The Letters of Paul and Issues of Canon

My New Testament class has been studying the letters of Paul--week after week, on and on.  I haven't changed my mind about Paul; I still find his prose dense and inelegant and in need of specificity.  Paul was writing for specific churches dealing with specific problems, and frankly, most of his advice is not really applicable universally.  His letters are interesting to me historically, but I am still baffled at how much the Church has been shaped by these letters, especially in terms of how we police behavior--baffled and irritated.

It's especially irritating when I consider that Paul thought that Christ would be returning during his lifetime and during the lifetime of the readers of the letters.  He wasn't writing for people centuries later.  He wasn't trying to shape the future church.

In class on Tuesday night, we talked about issues of canonization--how did the New Testament come to exist?  I was cautious about my comments.  I know that some of my classmates are likely to have a very different view than mine.  I do not see the Bible as the inerrant word of God.  I believe that God can be revealed in the Bible, but I also believe that God can be revealed in nature.  I know that books were chosen, and I don't believe those choices were always pure.  Those people had other agendas.  I know that work got lost, and some of that work might have been a better choice.  I know that books that survived several centuries might have been rejected for a variety of reasons.

I am also aware of how hard it was to preserve words and ideas in the ancient world.  It is hard in our current time too, but hard in different ways.

On Tuesday night, our professor asked us what letters of Paul's seem worthy of preservation, and I had to say none of them, outside of historical interest.  I raised my hand and said that if I never had a chance to read Paul's letters ever again, I wouldn't be sad, the way I would if I couldn't access the Gospels, if I had to rely on memory.  The Jesus revealed in the Gospels is much more compelling than the Jesus revealed in any of the epistles.

And it's through Paul's letters that I see how the Church came to be a church that talks about personal sin, not societal sin.  I could make a case that it's through/because of Paul's letters that we have the substitutionary atonement theology, that Jesus was crucified because that was the only way to appease an angry God.  Those developments make me sad.

There's just not much in these letters that helps in my spiritual development.  I try to imagine the early church who found these letters so relevant that they went to the significant expense and time to copy them out for each other.  It's not something I would do.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, April 3, 2022:

First Reading: Isaiah 43:16-21

Psalm: Psalm 126

Second Reading: Philippians 3:4b-14

Gospel: John 12:1-8

I've always had some amount of trouble with this Gospel; I suspect it's because I would have been that disciple who said, "Just think what we could have done with the money that went to buy that expensive oil. Doesn't Jesus know the electric bill is due? We could have helped the poor. And she went and poured it all over his feet!"

I know that traditionally we use this Gospel lesson to make us think forward a few weeks to Good Friday, when Jesus' dead body will be anointed with funeral oils. But there's still something about this Gospel that makes me restless.

Perhaps it is Jesus saying, "The poor you will always have with you." I'm uneasy with the way so many people through the centuries have used this line to justify their unwillingness to work to eradicate poverty. A shrug of the shoulders, that verse out of context, and poof, we don't have to worry about our riches.

I've been trying to sit with this passage in a different context, in the context of the whole Gospel of John. Jesus says that the poor we'll always have with us, but we won't always have Jesus (at least not in human form). I'm trying to see it as Jesus telling us that we must treasure the moments in life that are sweet. Did Jesus know what was about to happen to him? Different theologians would give you different answers, but even if Jesus didn't know all the particulars of his upcoming execution, he must have known that he was stirring up all sorts of worldly trouble for himself. He must have known that he wouldn't have had many more of these occasions to sit and savor a meal.

I'm sure he's also speaking towards our impulse towards anger and self-righteousness. I can criticize the decisions of others in how they spend their money and what they should be spending their money on ("Imagine. She calls herself a Christian and look how much she spends on books. She could get them from the library and send the money she would have spent to Habitat for Humanity"). It's not always easy for me to know how to allocate my resources of time, treasure, and energy.

Truth be told, I find it easier to work on many a spiritual discipline than to sit and savor a meal with those whom I love, the ones, whom, like Jesus, I won't always have with me. I find it frighteningly easy to slide into the behavior of the disciples, that self-righteousness which precludes being able to enjoy a meal together.

