to speak of “God’s reign” in the 21st century within a culture in which kingdoms and monarchs do not exist, and resonate within our imagination and lives as antiquated and oppressive?

Let’s begin by exploring a few of the essential qualities we can associate with the reign of God. These qualities might then enable us to briefly reconsider what we mean when we invoke these biblical words. I am going to draw from several early childhood experiences with my own father, because they are experiences, I now know, that introduced me to qualities of God. There is not necessarily anything gender-specific about these experiences; what is key is that a nurturing adult in my young life invited me to realize within my quotidian existence the presence of Being itself in all of its goodness.

When I was about 4 years old, I awoke early one summer weekend morning and strolled quietly to my parents’ bedroom. My mother was already downstairs with her coffee, but with the door slightly ajar, I could see my dad lying peacefully upon the bed, the covers pulled down to his waist to receive the cooling morning breeze through the open window. I tiptoed in, climbed up beside him – not knowing if he were sleeping – and laid my wondering boy head upon the nest of curly hair on his belly. As I ran my little hands through his hair my head floated upon the undulating movement of his belly, his breath gently coming and going. The sun ever so slowly continued its morning climb, its warmth, like that of my dad’s body, melted any distance there may have been between his heart and mine. A golden sense of Oneness arose, lying pleasurably upon the bed, our single being unencumbered by any edges, expanding endlessly like the azure sky of dawn.

This is one of my earliest experiences of realizing union of heart and soul in all its golden wonder. My father was this tender, strong, inviting gate into the endless expanse of the beauty of creation. I was tasting the gift of being one with the ground of Being in and through the specific being of this young man, my father. There is a basic and undeniable goodness in the melting of hearts that invites us on the lifelong path of letting go and experience the golden quality of merging with Being at the center of our own being. Here is the taproot of Jesus’ realization that he and his Beloved are one.

About a year later, I was with my dad at a football game on a Friday evening in southeastern Michigan. Standing beside him, we were engulfed in an arboreal sea of humanity. As I looked around, I felt as if I were deep inside a forest of giant trees swaying vigorously from a strong wind. I sensed myself as tiny, week, disoriented and vulnerable. I had no idea where to turn. The next moment I was being scooped up and planted firmly upon my dad’s broad shoulders, like a small chickadee suddenly finding a secure perch on a steady oak in a storm. Now, with my skinny little legs within the firm grasp of my dad’s hands I surveyed the scene. My heart relaxed and my eyes excitedly widened; I had embarked on an adventure. I wasn’t simply tolerating the crowd, I was enjoying, even relishing, the excitement. The vital strength of my father’s heart was coursing through my body. The strength of his soul was now mine. I knew that “I can do this.” We strode together, as if he were one of Tolkien’s Ents bearing a hobbit, with the swaying trees of humanity seeming to part as needed as we wandered about.

Strength – knowing that we can do what needs to be done – is an essential quality of being a human being. Without it we withdraw and cower and feel we are without capacity to engage whatever is before us. Strength is an essential quality of the reign of God, and it is critical that we have caregivers in our lives who introduce us to our capacity to do what needs to be done. Over again, Rabbi Jesus’ encounters with people results in the astonishing realization of the strength of their being. Jesus mixes spittle and mud, applies it to the man’s blind eyes, and he discovers the strength to see clearly.

One final vignette. The summer after I turned seven, my parents gifted my older sister, brother and I with an unescorted train trip from Michigan to Illinois. Illinois may well have been China for me; it was a far away land that we would reach by rail after many hours. Such pride: we had been deemed capable of making an exotic trip without our parents aboard. The evening before our departure, neighbors joined us for a celebratory spaghetti dinner. As the eating and partying progressed I found myself feeling worse and worse; I quietly stole away into a corner alone in what quiet could be found. It didn’t take long before my mother discovered me curled up. My temperature had soared and my tummy had become exquisitely tender to the touch. Dad scooped me up and drove me to the emergency room. There I sat upon the vinyl clad examination table, covered by that crunchy white paper in place to ward off germs. The room was cold and sterile. The doctor probed and prodded and muttered to himself until finally he said to me, “son, you aren’t going anywhere. Your appendix is infected and about to burst. You need to have surgery right away.” I sat stunned and crushed, with tears rolling down my ashen cheeks. The adventure had vanished as if it had been a midnight dream. My dad came and stood in front of me as I sat on the table. He held the gaze of my eyes gently but firmly and said, “I think you should be the one to call and tell your mom.” Without question, my heart knew that he was right. But even more, I knew, even though I was in tears and heartbroken, that I could do it. There was a powerful peace in my dad’s gaze and it held me and touched me and assured me of my own power to be with what was happening. Nothing was being denied – not the pain, not the sorrow, not the lost dream. It was all there and I hated much of it; but it was there held within the power of my little being to endure.

