How Mindfulness Can Defeat Racial Bias

I found this article to be fascinating and helpful...

How Mindfulness Can Defeat Racial Bias

An excerpt:

Is there a solution? Research shows that mindfulness practices help us focus, give us greater control over our emotions, and increase our capacity to think clearly and act with purpose. Might mindfulness assist police and other public servants in minimizing the mistaken judgments that lead to such harms? Might they help the rest of us—professors and deliverymen alike—minimize our biases as well?

In a word, yes. The good news is that mindfulness and related practices do assist in increasing focus and raising awareness, and have been shown to assist in minimizing bias. While the research is ongoing, studies are beginning to show that mindfulness meditation and compassion practices serve as potent aids in the work of decreasing bias.

When we consider these new findings along with some of the already proven benefits of mindfulness, and combine them with teachings about contemporary forms of racism, the outlines of an effective set of new mindfulness-based interventions—for police, doctors, educators, and the full range of others—have already begun to emerge. I call these Mindfulness-Based ColorInsight Practices.

Read the whole thing here.

An Interview with our Presiding Bishop

from sojo.net  - 2016

 
'God Is Not Finished With This World' by Christine A. Di Pasquale
 

Sojourners contributor Christine A. Scheller caught up with Bishop Curry during a recent trip to New Jersey for a diocesan convention. There, they chatted what’s ahead for the church, what it means to love our neighbor, and what Christians should keep in mind while voting in this year’s elections.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Christine A. Scheller, contributor, Sojourners: Do you attend all diocesan conventions?
Presiding Bishop Curry: Part of the responsibility of a presiding bishop is to visit every diocese in the Episcopal Church in the course of nine years. And so, sometimes I’ll go at the time of a convention. Sometimes a diocese will want you to come for a different occasion and do something there. Sometimes when a bishop is being consecrated you go and spend some time there.

Scheller: I’m a member of a small, wealthy, white Episcopal congregation at the Jersey Shore. How do churches like mine support work in cities like Camden, N.J. [one of America’s poorest cities, and a member of the Diocese of New Jersey] without being paternalistic?
Curry: Everything is built on relationships — real relationships where people actually get to know each other. And then shared ministry and programmatic kinds of things emerge out of that relationship. When I was a diocesan bishop trying to encourage congregations to develop relationships with other congregations of a different ethnicity or tradition, I encouraged them to worship together, or eat together, get to know each other, eventually finding ways for people to share their stories about their faith. That avoids the paternalistic or maternalistic model because when you build on relationships, the stories of people’s lives, everybody’s story is equal. And that sharing and listening creates incredible space and bonds between people that it’s hard to create otherwise.

Scheller: With a theology and perhaps politics that is more progressive, one would think the Episcopal Church would be more ethnically and racially diverse than it is. Is there a way to help people who are privileged in various ways to see what people who have less resources can offer to them?
Curry: There are going to be uniquenesses to every relationship, and some commonalities. One, have some shared life together, and shared life that really is equally shared, equally given and equally received — for example, the dioceses that have companion relationships with dioceses in the developing world. And two, take money out of the equation and ask, What gifts do we bring? Then we’re starting to get to a level of real human gifts.

It may be that part of what has to happen is that each congregation has to have an internal conversation and orientation in getting to know the other congregation, because we all come to the table with some presuppositions and some assumptions about each other. If there’s a common commitment to really getting to know each other and giving and receiving our gifts that moves us beyond, “I’m in charge, you’re not. I’m privileged, you’re not,” it’s in that space that we discover something that can make stuff happen.

Scheller: It sounds like you could be talking about some of the larger challenges in the Anglican communion. Do you have hope for relationships in the wider communion?
Curry: I have a little bit more than hope. I actually have a belief that God is not finished with this world, and God is not finished with the human family yet, and that applies as much to the Anglican communion or the family of nations as to the human community. I refuse to believe that we cannot learn to live together. I believe that that’s what Jesus came to teach us and to show us how to do.

And frankly, he has shown us the path to be able to live together across differences, live together in ways that have integrity, that are deeply grounded in love and not grounded in my opinion. When we get to that level, then it is possible for people to hold very different perspectives and yet to realize that it’s the relationship with my brother or my sister that really matters. I think that’s going to be true with us in the Anglican communion. It’s true with us in the United Nations, it’s true in the global community, and it’s true in relationships between congregations and on the streets of the cities.

Scheller: What other hopes do you have for the communion?

Curry: People in the NGO world will often tell you that the most effective human service delivery systems are actually church systems around the world. The Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is a part, is one of the three largest [church systems], and so my hope and prayer is that the Anglican communion will continue to be a vehicle of delivery of human services that not only responds to emergencies, but that is involved in much more long term human development and in the eradication of poverty.

The church’s Sustainable Development Goals are about abolishing poverty on the face of this planet by the year 2030, and we actually have the capacity to do it if we have the will. The Anglican Communion can play an important part in that. That’s one of my greatest hopes.

A second one that would be similar is that, while I know we have clearly different positions and perspectives on the question of who may be married, I hope that we in Episcopal Church will be able to bear witness to the call of Jesus to help the church to truly become what Jesus said — a house of prayer for all people. And that we will be able to bear witness to that conviction in the communion, and to help us as a communion discover how we may be called to live that out for everybody — gay, straight, black, white, rich, poor, male, female, everybody. I’m not prescribing exactly what that looks like, but living by that biblical principle.

I’m just quoting Jesus. He said that on Palm Sunday. He was quoting the prophets when he said it, so this is an old understanding and tradition. Living by that principle could be transformative, and it’s my hope and prayer that we will live deeply into those words of Jesus. There can be room for us all as the baptized people of God. Hopefully then, we can have a voice for the whole world that there’s room for all of us on the planet as equal children of God.

Scheller: You have prioritized evangelism and reconciliation in your ministry as presiding bishop. In a community like Camden, N.J., what does that look like? Do you have any ideas germinating from your tour of the city?

Curry: It takes many forms. But both evangelism and reconciliation are actually different sides of the same coin, because I think the core mission or purpose of the church is to help to unite people in a relationship with God through Christ, and with each other as children of God. Some of the work that draws us closer to God also draws us closer to each other. It can take many forms. We just left a place that was once a church building and is now a place where children and young people build boats not simply to learn a craft, but to learn that they can be part of the creative process. That creative process is something that they can participate in, that can draw them closer to the ultimate Creator himself.

Scheller: We saw that creativity twice today, especially here at the Urban Boatworks and at Hopeworks.

Curry: There was a stunning picture in Hopeworks of Jesus and I think it said “Real Hope.” Our real hope is in God, the relationship with God, and the relationship with each other that is reconciled and right and whole. Reconciliation isn’t just about singing “Kumbaya,” it’s about restoring things to the way they were meant to be. Reconciliation involves doing what is just and what is right, and reordering the way we live together so that none has need, so that children do not starve, so that every child here in Camden has an opportunity to have an excellent education so that they can become all that they can be, that no child should be deprived in this great country.

The truth is none should be deprived on the face of the earth, but we happen to live here. And we who are Christian are people who are fundamentally committed to the love of God, and love of neighbor. This is not a Valentine’s Day card. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said that love in the Bible is cruciform. It’s the shape of a cross. It is Jesus giving his own life, not for himself, but for the good and the welfare of others. That’s what love is. It’s not a sentiment. It’s a deep-hearted commitment to seek the well-being of the other, before one’s own unenlightened self-interest. That kind of love changes societies and changes lives.

Scheller: How should Christians be thinking about living out their hope and their faith in the political context of this interesting presidential election?

Curry: I really believe that the fundamental principle on which Christians stand as followers of Jesus Christ is what Jesus taught and embodied in his life: love God, and love your neighbor. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” In Matthew’s version Jesus says, “On these two hang all the law and the prophets,” which is basically saying that everything in the religious faith — everything — has to do with love of God and love of neighbor. It may say it in a different way or form, or apply it differently, but that is the bottom line.

If we who are Christians participate in the political process and in the public discourse as we are called to do — the New Testament tells us that we are to participate in the life of the polis, in the life of our society — the principle on which Christians must vote is the principle, Does this look like love of neighbor? If it does, we do it; if it doesn’t, we don’t.

We evaluate candidates based on that. We evaluate public policy based on that. And that has nothing to do with whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, liberal or conservative. It has to do with if you say you’re a follower of Jesus, then you enter the public sphere based on the principle of love which is seeking the good and the welfare of the “other.” That’s a game-changer.

And so, when you’re involved in votes that have to do with public education or that have to do with anything, always ask the question, “Is this something that you would want someone to do to you, or to those you love?”