In these days that feel increasingly hectic, let us remember to take time to focus on what's truly important. Let us put aside the anger and judgment that can make it so hard to live in community. 

Registrations of All Sorts

Yesterday was one of those days when technology worked, but also when it didn't.  I got registered for Fall 2022 classes for seminary.  It was rather unremarkable, in some ways.  Back in grad school in the 1990's, when I first started, we first had online registration during my last year of classes, and I set my alarm so that I could be ready to register just after midnight when registration opened to everyone.  I wanted to be sure I got a seat.

Yesterday, I registered in a calmer way, at 8:30, and for all but 1 class, I was the first one to claim a seat.  I will take the first part of Church History, Pastoral Care and Counseling in Contexts, and Foundations of Preaching. I will also take Creative Process as Spiritual Practice (yes, that's my heart you hear singing) and Leading Innovation in the Church. There are so many good classes that it's hard to choose--what a delightful problem!

I will take 2 of my classes virtually, by way of Zoom session, Monday night and Tuesday afternoon.  I will have a Tuesday night class, a Thursday afternoon class, and a Thursday night class, which will be face to face.  I do wonder if I should take one more class, but I don't want to be so overworked that I can't enjoy them or enjoy D.C.  So I will probably stick with those classes.

I got registered and did some grading for the online classes that I'm teaching; I'm underemployed, but not unemployed.  Again, technology worked as it should.  I realized that I hadn't heard about my unemployment benefits, even though I applied over a month ago, so I logged on to see what was going on.

My case is listed as pending, which it has been since I filed.  I looked around the site, and as in the past, I found no information.  I decided to call.  And thus, technology failed me.  I was bounced from recorded voice to recorded voice, before being disconnected.  The instructional videos showed me views of screens and dashboards that I could never find.  I was told that my account had been disabled because I tried to log on too many times, but it let me log on again from a new screen.

Finally, I gave up, which is what the state of Florida hopes I will do.  I will keep trying.  I am lucky--I have resources of all sorts.  What would happen if I didn't?

I know what would happen.  I have heard the horrible stories.

This morning I realized that I had gotten so snarled up in the "re-employment assistance" hell that I didn't go to my lectio divina session.  My New Testament professor offered us extra credit for attending, and so I signed up.  In some ways, if I had to miss an appointment, at least it was that one, since it's a come as you can appointment.  I missed an earlier session of lectio a few weeks ago, so I've probably already forfeited the 2 points.  Still it irked me to be consumed with something so soul draining when I could have spent time with the lectio group.  Sigh.

My spouse came home from his on-campus requirement, and we looked online at some properties in South Carolina again.  We have a variety of possible approaches to investing the profits from our home sale, and buying a house within commuting distance of LTSS, the seminary in Columbia, where I am likely to have to do a Lutheran year when I'm done at Wesley.

And then we disconnected from technology altogether, joining good friends who once lived in the neighborhood, for wine and cheese.  It was one of the perfect outdoor nights that we so rarely get here, and we decided to enjoy time in their backyard, instead of going out. 

A Week Thinking about Eucharistic Practices/Supper Clubs of Resistance

I have spent this week thinking about Eucharist practices, which may not be unusual for a seminary student.  In my Thursday night class, we talked about language and ritual and how they are linked to time.  We talked about Eucharist practices.  Some of my classmates talked about how they liked knowing that Christians across the world were celebrating communion the same way.  Because the class was almost over, I didn't raise my hand to point out that we probably assumed more similarity than was actually there--or maybe they just meant that we would all be using bread and wine/grape juice.  As a Lutheran who has spent a lot of time thinking about issues of transubstantiation and symbolism and food and liturgy, I know that we are not all celebrating communion the exact same way, and some Christian practices won't be recognized by other Christians.

Early in the Thursday night conversation at the end of class, I raised my hand to say that I appreciated the words of the Eucharist ritual because I felt it linked me to past generations, although I had spent part of the week writing a paper about Paul's view of the eucharist in 1 Corinthians, so I know that from the beginning, there's been disagreement about how to celebrate the Eucharist.

