Faith Forward

Here’s an invitation for all of you “inner monks” dressed in Protestant clothing. One of my favorite bloggers, Christine Valters Paintner, has posted something called a “Monk Manifesto” at her site Abbey of the Arts.  I share her invitation with you readers seeking to live more contemplatively in the world, in an intentional community with others like you.

Want to join me in starting a monk revolution?

Let’s spread a commitment to contemplation, creativity, and compassion far and wide!

State your solidarity with others who want to express their inner monk in their everyday lives by signing the Monk Manifesto below (scroll all the way to the bottom for the comment box).

• For a PDF version of the Monk Manifesto click the link to download a printable file
• Scroll down for a Monk Manifesto Button for your blog or website
• Read some intial reflections and musings about the Monk Manifesto at the Abbey blog
• Subscribe to the free 7-day e-course on becoming a Monk in the World.

Manifesto: from the Latin for clear, means a public declaration of principles and intentions.

Monk Manifesto: A public expression of your commitment to live a compassionate, contemplative, and creative life.

1. I commit to finding moments each day for silence and solitude, to make space for another voice to be heard, and to resist a culture of noise and constant stimulation.

2. I commit to radical acts of hospitality by welcoming the stranger both without and within. I recognize that when I make space inside my heart for the unclaimed parts of myself, I cultivate compassion and the ability to accept those places in others.

3. I commit to cultivating community by finding kindred spirits along the path, soul friends with whom I can share my deepest longings, and mentors who can offer guidance and wisdom for the journey.

4. I commit to cultivating awareness of my kinship with creation and a healthy asceticism by discerning my use of energy and things, letting go of what does not help nature to flourish.

5. I commit to bringing myself fully present to the work I do, whether paid or unpaid, holding a heart of gratitude for the ability to express my gifts in the world in meaningful ways.

6. I commit to rhythms of rest and renewal through the regular practice of Sabbath and resist a culture of busyness that measures my worth by what I do.

7. I commit to a lifetime of ongoing conversion and transformation, recognizing that I am always on a journey with both gifts and limitations.

Subscribe to the free 7-day e-course on becoming a Monk in the World.

Monk Manifesto Button

In addition to the printable PDF version of the Monk Manifesto, now you can also post a badge on your blog or website.  Simply right-click and save the image and then posting an image with a clickable link to: http://abbeyofthearts.com/about/monk-manifesto/.

by Philip Clayton

Brian McLaren and I are organizing a major public conference on September 8-9 in Raleigh, North Carolina in order to make the call for a return to “Big Tent Christianity” (see BigTentChristianity.com). Why is this call important?

“One Lord, One Church, One Baptism . . .”

The Christian church appeals back to a single teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, whom our tradition calls the Christ. The unity of una ecclesia, the one church, was counted among its most important features. But, frankly, we’ve never done a very good job at the unity thing. The earliest history of the church, “the Acts of the Apostles,” chronicles the rapid devolution from “they had all things in common” (Acts 2:44) to the acrimonious battle over whether circumcision should be required of all new (male) believers (Acts 15).

No one can take a church history course without being struck by how much of the church’s story is about debates and divisions. Sometimes it seems as though all they did was call each other heretics over ever more obscure matters. At its worst, in the “Great Schism,” popes excommunicated popes. On a bad day, it looks like everyone down river from them was working to imitate their example.

The American Church Today

The church in this country was no exception. We spawned new denominations like salmon spawn eggs during mating season. Then for about a hundred years, it didn’t seem to matter as much. Presbyterians preached predestination and Baptists practiced adult baptism, but (in good American fashion) most people didn’t get too worked up about the differences. Most people identified with a religious community. It might have its doctrines and its quirks. Still, it worked for them.

Over the last few decades, however, “church” stopped working for more and more Americans. The decline hit the Protestant mainline churches first. They’ve been bleeding members and funds for about fifty years. But it now looks like many are finally at that “tipping point” where it becomes impossible even to sustain the old structures. Churches are closing in great numbers. Now the malaise is beginning to spread to evangelical churches as well.

What Happened?

In a word: the old disputes stopped mattering. First, people just wanted religious community, good preaching, and a strong Sunday School program. They didn’t much care whether the historical source was Luther, Calvin, Wesley, or St. Thomas. Then things got worse. The younger generations, the Gen-Xers and Millennials, left their churches when they left home, and the vast majority of them never came back.

What are they saying? That churches have become irrelevant to their lives and concerns. That the old styles of church attendance and worship no longer draw them. That the vicious disputes about doctrines are a turn-off. “If that’s all that your religion stands for, I can do without it.” A staggering 72 percent of Americans between 18 and 29 now call themselves “spiritual but not religious.”

A Movement Outside the Old Institutions

This revolution in attitudes toward institutional religion is upsetting a lot of apple carts. But it is not ending the practice of religion. Across the country people are reading and blogging, meeting in homes and pubs, inventing new forms of religious community. They may write cynically about the hostile debates between evangelicals and liberals, but they also carry within themselves a new religious idealism. They find something revolutionary in the Jesus of the gospels. And they’re bold enough to ask what Christian communities would look like if they really sought to incarnate the Way that this Teacher lived and taught.

We call it “big tent” Christianity. It evokes the image of the revival tent that folks used to set up just outside of town. Here differences were (ideally) set aside while people sought transformation and a new direction in the Spirit. Today, likewise, vast numbers of people are seeking spiritual answers and communities outside of church buildings.

More boldly, “big tent” is also a prophetic challenge to the rancorous debates and condemnations that are the church’s public face today. Christians on the Left and on the Right look more and more like Washington: you are on one side or the other of that great aisle or chasm; everything you say and do plays to your own party. Unity hardly exists, even as a goal. Even Patheos has to offer separate “portals” so that evangelicals and mainliners don’t have to enter through the same door.