Essential to the reign of God is the realization of the power to be the truth of who we are within the circumstances of where we are. In this most simple and intimate exchange between my dad and I, he was inviting me to discover the power that is woven into the very substance of my soul. This power was not reactive. This power was the response of Being as my being. It was the same power that enabled Rabbi Jesus to accept the cup before him in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Union. Strength. Power. These are essential qualities of the reign of God.. They do not come to us magically out of the blue, but are introduced to us through the significant people in our lives who don’t miss the chance when the chances arise. Nature is grace, but we often fail to perceive and respond. History is God manifest, but often unrecognized and unseen. On these three occasions, my dad was graciously attuned to the present moment. He had no conscious idea of the mystery he was inviting me to discover. But, because his own heart was soft and open, Love drew his heart and soul to mine in an act of trust in its wisdom to guide us both.

What happens when we don’t have someone to introduce us to these qualities of the reign of God in our lives? We can become like ashes, without substance, and a victim to the forces that blow all about us and through us.. Without a sense of union, strength, and power (and these are just a few of the qualities of God’s reign), we can feel unbearably thin and without the capacity to engage life. Like Peter, when confronted with the unknown we can seek the shadows or find ourselves sinking below the turbulent waves of life.

In their book, Proverbs of Ashes, Brock and Parker describe such ashes in the lives of women who experience themselves with no strength or power to act in order to relieve themselves from violently oppressive relationships. To add insult to injury, they find in such language as “the reign of God,” religious justification to remain powerless and seemingly disunited from God. They believe they need to suffer the blows and indignities of abuse, because that is what they think Jesus did – the reign of God demands acquiescence. If we suffer like Jesus, perhaps we will then be graced with the chance to rest our heads in peace and know the union we long for.

Here is where we need to return to the matter of what we mean by the reign of God, which is simply a poetic way of speaking about Divine Presence. Rabbi Jesus is a wisdom teacher who invites us to discover that within our daily interactions we can come to experience and know directly the living and abiding Presence of the Beloved; not apart from nature and history; not above nature and history; but as the very warp and woof of nature and history. There is a depth to reality we tend to overlook in our habitual ways of skating along on the surface. This depth is the Divine heart of this life. This Presence, Jesus teaches, can come to reign in our lives as our way of living, which means we can come to know Being as our being, as the true nature of our own human nature; as the sure and strong beat of our own powerful heart.

We each need living, breathing, human beings to introduce us to the essential goodness of life. Jesus is such a human being in the lives of the disciples. There is nothing magical about his interactions, nor those of my father. But when those relationships don’t exist, tragedy arises in history as human ashes. Divine Presence, the reign of God, has many essential qualities that enable us to experience the goodness of our own human fullness. Three of these are union, strength, and power.

~ Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D.

Read the essay online here.

About the Author

Kevin G. Thew Forrester is an Episcopal priest, a student of the Diamond Approach for over a decade, as well as a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. He is the founder of the Healing Arts Center of St. Paul’s Church in Marquette, Michigan, and the author of five books, including “I Have Called You Friends“, “Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms“, and “My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You” and “Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland“.

Question & Answer

NJ via FaceBook, writes:

Question: How is it that liberal-minded people who claim that they are open to allowing people to believe what they want and live the way that they want attack people like me who stand on the Bible? That's real tolerant now isn't it?

Answer: By Rev. David M. Felten

Dear NJ,

First off, allowing people to believe what they want is just one characteristic of “liberal-minded people.” But to characterize liberalism as some willy-nilly-believe-what-you-want perspective is a false claim. True, liberals are OK with people believing what they want – but only insofar as those beliefs respect the basic dignity of other people and doesn't do others harm. That's a big difference. I've also heard it said that liberals tolerate anything but intolerance. I think that's about right.