Scheller: Until you got to that last line, I would have said people define love differently. Some might say it’s a loving thing to do to make people responsible for themselves.
Curry: That’s legitimate. There is a case to be made for that. There is going to be variety in the practical application. But I really do believe that we have a different quality of politics if we have people who actually are doing their politics by the Golden Rule. It doesn’t mean that everybody is going to agree, but you cannot say you’re voting as a Christian if you don’t apply the Golden Rule. You can’t. Jesus said that. He taught us that. It’s in the Sermon on the Mount. You can’t say you’re functioning as a Christian in the political sphere if you’re not functioning on the principle of love. You can say you want to function another way. That’s fine. It’s a free country. Go ahead. But you can’t say you’re a follower of Jesus of Nazareth and not function on the law of love, the Golden Rule, and those kinds of teachings.

218th Annual Meeting Rector's Address

O Lord, take my lips and speak through them; take our minds and think through them; take our hearts and set them on fire with love for yourself and your creation. Amen.

St. Paul wrote to the Church in Ephesus, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.” ~ Ephesians 3:17

Being rooted & grounded in love is key to our health as Christians because only love with Christ in our hearts will truly set us free from sin and death. And that love is rooted in us at baptism.

The community of the baptized by water and the Holy Spirit is the church. In this historic & holy place, it is St. Peter’s Church.

So why do you call this place home? Why is this your parish family?

One author put it this way, which I really liked, as she thought about the parish she called home for her faith:

So why would I choose to live out my faith here at this parish? Because this is where I believe I can best give myself to others and because, most simply, this is where I believe I am being personally invited to live out my baptismal covenant. In the final analysis, I believe that we do not choose the parish so much as discern whether it is a place we can find the intimacy we are called to and seek. By the sacramental reality of baptism, we are each called to holiness, to intimacy with God, and therefore we each need a special place in our lives where we can look after that relationship. This is mine. What is yours? [original by Jean Chivley, OSC]

And that is our question to answer – what is our special place?

I pray that St. Peter’s has been for you as it has been for me these 18 years that special place.

But the community of faith is always more than one person, it is about our collective spirit.

At the 2003 Annual Meeting, I reflected on my first year with you and I said…

“There is a welcoming atmosphere (here at St. Peter’s), a passionate spirit, a new resolve to move from maintenance to ministry.”

I know that was true in 2003. I pray it is so today.

Our calling to live out our discipleship through this parish and to live into our evangelism as we tell the world what we are up to are key points for the future of this place.

As our own Presiding Bishop said this past week: “Evangelism is sharing Jesus. Marketing isn’t bad, but it’s not evangelism. Real evangelism is unselfish. It may not make your church bigger, but it will make the world better.”

And that’s what we are up to, to make this world a better place. We are smaller than we once were… our average Sunday attendance 18 years ago was 95, we are now at 69.

But the point of our work as a church is to do what God has called us to in this time and place.

There is no time to lament. We must acknowledge the loss of persons in this church, but we must not give into the fear of what we have lost but need to hold onto the hope of what we are being called into, a future that will look different than the recent past.

Evelyn Underhill wrote a hundred years ago (or so) that “the only interesting thing about Church is… God.”

As wonderful is our Fish Fry & Apple Festival, our outreach to DCF and Chapel on the green, our choirs, our worship, all that we do, what makes us a church, is our relationship to God and our response to what God calls us to do.

(As Jesus put it, you are to love God with your whole being and you are to love your neighbors as you love yourselves.)

I recently came across this reflection on Catherine Doherty's classic book Poustinia and I think it says something to us about our lives together as a church…

"Poustinia" is the Russian word "desert," and in Russian spirituality it refers to a tradition where persons would leave society to go and live a life of prayer and solitude, building a small hut or finding a cave out in an isolated, secluded place. The person who sought the life of prayer in the poustinia was called a "poustinik."

The poustinik isn't a classic hermit, seeking to avoid society. Yes, the day to day life of the poustinik is one of silence, solitude and prayer. But in contrast to the western monastic tradition, the poustinik is also radically available to others. The door of the poustinia is always unlocked and open. The poustinia prizes hospitality and welcomes interruption. In fact, the poustiniki functioned as spiritual directors for the the Russian people. If a person was needing prayer or spiritual guidance they would seek out the local poustinik, who would listen, pray and offer counsel.

Even more, if the town ever needed an extra hand, to care for the sick or harvest the crop, a person would be sent to the local poustinik who would rush to the town to be of assistance. A poustinik might spend weeks and weeks in the town among the people bringing in the harvest. And when the work had been accomplished the poustinik would leave, to return back to the silence and solitude of the poustinia.

In short, because of the poustinik's availability to the people, from spiritual direction to hard labor, when a poustinik arrived in the vicinity of a town that was consider a very good omen for the town. Every town wanted a poustinik living somewhere close by.

And wouldn't it be awesome if our neighbors felt about our churches the way the Russians peasants felt when a poustinik moved near?” (The Poustinia and the Poustinik by Richard Beck)

His final thought got me thinking about the Church in our society. We no longer hold a privileged spot as a church. But I wonder, can we recapture the idea of our necessity in the lives of others. That the church exists not just for its members but for the world, a place of spiritual direction for our lives and a place you can count on in times of need?

That’s the challenge ahead of us as a church but individually, its through our Baptism that we live our faith in the world and we can do this every day.

As Dr. Lisa Kimball said this past week (same conference as our PB): “Baptism changes everything about your life. I leave a note and a tip on my pillow in hotels, not because I’m a good person, but because I’m baptized and I promised to work for justice in the world.”

How do we live out of our baptismal covenant? How will we fulfill God’s calling in this church and in our lives?

One last story to consider…

Darren Walker is the president of the Ford Foundation, one of the world’s largest philanthropic organizations. With an endowment of $13 billion, the Ford Foundation last year made some 1,300 grants totaling more the $650 million, to support the work of organizations around the world tackling justice issues surrounding the economy, the environment, education and technology.

Walker sees the foundation’s work as trying to improve the life for people who, in his words, are “invisible in our society.” People like the child he once was

He was born in a charity hospital in Louisiana and raised in a rural town in Texas. He went to public schools, attended colleges on scholarship, then went to New York to practice law, eventually moving into investment banking.

On Wall Street, Walker made money — and makes no apologies: “Growing up poor [you] never want to be poor again, and to have clarity about that.” But Walker walked away from Wall Street and went to work for a nonprofit economic development organization in Harlem. From there, he moved on to an executive role at the Rockefeller Foundation, and then the Ford Foundation, becoming president in 2013.

In an interview in The New York Times [September 29, 2019], Walker said the experience that most prepared him to be president of the Ford Foundation was working as a busboy when he was thirteen.

“When you work as a busboy, you are the lowest person in the organization. You are invisible, and relevant only to the extent that you are cleaning up after people and taking away the things they discard. No one acknowledges you, no one speaks to you, no one recognizes your dignity. There was something about being rendered invisible and the perniciousness of the systems that render too many people invisible that has informed how I think about our work at Ford.

“For me, this question of how I settled into philanthropy is one that I struggle with, because there is an enormous amount of privilege [among Americans]. And so the question is, what are we doing with our privilege?”

Today in the Gospel, Jesus begins his preaching life, proclaiming his vision of the kingdom of heaven. That vision is illuminated by the great light of God’s justice and mercy that enables us to see ourselves and one another in all our dignity and goodness, in all our brokenness and failings. In the light of God’s Christ, no one is so invisible as to be beyond the love of God, no one is so privileged as to be above the demanding work of the Gospel in our compassion and justice for one another.

As we accompany Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel in the year ahead, may we walk with the humility and insight of Darren Walker’s 13-year-old busboy, embracing the hope that we can restore and re-create our world by God’s grace through this parish and in our lives.

“God is not finished with this world, and God is not finished with the human family yet.” (PB Curry)
Indeed, God is not finished with this parish. With you and with me.

May Christ dwell in our hearts through faith, as we are being rooted and grounded in love. Amen.

The Climate Crisis: A Clergy Call to Action

We are faced with a crisis today. 

A multitude of human activities including the use of fossil fuels, large-scale agriculture, and large-scale land clearance have modified the natural processes that sustain life in every ecosystem and culture on the entire planet. This is no longer a question for debate. The question we (humans) must answer—and the impetus for this letter—is: “How will we respond to this crisis?”

 

We call on leaders from all of the many faith traditions and ethical communities throughout the world to unite with scientists, activists, and concerned citizens as one voice in calling for humanity to recognize the crisis, our role in creating it, and our collective responsibility to immediately identify and enact solutions.

Scientific understandings and religious teachings alike teach us that we are connected as one human family and, further, we are connected to all life. Thus, our own survival is inextricably connected to the responsible stewardship of the Earth and all its creatures.