A Challenge

Our challenge is simple: if there is any core faith, any shared Way, in Christianity, let’s place it in the middle. Let’s gather on a single stage – from Pat Robertson to Bishop Spong, and everyone in between — to say that unifying love comes first and that the disputes are secondary.

Join us September 8-9 in Raleigh, if you can. But if you can’t, write, blog, and speak about unity over division. Remember that the “big tent” mindset begins at home; it’s not an ideology, it’s how you live. Perhaps what the church needs to hear is what Jesus said to his friend: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only a few things are necessary . . .” (Lk. 10:41f).

Philip Clayton is Professor of Theology at Claremont School of Theology and head of the TransformingTheology.org project. He made the journey from conservative evangelical to liberal before staking his tent with the emergent church. His most recent books are Adventures in the Spirit: God, World, Divine Action andTransforming Christian Theology. He blogs at Reimagining the Future of Faith.

Pakistan is still reeling from the destruction of the floods. I have personal friends who are struggling through and offering their presence to these families. I think that’s the key, not offering them answers; answers can be destructive. Peace isn’t finding an answer to your problem, its knowing that you’re not alone.

The last thing we should do is offer the victims answers. We can’t control nature. If anything, nature reminds us time again that we are exiled from our illusions of power. Nature reminds us that we are truly unsovereign beings. Powerless, without answers to fix it all.

I recently watched 2012 with John Cusack, another apocalyptic narrative of humanity rescuing the world from the end of itself. But, I think that’s where the movie errs. I think we need to the world reach the end of itself. The more we sustain the world in the matrix of its empty promises, the more we become the sentient beings who exist only to insure its survival.

Much like the woman in the CNN footage who is mourning the tragic loss of her ‘Golden Boy’, I think Christianitys’ golden boy is the idea that we are meant to offer answers. If anything, we are more like the local fisherman who are there ‘fishing’ out the dead bodies. Our presence has more influence than any answer could. that is the dangerous assumption within the matrix of Christianity, that we have all the answers, and that the answers will fix everything. Sometimes the truth will imprison you rather than set you free.

If we think of truth as something that itself leads to an end, than truth will demonstrate its inflexibility by creating bars that we eventually will call home. I think that we have to come to a place where realize Christianity isn’t about offering answers, but rather presence. The answers negate the experience. Salvation in the orthodox sense is an answer, rather the idea of the incarnation was a helpless, powerless baby coming not to give answers, but to be present.

Salvation means healing, not healed.

There is a direct difference in those words, the semantic structure of each word says a lot about the intentions of who is bringing the salvation. Maybe, we can embrace truth as something that progresses and evolves, much like the ancient Eastern religions. Rather than trying to colonize truth and offer it others, maybe we can invite others to race with us discovering the speedily pace of truth that leads us into our own personal evolution.

Much like in the story of Job, God doesn’t respond to Job’s deep struggles with answers, in fact, he avoids them. Maybe like philosophe Slavoj Zizek posits, God is overwhelmed by how messy her creation really turned out. So, rather than offering answers to Job, God sits in the unrest with Job, God doesn’t rail at Job, God shares in the frustration. God and Job are overwhelmed by the experience — Together.

I think the last thing the gospel was meant to be was an answer.

Maybe a reminder that we’re not alone through the junk we go through. Maybe like the fisherman, we are looking for those moments of deadness and picking them up and sadly letting them go.

Notice when Jesus utters the words “I have come to give you life to the full” – he doesn’t say: ” I have come to give you a life filled with answers, with peace, with more money than you can handle, or anything the American dream can offer. The word for full or abundant in the Hebrew means overwhelming, more than you can handle.

A life consumed by life.

But in life, there is sadness, there is struggle, there is pain, there is hope, laughter, friendship, betrayal, and beauty. But, most of the beauty we experience is in the breakdown. Jesus offers consummation. Offers a space where can experience the overwhelming confusion and beauty all at the same time. If we offer people answers, than we deny them the experience of a life to the full.

by Bruce Epperly

This week, at least two, and no doubt many other, important events occurred in Washington DC – the birth of my first grandchild and Glenn Beck’s “Recovering Honor” Rally.  Saturday morning, as I gazed outside from George Washington University Hospital’s maternity ward, I saw hundreds of people emerging from the Metro station on their way to Beck’s rally.  I even spoke with a few at the hospital’s Starbucks.  Mostly in their fifties and virtually all Caucasian, they were good and decent folk who loved their country, yet afraid of the way things are going –issues such as massive government spending, decline in America’s global position, terrorist threats, immigration, homosexuality and marriage equality, excessive taxation, and pluralism.  They sought a return to a better day, perhaps inspired by memories of “Leave It To Beaver” or “The Andy Griffith Show,” simpler times, when America seemed, at least on the surface, to be homogenous religiously, culturally, and ethnically.

Entertainer/talk show host turned grassroots-evangelist Glenn Beck proclaimed that Saturday’s rally was all about God.  Indeed, he noted that “divine providence” was behind the scenes in the synchronous choice to have the rally on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.  Beck affirmed that this would be a nation-changing day, “Something beyond the imagination of man is happening — America begins today to turn back to God.”  Beck was talking about metanoia, about repentance, about returning to the values of an earlier time.

I appreciate the sincerity of Beck’s congregants and hope that Beck is equally sincere.  But, I must question whether God really wants us to go backward, and whether the future of America or the planet involves turning back the clock or moving forward into the white waters of the future.  While I don’t fully claim to know God’s vision, nor do I suggest that Beck knows it either, nevertheless, we are both entitled to cast a humble vision for the future.  So let me suggest an alternative vision, with alternative values.

