It’s an easy read, the story of a college professor Kate, her senior colleague Martin, and a student Erin. About to get tenure, Kate is invited to apply for a one year professorship at a seminary; if she accepts, however, she’ll have to reapply for her position and may not get it. She and Martin had a brief affair years ago, which ended abruptly. Erin is part of a conservative Bible study cell, pressuring her to drop Kate’s liberal class.

Author Borg uses the characters’ class lectures, sermons and meditations to put forth his progressive views, namely that since the Enlightenment Christianity has changed. The Enlightenment in the 17th century saw the rise of science, in particular Newtonian physics, and called into question such things as the miracles and the creation accounts. Borg offers an alternative vision which sees the miracle stories as symbolic.

He emphasizes the point that something may not be factual, but nevertheless true; he quotes Thomas Mann, who said, “Myth is the way things never were, but always are.” For those who find the word “myth” scary because it often is used in the sense that something is false or made up, rather than real or true—I define “myth” as language about truth which cannot be put into words.

Kate gives a lecture in which she references a study of the word “believe” over time. Before the 1600s “believe” almost always had a person as a direct object; after, it often had a statement as direct object. Believing moved from meaning “committed to” to meaning “agreeing with, giving assent to.”

We see the difference in the idioms “believe that” and “believe in.”

• I believe that Hitler lived.
• I believe in Jesus Christ.

Borg points out an old form of the word was something like “belove.” That still survives, by the way, in the word “beloved.” It involves a whole lot more than accepting a set of factual statements about Jesus.

Habakkuk’s “the righteous will live by faith [believing]” doesn’t mean “agreeing with” doctrinal statements.

Borg moves on to words for faith, three of them.

1. Assensus, intellectual agreement.
2. Fidelitas, faithfulness.
3. Fiducia, trust.

The latter mean living in faithful relationship and risking your life on.

Genuine Christianity requires the second and third. But since the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on science, and the Reformation, on doctrine, the first meaning “agree with” has become ascendant.

Real faith means living in God-confidence, not anxiety and fear.

I find Borg’s thought exciting. I accept the possibility of the miracles being factually as well as symbolically true more than he does. But it’s unimportant because he clearly has a living relationship with God.

I love the Bible—having read it, learned it by heart, taught it, preached and (I hope) lived up to it all my days. I believe by composing, preserving, and passing down through generations these scriptures the Hebrew, Jewish and Christian peoples have sought to hear (often succeeding in  hearing) the true Word of God.

Darkness (whatever you understand it to be) also loves to use the Bible, however, creating diversion, division and hatred, and causing pride, hypocrisy. and legalism. Darkness also wrongly uses texts like Zephaniah to persuade us there’s no hope, no use, no future—when by God’s grace there is hope, there is a point, there is a bright future for all who listen and follow the God of light and love.

Zephaniah, one of the 12 short books at the end of the OT, gives End of the World crazies a reason to celebrate! Try this:

“I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth”
—declares the Lord.
“I will sweep away [humans] and beast;
I will sweep away the birds of the sky
And the fish of the sea….
And I will destroy [humankind]
from the face of the earth”—declares the Lord. (Zeph 1.2-3, TANAKH)

The note says the Hebrew may mean the total destruction of an area of the earth, rather than total annihilation. Either way, I’d rather not.

 For the Hebrew prophet, the issue of ecology is morality, not science. Science is a tool, a good tool, in the hands of good people. But science alone cannot correct this problem.

The prophet Hosea, much earlier than Zephaniah, makes the connection crystal clear:

…”there is no  honesty and no goodness
And no obedience to God in the land.
[False] swearing, dishonesty, and murder,
And theft and adultery are rife;
Crime follows upon crime!
For that, the earth is withered:
Everything that dwells on it languishes—
Beasts of the field and birds of the sky—
Even the fish of the sea perish.” (Hosea 4.1b-3)

So what?

A scholar I can’t name said that Bible study involves two questions: what? and, so what?

“What” tells the message, “so what” the meaning for your life.

Zephaniah, Hosea said… So what? For decades pop culture has laughed at the bearded guy in a monk’s robe waving a placard “The End is Near.” Preachers don’t talk about this stuff so much any more. But Nature programs now routinely document the imminent extinction of species and decimation of habitat. “Mass extinction event” is part of our everyday vocabulary.

Yet, nothing changes.

BP makes bad decisions to speed things up and boost profits; and, millions of gallons of crude oil foul the Gulf of Mexico. A natural environment that cannot be valued is mired for a century or more. If (or when!) the stuff gets into the Gulf Stream, who knows what worldwide destructive impact is possible.