The many faith traditions that exist across the world, while differing in specific beliefs and expressions of their convictions, share many common values. One of those is a commitment to care for the disenfranchised. We know that the people with the least access to resources experience the greatest suffering as a result of a changing climate. Ecological insecurity reinforces inequality. We have a moral and ethical responsibility to advocate for those who are vulnerable and/or voiceless. 

We clergy signing this letter pledge ourselves to express our love for humanity and for all life on Earth by advocating for an immediate change in our behaviors that continue to threaten the health of the planet, its people, and their varied cultures. We urge you to join us in the education and motivation of our fellow planetary citizens, and to help us unite and to take the steps urgently needed to save our home.

We must remember, in this work, to be kind to one another. It is easy to let the panic, the frustration, and the pain turn us against one another, to speak in harsh judgment, and to act in self-righteous anger, but we will only move forward together. It is not only important what we do but how we do it. We must acknowledge our shared needs and celebrate our differences in meeting them – but do so with a compassionate, honest, and committed regard for the Earth and its inhabitants. This is what brings us joy in the work and hope for the future.

The climate is changing, but there is also evidence of a changing climate in public opinion and resolve. People are ready to insist on and be a part of the necessary change. People are ready to explore what it takes to remake our societies in response to this challenge; to turn the world around. 

Our religious communities should lead in asking a simple question: How can we be good ancestors? A powerful question. A spiritual practice. A call to action.

Join us in this work. The time is now.

 

(You can also find this call to action here.) 

I signed on to this call to action on January 23, 2020.

January 20 Sermon (2 Epiphany)

Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, Have mercy on us.
You have shown us that self–giving love leads from death to life
May the death–dealing violence of our world
Yield to the power of your vulnerability,
And the whole creation join in songs of everlasting praise.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, hear our prayer & give us peace. Amen.
(Trevor Williams)

Everyday of our lives, Jesus invites us on a journey, a journey into the heart of love.

And everyday, we get to make a choice to follow him or not, like all who turn to Jesus.

When Jesus saw two of John’s disciples following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.”

That interaction makes me think of this poem:

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of living, it doesn't matter
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come even if you have broken your vow a thousand times,
Come, yet again, come, come.
(As quoted in Rumi and His Sufi Path of Love (2007))

This beautiful poem written in the 13th century by Rumi a Persian philosopher, Sufi theologian, poet, & teacher, is a poetic invitation, like what Jesus says to the disciples, what Jesus says to us… whoever you are. Come sinner and saint. Come wanderer and worshiper. Come again. Come and see…

“Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

John the Baptist twice proclaims Jesus as the Lamb of God, testifies that Jesus is the Son of God. The second time, two of John’s disciples go & follow Jesus. They want to know where Jesus is staying, they want to hear his words, they want to see the Son of God, they have that hope in the messiah, the one they had been waiting for… And Jesus tells them to come and see.

Come and see. It is an invitation to come follow him, to come see what he will say and do. It is a significant beginning for the disciples, a simple invitation and they follow him. And our patron saint here, Peter is named by Jesus in this moment. Come and see and those who follow are changed and their lives are changed.

She was born Araminta Ross on a farm in Buckstown, Maryland, in 1849. As a young woman of 27, she is promised her freedom in the will of the owner of her estate. The heirs, however, renege on that promise and plan to sell Araminta — “Minty” as she is called — “down river” to a plantation in the Deep South where she would be forever separated from her husband and family.

Despite the odds against her, Minty pulls off a daring escape, even leaping from a bridge when she is cornered by the dogs and men on horseback who are quite literally hunting her down. At great risk, Minty makes it to Philadelphia, building a new life for herself with the help a supportive community of black abolitionists. As many emancipated slaves would do, Minty takes a new name to mark her new life as a free woman: Harriet (the name of a film from last year!).

But Harriet can’t rest easy, knowing that her people continue to endure doomed lives as slaves. So she returns again and again to Maryland’s Eastern Shore, often in disguise, to guide other slaves — including her parents and sister — to freedom. The dangers increase with each trip — but so does Harriet’s guile and resourcefulness.

Harriet Tubman would make 13 missions and guide 70 slaves to freedom, becoming one of the most successful conductors on the “Underground Railroad.”

Harriet’s success in bringing slaves to freedom makes her a marked woman in slave states. As slaveholders increase the bounty on her, Harriet’s friends in Philadelphia urge her not to return to Maryland. But Harriet will not hear of it.

“God’s time is always near,” Harriet Tubman responds. “He set the North Star in the heavens; He gave me the strength in my limbs; He meant I should be free . . .Now I’ve been free, I know what a dreadful condition slavery is. I have seen hundreds of escaped slaves, but I never saw one who was willing to go back and be a slave.”

In her crossing to freedom, Harriet Tubman realizes God’s call to her: to bring other slaves to freedom and to work to end the institution of slavery. In Baptism, we receive God’s blessing and are re-born in God’s grace and called to take on the work of Jesus: to testify to God’s presence in our midst, to proclaim the justice and peace of Jesus’ Gospel, to stand with the poor, the rejected and the forgotten — with the certain hope and assurance that the Spirit of God — our own “North Star” — leads us on.

Harriet Tubman mirrors the prophetic witness of John the Baptist, who gives his life to proclaim the presence of the “Lamb of God” in our midst. Like John and Harriet and Dr. King, we have been called in Baptism to testify to the presence of the Lamb of God in our midst. Our witness can be declared in less vocal but no less effective vehicles: in our unfailing compassion for others, in our uncompromising moral and ethical convictions, in our attempts (however small and simple) to bring forgiveness and reconciliation to those around us, with the vision and commitment of “prophets” like Harriet Tubman.

“What are you looking for?” Asks Jesus.
“Come and see.” He says.

Everyday Jesus invites us on a journey and we get to make a choice to follow Jesus into the heart of love. Amen.

On the Baptism of Christ

Again my Jesus, and again a mystery, a mystery lofty and divine and bringing down light from above. For the feast which we are celebrating today has for its origin the baptism of my Christ, the true light that illumines every man that comes into the world and brings about my own purification and strengthens that light which we received from the beginning from Him from above, but which we darkened and obscured by sin. I cannot contain my joy. I become inspired, and almost like John I announce the good news. Christ is bathed in light, let us also be bathed in light. Christ is baptized, let us go down with him, that we may also rise again with him.

While John is baptizing, Jesus approaches, perhaps also to sanctify the baptizer, and certainly to bury the old Adam in the water. But before these things and for the sake of these things he comes to sanctify the Jordan [and all creation]. As indeed he was spirit and flesh, so he begins [a new creation] by the Spirit and the water.

The baptizer does not accept this; Jesus insists. “I need to be baptized by you,” says the lamp to the sun, says the voice to the Word, says the friend of the bridegroom to the bridegroom himself, says the greatest of those born of womb to the first born of all creation, says the one who leaped in the womb to the one worshiped in the womb, says the one who was and will be the Forerunner to the one who has already come and who will be made manifest once again. “I need to be baptized by you”; and we should also add “and for your sake.” For John the prophet knew that he would be baptized by martyrdom and, like Peter, would have not only his feet cleansed.

Jesus comes up again out of the water. And he carries up with himself the world and “sees the heavens opened” which Adam had closed for himself and for those after him—as paradise also was closed for him with a flaming sword. And the Spirit testifies to Christ’s divinity, for he rushes toward one like himself, as does the voice from heaven, for from there comes the one to whom testimony is given. And the Spirit comes as a dove, for he honors the body, being seen in a bodily form, since it also is God by divinization—and since long ago the dove has been accustomed to announcing the good news of the flood’s end.

Let us honor today the baptism of Christ and celebrate well, not feasting with the belly but rejoicing spiritually. And how shall we feast? “Wash, become pure.” Be entirely purified and remain pure, for nothing gives so much joy to God as the conversion and salvation of human beings, for whose sake every discourse and every sacrament exist, that you may become like lights shining in the world, a life-giving force for other human beings; that as perfect lights standing beside the great Light, you may be initiated into the light of heaven, illumined with more purely and more clearly by the Trinity, from whom you have even now received in measure the one ray of the one God, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory unto ages of ages. Amen.

These selections are taken from Oration 39, a homily St Gregory of Nazianzus delivered as Archbishop of Constantinople on January 5 at the Vigil of the Epiphany in the year 381.

From God"s Perspective We Are All Minorities

This article is based on a lecture Prof. Krister Stendahl delivered at the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University.