There is clarity to Beck’s vision – it involves individual rights and individual responsibility.  It involves people returning to a moral compass characterized by individual initiative, economic freedom, face to face ethics, and the belief that God has uniquely chosen America to be a light among the nations.  America’s destiny is to be the new Jerusalem; God’s instrument to bring peace and order to the planet.  It involves greater individual liberty, provided you are heterosexual and American-born.  It involves less government involvement in individuals’ lifestyles, except if you are gay or lesbian.

Here is where Beck and I part company, not on the basis of sincerity but on the basis of theology and scripture.  Let me, first, bring scripture into play.  Most of the Christians in Beck’s audience would, I suspect, describe themselves as Bible-believing people.  The problem is that Beck’s vision reflects Western economic individualism and political theory more than biblical ethics.  The biblical tradition is through and through communal.  The prophetic books are about politics and governmental responsibility and, dare we say, social justice: they challenge the wealthy and powerful on behalf of the vulnerable and the poor.  Shalom, which is at the heart of the prophetic message, describes a world of justice, well-being, and wholeness.  While individuals constantly make ethical decisions as leaders in the corporate sphere, corporate entities are judged on issues of social justice – Are the hungry fed? Do the vulnerable have social safety nets?  Do children have enough to eat? Are the sick cared for regardless of ability to pay for treatment?

A nation – that is, a government and business elite – that fails to do justice will experience a famine of hearing the word of God.  (Amos 8:11)  The prophetic books speak to social issues and social justice and to the distribution of wealth.  They call business and political leaders to be socially responsible.  Financial integrity, regulation of business practices, and fairness to workers are pivotal in Old Testament/Hebraic Bible ethics.

While the early Christians were marginalized and had no political power, it is clear that for Jesus’ first followers community trumps individualism.  Individual decisions and initiative are important, but are judged in light of the well-being of the body of Christ.  With the New Testament, Martin Luther King speaks of an intricate web of relationships in which the well-being of the community is dependent upon the well-being of the each participant, and vice versa.  Acts of the Apostles describes a cooperative economic vision that far exceeds anything found in medicare, social security, and national health insurance.  The early Christian communities are an economic nightmare for Beck and the tea party movement: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:43-47)  In a curious passage, a married couple who fail to sell their assets and contribute to the church is struck down. (Acts 5:1-11)  Nothing the current Obama administration advocates can rival such punitive measures for those who do not place the community’s well-being as central to their economic lives.

Private property is never private in the early church or in the bible as a whole, but is always subject to the well-being of the community.   In fact, biblical theology always subordinates private property to divine prerogatives.  “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.” (Psalm 24:1)   This is bad news for anyone who believes that unrestrained free enterprise is consistent with biblical economics and spirituality.  The gospel is good news for individuals and calls us to be responsible citizens, good parents, and active in seeking the well-being of our communities.  But, for the gospel to be “good news,” it must also be “social,” that is, calling nations and corporations to place persons over profits and the health of communities over the bottom line.  That’s simple prophetic and gospel ethics, no more and no less!

Finally, I would suggest that God calls us forward rather than backward.  I am a big fan of “Andy Griffith,”  “Leave It To Beaver,” and “Father Knows Best.”  But, we simply can’t go back to that world – for beneath the veneer of respectability lay violence against African Americans and homosexuals, male domination, and fallout shelters.  Do we really want to go back to an era before employee provided health care insurance, disability insurance, social security and medicare, and unemployment insurance?  All these initiatives were championed by persons of faith, who saw fidelity to God involving widening, rather than narrowing, the circle of care.  The least biblical thing we can say, it would seem, is “every man or woman for him or herself.”  Indeed, the primary movement of scripture is the expansion of divine revelation, the scope of God’s love, and human ethical responsibility beyond our kin to include the diverse people of the earth, including immigrants and their children.

I believe that God calls us forward precisely in the changing world in which we live.  We must be faithful for just such a time as this, not an earlier era.  Divine providence is not found in the selection of date for an event, but in our openness to God’s forward moving vision in the midst of pluralism, economic inequality, social injustice, and the reality that the USA Empire is over, and that we must claim creatively our new role as a great nation among other great nations.

Faithfulness to God today involves world loyalty and the willingness to sacrifice for the well-being of vulnerable persons and an equally vulnerable planet.   Individual initiative, creativity, and freedom are important and essential to the good life, but they always exist in the context of caring for God by supporting the least of these and seeking to be God’s partners in healing the earth, economically, politically, and spiritually.  The only gospel worth following is social, despite Beck’s revisionism: “let justice roll down like waters, righteousness like an everflowing stream.” (Amos 5:24)

Bruce Epperly is Professor of Practical Theology and Director of Continuing Education at Lancaster Theological Seminary.  He is the author of seventeen books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living,  a progressive spiritual response to Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life and Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry, written with Kate Epperly, selected as the 2009 Book of the Year by the Academy of Parish Clergy. His most recent book is From a Mustard Seed: Enlivening Worship and Music in the Small Church, written with Daryl Hollinger.

Lectionary Reflections for September 5th, 2010: Luke 14:25-33

This text is a sandwich. Before it comes Luke’s version of the Great Banquet. After it comes Jesus’ teaching about salt.At this point in his ministry, in Luke’s account, the cross casts it shadow on his path. The cost of discipleship is at the forefront of his attention, now more than ever.  These two little parables about the man and the tower and the king and his war are about the cost of discipleship. Jesus is expanding his message of discipleship as sacrifice to those beyond his discipleship circle (9:18-27, 57-62). In these two parables, unique to Luke, Jesus is not discouraging people from following him. He is discouraging them from following him without counting the cost (Stein, 112).