Here’s what I think:

We know of several civilizations which flourished, depleted their resources, and vanished from the earth: Easter Island, the Mayans, the culture centered in Angkor Wat, Southeast Asia. It’s very likely that is happening again, except this time on a global scale. Perhaps, if humans are utterly stupid, greedy and blind, we can cause a mass extinction event.

There aren’t enough tears to weep, when you realize that. Nevertheless:

I Will

• reach out my hand and heart to all who strive to follow the Wisdom Tradition of their culture. 
• speak out for justice and well-being of individuals and eco-systems.
• do my best to understand my position of privilege, and deconstruct as much of that as I can.
• strive to live as St. Francis and Gandhi lived, though I can’t reach anywhere close to their level.
• follow Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, living in accord with
  • the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7),
  • the Great Commandments (love God, others, self), and,
  • the Ten Commandments.

I will live in hope.

Translators note that “humbly” also means wisely or prudently.

I’m rambling all over the place. But the question is, What does the Lord require of me? That’s the question.

There are several attempts to sum up the Law. The Ten Commandments. Psalm 15 boils it down to 11 clauses. Jesus reduces it to two stated + one understood: (1) love God with all your being, (2) love your neighbor, (3) as [you love] yourself.

But the prophet called Micah achieves an elegant simplicity:

•  justice,
• mercy,
• wisdom (which presumably engenders humility).

In Matthew 23.23-24 Jesus condemns the legalists who tithed the herbs in their garden but”neglected the weightier matters of the Law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness.” (TNIV) NRSV translates the same three virtues.

Do justice. Treat everybody fairly, or to go to the spirit of the Law: generously. Treat people as God treats them. For God sends rain on the just and the unjust. For the average American, the problem is that the people abused by our system are largely invisible. They may be the poor on the other side of town, or the destitute on the other side of the world. For us much of the world is as familiar as the dark side of the moon. So doing justice may require us to open our eyes and learn about people we never see, we never think of—people we have no intention of harming, but whom we do harm because of where and how we live.

Love mercy. This term mercy is a great Hebrew word hesed. It stands for love within covenant. It means that God requires us to treat the stranger kindly, that is, like kindred. Why? Because, it’s not the preacher or the deacon, not the brother or the sister, but it’s we ourselves who are standing in the need of God’s love.

Finally, walk humbly, wisely with God. Like Enoch did, like Adam and Eve in the garden did, like Jesus did. Walk is a metaphor throughout the Bible for life. How we live, day by day, hour by hour, must reflect God’s love and mercy to us.

Sorry if this post is a bit preachy. I’m preaching to myself. I’m none too happy with how I’m “burning daylight” as the Bard says.

“There’s a special Providence in the fall of a sparrow…. Readiness is all,” Hamlet tells Horatio just before his death.

I think that’s what God requires. Readiness for whatever God pleases. I hope to do better at that this coming week than I have in the past.

It pisses me off.

The author says he is a neutral observer of history, what probably happened. Since miracles are highly improbable, he can’t prove they occurred. But by that logic—the super natural lies outside the realm of the natural, which is all the historian has access to—that same historian cannot prove or disprove miracles.

So how come the author then attempts to disprove every miracle in the NT?

Doubt is not a modern phenomenon. It’s as old as the Garden of Eden. “But the serpent said, ‘You shall not die….’” (Gen 4.4).

No, I don’t know absolutely that there was a snake, a Garden, or a woman named Eve. I’m not sure whether Genesis is an account of data as well as a story.

I believe in miracles. I believe also in the power of Story.

What I’d like to point out is that, when historians pooh pooh the miracles, reduce them to a parlor game of Gossip over time, they are not doing so as historians. But as dis-believers.

It’s okay, fashionable, especially in academic circles to be a dis-believer. So the historians say they cannot write as believers. To be honest, they must say also that they cannot write as dis-believers. Disbelief is  often actually a set of beliefs made popular in the 18^th century by white male Europeans which reduces every miracle to something that fits an 18^th century intellect of this stripe.

The problem of miracle belongs to the Newtonian universe, the machine in a box. But physics today has exploded that universe.

Many of us believe uncritically, unconsciously, what that group of white male European scientists and philosophers in the 18^th century believed, ideas called the Enlightenment.

But that set of beliefs reduces the world to a place without anything intangible. You can see how it works in the definition of the word immaterial, (Dictionary.com)

im·ma·te·ri·al

–adjective

1. of no essential consequence; unimportant.

2. not pertinent; irrelevant.

3. not material; incorporeal, spiritual.

