A BOOK WORTH HAVING

John Shelby Spong’s latest work Re-Claiming The Bible For A Non-Religious World, (HarperOne 2011) is an important book. It began as a series of lectures at a summer institute in South Carolina in 2006, developed into an online series of newsletters, and has now reached its published form. His intent is to give those interested in the Christian scriptures - and those dismissing it as nonsense – a clear sense of nature of the Bible as it is known to scholars who have spent their lives studying it in minute detail. In the preface, he writes, “… it will give those who engage it the sense of having completed a major university course on the Bible.”

A fellow of the Jesus Seminar, Spong adopts what can be defined as a consensus of current progressive biblical scholarship. Little of what he writes will be new to those who have maintained an active reading of current literature about how the Bible came into existence. Little will please those who cling desperately to the conservative, literal approach to scripture. He discounts the religious value of some of the less often read books of the Bible, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament.  Some of never appear in lectionaries designed for reading and preaching in worship of congregations.

Spong holds to what is now the traditional view, already some one hundred and fifty years old, of the so-called “five books of Moses” (the Hebrew Torah).  On the other hand, he breaks with the well-known theory of a document called Q, thought by many scholars to have been the common source shared by the gospels of Matthew and Luke. The Apostle Paul, he believes, gave not only one of the first but also the most influential interpretation of the meaning of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. At the same time, he does not regard the stories of Jesus’ birth or resurrection as believable in this day and age.  His alternate views on these narratives is worthy of serious consideration.

A particularly significant part of the book presents the first three gospels as set in the context of synagogue worship for a full year. Mark’s presentation of the Jesus story runs from from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, a period of about six and a half months. Matthew and Luke carry the cycle forward for the remaining five and a half months to the next Rosh Hashanah.

Possibly the most valuable part of this 400-plus page work of fifty-nine chapters in twelve parts is the religious and cultural background Spong cites for each book in the Bible. He does not believe that the Bible is in any sense the “Word of God.” He frankly states that “it is a tribal story, as this book will reveal – a pre-modern story, an ever changing and ever-growing story. It came into existence, as every other book does, out of the experience of human beings seeking to make sense out of the life they are living and the things they are experiencing.”

Without falling into the trap of supercessionism, Spong’s approach to the New Testament locates many of the stories and interpretations therein as the fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures.  He ends his final chapter reassuring his readers that, despite what some will see as his extreme views, he still believes that God was in Jesus and therefore remains for him, Christ.

The publisher, HarperCollins (HarperOne, in Canada) anticipates a wide readership, particularly in small study groups found in many progressive churches. It is priced accordingly. Anyone looking for a suitable Christmas or Hanukkah gift for a spiritually searching friend or family member could find nothing better than this.

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SACRED MEMORIES

In Canada and throughout the Commonwealth, Remembrance Day falls on November 11th each year. It marks the end of hostilities in the First and Second World Wars (1914-18 and 1939-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953). In the USA on the same date, Veterans Day is also celebrated with appropriate ceremonies. It is day of sacred memories for the dwindling few service men and women remaining from the Great Wars of the 20^th century.

“Sacred?” Is that the right term for terrible conflicts in which so many died. Not just those who served in armies, navies and air forces, but even millions more civilians too.

A book review in the Canada’s Maclean’s Magazine cites the memories of an American veteran of the Viet Nam War as having given him “the profound belief that combat is a potentially sacred experience.” That experience incorporates four components of a mystical event: premature awareness of one’s own mortality, total focus on the present moment, valuing the lives of others more than one’s own, and feeling part of a larger community.

By no means did every veteran have such an experience. Nor is the experience limited to veterans alone. Families and descendants also shared something similar. As early as ten years of age I was aware that my paternal grandmother and my father’s sisters felt that way about Remembrance Day. When the Vimy Ridge Memorial was dedicated in 1936, my aunts travelled to France to attend the ceremony. One of my father’s elder brother’s had died in the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. His name is forever sculpted on the Vimy Ridge memorial along with the names of thousands who has no known grave.

Another brother had been taken prisoner in the same battle at Ypres. Though he lived into his seventies, his three and a half years in a German prison camp ruined the rest of his life. Eligible for military service, my father was exempted because he was the only remaining male able to support his parents in their old age. So too was my future father-in-law.

I was too young to serve in the military in World War II. My older brother was wounded in the Normandy campaign in 1944. Several of my classmates did serve, however, and the chap who sat behind me in class died in the Battle of the Bulge in France while serving in the US Army. Since then I have marked Remembrance Day in the churches where I was pastor. Those services were usually held on the Sunday closest to Remembrance Day. On November 11^th there is a community ceremony at the cenotaphs in each community as well as at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.