I have found from experience that there is something special about multilateral dialogue, one in which we are all minorities, for the simple reason that in so much of religious history the relation among religions has usually been defined in terms of differences­one"s identity being defined by that which is different from the other. This is so natural to our whole habit of thinking it is hard for us to conceive a way of defining our identity by that which makes us glad. Multilateral dialogue nurtures that vision: that in the eyes of God we are all minorities. In this plural and diverse situation and the increased consciousness of that being so, the attempt at a common denominator approach has proved increasingly hard to work. When it has succeeded, it has just created one new religion­as if we needed another one. Nor is tolerance quite the solution. It usually has an elitist lining; either an elitist lining in the sense that you can be tolerant because for you it is not that important, or an elitist lining of noblesse oblige­I know, but I cannot expect the other to know as much as I do.

These approaches do not work very well, once one wakes up to radical pluralism. Nor does the model in which one anticipates the victory of one over the many, work either. Many of you have heard me use as symbolic of this attitude the fact that ninety years ago in the United States, we got a journal called The Christian Century. It"s a very enlightened journal. It even switched from Gothic print to Latin letters in its masthead some twenty years ago. But it is sort of cute to think that at the beginning of this century Americans really believed that with American know-how and a little help from God we would end up by the year 2000 in a christianized world. What actually happened was an enormous renewal of the major religions of the world: great meetings, in Rangoon I think, in the 30s and 40s revivifying the Buddhist canon; the end of the classical form of Jewish assimilation after the Shoah and the establishment of the state of Israel; Hinduism in its various shapes and forms becoming a reality in practically all parts of the Western world. And the number of Muslims outnumbering the Jews in many parts of the West. That"s what happened­what happened was that Gandhi became the rejuvenator of the social consciousness of Martin Luther King. What happened was quite different from what was expected. So the only alternative is a plural alternative, and so I ask myself: how to sing my song to Jesus with abandon without telling negative stories about others! Or, if you want to sound more academic: "Towards a Christian theology of religions."

And I want to deal with that subject very seriously tonight, and I want to do it as a biblical scholar or at least as a reader of the Bible that I love. I want to deal with questions of how one, as a Bible-tutored Christian, can come to think about God"s whole menagerie and the place of the Christian Church and the Christian religion in the midst of it. How, in the wider missio dei, are we to define the missio christi and the missio ecclesia, to use terms which Catholic theologians have used to cope with this problem. How to define the wider mission of God, the specific mission of Christ and the way in which the mission of the Church fits into God"s total plan? That"s a risky subject and I have decided to forget that some of you must have heard me say similar things for some time. But I think I have some new thoughts towards the end, so bear with me.

It seems that there are clear words against any such enterprise of radical pluralism. I will start by lifting up three famous scriptural passages which seem to close the matter before we have opened it:

(1) Acts 4:12: ... for there is no other name under heaven given among human beings whereby we must be saved.

(2) John 14:6: ... I am the way the truth and the life. no one comes to the Father except through me.

(3) Matthew 28:19: ... Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

1. I have an old exegetical rule which says that when you apply the right answer to the wrong question, it will always be wrong, even if—or especially if­the answer is God"s word. Now what was the question to which Peter gave that answer in Acts?

The question was the accusation, the accusation that Peter had performed the miracle of a magician in his own name and he answers by the exclamation: "Heavens no, in no other name is there salvation but Jesus." This does not relate to the problem of Christianity and Buddhism­at least not on the conscious level. But words like that grow legs and walk out of their context. And even when that is legitimate we must also remind ourselves of the very nature of confessional language. As Eastern Christianity has always known better than the West, confessional language is doxological. It is a way of praising God. It is the primary language of faith. The home language of the Church is the language of prayer, worship and doxology, giving praise out of the fullness of one"s heart. Actually, confessional and liturgical and doxological language is a kind of caressing language by which we express our devotion with abandon and joy. Raymond Brown, the outstanding Roman Catholic exegete, in writing about the development of Biblical studies in the Roman Catholic Church, hails Pius the XII"s encyclical of 1943, long before Vatican II, as the milestone in setting Biblical scholarship free in Catholic studies. This the encyclical did when it admitted or even hailed the fact that in studying scriptures you have to study the genre, the style, the nature of the language it has, so that you don"t read it in the wrong key. I think this is apropos to Acts 4:12. I can preach wonderful sermons on this but I have to restrict myself.

2. The Johannine passage is found in the beginning of what is called the farewell speech of Jesus The setting is this: "Do not be upset in your hearts, believe in God, believe also in me. I"m going to leave you, but in this world there are many ways­many ways­for you to stay. If there were not I would take you with me right now, but you can stay here. Don"t worry ... And you know the way to where I am going." Then Thomas asks: "But we don"t know where you arc going. How can we then know the way?" Thomas is always pretty smart, good questions, good logic. Jesus said to him: "I am the way, the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the Father except through me."

It strikes me very odd to take a passage from the most intimate and tender conversation with the most intimate and closest circle of disciples, from a context in which their hearts are full of foreboding with the imminent fear of relations about to be severed, to lift a word from that conversation, and use it in answering the question of Christianity"s relation to other religions. It is just not apropos. It is odd that one of the few passages that are used by those who have closed the doors on a theology of religions in Christianity, should be a passage which is dealing not with the question of the periphery or the margins or exclusion, but which, on the contrary, lies at the very heart of the mystery of what came to be the Trinity: the relation between the Father and the Son.

3. Anyone who reads Matthew"s gospel finds this a rather stunning statement towards the end, because Matthew"s gospel is totally built on the theory that during the ministry of Jesus, neither Jesus nor the disciples were to move outside Israel. Matthew has rather striking statements: "Do not go to any Gentiles ... You will not lack cities in Israel before the Son of Man appears" (10:5 and 23). This concentration on the mission to Israel has its contrast in the announcement of the Gentile mission in the last verses of the Gospel"all the nations" refers to "all the Gentiles". But what kind of a mission is this? How did Matthew­if we start on that level­think of this mission? Did he think of it as a saturation mission, did he think of it as the christianization of the world, the cosmos?

I think we can be very clear that Matthew thinks of the mission of the Church on a minority model, as did Paul. You will remember that in Romans 15 Paul says, "I have a principle: never run a mission where anybody else has preached the gospel before. And now I have run out of space, there is no place for me to go in the East. So I have to go to Spain, I have to go West." That"s an odd way of looking at things. What matters to Paul seems to be establishing a presence, a small minority in these centers of the East. It is a minority image, it is the establishment, as I like to say, of Laboratory II. Israel was Laboratory I, and when God felt that some good things had been achieved in Laboratory I God said "Let"s now try it out on a somewhat broader basis ... on a Gentile basis"; but still a laboratory with Christians as the guinea pigs, Christians as another "peculiar people."

The images in the gospel of Matthew are minority images: "You are the salt of the earth." Nobody wants the world to be a salt mine. "You are the light of the world and let your light so shine before the people that they see your good deeds and become Christians." That"s not what it says.. It says: that they see your good deeds and praise your Father who is in Heaven, have some reason for joy, that"s what it says. And think of the magi­the Ayatullahs from Iran. They did not start the church when they got home. We might in retrospect think that was sad; anyway they didn"t, and it doesn"t seem to bother Matthew. Because for Matthew they got the experience of their life and they had touched the holiness of God"s kingdom. Matthew"s perspective is centered in what we refer to as the Kingdom. I"ll come back to that.

So these three pivotal passages from Acts, John and Matthew are not as simple as one might think. They are opening up perspectives. Let us take the special case of Matthew. Matthew operates with what I call the Biblical model, the Jewish model (of Isaiah 49 and many other texts), the understanding that Israel is to be a light to the Gentiles, a theme Luke picks up in the Song of Simeon and recited in large parts of Christendom every evening, "a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel" (Luke 2:32). This is a peculiar view. Judaism is a revelatory religion, a religion of the book, a religion of salvation ­a revelatory religion, however, that at the same time doesn"t think that everybody has to be a Jew in order to be acceptable to God. Now once that structure of religion came into the hands of Christianity and Islam, it was coupled with universalism in such a manner that no one could be acceptable to God who did not think and believe as Christians and Muslims think and believe.

That is why, in the world of pluralism, it is not so strange that Christians who wake up to the fact that they are not any more a self-evident majority should find their way to the Jews and ask them: "You have lived for a pretty long time as a minority, do you have a secret to share with us?" And the secret is quite simply this, that universalism is the ultimate arrogance in the realm of religion. It is by definition and unavoidably spiritual colonialism, spiritual imperialism. The Crusades can be more civilized but they will still be Crusades, by definition. And the insight of a revelatory non-universalism is this: to be a particular, even a peculiar people, somehow needed by God as a witness, faithful, doing what God has told them to do, but not claiming to be the whole.