And let's be clear, you're probably not being "attacked" for being a person who "stands on the Bible," but for being a person who's "stand" on the Bible is not in keeping with other peoples' "stand" on the Bible.

Let me remind you that people "stood on the Bible" to defend slavery, they "stood on the Bible" to keep women from having the vote, they "stood on the Bible" to defend segregation. Without "liberals" who opposed those racist, misogynist, and un-American practices, our world would be a very different place indeed (and not for the better). Many of those appalling liberals, by the way, were faithful Christians who appealed to the Bible to further the causes of freedom and basic human rights. I’m going to assume that, in these areas, you agree with them and their “liberal” interpretation of the Bible.

Among today’s front line issues of defense on behalf of basic human dignity and human rights are LGBTQ rights and reproductive choice. Bizarre Biblical attitudes toward women and sexuality notwithstanding, neither of these (as we currently understand them) are topics in the Bible (uh-oh, no place to “stand”!). Similarly, although there’s no mention of cultural practices like female genital mutilation and sex-trafficking in the Bible, many conservatives “stand” with liberals in opposition to these sex-related challenges – and do so on the grounds of that eminently liberal notion of human rights.

Then, if you manage to filter out all the propaganda, cultural prejudices, and superstitions from the Bible, there are plenty of examples of where scripture is clearly aligned with what you would call today’s “liberal agenda.” Opposing racial injustice and the U.S.’s unjust immigration policies are just two examples where liberals have all kinds of Biblical precedent on which to “stand.”

So, don't mistake the liberal tendency towards tolerance (which allows you – in broad strokes – to believe what you want and do what you please) to remain silent when what you believe and advocate fails to respect the rights or freedom of others. You can claim that your “stand” is the definitive interpretation of what the Bible says, but so did the slave-owning, sexist, and racist Christians of the past – and so do the discriminatory, misogynistic dogmatists of today.

~ Rev. David M. Felten

Read and share online here

About the Author

David Felten is a full-time pastor at The Fountains, a United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, Arizona. David and fellow United Methodist Pastor, Jeff Procter-Murphy, are the creators of the DVD-based discussion series for Progressive Christians, “Living the Questions”.

A co-founder of the Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology and also a founding member of No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church and tries to stay connected to his roots as a musician. You’ll find him playing saxophones in a variety of settings, including appearances with the Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet.

David and his wife Laura, an administrator for a large Arizona public school district, live in Phoenix with their three often adorable children.

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited "The Passion of the Christ" Mel Gibson's Film and Biblical Scholarship – Part II

Mel Gibson claims that in his film, "The Passion of the Christ," he has "followed faithfully the texts of the Gospels." That is demonstrably not so, as I sought to show in this column last week. Yet, what interests me about this even more is that many religious people think that biblical accuracy is the only criterion by which this film should be judged. If it is true to the Bible, then it seems not to matter whether it increases the virulent cultural prejudice against Jewish people. Upon viewing the film, no less a person than John Paul II, for example, stated approvingly, "It is as it was!" The Pope clearly bought the argument that the biblical account itself is accurate. These words reveal a failure to embrace some uncomfortable aspects of contemporary biblical scholarship on his part. It is not dissimilar with the other Christian leaders. To make that clear, one has only to lift several facts of history into the public awareness.

First, the most elementary study of the familiar material in the passion story will reveal that it is not the work of eyewitnesses. Jesus' earthly life came to an end around the year 30. The first account of the events in Jesus' life from Palm Sunday to Easter was not written until Mark's Gospel came into being between 70-75 or, at a minimum, forty years after the events being described. This means that these narratives were developed and passed on orally in some context for at least forty years before they were written down for the first time. In that world there were no places to go to research events of the past.