The verse about hating one’s family and even life itself is a sharp pinprick of hyperbole meant to heighten our awareness of the single minded commitment, the supreme devotion required of the one who would follow Jesus all the way that lies ahead (14:26). We are to count the cost before we commit. Counting the cost doesn’t mean we have to pay up, that we have to come up with enough renunciation and enough pain to earn our way into Jesus’ good graces. Jesus is not saying that we must earn divine love by hating our family or by holding a contest to see whose cross contains the most pain.

Robert H. Stein, in his Introduction to the Parables of Jesus points out that “the kingdom of God is offered graciously by God to all” (112). God’s love provides us with the perseverance and energy to follow Jesus as we live in and into that kingdom. We need to view this passage in the context of Luke’s gospel which repeatedly emphasizes the compassion of a God who seeks out and saves the lost, who stands ready to forgive the sinner. Says Stein, “We aren’t excluded from God’s kingdom because it’s too hard to earn entrance. We exclude ourselves when we willfully reject God’s gracious invitation” (112) Luke 14:15-24).

The grace of God is not cheap grace. It requires a response. Says Stein “one can only receive the grace of God with open hands, and to open those hands one must let go of all that would frustrate the reception of that grace. Jesus refers to this letting go as repentance…It is foolish and damning to answer the invitation if one is not willing to repent” (Stein, 112). Half hearted disciples rsvp to the messianic banquet and then find excuses not to attend (14:18-10). They come to the shore but won’t get in the boat with Jesus because rough waters might await them (Matthew 8:18-22). They put their hand to the plough and look back (Luke 9:62).They “taste the heavenly gift, and share in the Holy Spirit …and then they fall away” (Hebrews 6:5,6).

Says biblical scholar Earl Ellis, “Jesus’ purpose in telling these 2 parables is not to dissuade prospective disciples, but to awaken half hearted followers to the disastrous consequences of such a path”(195). They will be thrown out like worthless salt (Luke 14:18). Matthew is the evangelist we usually associate with the consequences of not responding to Jesus. He is the one who likes to end his parables with people being thrown into outer darkness where they will weep and gnash their teeth. But Luke’s little verse about salt is ominous because it is so non dramatic, so matter of fact.  It makes me think of other things that get thrown out because they are past their prime. They include milk, cottage cheese, and all those slimy, unrecognizable vegetables in the bottom of your refrigerator produce drawers which you toss while wrinkling your nose in distaste. It’s too late. They can’t be made wholesome and edible again.

When I was growing up, my dad was big on perseverance proverbs. “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” He even had a picture over his desk in his study of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry’s battle flag that flew over the USS Niagra during the Battle of Lake Eerie in 1812. It read “Don’t Give Up the Ship.” There is a long history to this motto I won’t go into here except to note that it was the dying statement of James Lawrence to the crew of his USS Chesapeake. Growing up we were never allowed to quit anything. That’s enough to make you think twice before you join the marching band.

These parables don’t deserve to be reduced to a moralistic sermon in which the preacher, wagging her finger at the congregation, berates them for ever giving up on anything, for ever starting something they can’t finish. Some things we start we should finish. Others- not so much. Sometimes I counsel a student to drop a course. Sometimes we need to end an abusive relationship. I should definitely have quit the high school basketball team way earlier than I did.

These parables depict a man staring at a foundation he can’t build on and a king contemplating a war in which he is outnumbered 2 to 1. They call for a sermon that encourages people not to get themselves into this kind of spiritual situation: the kind in which they are faced with a task without means to complete it. These two parables call for a sermon that urges people to count the cost of discipleship and to commit to following Jesus all the way that lies ahead. This cost and this commitment can only be preached in the context of God’s commitment to us. The cross conveys God’s extreme commitment to us. The resurrection conveys God’s power to see us through every obstacle that litters the path ahead.

E. Earle Ellis, The New Century Bible Commentary on Luke

Robert H. Stein, An Introduction to the Parables of Jesus

Alyce M. McKenzie, Professor of Homiletics, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

by Carol Hovis

The national uproar regarding the Cordoba House, a mosque and Muslim community center in New York City is a critical moment in the United States for all religions, for US politics and for the preservation of civil rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.

It is no mistake that the First Amendment is first.  It is the bedrock of our democracy.

Up to this point in time, there has been no governmental interference with the Cordoba House initiative; their First Amendment right to freedom of religion has not been violated.  This is good news for our republic.

However, there has been an explosion on the internet, picked up by the mainstream media, of propaganda about Imam Feisal Abdul Raul and those who have been planning the NYC mosque.  The popular press and internet have fanned the flames of bigotry and hate, based on half-truths and outright lies.

On the positive side, the First Amendment rights of free speech and a free press are intact.  On the negative side, I believe the discourse in our public square is broken.  In my 20 years as an ordained Presbyterian minister, and the past six years as Executive Director of the Marin Interfaith Council, I have observed the tendency of thoughtful people, secular and religious, liberal, moderate and conservative, to be lethargic regarding our right of free speech in our civic conversations.  This includes me.

As long as a majority of concerned citizens remain passive spectators while a small minority of fringe ideologues whip up fear-mongering rhetoric about Muslims or any other “group” of people, our democracy is impoverished, even threatened by our silence.

I find good people of faith and conscience are reticent to speak up about controversial issues, whether in houses of worship or councils of government, because of the common misconception that expressing passionate views grounded in a religious or ethical belief system somehow violates the separation of religion and state.

The founders of this nation knew the disposition of institutions, both religious and political, to gravitate toward tyranny, without the proper checks and balances imbedded in our Constitution.  Also, the founders knew the inclination of individuals to persecute the “other”, those who are different from the majority.  For more than 200 years, our government has enacted laws to protect the civil rights of minority groups, albeit belatedly and imperfectly.