But particularism has been so ridiculed, especially after the Enlightenment. Have you ever read Voltaire"s anti-Jewish statements? They are all based on the alleged tribal primitiveness and particularity of Judaism. But I would suggest revelatory religion without such a particularism instead of a universalism is lethal. That"s my lesson and I am very intrigued as a student of the gospel of Matthew that Matthean thinking constructed that same model: the church being another peculiar people, willed by God to have a function (what I earlier called Laboratory II), now built on a Gentile base, panta ta ethne, disciples of all the Gentile nations, yet still a minority. This is beautifully expressed in the sublime eschatological vision of Micah 4:5: Thus God will judge among the many peoples and arbitrate for the multitude of nations, however distant, and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not take up sword against nation, they shall never again know war or learn war. But every man shall sit under his grapevine and/or fig tree with no one to disturb him. For it was the Lord of Hosts who spoke: for all people will walk, each in the names of their Gods, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever. Its quite a stunning vision. I have used a Rabbinic scholar E.E. Urbach"s translation with an and rather than a but in the last sentence: and we will walk ... Urbach, in his discussion about similar matters in one of the famous volumes on Jewish and Christian self-definition, E.P. Sanders et al. (eds.), Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, Vol II (1981), p. 298 says: "In their relations with other nations, most of the sages (i.e. Rabbis) would have satisfied themselves with the declaration of Micah 4:5."

Matthew suggests to me that he thought of the church as a church of such a peculiar people in a new key. Universalism comes with power, Constantinian or otherwise. I think there are two alternatives to thinking what it is all about from a Christian perspective; and if I want to use drastic images I would say: What is the first thing that God asks when God comes to the oval office in the morning? Is it for a printout of the latest salvation statistics of the Christian churches? Or is it a question like: Has there been any progress towards the Kingdom and, by the way, what has the role of the Christians been in that? Or is it totally an accident that in the very last vision on the very last pages of the Christian Bible there is, for us theologians, priests and ministers, that shocking statement: "And I saw no temple in that city." There is something rather striking about a religious tradition which envisions the consummation not as the cathedral of cathedrals, but as a city in which there was no temple.

Now I have to speed up. I want to lift up two other texts, "model texts" as I call them. These are intimations, models of attitude, which I find important towards building theology, which I cannot do. I am not a systematic theologian. I am just a Bible scholar­providing a little Biblical encouragement to the theologians" models. One would of course expect that the first person, the first theologian­the first Christian theologian­who saw the spectre of Christian antisemitism and anti-Judaism coming, was the apostle Paul. He detected, in his Gentile followers, an attitude of superiority towards Israel, not only towards Judaism but towards Israel, the people, the Jews. And his missionary strategy is contained in Romans, Chapters 9-11. The Calvinists thought it was a tractate on predestination because they were interested in that, but it"s actually Paul"s ruminations on how his mission to the Gentiles fits into God"s plans and how it relates to the people of Israel. Paul ends with a scathing critique of Gentile Christians and their attitude of superiority towards Israel (11: 11ff). He uses a lot of images of olive trees and things and grafting and he gets so upset he mixes up what grafting actually does to a tree and so forth. But we have to ascribe that to his intensity of feeling­or to his lack of knowledge about horticulture. He was a city boy. I feel for him. He is trying to come to grips with this fact that there is this feeling of superiority and he doesn"t like it. And he ultimately says: I"ll tell you a mystery, lest you be conceited. And that is that the whole of Israel will in due time be saved, and that"s none of your business because God won"t go back on His promises. And he doesn"t actually say this is going to happen because they are going to accept Jesus as the Messiah. And the doxology he ends with is the only one he wrote in straight God-language without anyple istological twist.

When I speak about this, theologians get very upset and they say "You teach two ways to salvation: one for Israel and one for the rest of humankind." And I say "No, I say with Paul that it is a mystery­if I taught two ways it would be a traffic plan." But Paul is trying to set in various ways a kind of limit to missionary zeal. And why? I know why: He had been burnt once. It was out of religious zeal that he committed the only thing that he ever confesses as a sin: having persecuted the Church of Jesus Christ. So he was aware of the risk of such zeal.

The other text is of another nature. It is Paul"s reflection on pluralism when he is up against it in Corinth, in First Corinthians. Paul was not a great ecumenist through most of his ministry. And in Galatians it seems that he really thought that if he stamped his foot enough they would really go with him. And he says: "Even if an angel from heaven comes and teaches otherwise than I taught you, let that angel be accursed!" That"s Chutzpah! But in Corinth he is low on the totem pole and he is almost going to be read out of the Church so he has to settle for ecumenism. He is in minority status and that"s perhaps why it is in that Epistle that his basic thinking about love, as the elasticity which makes it possible to have diversity, is born. The ode to love in First Corinthians is not speaking about love in general but is Paul"s solution to the problem of how diversity can be an asset instead of a liability. Now, what is so interesting to me in this context is how Paul presents the problem, and the ensuing insight. To deal with different theologies as if they were competing philosophies­on the model of Stoicism and Epicureanism, etc. is wrong and shows no understanding of the nature of the Church. Paul gropes for other metaphors. He speaks about the garden, he speaks about the house, he speaks about the temple. The diversity of theologies are not like philosophical schools arguing with one another; that"s a fleshly way of thinking­or, as we would say, it is a secularized way of thinking about religious diversity (1 Cor. 3).

Matters of religion do not represent a zero-sum problem. That"s Paul"s message. It is not a zero-sum proposition where adding to the other means deducting from the one. That"s his vision, and I think, it is valid and important for us as another way of thinking about religious coexistence. Of course, people who speak like me are accused of, "So anything goes, eh?" No. Paul certainly knows he was right. "I know that I am right but I am not thereby justified, it is God who judges" ( I Cor. 4:4). So he is not backing down from his conviction. But since religion has to do with God, any doctrinal insight expressed by the human mind and grasped by a human will cannot claim ultimacy. Anything goes? No. Let"s argue. I"ve just read a brilliant book review by Jon D. Levenson in Journal of Religion 71 (1991), 558-67. He is writing about a book by David Novak on Jewish-Christian dialogue. He is saying that if anyone in dialogue has to presuppose that you are not allowed to witness to your conviction, then it is better just to go with Soleveitchik"s position that we should discuss only matters of common interest and not theology. Now Levenson doesn"t quite say that it has to be so, but he is sort of teasing Novak for making it too easy to say that somehow you bracket your convictions when you enter into dialogue. That"s a caricature of dialogue. For dialogue slowly creates a climate in which you can both speak and listen and find out what the real issue is. And ultimately perhaps reach what I love to speak about, but will not speak about tonight­the Holy Envy: when we recognize something in another tradition that is beautiful but is not in ours, nor should we grab it or claim it. We Americans in our imperialism think that if we like something we just incorporate it and we think that we honour others by doing so. But that is not the way. Holy envy rejoices in the beauty of the others.

To me "the Corinthian model" is the solution. Another point I have borrowed from Levenson is that if one wants to move toward dialogue, one has to give reasons for breaking with the tradition. For it is obvious that the Christian tradition, in general, in relation to other religions has not been dialogical. Sometimes it has been more dialogical on the mission station than we have been given to believe, as Kenneth Cracknell of Wesley House in Cambridge has always pointed out. If you read the diaries of the missionaries, you see how much there is of "presence" and "dialogue," but when they wrote home often the jargon of the home office won out. Levenson says that Novak has not demonstrated that dialogue is so essential that it justifies changes of that magnitude; namely, bracketing both, the witness and the critique of one another.

I happen to think that dialogue is essential in a world where religion is often part of the problem rather than part of the solution in the relations between people. It is of much importance that we make our hermeneutical moves honestly and openly. I have lifted up Paul"s warning in Romans 11 and Paul"s idea in First Corinthians of a coexistence which is not a zero-sum order that to him is totally secular. Actually, in both cases he is referring to something which is different because it has to do with God and not with philosophy, not with defined thinking systems, for any thinking system which claims ultimacy is a form of idolatry. "I think I am right but I am not thereby justified" is Paul"s wonderful safeguard.

The first model deals with Jewish-Christian relations and the second model deals with intra-Christian relations, based on the fact that Christ is the foundation on which the house is being built. I would like to suggest a modern typology in which one says that these spiritual models of attitudes, these awarenesses of the fact that under God we are not locked in a zero-sum society, can be extended, and that we have valid reasons to extend both the Jewish-Christian and the intra-Christian model of Paul"s toward interreligious attitudes in general. We are thereby making a deliberate move; we are not smuggling it in, we should know what we are doing. But I want to do it openly and give the reason for it as a valid way of utilizing the model.