The basic meaning is 3a: not material. But look at all the other stuff that gets piled on: of no essential consequence, unimportant, not pertinent, irrelevant, spiritual. In other words, all that counts in this worldview is what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, count, control.

But wait: love is immaterial, that is, not material. Joy, peace, right, wrong, dreams… the list goes on and on forever. That which makes us uniquely human—not a brick, or a dog, or a widget that produces dollar value—is immaterial, but it is what makes humans human.

Maybe one pair of human eyes cannot see an angel. But over time and space, a thousand human spiritual eyes can see that, indeed, there must be angels, there were angels at Bethlehem.

Okay, that’s a belief statement. It’s beyond the ken of an historian.

That’s a knock against our way of doing history, not belief.

I don’t want the Bible to be historical, in the way my historian friend makes it. I want it to be true.

I just hope our college freshmen know enough to realize that belief and disbelief are the same kind of thing.

My darling girl pointed me to a video by Rob Bell, Everything is Spiritual. One of the most incredibly intelligent addresses I’ve heard, ever.

One of the most important passages in the Bible on the subject of giving is 2 Corinthians 8-9. Paul is collecting money from the Gentile churches of Macedonia and Asia Minor for the poor Jewish Christians of Jerusalem.

This was the climax of his life’s work.

The principles I see in these verses are:

• Give (money) as God has blessed you.
• First give yourself totally to God.
• Jesus’ self-emptying, descending from heaven’s throne to Calvary’s cross, is our prime example.
• Sow little, reap little—sow much, reap much.
• Hilarious (the Greek word) giving celebrates God’s insane abundance.
• God gives us more than enough to be generous—both grain for food and grain for seed.
• Giving enriches the giver!

God reinforced these lessons in my heart today. I want to thank God for the generosity of Trinity church and friends who reached out to help us with medical bills in past weeks and months.

Paul wrote:

For, as I can testify, they [the Macedonians]  voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means, begging us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this ministry to the saints– and this, not merely as we expected; they gave themselves first to the Lord and, by the will of God, to us.

2 Cor 8:3-5 (NRSV)

For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.

2 Cor 8:9 (NRSV)

The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.

 As it is written,

“He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor;
     his righteousness endures forever.”
He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God.

2 Cor 9:6-12 (NRSV)

Matthew begins with 17 verses of “begats.” Mostly we skip it. There are theological insights hidden there, however, like Easter Eggs in a  DVD.

Three groups of 14. In gematria, the Jewish system of number symbols, 14 is David’s number. D is the 4th letter in the Hebrew alphabet, W (V) the 6th. Add the numbers, you get 14. So each group announces Jesus’ relation to David. The breaking points are highlights of Israelite history, starting with Abraham, then David the stellar king, and after the deportation to Babylon.

The list includes five women (except Mary, each of them a shady lady in some respects): Tamar (v. 3), Rahab and Ruth (v. 5), the former wife of Uriah (v. 6). This week our Bible study groups looked at Tamar, Genesis 38.

Tamar’s story interrupts the saga of Joseph, just as he was going down to Egypt as a slave. Judah had three sons; he married Er the eldest to Tamar. But Er died. Judah told son #2 Onan to do his duty and raise up an heir for his brother. (This is levirate marriage, see Deut. 25.5-10.) Without knowledge of the resurrection, you needed offspring to keep your line going. Onan, however, didn’t want an “heir” of his elder brother’s to inherit 2/3 of his father’s estate; so he practiced a crude form of birth control to prevent pregnancy. Onan also died.

Many biblical interpreters have used Onan’s story as a way to discourage boys from masturbation, but that’s a misuse of scripture. The issue here is that Onan refused to follow the law and raise up an heir for his brother.

Judah didn’t want to lose his third son Shelah to a “black widow.” He shelved his daughter-in-law in her father’s house. When she realized he was not going to let her keep her dead husband’s name alive in israel, Tamar took action.

She disguised herself as a temple prostitute, a woman involved in Canaanite worship through ritual sex. Not knowing who she was, Judah had sex with her, but not before she secured tokens from him that would identify him at a later date. (A comparable act would be giving her his driver’s license and VISA card, until he brought cash payment.) But when his friend returned with payment, the so called temple prostitute had disappeared.

Family discovered Tamar was pregnant, and planned to burn her. (Double standard! No sweat for the man.) But she produced the items belonging to Judah, proving she had acted only to secure an heir for her husband, and keep the line going.

Since it is the line eventuating in the Messiah, God also wanted to keep the line going. Her loyalty and hutspah served not only her husband, but Almighty God as well! In that way “she was more righteous than Judah.” (Gen 38.26)

Tamar took grave risks of being maligned, even being burned, to accomplish what in her time and place was an honorable goal. As a single woman, she had no power. Yet she confronted the head of a clan, successfully.