The current frenzy reaffirms for me the fundamental importance of interfaith, interreligious, multicultural work for the well-being of our nation and world.  The Marin Interfaith Council (MIC) seeks to contribute constructively to the public dialogue and debate on a myriad of issues, including immigration reform, homelessness and housing, Israel and Palestine, Proposition 8 and most recently on August 23^rd, the Marin Education Achievement Gap.

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote:  John Locke says ‘neither Pagan nor Mahomedan [Muslim] nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion… It is refusing toleration to those of different opinion which has produced all the bustles and wars on account of religion.”

As we commemorate the March on Washington, August 28^th, let us remember one religious leader who understood the power of freedom to transform politics and the public discourse.

Forty-seven years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed: We have come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now.

Now is the time to stand with Muslim Americans and all who know the virulence of prejudice and discrimination and say “No” to fear and “Yes” to the Dream of freedom for all.

Carol Hovis is an ordained Presbyterian minister and Executive Director of the Marin Interfaith Council in San Rafael, California.

For Lacan, public law such as “No Photos” or “Do not go on the grass” implicitly attracts the subject of that law to commit the very thing it prohibits (exactly in the way that if we tell the child not to eat the freshly baked cakes, we are simultaneously pointing out the method with which the child can ignore our demands). The point at which the attempts of prohibition by public law fail, like here, is precisely where superego emerges. And for Lacan, as it is for Žižek, the superego is not the moral conscience (as it would be for Freud) but rather the stigmatisation of our ethical betrayal, or in other words the invitation to transgress the law whether we like it or not, what is known as the superego injunction to enjoy! This adds something rather provocative to the pushing of boundaries.

Galatians 3:28: There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. – Paul of Tarsus

We tend to think ideas or truths are born out of tradition or something that has been established. In the narrratives where boats are involved in the New Testament, it does seem the idea that is being perpetuated is one where truths organically arrive out of what is ungrounded. Or said another way, out of the absurd comes the matieralistic. We use terminology like ‘we’ve been doing this for centuries’ or ‘we do this because others have done this’, and although they sound very poetic, these phrases induce a ritualistically bound coma where we live as zombies on the outside and ideologically are dying on the inside. Out of the darkness comes light. We must enter the darkness to experience the light. There is a 2nd century Rabbinic view that darkness is a good thing. That when God created the heavens and the earth and formed light, that the light isn’t what brought distinction, but it was the darkness that gives the light its purpose.

We must enter the darkness to experience the light.

The boat is an ungrounded object. The waves beneath it are not concrete, far from it. Peter was invited to step out of a boat, in that moment he walked out of something that itself was ungrounded into something itself that is inherently ungrounded (the waves). He found that he was able to believe in the midst of his ungrounding. He had to move away from the very thing he was sure of to find that Christ was present in the middle of his ungrounding. It when we move away from the solid things we have traditionally either been taught to or come to believe that we find that we truly have faith in ourselves and in the Christ ethic. It is in the pushing away of those things do we truly find ourselves.

I think Paul, the early church author, asks us to do the same in terms of understanding and relating to each other. That we can enter into a perpetual ungroundedness. Paul begins this ungroundedness in discussion of something that we tend to as westerners assume is the object of our groundedness. Paul refers to it as the Law.

In the verse above, Paul speaks of equality as if it supercedes the Law. We come to a place where we realize within the Law that the Apostle Paul speaks of is a perversion of transgression. That in the law there is an inherent expectation of breaking it. A good example is when we are casually walking across a patch of green grass and notice the sign that prohibits us from being present in the area. The ‘do not walk on the grass’ is a perversion in that it expects us to follow it yet realizing that the opposite itself is also true. That we might not follow it. It prohibits desire and defines desire as something to be transgressed. This is what I think was going in in the theology of St. Augustine who is repeatedly pointed to as the main ideological influencer of ‘Original Sin’; the idea that all of humanity is born with a permanent scar. St. Augustine seemed to call this permanent scar desire in era where the politicized Church got to define what was desirable and what wasn’t.

The Law represents that thing that is outside of us, for all-intense purposes it is the Objective. Paul redefines the Jewish law and opens it up to include the Greeks, the (majority) population of the known world. Paul introduces the idea of plurality and universalism by treating the law as something that is to be challenged. Which is in itself a challenge, because Paul himself was a Jew. Paul was re-envisioning the landscape of what it meant to be a Christian. By spending a lot of time on the Law, Paul was essentially distancing himself from what the Law represented. Its much like the person who overstates their case or exaggerates their position for the sake of direct irony.

The negation of something is found not in the public negation of it, but in the public acceptance of it. In fact, Paul’s re-envisioning of the Law from the ethnic to the personal took something objective and made it subjective. He seems to publicly accept the Law by speaking it, but he then changes the Laws focus on to the Christ ethic, the way we treat each other – Love.

Love is the

new

Law.

The Christ-Ethic is the new way we see each other.

He took something initially meant for the small and made it big. He replace the Law with an Ethic. But this ethic is experience subjectively rather than objectively. If anything, in this regard was more a subjectivist act than not. (The danger is to hear this and assume that that is a bad thing). I see the letter of Paul not necessarily as a collection of modern-day handbooks with which to measure ourselves against, but rather as letters between himself and his communities. Almost like two-way journals into their ‘personal’ journeys toward understanding God.

In fact, in Pauls’ statement there is an anticipation toward a neutered identity. That there is a reality where all of our identities are suspended in the Christ ethic. That when we treat one another as Christ teaches us, there is something that occurs within the human condition – we stop seeing each other as labels. When we love there is no Methodist, no Baptist, no Mormon, no Buddhist, no Muslim and no Christian – because in this instance there is only what Christ represents.