Second, this Passion story in Mark's Gospel was then, during the next ten to twenty years, incorporated into both Matthew and Luke, each of whom wrote an expanded version of Mark. Matthew, who copied some ninety percent of Mark into his gospel, wrote probably between 80 and 85, and Luke, who copied some fifty percent of Mark into his Gospel, wrote probably between 88-92. Since we can compare these narratives today, we recognize that both Matthew and Luke changed the passion details dramatically, adding new things and omitting others. For example, Matthew develops the story of Judas Iscariot by placing into the narrative such things as the 30 pieces of silver as the price of his treachery, the attempt to return the money, the refusal of the high priests to receive it, Judas hurling it back into the Temple and his suicide by hanging, none of which were in Mark's original story. Matthew also introduces the story of the Temple guard placed around Jesus' tomb, heightens Mark's messenger of the resurrection into being an angel with the power to cause these guards to faint and adds an earthquake to his story. Then he contradicts Mark on whether the women, who came to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week, actually saw the Risen Christ.

Luke continues the development of Judas' story by finally giving the reason for the betrayal and expanding the dialogue that Judas has with Jesus. Luke also adds three of the familiar "last words of Jesus" from the cross, while omitting the cry of dereliction that, according to Mark, were the only words that Jesus spoke there. Only in Luke do we find the sayings: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do," spoken to the soldiers; "Today you will be with me in Paradise," spoken to the penitent thief; and "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit," spoken presumably to God. In the Resurrection narrative, Luke denies the Galilean tradition as the locus of any resurrection experience for the disciples, which contradicts a major feature in both Mark and Matthew. Luke expands Mark's resurrection messenger into not one but two supernatural angels. The story is certainly not static.

John, writing between 95 and 100, adds the words from the cross committing Jesus' mother to the care of the beloved disciple, the cry "I thirst," that was related to a prophetic saying (Ps. 69:21) and the final words of triumph, "It is finished." He introduces the story of the soldiers breaking the legs of the thieves to hasten their deaths, but not breaking Jesus' legs, relating this to a prophetic saying (Ps. 34:20), the account of a soldier hurling the spear into Jesus' side, which he suggests was foreordained by the writing of the prophet Zechariah (12: 10) and the story of the soldiers rolling dice for Jesus' clothes. John's resurrection narratives are also radically different from the other gospels. John focuses on Mary Magdalene, a miraculous entry by Jesus into a locked and barred home in Jerusalem, and the conversation with the doubting Thomas. He then tells a Galilean story of a resurrection appearance, together with the account of Peter's restoration, which was set months after the crucifixion. None of these details are found anywhere else. It is quite clear that between the first Gospel of Mark and the last Gospel of John, the story of Jesus' passion and resurrection has grown considerably. The question that this brief sketch raises is simply this: "If the details grew that much between 70-100 when the narratives were written, how much did the story grow between 30 and 70 when there were no written narratives?"

The only things we find in those hidden years are scanty details in Paul's writings during the mid-fifties (I Cor. 15:1-6). There is no narrative here about Jesus' betrayal, his arrest or his torture. Paul says only that, "Christ died." There is no crowd, no trial, no thieves, penitent or otherwise and no words spoken from the cross. Then Paul says just as simply, "He was buried." There is no tomb, no garden and no Joseph of Arimathea. Next Paul says still sparingly, "He was raised on the third day." There are no women coming to the tomb. Indeed there is no tomb, empty or otherwise. There are also no angels, no earthquakes, and no narration of an appearance to anyone. Paul provides only a list of witnesses to whom, he says, Jesus appeared.

That list is fascinating in several details. Cephas or Peter is first. The mention next of the number 'twelve' implies that Judas is still among them.. Paul does not seem to know the tradition that one of the twelve was the traitor. The name James, third on this list, begs the question as to which James is intended. Is it James the son of Alphaeus, James the son of Zebedee, or James the brother of Jesus? The phrase, "the apostles" placed fourth on this list causes us to wonder who they are, since the 'twelve' have already been named! Then after mentioning 500 brethren, Paul lists himself as the last one to whom the raised Jesus appeared. The fact that Paul's experience was certainly not that of a physically raised body suggests that Paul did not regard the resurrection of Jesus as physical at all. Paul thus offers us no clues about the historicity of the passion narratives as the gospels describe them. Perhaps the papal words about Gibson's film, "It is as it was," ought to be rendered, "It is as gospel writers 40-70 years after the event suggested it was." That is not a very vigorous claim.