Jesus must have known the stories about his mother, and have felt the sting of slurs against himself as a “bastard.” When he was confronted with the woman taken in adultery (John 8.1-11), did he think about Mary’s suffering?

The Messiah’s genealogy includes the most powerless, poorest people of the society—single women, and not even the “respectable” ones! Surely, we too need to think of women who are left out and lost by our society, if we are truly to be part of Jesus and Mary’s household.

Next: The Miss Kitty and the Longbranch of Jericho, Rahab (Joshua 2)

Flush with the success of earlier efforts, I added a protein booster whey powder, a couple eggs, and two tablespoons of oil.

After 25 minutes in the oven, the knife came out clean.

We cut the cake the next day to store it. It consisted of an outside ring, inside ring and center.

The outside was perfect, a dream of a cake.

The inside was still semi-liquid, doughy.

The center was empty.

T. S. Eliot:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Wow! What an image of spiritual life!

It is critical for our spiritual lives to be real, nourishing, whole.

Not cream puffs without cream.

And, when you’re starving, a good hearty piece of bread is better than a pastry.

I’m reading Dom Helder Camara in the Orbis Books series Modern Spiritual Masters. I was intrigued that I never heard of him before, yet the blurb identified him as a major player in Vatican II and an archbishop (?) who implemented changes to move the Brazilian and Latin American church toward ideals of Poverty and Service.

He embodied the bishop Victor Hugo described in the opening pages of Les Miserables. Fluent in French,  he must have known that book well. The Brazilian dictatorship of the 1960s silenced him in the country, but could not outside.

Conservative, fervent anti-Communist pope John Paul II dismantled most of his accomplishments. His writings are largely in Portuguese and housed in Recife, I believe. Orbis is doing world Christianity a great service in bringing the riches of his thought to light.

I confess I  got a flyer offering them at half off. I purchased:

• Dom Helder Camara
• Pedro Arrupe
• Thomas Merton
• Evelyn Underhill
• Simone Weil
• Writings on Contemplation and Compassion, ed. Robert Ellsburg.

Easily a year’s worth of reading and reflection.  I was introduced to the series by the volume on Dorothee Sölle, the German theologian. That led me to read her magnum opus The Silent Cry, which I’ve written about.

Reading is a way out of despair for me. It helps me in these increasingly dark days. Advent is around the corner, my heart cries out for light, light, light!

Not the kind of book you’d expect a preacher to be reading. Lots of rowdy sex.

Besides that, what I like in this book is the longing evident from early days in Arenas’s life, a longing for something missing in the Communist paradise he grew up in.

Maybe food. As a boy he often ate dirt to fill his stomach.

His writing brought him to the attention of the literary community in Cuba. Despite the many parasites who sold out to State Security, there were others who gathered in small groups to read their work.

In one meeting the poet read his original poems, then burned the only copy in a hibachi to the gasps of the crowd. In Cuba it’s criminal to write except in connivance with the State.

Arenas’ friends smuggled his work out of Cuba, and it was published in France, winning acclaim.

He writes that tyranny hates the Beauty of a poem which cannot be enslaved to its purposes.

He would have liked Ephesians 2.10, “We are God’s works of art…” [lit. poema] NJB.

In my heart is a longing that Arenas somewhere, somehow met the God, who might be known by other names—such as Beauty, Medicine, Truth, Justice, Love. Transcendent names.

I don’t know. I’m just really clear that the system I grew up with, in which people were either saved or lost (no other possibilities), doesn’t cover all the people I know.

There are those souls who long for a better God than all the gods they know, souls who serve their better God even though they have no proof their God exists, souls who put many “saved” folks to shame.

C.S. Lewis wrote of one such soul in The Last Battle. Emeth [Hebrew word meaning faithful] was an enemy soldier who loved the pagan bird god Tash fiercely, risked his life to catch a glimpse of Tash, only to learn in Aslan’s country that he had worshiped the great Lion all his life.

Lewis explained, you can’t offer true worship to a false god; nor can you give false worship to the true God. By whatever name they call God true worshipers serve the true God; false worshipers, false gods.

O true God of mercy, love and grace, you have other sheep, belonging to other folds. May you bring them home in peace at the last. Amen

 Note: high pain today, so I can’t write a lot.

As fall deepens, days grow short and the air gets cold. Daylight Savings Time begins—suddenly night falls. You huddle with your school children at the bus stop as if in the wee hours.