The book by David Novak which Levenson critiques strikes me as unattractive in one way because it really sees the task of Jewish-Christian dialogue as one of banding together in an alliance against all the others and I don"t think that we are much helped in this world, in which we are all minorities from God"s perspective, by alliances among sub-groups. This doesn"t seem to be what the situation calls for. But as has often happened in Christian history, coming back to my beloved image of the laboratory, I would say that somehow when we Christians have found a model which works for us, it might be ready for export, to try these things out.

Now my final point is this. It is a well-known one and I don"t know why it has dawned on me so slowly. I have referred to texts. These are our texts. Each minority has its texts; what its history has recorded, what God has recorded in the hearts of the people. Their writing is shaped by their experiences.

These are our texts. Out of our perspectives we interpret them. When a child is born­I guess women can talk better about this­but I would guess that the child"s, the baby"s, world does not consist of much more than itself and the mother"s breast. That"s the whole world and one of the things that happens as we grow up is that it dawns upon us that other children have sucked other breasts. The process of sorting out such facts is called maturation. That"s what maturation is. Now one of the most intriguing texts on the universal and the particular that I know of in my beloved Bible is the passage in First Corinthians 15. (This is just an attempt to help those who love the Bible to think about these things, although others are allowed to listen in!) Let me tell it in the form of a Jewish-style midrash.

It is the day of consummation and the whole world is gathered and there we are, we Christians. Now as we look up there is God and Christ on God"s right hand exactly as we have been told. So we turn around and see that there are also all the others. We see a sort of pan-religious and ecumenical representation and we turn around with a Christian smile which says: "You see, it is just as we said and isn"t it wonderful that our God is so generous that you can all be here!" When we turn back towards God there is no Christ to be seen on God"s right side because Christ will never be present to feed into the smugness of his believers; or, as the text says: "And so when the end comes, Christ will lay it all down before the Father and God will become panta en pasin, all in all." That is another way of witnessing to the mystery — lest I be conceited.

Baptism of Jesus Sermon (1 Epiphany)

Eternal Father, at the baptism of Jesus you revealed him to be your Son, and anointed him with the Holy Spirit, Keep all who are born of water and the Spirit faithful to their calling as your people; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Church of Scotland)

God shows no partiality.

That is quite a statement that Peter makes in the Acts of the Apostles this morning - “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”

One’s heritage. One’s blood lines. One’s nationality or ethnicity and maybe even one’s religion… None of that matters to God – but a life lived of faith – of awe and doing good.

The late Bishop Krister Stendahl insisted that from God's perspective, we are all minorities.

I think what is at play, is a humility, lest we be conceited and think we have it all because of wealth or race or religion, but no.

God shows no partiality and we all stand equal before God our creator.

That is true of baptism.

From the mightiest saint and to the worst of sinners, those who are baptized stand before God equally in humility for it is God alone who judges us. And all are welcome to receive baptism in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Consider the Gospel of Matthew this morning.

Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
John knows who is before him. This is Jesus. The Messiah. “I baptize you with water for repentance, I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire…”

John is ready for Jesus to come. But to baptize him? Jesus should baptize John. He is the one!

But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”
And Jesus has his way for righteousness sake and is baptized by John.

As he comes out of the water. the Spirit of God descends like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Such joy from heaven! And this happens to us too. At our baptism.

We are all equal in that water and that God is at work at that very moment, preparing us for what comes next. Blessing us with words of joy as we are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own.

In his book Against an Infinite Horizon: The Finger of God in Our Everyday Lives, the Rev. Ronald Rolheiser takes it a bit further. He writes of preaching on Jesus’ baptism one year and remarking that the words God speaks over Jesus — “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” — are words that God speaks over us, every day of our lives. He was later approached by a young man who had heard the sermon and was both moved — and distraught — by the priest’s words. Father Rolheiser writes:

“[The young man] had not been to church for some time but had gone on this particular Sunday because he had, just that week, pleaded guilty to a crime and was awaiting sentence He was soon to go to prison. The sermon had struck a painful chord inside him because, first of all, he had trouble believing that God, or anyone else, loved him; yet he wanted to believe it.

Secondly, and even more painful, he believed that nobody had ever been pleased or delighted with him: ‘Father, I know that in my whole life nobody has ever been pleased with me. I was never good enough! Nobody has ever taken delight in anything I’ve ever done!’ This man had never been blessed. Small wonder he was about to go to prison.”

Then Rev. Rolheiser recalls how different his own family experience was:

“When I left home as a seventeen-year-old boy, my father and mother blessed me. They made me kneel on the old linoleum floor of our kitchen, placed their hands on my head, and said the ritual words of Christian blessing. In effect, however, what they were saying to me was: We love you, we trust you, we are proud of you, and we send you off with our full spirit. You are our beloved child and in you we are well pleased. I suspect that had the young man I spoke [with] had been blessed in the same way by his parents, or by anyone else significant to him, he would not have been on his way to prison. To be unblessed is to be bleeding in a very deep place.

“So much of our hunger is a hunger for blessing. So much of our aching is the ache to be blessed So much of our sadness comes from the fact that nobody has ever taken delight and pleasure in us . . . When has anyone ever made you the object of delight? When has anyone taken . . . delight in . . . your beauty, your intelligence, your person? When have you last felt that you are someone in whom others, and God, take pleasure and delight?”

In Baptism, God claims us as his own, not matter who we are, expressing his delight in us as his own beloved daughters and sons. From the waters of our baptisms, God then sends us forth to be a source of blessing (of joy and love) to others: the work of reconciliation and forgiveness revealing to others that they are loved by God; the work of justice that honors the dignity of every human being as made in God’s image; the work of peace that realizes God’s vision for the world God so lovingly fashioned.

On this feast of the Lord’s Baptism, may we hear God’s expression of joy in his beloved Son as addressed to us, as well and, with gratitude, may we seek to be God’s “blessing” to all. For the Holy Spirit has been given to us in baptism, to live out that blessing in our lives to the world. For God shows no partiality and looks to us to bear such faithful witness in our words & deeds.

“Let us honor today the baptism of Christ and celebrate well…for nothing gives so much joy to God as the conversion and salvation of human beings, for whose sake every discourse and every sacrament exist, that you may become like lights shining in the world, a life-giving force for other human beings; that as perfect lights standing beside the great Light, you may be initiated into the light of heaven.” (St Gregory of Nazianzus) 

Amen.

The Good Book Club - the danger of taking biblical passages out of context

As we jump into the Gospel of John, this article will be of help...

"Jews are the children of Satan" and the danger of taking biblical passages out of context

In the aftermath of Saturday's tragic mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue, much attention has been given to the gunman's social media presence and virulent anti-Semitic statements. Robert Bowers reportedly yelled "All Jews must die" as he opened fire. His Gab profile appalled many with its use of the biblical verse John 8:44 – "Jews are the children of Satan" – as a sort of slogan and introduction to his account. But is there really such anti-Semitic sentiment in the Bible? Or was the line twisted and taken out of context?

John 8:44

"Uses of that passage and other passages that we find in the New Testament that give evidence of tensions that were there between religious communities in the first century, take them out of that historical context and use them in ways that they were never intended to be used," explains Harold Attridge, Sterling Professor of Divinity at the Yale Divinity School.

"The Gospel of John does not support or encourage persecution of Jews. It doesn't support or encourage persecution of anybody."

Rather, the passage in question is a somewhat heated dialogue between Jesus and the crowds in Jerusalem. According to the story in John, people have been plotting against Jesus for some time, trying to arrest him and stone him to death. So Jesus reacts rather strongly and calls them children of the devil. According to biblical scholars, however, this statement was never meant to be showcased in isolation.

"The Gospel of John is, in some ways, the most Jewish of the gospels. And at the same time, it is the one that displays some of the most polemical lines," says Attridge. "Those who cite John, saying that 'Jews are children of the devil,' ignore statements in John, like 'Salvation comes from the Jews.'"

Those that utilize John 8:44 for anti-Semitic purposes are also likely overlooking the fact that Jesus himself was a Jew. And while we may never know the precise identity of the author of the Gospel of John, he is most often identified as John, the son of Zebedee, who is a Jew, as well.

"All of the immediate followers of Jesus were Jews," explains Attridge. "And one of the major controversies in the first generation after the death of Jesus was whether non-Jews could even be part of the movement."

Still – despite the fact that Jesus was himself a member of the Jewish people – there are many examples throughout history of passages in the New Testament being wielded for anti-Semitic purposes.

Anti-Semitism in the New Testament

"The passage that was probably most widely cited in the persecution of Jews, especially in German anti-Semitism with Nazis and the like, was Matthew 27:25," explains Attridge: "May his blood be upon us and upon our children."