It doesn’t mean we lose our distinctiveness, it means we lose the spirit of competitive aggression.

It means we die to ourselves.

Paul believes this reality can exist. I think it partially lies in what he says after the ethnic designation, that there is neither bound nor free. In our society there is a ritualistic addiction in having and not having. The have’s tend to compare themselves to the have not’s. Those who are ‘bound’ to the things they have seek justification in their violent comparison against those who lack. Paul says in this new landscape of hopeful equality, there are no have’s and have not’s.

That we all exist as equals.

That one religion isn’t better than another, nor is one house better than another, or one bank account is bigger than another, nor is one country better than another, that all exist as equals in this cosmic Christ. Paul is perverting the Law to the point that is beyond something that we could ever be bound to, in fact, in his talk of the law he continously turns the conversation back on to Christ. Essentially, make Christ the ‘new law’ or the new objective. And in Christ we are all one. We are all beyond the law, we are neutered yet defined in this Christ ethic, in the way we treat one another. When we treat one another in this new Christ Way we are perpetuating the dream of God.

After a hiatus due to a move across country my weekly feature on science and religion returns with guest author Paul. J. Zak and his work on the science of morality, especially interpersonal trust and love. Paul J. Zak’s book The Moral Molecule: Vampire Economics and New Science of Good and Evil will be published by Dutton in 2012.  Follow him on Twitter @pauljzak

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Strident anti-theist Christopher Hitchens recently announced he will begin chemotherapy for esophageal cancer. The five-year survival rate for esophageal cancer is only five percent so things look quite grim. Hitchens has famously compared the three major monotheistic religions, with their top-down “thou-shalts” and “thou-shalt nots” to totalitarian political regimes. He logically deduced that these religions, like totalitarianism, must be responsible for much of the evil in the world. Hitchen’s presumption in this argument is that people are inherently evil. If this is true, paradoxically we may need a God to keep us on the straight and narrow.

Work from my lab (www.neuroeconomicstudies.org) over the past ten years has identified a brain chemical that causes people to engage in moral behaviors in the laboratory. This research has shown that most people, most of the time are moral, not evil. It even reveals the biochemical soup that leads to immorality.

Oops, how can one be “moral” in a lab? We test morality the old-fashioned way, tempting people whose privacy is guaranteed with virtue or vice by putting cold hard cash on the table. In our experiments, participants can either keep the cash, or under a specified set of rules, share it with another participant. A dilemma arises because they cannot see or talk to this other person. And, in some experiments, if the other person doesn’t like the cash offer, she or he can choose to burn the money and both people lose.

What would you do? Try to get away with being stingy or be generous?

Many people are, in fact, generous. But why? Especially when no one, not even the experimenters, are watching. By taking blood samples before and after these monetary decisions, we showed that when a person entrusts money to a stranger, the stranger’s brain releases a biochemical called oxytocin. Oxytocin motivates sharing resources with others. Our brains evolved to share.

That makes sense. We are social creatures, and sharing with others is a necessary part of being part of a social group. But outside the lab we typically share because cooperation goes around and comes back to us. We share with our family and friends and we expect them to share with us, too.

But in our experiments, people made a single decision involving money with a stranger. Nothing at all could come back to them. And yet nearly all of them choose to share. Indeed, helping complete strangers comes naturally to us. I got off a cross-country flight yesterday and innumerable other passengers held doors for me, helped me with my luggage, engaged in conversation and generally made my travel more pleasant. They are not friends, and there is little chance I’ll ever see any of them again.  I did the same. On my last flight, I sat next to a couple on a trip for their 50th wedding anniversary and bought them drinks to celebrate. I did not do this because I fear God’s wrath or was seeking to earn my way into heaven. It just seemed, well…nice.

Oxytocin makes us nice. In other experiments, I’ve infused oxytocin into the brains of hundreds of human volunteers. (This is safe, your brain makes oxytocin so I’m just increasing what is already there.) In these experiments, those getting oxytocin are demonstrable more generous with money than people given a placebo. And, they do not mind leaving the lab with less money–we asked about this and they had a c’est la vie attitude. The money involved was in the $30-$50 range, so it was not going to make them rich, but on the other hand these are hungry college students who are getting poked and prodded for two hours. They take the sharing decision seriously.

Oxytocin provides a reflection of what our actions would feel like if we were on the receiving end. It put us into the other person’s shoes. Since we tend to avoid pain, oxytocin makes us more sensitive to the pain others might feel. If we believe that our actions will produce pain in others, we typically avoid the action because it causes us pain. In this sense, morality is self-serving mechanistically, even if it produces virtue socially.

Oxytocin, and the larger brain circuit that it engages, allows us to crowd-source our actions. Because most of what is considered moral has to do with our behavior towards others, this ancient molecule keeps us focused on others. My experiments have revealed that oxytocin is the “moral molecule.”

So where is God in all this? Belief in God is not necessary for morality. But, I cannot disprove that an omniscient God created the universe in such a way that we would evolve oxytocin as the moral molecule. I have no way to test this so I must leave this in the “inconclusive” pile. Call it a matter of faith.

As social creatures we emulate those who have lived successful lives. Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, Krishna, and Mother Teresa can all be considered moral exemplars. We study them because they reveal how to live a virtuous life. A life that is fully connected to, and in service of, others.

I believe an example of such virtue (the virtue of compassion) is the report by Ross Douthat of the New York Times that a number of Christians are praying for Christopher Hitchen’s recovery. While those praying may be driven by their faith in God, they are certainly showing themselves to be virtuous and may have even raised Hitchens’ oxytocin level. Uncharacteristically, when asked about people praying for him, Hitchens said he was grateful.