Another thing that causes scholars to question the historicity of the passion narratives, as they appear in the gospels, is the kind and sympathetic way that Pilate is portrayed. He is exonerated from blame. In no way does this portrait connect with the historical references from secular sources that we have about this Roman Governor.

Pilate is introduced into the Christian story by Mark (15:1-44) who portrays him as "wondering" at Jesus' lack of response when being interrogated, as trying to free him and being overwhelmed by the crowd's cry for his crucifixion, and as protesting Jesus' innocence by asking, "Why, what evil has he done?" Finally, Pilate is pictured after the death of Christ as granting Joseph of Arimathea permission to bury Jesus properly. Matthew follows Mark's story line closely (Mt. 27:11-65), but adds a scene in which Pilate's wife sends him word to "have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much over him this day in a dream." Then Matthew has Pilate wash his hands, claiming to be innocent "of this man's blood."

Luke introduces Pilate earlier by name when Jesus emerges to be baptized by John (Lk. 3:1). He also refers to Pilate's atrocity of mingling the blood of Galileans in pagan sacrifices (13:1). Luke then quotes Pilate in the crucifixion story (Lk. 23:1-53) as saying, "I find no crime in this man." Later, Luke says, Pilate tries to escape involvement with Jesus by sending him to Herod since Jesus was a Galilean and thus not part of Pilate's responsibility. Next, Pilate reiterates his belief in Jesus' innocence and tries to release him after scourging him, hoping that whipping the prisoner will satisfy his enemies. Only then does he acquiesce to the crowd.

In John, Pilate is portrayed as seeking to save Jesus by ordering the Jewish accusers to try Jesus according to their law that did not provide for an execution; then as waxing philosophical by asking, "What is truth?" Finally, John has Pilate repeat his belief in Jesus' innocence, seek again to release him, and even to refer to him as the 'King of the Jews.'

The story line of the gospels read as if Pilate is simply trapped by events over which he has no control, benign at worst, benevolent at best. Even Jesus is quoted in John's Gospel as establishing Pilate's innocence by saying, "He who delivered me to you has the greater sin (19:11)." This, it must be stated, is a far cry from the portrait of Pilate that we meet in history.

Pilate appears, in the records of antiquity available to us, to have been a murderer of unspeakable cruelty. A Jerusalem Post writer, after researching his life, has referred to him as "the Saddam Hussein of his time." His contemporary, King Agrippa, in a letter written to the Emperor Caligula, referred to Pilate's corruption, his murder of untried and presumably innocent people and his ruthless inhumanity. Philo, a first century Jewish philosopher, called Pilate an "unbending and recklessly hard character, famous for violence ----ill treatment of the people --- and continuous executions without even the form of a trial." Roman records indicate that Pilate was recalled in the year 37 for sadistic actions, among which was his slaughter of 4000 Galileans who had gathered on their holy mountain, an act that made Pilate a political liability even to the Romans. At the same time, historical records abound in which the Romans routinely crucified self-proclaimed messiahs and kings of the Jews: There was Judah in the year 6, Theudas in 44 and Benjamin in 60, just to name the most famous. None of this negativity, however, appears in the New Testament portrait of Pontius Pilate or of the Romans.

So, where is the truth? How trustworthy historically is the biblical account of the crucifixion of Jesus? Is there some other agenda operating at the particular time that the gospels were written that caused their authors to exonerate Pilate and to shift the blame for Jesus' death from the Romans to the Jews? Is it enough for Mel Gibson to claim that he is following faithfully a biblical text that becomes nothing but his pious rationalization for pumping enormous amounts of anti-Semitism into the bloodstream of the western world? Is it not time for Christian leaders including even John Paul II, to acknowledge that the way the gospels describe the death of Jesus may well not be the way it was?

Next week, I will propose a different way to read the Passion story in the New Testament, by placing it into the context of its own history, some 40 to 70 years after the crucifixion. Perhaps that exercise will help us to understand why the annual reading of the story of Jesus' final days has continuously created anti-Semitism which Mel Gibson in this film has now raised to an art form that will be seen by millions and for which he apparently feels no shame.

~ John Shelby Spong Originally published March 3, 2004

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