That passage occurs in the Gospel of Matthew, when the Jewish crowds in Jerusalem are given the option of releasing either Jesus or the prisoner Barabbas – and they choose to release Barabbas.

"That line was, I think, originally meant by Matthew to say, look, we can explain something about what has happened in our lives with the destruction of Jerusalem by what happened to Jesus," explains Attridge. "But it was taken out of that context and used as a way of saying Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus from the get-go."

That sentiment, whether inadvertently or as part of a deliberate strategy by early Christians to rationalize their connection to Judaism, laid the groundwork for centuries of anti-Semitism. Stories about the death of Jesus sparked violence by Christians against their Jewish neighbors, often abetted or actively instigated by local authorities across Europe. In fact, long before the Nazis devised racial theories to push for the annihilation of the Jewish people, leaders of the Christian church itself painted the Jews as a "despised people" meant to wander the Earth in misery and marginality.

Though the Catholic Church came out against such teachings in the mid-twentieth century, centuries of damage had already been done. The seeds of animosity were sown long ago for those seeking a biblical justification for their modern white supremacist and anti-Semitic views.

Another passage sometimes used for such purposes is First Thessalonians 2:15, where Paul refers to the people in Jerusalem as being responsible for Jesus's death. But according to Attridge, that passage is controversial as well, because historically speaking, the crucifixion of Jesus was not primarily a Jewish decision.

"Jesus was executed as a Roman political criminal. There's no doubt about that," the Yale biblical scholar explains. "The person responsible for making that decision was Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. And the method of execution was a Roman method of execution: crucifixion. There was probably collaboration between the priestly authorities in Jerusalem and Pilate, but it's mainly a Roman decision, based on the judgment that Jesus was probably a political revolutionary."

Racism and homophobia

The wielding of biblical passages for hate-fueled ends is sadly nothing new to the Jewish community. It is also all too familiar to black Americans and to members of the LGBTQ community, as well.

There are numerous examples of Bible verses which have been used through the course of history to justify the institution of slavery, with all its racial connotations in this country, and that are still being heralded by white supremacists today. First Corinthians 7:21, First Timothy, Second Timothy, Ephesians, Colossians, an entire letter that Paul writes about a fugitive slave... the list goes on and on, with several biblical examples in which the same advice is given to slaves: "Obey your masters."

"They are there in the Bible and we now recognize that they are not moral guides to what we should do or be," explains Attridge. "But you know, 150 years ago, people were quoting the Bible to support the institution of slavery. That heritage has lasted in terms of some of the racialism we see on the streets today."

In addition, some of those who condemn homosexuality point to biblical passages like Leviticus and Romans 1:24-27 as proof that the Bible agrees. But in this case, too, Attridge argues that these passages are being taken out of their proper historical context.

"Paul talks about men having sexual relations with men and women exchanging the natural for the unnatural," says Attridge. "They're probably reacting not in general to homosexual activity, but to specifically the forms it was taking in the Greco-Roman world, reacting to the ways in which people were exploiting people of the same sex, as well as people of other sexes, for various personal reasons. This has to be, I think, understood in the same way as a lot of stuff in the Bible that simply reflects the cultural assumptions of the period, which have long since proven to be problematic – that the world is flat, that lending money at interest is evil, etc.

"Lots of things in the Bible that were assumed to be correct at the time without a careful analysis, human experience has corrected over the course of the last couple millennia," he said.

So, as the world reels from yet another hate crime at the hands of a man justifying his actions with a misinterpreted biblical verse, scholars are emphasizing the importance of understanding the full context and deeper meaning of the text.

"I think any serious engagement with the Bible has to take it, not in terms of the particularities of an individual verse, but in terms of the whole of the witness," says Attridge. "And the whole of the witness of the Bible is God's relationship with humankind and God's call to do justice and live rightly and walk humbly before your God. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who don't recognize those as the governing principles that should be used in engaging any particular text. But I think all passages need to be read within, first of all, a historical context and what the assumptions were governing that historical context, and then critically evaluated on the basis of what we now know about life."

From CBS News
First published on October 31, 2018 / 9:49 AM
© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Good Book Club - Gospel of John

In the beginning was the Word…
Start 2020 with a renewed commitment to the Word of God. The Good Book Club returns for a third year with the Gospel of John. We’ll read the compelling account—inspired by “the disciple whom Jesus loved”—during the time from Epiphany (January 6) through Shrove Tuesday (February 25).

Resources available downstairs in the Undercroft and online: www.goodbookclub.org


Bible Study on the Gospel of John
Wednesdays at 10:30 am

The Gospel of John Introduction

The Gospel of John is the fourth of the canonical gospels. The book went through two to three stages, or "editions", before reaching its current form around AD 90–110. It is written anonymously, although it identifies an unnamed "disciple whom Jesus loved" as the source of its traditions.

The Gospel of John is closely related in style and content to the three Johannine epistles, and most scholars treat the four books, along with the Book of Revelation, as a single corpus of Johannine literature, albeit not from the same author.

The discourses contained in this gospel seem to be concerned with issues of the church–synagogue debate at the time of composition. It is notable that in John, the community appears to define itself primarily in contrast to Judaism, rather than as part of a wider Christian community. Though Christianity started as a movement within Judaism, it gradually separated from Judaism because of mutual opposition between the two religions. 

The structure of John is highly schematic: there are seven "signs" culminating in the raising of Lazarus (foreshadowing the resurrection of Jesus), and seven "I am" sayings and discourses, culminating in Thomas's proclamation of the risen Jesus as "my Lord and my God.” (Wikipedia)

Composition:

· Prologue (1:1–18)
· Book of Signs (1:19–12:50)
· Book of Glory (13:1–20:31)
· Epilogue (Chapter 21)

Reading Schedule:

1. John 1-2:12
2. John 2:13-4:54
3. John 5:1-6:71
4. John 7:1-9:34
5. John 9:35-12:11
6. John 12:12-15:17
7. John 15:18-19:30
8. John 19:31-21:25

2nd Sunday of Christmas Sermon

O Gracious God, help us to answer Yes to your impossible call with our lives. Enter and penetrate our souls with your Compassionate Spirit. Come and bless this hour: with a star and in our dreams you guide us onwards. Only the absurdity of love can break the bonds of hate; may that be true now as it was then. Amen. (Based on words of Madeline L’Engle)

What are your dreams for 2020?
What are God’s dreams for you this year?

Our Gospel reading for this 2nd Sunday after Christmas, reminds us that God intercedes in our lives – often in our dreams…

In the Gospel of Matthew, the angel first comes to Joseph in a dream, telling him take Mary as his wife. And he does so. And Jesus is born.

But in the second set of dreams, behind it all, is King Herod.

As one author & priest noted: "Herod represents the dark side of the gospel. He reminds us that Jesus didn't enter a world of sparkly Christmas cards or a world of warm spiritual sentiment. Jesus enters a world of real pain, of serious dysfunction, a world of brokenness and political oppression. Jesus was born an outcast, a homeless person, a refugee." (Joy Carroll Wallis)

The magi come from the East. They are not Jewish but they have observed a star and want to pay homage to the King of the Jews. Even as Herod scrambles to figure out what this all means for him, the star guides the magi to Jesus.

But after giving their gifts – they are warned in a dream not to return to Herod, and they left for their own country by another road.

Then an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and warns him to flee with Mary & Jesus to Egypt, away from Herod & his violence and only return after he dies.

For us, this Gospel reading presents a challenge to us, in the midst of the noise of our lives to see the signs, to listen to the dreams, to know that God is still risking it all and reaching out to us.

What star guides you to the Christ child today?
What dreams does God plant in you? How do you hear from God in your life? In your prayers?
and Why does God risk coming into our world this way?

The Risk of Birth by Madeleine L'Engle

This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war & hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out & the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honor & truth were trampled to scorn—
Yet here did the Savior make His home.

When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn—
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

God takes the risk and is born for us out of love for God’s creation. God takes the risk and the magi pay homage. God takes the risk and Joseph protects as Mary cuddles Jesus on their way to find safe refuge.

We live in such times of hate. Jews attacked here in the US. A Middle East full of unrest. Christians kidnapped in Nigeria. Australia on fire. Wars and the rumors of war. Honor and truth seemed to be trampled to scorn in our world.

So where would God have us look? Where does Love still take the risk of birth?

There was once a monastery that had come upon hard times. Once it was filled with young monks and its great church resounded with the singing of God’s praise, but now it was almost deserted, with a handful of elderly brothers shuffling through the cloister struggling to pray and work.