I want to preserve a Twitter thread that I found as I was finishing that exegesis paper on 1 Corinthians 11:  17-34.  Tuesday morning, March 22, I read these tweets from Diana Butler Bass, which she wrote on March 21: “So far my Lent reading has convinced me: 1) Maundy Thurs and not Good Friday is the point of the Gospels, and 2) there’s actually no “Christianity” until the 3rd century. How’s your Lent reading going?” and “Also, the early gatherings of Jesus people were basically supper clubs of resistance to Empire. (I’m so on board with this).”  Bass is reading Holy Thursday Revolution by Beatrice Bruteau and After Jesus / Before Christianity: A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements by Erin Vearncombe, Brandon Scott, and Hal Taussig.

I love the phrasing Bass uses:  supper club of resistance to Empire--yes!

And now, it's time to get ready to celebrate Eucharist--time to start shifting into getting ready for church mode.  I wish our church service was more of a supper club of resistance.

Beachside Foxes

Yesterday during my walk, I had several encounters with one of the neighborhood foxes.  As I write that sentence, I wonder if people still use the term "fox" to mean an attractive female.

I saw the fox from a distance of a block, as we both walked east.  As always, I wondered if I was seeing a fox, a coyote, or a dog.  But the head made me think I wasn't seeing a dog.  And it was a slender creature, which made me think it was either a baby coyote or a fox.  Plus, I've seen a fox in the neighborhood before, but never a coyote.

I continued east to the Intracoastal and then around by the marina, heading up to the route around North Lake.  A few blocks away from the path around the top of the lake, I saw the fox again.  This time, the fox crossed the street, stopped under a tree, and stared at me.

I stared back.  I didn't want to make the fox feel threatened.  Plus, I wanted a good look.  My spouse and I have a long running disagreement.  He often thinks he's seen a coyote, and I think he's probably seeing the neighborhood foxes.

Eventually, I kept walking, and the fox trotted off into a back yard.  I walked home, thinking of all the forest creatures that are here, in a beachside town full of concrete and high towers, very far away from any forest.  If I wrote children's books, I'd write about foxes and raccoons who live in the abandoned houses and go to the beach after everyone goes home.

At home, I looked at various pictures to be sure I was seeing a fox instead of a coyote, and I'm pretty sure it was a fox.  It would have been small for a coyote, but more than that, its face was more like a fox than a coyote.  And back to that slang--how did that become a term for a beautiful woman?  Foxes are cute enough, but other animals are much more beautiful.

I spent the rest of the day working on writing for seminary classes and meeting former colleague friends for lunch at a Mexican restaurant.  In later years, when I look back and wonder why I wasn't writing during this time when I was underemployed and a part-time student, let me remember that I'm writing thousands of words a week.  For my New Testament class, each weekly assignment clocks in at over 1,000 words, and that's just one class.  I'm writing a similar amount for Hebrew Bible and I'm writing 300-500 words each week for my Religion and the Arts class.  And some of it might be useful in other contexts--but the larger importance is that it keeps my writing muscles in use.

It's the kind of delightful life that I have to keep fighting back this fear that I might be punished later.  But what kind of punishment do I fear? Will I regret this time of not optimizing my earning potential?  I doubt it.

Let me remember the many delights of this time.  

The Feast Day of the Annunciation

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, the feast day which celebrates the appearance of the angel Gabriel, who tells Mary of her opportunity to be part of God's mission of redemption. The angel Gabriel appears to Mary and says, in the older wording that I still like best, "Hail, oh blessed one! The Lord is with you!" Mary asks some questions, and Gabriel says, "For nothing will be impossible with God" (Luke 1: 37). And Mary says, ". . . let it be with me according to your word" (Luke 1: 38).

That means only 9 months until Christmas. If I wrote a different kind of blog, I'd fill the rest of this post with witty ways to make your shopping easier. But instead of spending the next nine months strategically getting our gifts bought, maybe we should think about the next nine months in terms of waiting for God, watching for God, incubating the Divine.

I find Mary an interesting model for modern spirituality. Notice what is required of Mary. She must wait.