My wife frequently reminds me that civilians too also served in our nation’s war effort on the home front. During high school, she spent three summer vacations working in various roles. For two summers she was a civil servant, the third she worked as a farm labourer in the Ontario Farm Service program. Those same summers I too was a farm labourer.

While I may quibble with these being “sacred memories,” I do feel that our work was as essential to the war effort as on the battle front.

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"KARMA IS NOT AN EQUATION"

That title has been plagiarized from the October 8^th edition of the Toronto Star. It headed a column on ethics written by a friend and colleague of mine, Ken Gallinger. Most likely, the headline had been written by someone else, as is the normal practice in the newspaper business.

Be that as it may, my friend’s advice was not to equate good behaviour with

blessings while also believing that bad behavior is inevitably punished. “It’s

obviously not true,” he wrote, “that people who do good always get good. But it

is true that people who are generous, kind, faithful in their relationships –

people who love, keep promises, work hard – tend to be happier, more peaceful

and more hopeful.

“They have friendships that last. They deal with adversity with more equanimity.

 They laugh in the daylight and sleep soundly at night. They do, overall, have more
 fulfilling lives ... even when the math doesn’t work out as precisely as we might
 wish.”

Was my friend being overly optimistic? Certainly more so than I would have been. Or was he contradicting himself?
His comments reminded of another article by a well-known Canadian humourist,

Scott Feschuk, in a recent issue of Maclean’s Magazine. He made the sly comment
that “these are prosperous times for pessimists.” Feschuk was writing about the
current global economic malaise and the threat of a double dip recession. For most
people this isn’t funny at all.

By sheer coincidence on this same day, the Nobel prize for economics was awarded to two Americans, Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims. Working separately in the 1970s and 1980s, they developed methods for answering questions such as how economic growth and inflation are affected by a temporary mandated increase in the interest rate or a tax cut. By even greater coincidence, all this happened on our Canadian Thanksgiving Day.

Was it coincidence, or what our scriptures keep reminding us: a touch of God’s

almighty hand in the history of our times?

That is a metaphorical expression, a poetic and theological way of saying what the Bible takes for granted. God's almighty hand - aka Providence - is in all human affairs. Theologians struggle to find new ways of describing the same religious experience in terms of an expanded view of human consciousness without a literalist approach to biblical metaphors of that Transcendent Reality we call God. 

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Theophanies – Then and Now.

One of Cuyler Black’s biblical cartoons, (www.inheritthemarth.com) shows Moses coming down the mountain carrying the Ten Commandment stones and grumbling to himself. “Kill joy! Out of the cloud overhead comes the Voice, “I heard that!” That’s a delightful turn of phrase about the meaning of a theophany.

 Part of the title of this note could be reversed to now and then. That’s how some even very religious people think of theophanies. It is not just occasional, but rare and bestowed on very few individuals as a special gift. That is not what the dictionary definition states. A theophany is defined as the appearance of a god to a human. Note the singular. Usually a theophany is an individual religious experience a manifestation of that spiritual reality we call “God.”

 Just how theophanies take place is quite unknown. The Bible is full of them. In particular prophets have them and so become spokespersons for God. Because of the male bias of the authors of the writings we have collected in what we call our Scriptures, we have come to think of particular men like Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Jesus and Paul as having such experiences. That is a pity, because there is no reason why women and other men may also have theophanies. Deborah (Joshua 5), Mary, the mother of Jesus, (Luke 1:26-56); Anna (Luke 2:36-38), Lydia (Acts 16:14), Priscilla (Acts 18:1, 26) are women of the Bible known to have had similar experiences.

 Are we then to presume that every person who claims to have had a spiritual experiences of this kind have had a theophany. That would be foolish. It is not the experience per se that is evidence of a theophany, but the spiritual fruits that results from it that determines its validity.

 I recall attending an evangelistic revival in a large stadium that was normally used for football games. The preacher held forth for nearly an hour, then called for people who felt so moved to come forward in an altar call. I am not sure that that either the preacher or any of those who went forward for a special blessing and prayers would claim that any had a theophany. Yet there are plenty of examples of evangelists who desperately tried to create the circumstances for a theophany to occur - but failed.

 The truth is that we cannot manipulate God to appear or to communicate with us at will. Yet we do need to maintain our relationship with God in public worship an in private devotions.

 An article in the current issue of The United Church Observer asks, “Does God need to be thanked?” The author proceeds to give what he calls “four good reasons to argue that there is no need to offer thanks to God.” He concludes by saying, nevertheless, that if we believe in the God Jesus revealed we need to remind ourselves that we have a relationship with the God who loves us and the whole universe. We have a place in God’s whole scheme of things. “God needs our thanks to know that we care.” He quotes from the First Letter to the Thessalonians 5:18 where Paul wrote, “In everything give thank: for this is the will of God in Jesus Christ concerning you.”