This is one of the two great seasons of penitence that the Church observes: in the spring when light lengthens, it’s Lent; in the fall when darkness gathers, Advent. During this season we watch shadows grow, until the winter solstice, when the sun stands still, and the light once again begins to win back the hours.

Imagine ancient humans tending their fires, keeping watch, without explanation for the war between darkness and light that took place in the heavens, dreading that one year darkness would win, and the ice and endless night of long ago would return.

Imagine something closer to today: existing without hope of a Savior. Perhaps you live under tyrants who suppress religious faith. Or, maybe your family taught you that only good looks, money, success give life meaning.

In either case, you’re still in the dark, still waiting for the dawn to come. Perhaps grace has awakened in your heart a love for the Light you have yet to fully see; you live in what little Light you have; you work to give Food to the hungry, Healing to the sick, Justice to the powerless. You long for the Daybreak which you cannot name.

Advent is for you!

It answers that ancient fear of the dark, as old as the species. During the four weeks of Advent we prepare mind and spirit for the victory of the Light in our lives. We ready our community for the birth of the Child whose Life is a turning point for all humankind.

Advent is for all of us who walk in darkness. In our heart is a longing for the Light. Advent tells us, “Lift up your heads! Redemption is drawing near!” (Luke 21.28)

—I’ll have more to say about this, related to the book Before Night Falls, by Cuban poet and activist Reinaldo Arenas.

1600 years ago a child went missing, a sign child went missing, and  is still missing today for most folks.

Child 1: Shear… “A remnant will return”

When God gave the faithless king Ahas a sign through the prophet Isaiah, he said, “The ‘almah is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him ‘Immanuel’—God with us.” (Isaiah 7.14).

Isaiah and his wife the prophetess already had a child Shear-jashub (‘A remnant shall return.’)

God instructed the prophet to take his son Shear-jashub with him to meet the king (who sacrificed his son to pagan gods). As prophet and king talked, perhaps the child ran around, as children do.

The prophet called out to his child: “Shear-jashub! Shear-jashub!”

Each time he proclaimed God’s message to the king: “A few will return.”

This means either “only a few of the enemies you fear will survive to go home” or “only a few Israelite exiles will return from Babylon.” Or maybe it means both.

The exiles returned from Babylon in 538 BCE about 200 years after Isaiah confronted the king. We know the date because in that year Cyrus issued an edict allowing exiles to go home.

Child 2: Maher…. “The spoils speeds, the prey hastens”

Isaiah 8 tells us of the child we miss.

Isaiah has a legal document drawn up and witnessed which says: “Belonging to Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz” (The spoil speeds, the prey hastens.)

Then Isaiah makes love to the prophetess (presumably his wife), and nine months later his second child Maher… is born.

The young woman, the ‘almah, of 7.14 has to be first the prophetess (700 years later, another maiden, a virgin named Mary fulfills the prophet’s word again. Matthew leaves no question about Mary’s being a virgin.)

Isaiah makes his point to king Ahaz twice (Isaiah 7.16 and 8.4). Before Maher is old enough to know the difference between right and wrong, the small neighboring kingdoms who are bullying Ahaz will be destroyed by Assyria, the mighty empire to the northeast.

What’s the big deal?

Prophecy is first fulfilled in the near future in the prophet’s time. Then, sometimes it may have another fulfillment later. This is true of Isaiah 7.14.

Suppose you go God and say, “Lord, I’m hurting, I need your help.”

“Fine,” God answers, “in 1000 years I’ll do something miraculous.”

How does that help you in the immediate time frame?

God doesn’t leave us hanging for long periods. The answer comes soon. Maybe not as soon as we’d like.

And yes, 1000 years is like a day.

Nevertheless, and especially in the case of Isaiah 7.14, God’s answer came in nine months. And again in 700 years, nine months.

Child 3… Jesus

When Mary’s child was born, not that many people noticed.

Historians did not notice. Three kings from the East noticed; they alerted Herod, tragically.

An innkeeper didn’t notice. Most of Bethlehem didn’t notice.

A few ecstatic shepherds told of a sky full of angels singing “Glory!”

When Mary and Joseph took him to the Jerusalem temple, most overlooked the little boy they brought to be circumcized.

Except an old man Simeon, and an old woman Anna.

They saw the Light of heaven nestled in Mary’s arms.

Two lessons

Our neighborhood Bible study group saw two lessons at least in Isaiah 7-8.

1. If we open our eyes, we can see God with us all around. Especially, there are Immanuel people, who remind us of God’s presence.

2. We as followers of Mary’s child are called to be Immanuel people, carrying the Light with us to everyone we encounter every day.