Lectionary Reflection for August 29, 2010

Luke 14:7-14

This text is part of a larger unit.  It consists of an opening scenario from Jesus’ ministry, a Sabbath meal with religious leaders at which an uninvited guest appears (the man with dropsy 14:1-5), a parable sparked by Jesus’ observation of how guests choose their seats (25:7-24), followed by a longer parable about a wedding banquet. 14:7-14 deals with behavior when we’re on the receiving end of a banquet invitation. 14:15-24 deals with behavior when we’re on the giving end of a banquet. The contrast between the invited guests and the uninvited intruder is thematic to 14:1-24.  We are to attend God’s banquet (the Messianic banquet) with a spirit of humility. We are to host others in the meantime in a spirit of inclusivity, treating the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind as guests of honor (14: 13, 21).

The text begins with a scene from Jesus ‘ministry: he is in the home of a leader of the Pharisees for a Sabbath meal.  The combination of the detail that “they were watching him closely,” the presence of lawyers and Pharisees, and the man’s sudden appearance may indicate that this was “staged” to trap Jesus (Ellis, 192). This scene is almost identical to the scene from last week where Jesus heals a crippled woman on the Sabbath, the leader of the synagogue objects and Jesus offers corrective teaching. In this earlier story, we learn that “all his opponents were put to shame (13:17).” Here (14:6) “they could not reply to this.” Jesus’ healing on the Sabbath epitomizes his valuing of relationships over rules.  For these religious leaders, rules take precedence over relationships. Jesus’ question in verse 5 reveals that they relate to their oxen with more compassion than they show in their attitude toward the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.  Says one biblical scholar “Jesus undresses their concealed and half-forgotten motives and lays them naked on the dinner table” (Ellis 192).

As all of this is going on, Jesus is noticing how guests are choosing their seats, and this sparks a brief parable (14:7-14) in which he gives advice on how we are to behave when we are on the receiving end of an invitation to a banquet. His advice is similar to the teaching of Proverbs 25:6, 7 about where to sit and stand in social gatherings at the king’s court. Jesus takes a piece of advice that could have shown up in an advice column of his day and applies it to how we are to behave in the presence of God. He is not just giving etiquette advice about feasts. He is expressing the fact that, when we answer the invitation to the banquet of the kingdom of God, we had better enter by humbling ourselves (Wenham 167). Elsewhere Jesus warns his disciples against seeking positions of power in the Kingdom of God. (Luke 22:24-27; Mark 10:35-45; Matthew 20: 20-28), and he criticizes the Pharisees for their religious pride (Luke 11:43; 20:45-47) (Marshall 581).

At banquets of that time the most important guests arrived late. The place of honor reserved for them was the head end of the table or, if it was a banquet at which guests reclined, the middle seat at the middle couch. It would be a public embarrassment to assume you were the most distinguished guest present, to take that seat, and then have to give it up. Your exalted view of yourself would be on public display and would be a source of shame. We would much rather keep our exalted view of ourselves a secret!

After Jesus’ advice in verses 7-11 about appropriate behavior when invited to God’s banquet, he offers advice about how we are to host banquets that, in the present time, incorporate kingdom values (14:12-14). We are to invite that twice repeated foursome of guests: the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind (14:13, 21). We are to invite the very guests the Pharisees object to Jesus healing. We are to invite the very guests they object to even being present at their tables. The last person on their list, in fact, the person not on their lists at all would be a crippled woman (13:10) or a man with dropsy (14:2). These individuals would sully the ritual purity of their table, since physical infirmities were believed to be signs of sin.

The word blessed (makarios) shows up twice in this chapter (14:14; 14:15). Jesus, in 14:14, says “You will be blessed, because they cannot repay you…” and, in 14:15, one of the dinner guests says “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” The name for this form of saying is beatitude. Christians sometimes assume that Jesus invented the beatitude, but they are a common form in the Old Testament (see Isaiah 30:13 and Jeremiah 17:7).  They are also found in Greek literature where the blessings promised are largely materialistic. In the biblical context blessedness describes happiness that comes from a right relationship with God, as opposed to a more material understanding of good fortune or emotional bliss. (See Psalm 1:1-2; 33:12) (McKenzie, 33). Jesus is telling us that offering kindness to those who cannot repay us and inviting those who have nothing to God’s banquet sets our relationship with God on a right course.

One of the dinner guests, hearing this teaching of Jesus about whom we should invite to our banquets, offers a spontaneous beatitude of his own:  “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” (14:15) We are to understand that blessedness comes into our lives when we realize who the guest of honor really is. Blessedness comes into our lives when we treat the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind as guests of honor. When we exalt them rather than ourselves, we are already eating bread in the kingdom of God. God’s kingdom is not yet, but it is already present in Jesus’ table fellowship with outcasts, his exorcisms and his healings.

Who was the guest of honor in the banquet Jesus attended? The leader of the Pharisees (14:1-6) thought he was it. But it was the man with dropsy. Who is the guest of honor in the banquets we attend? We may think we are it, but humiliation awaits such an assumption. Who is the guest of honor in the banquets we are to host, a foretaste of the messianic banquet? Those who may seem to have nothing to offer us back: the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.  Who is the guest of honor at the messianic banquet in the kingdom of God yet to come?

The guest of honor is the one who said, “The Son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28). Says Jesus in Luke, “I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:27). The guest of honor is among us.

Sources cited:

E. Earle Ellis, The Gospel of Luke, The New Century Bible (Greenwood, South Carolina: The Attic Press).

I. Howard Marshall, The New Interational Greek Testament Commentary on Luke (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1978)

Alyce M. McKenzie, The Interpretation Bible Studies Commentary on Matthew (Westminster John Knox Press, 1998).

David Wenham, The Parables of Jesus (Downer’s Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1989).