Mary is not required to enter into a spiritual boot camp to get herself ready for this great honor. No, she must be present to God and be willing to have a daily relationship, an intimacy that most of us would never make time for. She doesn't have to travel or make a pilgrimage to a different land. She doesn't have to go to school to work on a Ph.D. She isn't even required to go to the Temple any extra amount. She must simply slow down and be present. And of course, she must be willing to be pregnant, which requires more of her than most of us will offer up to God. And there's the later part of the story, where she must watch her son die an agonizing death.

We might think about how we can listen for God's call. Most of us live noisy lives: we're always on our cell phones, we've often got several televisions blaring in the house at once, we're surrounded by traffic (and their loud stereos), we've got people who want to talk, talk, talk. Maybe today would be a good day to take a vow of silence, inasmuch as we can, to listen for God.

If we can't take a vow of silence, we could look for ways to have some silence in our days. We could start with five minutes and build up from there.

Maybe we can't be silent, but there are other ways to tune in to God. Maybe we want to keep a dream journal to see if God tries to break through to us in that way. Maybe we want to keep a prayer journal, so that we have a record of our prayer life--and maybe we want to revisit that journal periodically to see how God answers our prayers.

Let us celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation by thinking about our own lives. What does God call us to do? How will we answer that call?

The Feast Day of Archbishop Romero

 Oscar Romero is now officially a saint, and today is his feast day.  On this day in 1980, he was killed, a martyr for the faith.  When I made this collage card years ago, I couldn't believe that he'd ever be canonized:

Many scholars believe that he was chosen to be Archbishop precisely because he was expected not to make trouble. All that changed when one of his good friends, an activist Jesuit priest, was assassinated by one of the death squads roaming the country. Romero became increasingly political, increasingly concerned about the poor who were being oppressed by the tiny minority of rich people in the country. He called for reform. He called on the police and the soldiers to stop killing their brethren. And for his vision, he was killed as he consecrated the bread for Mass.

I was alive when he was martyred, but I didn't hear or read about it.  I remember reading about some of the more famous murders, particularly of the nuns, and wondering why people would murder nuns or missionaries who were there to help--I had yet to learn of the horrors of colonialism throughout history.

In my first year of college, I was asked to be part of a service that honored the martyrdom of Romero, and this event was likely how I heard of him first.  Or maybe it was earlier that semester when our campus pastor took a group of us to Jubilee Partners.

Jubilee Partners was a group formed by the same people that created Koinonia, the farm in Americus Georgia that most people know because they also created Habitat for Humanity--but they were so much more, in their witness of how Christian love could play out in real practice in one of the most segregated and poor parts of the U.S. south.  In the early years of Jubilee Partners, when I went there, the group helped people from Central America get to Canada, where they could get asylum in the 1980's, when they couldn't get asylum in the U.S.

My consciousness was formed by these encounters and by other encounters I had throughout the 80's.  I met many people in the country illegally, and I heard about the horrors that brought them here.  Then, as now, I couldn't imagine why we wouldn't let these people stay.

Many of us may think that those civil wars are over, but many countries in Central America are still being torn apart by violence.  The words of Romero decades ago are sadly still relevant today:  "Brothers, you came from our own people. You are killing your own brothers. Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God, which says, 'Thou shalt not kill'. No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather than sinful orders. The church cannot remain silent before such an abomination. ...In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression."

But his teachings go beyond just a call for an end to killing.  His messages to the wider church are still powerful:  "A church that doesn't provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a word of God that doesn't get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed — ​what gospel is that?"

And even those of us who are not part of a faith tradition can find wisdom in his teachings:  "Each time we look upon the poor, on the farmworkers who harvest the coffee, the sugarcane, or the cotton... remember, there is the face of Christ."

If we treated everyone we met as if that person was God incarnate, what a different world we would have!

But for those of us who are tired from the work of this weary world, here's a message of hope and a reminder of the long view:  "We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own."

On this day that honors a man who was not always honored, let us take heart from his words and from his example.  Let us also remember that he was not always this force for good in the world; indeed, he was chosen to be Archbishop because the upper management of the church thought he would keep his nose stuck in a book and out of politics. 

In these days that feel increasingly more perilous, let us recommit ourselves to the type of love that Romero called us to show:  "Let us not tire of preaching love; it is the force that will overcome the world."