On the edge of the monastery woods an old rabbi had built a little hut. He would go there from time to time to fast and pray. Whenever the venerable and wise rabbi was there, the monks felt blessed by his presence.

One day the abbot of the monastery went to visit the rabbi to seek his counsel. The rabbi welcomed him warmly. First, the two prayed silently together; then the rabbi made tea for his guest. As he set the cups on the table, the rabbi said to the abbot, “You and your brothers are serving God with heavy hearts. You have come to ask a teaching of me. Very well. I will give you a teaching — but you can only repeat it once. After that, no one must ever say it aloud again.”

The rabbi leaned in and looked straight into the eyes of the abbot and said, “The Messiah is among you. He lives among you now.”

The abbot did not know what to say; he left the rabbi’s hut without a word. The next morning, the abbot called his brothers together. He told them he had received a teaching from the rabbi who walks in the woods — but warned that the teaching was to be spoken once and then never said again. The abbot then looked at each of his brothers and said, “The rabbi said that one of us is the Messiah.”

The monks were stunned by the abbot’s words. What could this mean? they asked themselves. Is Brother John the Messiah? Or Father Matthew? Or Brother Thomas? Could I be the Messiah?

They were all puzzled — and unsettled — by the rabbi’s teaching, but faithfully obeyed the abbot’s instructions that it never be mentioned again.

As time went by, the monks began to treat one another with a special reverence. There was a gentle, peaceful quality about them that was hard to describe but easy to notice. The few visitors to the monastery found themselves deeply moved by the life of the community. Before long, people were coming from miles around to be nourished by the prayer of the monks. More and more brothers joined the community. As the monastery began to rebuild, the joy of their prayer once again resounded through their church — and hearts.

The old rabbi was never seen again — but the old monks, who had taken his teaching to heart, forever felt his presence. [Source unknown.]

“The Messiah lives among you” — today we celebrate that reality in our lives: that God’s Christ is present among us in our love for one another, in the mercy and justice we work for, in the forgiveness we extend and accept.

Our lives are filled with “epiphanies:” the moments of awareness and understanding, discoveries of abilities and potential, realizations of the love of God in our lives. In dreams. In seeing a star.

In this New Year, may we seek to find the Messiah in our midst, following the star of God’s reconciliation and justice, enabling us to behold Emmanuel — “God with us”— in every experience of charity, consolation and forgiveness, whether given or received.

What are your dreams for 2020?
What are God’s dreams for you this year?

May our dreams and our lives live into the mystery of God and God’s love, for God is with us. Amen.

Prayers for Australia

Fire Map of Australia 1/3/20

This prayer has been said at St Paul’s Cathedral these past days. The Anglican Primate of Australia, Melbourne Archbishop Philip Freier, invites all Christians to use it:

Almighty God and heavenly Father, we pray for this world that you love so much
that you sent your Son Jesus to be born as the child of Bethlehem:
We pray for the safety of those sheltering from fires and those fighting fires,
for livestock, native animals, paddocks, bushlands and sacred places.
We remember our own loved ones and those who are dear to us facing this crisis.
We pray for those tending to the injured, the frightened and the broken-hearted,
for emergency services, emergency broadcasters, chaplains and counsellors.
We ask for your forgiveness for our own failures in safeguarding your good creation,
and pray for political and community leaders, and all those responding
to the current crisis in our nation.
Above all, we pray the peace that passes all understanding,
in our nation and state, in our homes and in our hearts.
This we ask in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Other prayers adapted from: A Prayer Book for Australia, Broughton Books, 1999
All things look to you, O Lord,
to give them their food in due season:
look in mercy on your people,
and hear our prayer for those whose lives and possessions are threatened by fire.
Give protection and wisdom to fire fighters and other emergency service personnel.
Encourage our generosity to those who suffer loss.
In your mercy restore your creation and heal our land.
So guide and bless your people,
that we may enjoy the fruits of the earth
and give you thanks with grateful hearts,
through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Bounteous God, we give thanks for this ancient and beautiful land,
a land of despair and hope,
a land of wealth and abundant harvests,
a land of fire, drought and flood.
We pray that your Spirit may continue to move in this land
and bring forgiveness, reconciliation, peace and an end to all injustice;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A prayer for Australia in drought and fire

Our heavenly Father, creator of all things and especially the creator of this land and its original peoples, we call out to you in these desperate times as fires have swept across several parts of our country.

Our hearts cry out to you for those who have lost loved ones, and those who have lost properties in the wake of these ravaging fires.

Father we pray, in your mercy, restrain the forces of nature from creating catastrophic damage; in your mercy protect human life.

Guard those volunteers, rural fire service personnel and emergency services who selflessly step into the breach to fight these fires. Guide police and authorities who help evacuate and shelter those who are displaced. Bring comfort and healing to all who suffer loss.

Remembering your promises of old that seedtime and harvest will never cease, we pray that you would open the heavens to send refreshing rain upon our parched land. In your mercy, we pray for drenching rain.

We pray that despite the forecasts, in your miraculous power you would bring forth rain to quench these fires and to bring life back into the earth, so that crops may grow and farmers may bring forth the harvest of the land again.

We bring these requests before your throne, in the name of your Son, who died and rose again for our deliverance, Amen.

(Archbishop Glenn Davies of Sydney)

Pray for the Communities affected:

· New South Wales
o North Coast
o Mid North Coast
o Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury
o Metropolitan Sydney
o Southern Highlands
o South Coast
o Riverina
· Northern Territory
· Queensland
· South Australia
· Tasmania
· Victoria
· Western Australia

Statement in solidarity with the Jewish community

I read this statement and thought it useful for us here in Connecticut.

The following statement is also available on the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island website here.

The attack on Saturday, December 28 at the home of a Brooklyn Jewish rabbi in the midst of a Hanukkah celebration after a rash of recent anti-Semitic incidents in our region impels us, the Episcopal Church bishops of Long Island, to speak out in solidarity and support of our Jewish sisters and brothers.

New York secular authorities have had to boost police patrols in a number of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods of Brooklyn and security has been bolstered at Brooklyn synagogues and yeshivas. There has been a twenty-three percent rise in the number of anti-Semitic crimes in the New York region over the last few months alone. We cannot stand silent before this fresh outbreak of anti-Jewish terror.

Therefore, we call on our fellow Episcopalians now to boost our own spiritual solidarity with our Jewish sisters and brothers. Anti-Semitism is a problem of special concern, not to be overlooked, to Episcopalians and all Christians. One Christian leader once said, “Spiritually we are all Semites.” The Christian Church has formally renounced anti-Semitism on almost all levels of its organized life. The First Assembly of the World Council of Churches soon after the end of World War II and the Holocaust denounced anti-Semitism as a grave “sin against God and man,” and called upon the Churches to readily denounce any anti-Semitic activity as “absolutely irreconcilable with the profession and the practice of the Christian faith.”

Many such statements of a similar nature have been issued officially by The Episcopal Church, and The Episcopal Church has taken a strong stand against any anti-Semitic theological perspective. Theology within The Episcopal Church increasingly emphasizes that the covenant of God with Israel is not revoked by the “new covenant” with the Church.

We call upon Episcopalians to take the following steps: 

1. Study the recent events in the New York region so as to understand and recognize anti-Semitism as this virulent, endemic illness which not only lives on within our region but is on the rise within the rest of our country. 

2. At the level of our parishes, we should initiate local gatherings for interfaith dialogue which bring together Episcopalians and Jews who are prepared to examine their prejudices. 

3. We should find opportunities for joint prayer which lifts before God the anguish of the Jewish community and asks God for greater mutual understanding to emerge between our two communities. Episcopalians should become a prayerful presence in the face of the fear and vulnerability created by these incidents threatening the Jewish community. 

4. We should provide occasions for the proper public demonstrations by Episcopalians that show solidarity with our Jewish sisters and brothers, particularly at vulnerable locations such as synagogues, temples, yeshivas, and schools. 

5. During this time of anxiety and concern, please find the appropriate time in your parishes to use the following adapted prayer for Genocide Remembrance from Holy Women, Holy Men:

Almighty God, our Refuge and our Rock, your loving care knows no bounds and embraces all the peoples of the earth: Defend and protect those who fall victim to the forces of evil, and as we remember this day those who endure depredation and death because of who they are, not because of what they have done or fail to do, give us the courage to stand against hatred and oppression, and to seek the dignity and well-being of all for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ, in whom you have reconciled the world to yourself: and who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
The Right Rev. Lawrence C. Provenzano
Bishop of Long Island

The Right Reverend Geralyn Wolf
Assistant Bishop of Long Island

The Right Reverend Daniel Allotey
Assisting Bishop of Long Island

The Right Reverend R. William Franklin
Assisting Bishop of Long Island