Alyce M. McKenzie is Professor Of Homiletics at Perkins School of Theology.

The condition of renewal means you cut your roots – Slavoj Zizek

Once upon a time when we were peripatetic hunter-gatherers, all we knew was travel. Mobility was life. Life was mobility. We only took what we needed. We didn’t consume in excess. Then one day we discovered the art of farming and settling. This simple shift transformed the landscape of how we interacted with the world and one another. This simple shift from constantly moving to immobilisation, would force us into awkward tribal skirmishes even moreso than when we were traveling without the need for a travel agent. The idea of being static and established would also come to taint how we define what it means to be established and non-established. We now think in terms of buildings when we approach ideas. Not movement.

Yet, the early Church philosopher Saul-turned-Paul uses the metaphor of a body when he writes about the Church. What is a body? Something that has blood coursing through its veins, something with a heartbeat and most importantly, something that moves. Mobility. Alive. Breathing. The Church of the future doesn’t need to look like anything of the Church of old, but it can learn from it. It can look to the Church now as something to stare at, analyze and gawk at in the museum of our history. I think this idea of establishment was something that even during the paleolithic era brought more danger than not. I think what we need to rekindle in this new formless Church is a movement.

A church that is inclusive means we can’t allow space for exclusion.

And here is the ironic thing, when we reject something, whether something as simple as an idea or a person there is going to be exclusion. What we have to do is negate the negation when we enter into such crisis points. If we find ourselves as a new experiment in church excluding than we negate not only the act of being inclusive, but we in turn defend exclusion in practice and negate the desire to be inclusive. This is very tricky territory here.

Negate the negation means this: We have to bring the idea of rejection to its furthest possible end, to its own death. And we can’t speed up the velocity of rejections’ self-rejection. But we can allow space for it. If anything, church is definitely a space for death. In this conversation, the assumption of taking it to its furthest possible end is death. To bring rejection to is furthest possible end, means we have to allow space within this new experiment in community for rejection. The only way rejection can reject itself is if we allow it to reject itself. If you are interacting with another person and they disagree with you, this then can be defined as rejection. And if we accept rejection as a valid form of communication, which I think we should, than we also have to accept the possible death of our ideas. We must be willing to engage with one another, not in defense of our ideas, not as an apologist, but as a sacrifice.

Do you remember the ram provided for Abraham in place of Isaac?

This is what is going in here in this dynamic of the future church. Isaac represents our ideas we offer to one another, we bring them to the conversation bound and defined, but also ready to be sacrificed. If the greater good (God/Objective) is in favor of this idea than a ram is provided. The greater good is the aim or the goal of the community you call home. What this also means is that the altar is the tribal objective/direction. We willingly lay down our ideas as an offering, this doesn’t mean we don’t bring them passionately or intentionally. Abraham, I am sure was passionate about his sacrifice. I think this is one step in the right direction in terms of what does an inclusive community look like that follows after Jesus.

So how far do we go in terms of inclusion?

Again. If we start putting fences around our definitions, than the definition we begin with is negated (no longer exists). Some aren’t comfortable with allowing those from other faiths to participate fully with their community and are still adament that the atmosphere represents inclusivity. The flaw in this way of thinking is that this group has defined inclusive. Once you define something you negate it. So, how do we know if we have gone too far? I think this is the wrong question.

Peter, a passionate follower of Jesus asked how far is too far in terms of forgiveness, and Jesus responds by challenging peter with an infinite numerical metaphor. Jesus is essentially telling peter that there isn’t a too far. Jesus negates/reject Peters idea. Peter accepts this negation. So, really there is no too far. The query presumes that there should be; the fear is that a group if too inclusive will become obsolete or amorphous. This possibility is also present within an exclusive group of people and can be seen in some churches today.

We have been sensing something is wrong, and so we dream outside of the box.

So in terms of inclusion, what we come to is a space for inclusive social diversity. Inclusion doesn’t mean we lose our identity, if anything we enhance it by interacting with other identities. I think of the Chimera,the mythical Greek creature that was a hybrid of many animals. It was the contribution of each of these animals that made this character influentially effective (in terms of a post-colonial power). Inclusion can bring this kind of strength to a group. Some are afraid we lose identity, which is a valid concern, but in terms of the Chimera, we gain an identity if not more.

We learn. We grow. We are changed and challenged. We become something we never anticipated.

Something better than before. So rather than a we and them, it now becomes a we. A ‘we’ enhanced by our diversity. The harmony of diversity can only exist if we desire it. Part of the desire comes from a place of informed naivete. We must choose to be naive. Not naive in the child sense of not being aware of ’stranger danger’, but a naive spirit of childlike re-discovery. Where we actually choose against what the stats say, what the stories tell us, even what our own ego’s whisper at us, we defiantly hope for a better world where church inherently disallows the label. This doesnt mean we lose our personas or give up what we believe, it means we deny the stereotype that we will. It means we look to the expressions of others as a way to learn about ourselves.

Once we make it here, than I think we can make it there.

I think once we learn how to get to a point of harmonious self-submission than we can truly begin engaging on how to make the world a better place. But, once we attain the above, a huge amount of our issues might not exist. I am not naive enough to say that they won’t exist, but am independently naive enough to say it is possible. I look to the church in acts not as a metaphor for what we now deem as a church, but rather a microcosm of how the world is meant to be, what it could look like. People who selflessly give to one another to the point that there is excess. This is why I think in this new future church its imperative that our desires don’t simply empower our own ego’s, but that we have circular desires. what do I mean? I mean that my desires inherently lead to your ideas and your ideas inherently lead to mine and so on and so on. That there is this dance where we willingly participate in to create a diverse space of harmony.

I think these are just a few good places to start for the dream that is the future church.