 It is to people who practice their faith on a regular basis that a theophany may occur, if God so wills.

 
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CIVIC RELIGION

CIVIC RELIGION.

The late Mordecai Richler was one of Canada’s leading 20^th century novelists. From the Jewish community in Montreal, Richler fiercely opposed to the narrow French nationalism of Quebec. He was equally dismissive of what he called “sentimental, milquetoast” nationalism of English Canada. A lecture delivered on the Big Ideas program on TVO, Ontario’s educational television network, featured Charles Foran, author of a recent biography of Richler. Yet Foran had difficulty describing the kind of nationalism exhibited in Richler’s numerous novels, magazine and newspaper articles, and television commentaries.

Foran believes that Richler rejected all sense of tribalism, whatever its source. Instead he belonged to a brand of moral individuals springing from Judaism “whose duty is to question and confront” every position that does not meet the highest standards of justice. Without saying so, Foran described a man who was a prophet of his time in the midst of Canada’s struggle to remain a united country.

Canada has a long history of nationalism, particularly in relation to the United States of America. Our first prime minister, John A. Macdonald (1815-1891), was perhaps the greatest of those who could be said to be Canadian nationalists. He was determined to do everything possible to maintain the whole of Canada’s vast geography from east to west coasts as “British North America.” It was his driving motive for striking the political deals that brought about Confederation in 1867. Later he negotiated the entry of Manitoba and British Columbia in the west and Prince Edward Island in the east, as the next provinces to become part of the new “Dominion of Canada” as part of the British Empire.

Today Canada is a vast country stretching from sea to sea to sea, with a very limited population of only 33 million. Our constitutional monarchy expresses a value system that recognizes our place in the world as a nation that seeks to help others protect democracy or achieve freedom and independence. In global geopolitics we have served many times as peacekeepers or peacemakers for the United Nations.

Most everyone may be proud of their own country’s particular brand of nationalism. Some may criticize or condemn it as an extreme form of patriotism. I prefer to call it our civic religion. Each brand of civic religion has its own liturgy, beginning with a national anthem and a constitution that declares the nation’s basic values and system of government. In this country our national holidays and memorials are essential to our civic observances. Our Canada Day celebrations on July 1^st and Remembrance Day parades to the national and local cenotaphs on November 11^th also evoke the liturgies of our civic religion.

One of the more powerful instances of civic religion came  little more than a week ago in the marking of the 10^th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. We in Canada marked the anniversary too by recalling how we had helped the many airline passengers who had been forced to land at airports far from home. We welcomed several thousand passengers from those aircraft into our homes for up to a week while they waited to be cleared to fly on to their destinations in the USA. All this was done without any cost to the passengers. We feel proud of doing more than might have been expected of us. Those simple acts of kindness were a supreme expression of our civic religion.

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REV ELATION - Part 2.

The role of the church in determining whether or not a particular experience of revelation is valid also has to be raised. Through the centuries Christian church authorities have been somewhat rigid in allowing solo voices to depart from the creeds established by church councils. Creeds have been used as a means of controlling what is a true and what is a false revelation. The church has often denied that particular individuals have received a prophetic revelation.

For instance, since the 4th century CE the Christian church has insisted that God is to be understood as a Trinity of three personae but one divine being. Anyone who disagreed with this doctrine has been pushed to the fringes, expelled from the church as heretics, or at times cruelly executed. On a number of occasions in church history these people have created new movements that became sects or denominations that prospered as competing rivals. Unfortunately, this divisive process is still going on.

Not all revelation occurs in a religious context. The discovery that energy is the basis of all life is a scientific revelation. So is the discovery that all animal species have remarkably common genomes. For instance, fruit flies and humans share 60% of the same genes. Another revelation states that all living things have a common descent stretching back over the 3.5 billion years that there has been life on the planet Earth. The religious person interprets such discoveries as experiences of God’s unfolding purposes.

A children’s book I read to my children many years ago had these words: “God speaks to me in my mind and says, ‘Be good; be kind.’” Those words and the influence of people of faith in their lives helped to shape their character and their faith. Many other parents have had similar experiences. This is both a mental, moral and religious process. Physiological and neurological research is beginning to discover the means by which this takes place within our neurological system.

“The mind is the locus of revelation,” wrote Bruce Chilton in his latest book, The Way of Jesus to Repair and Renew the World. (Abingdon, 2010.) “What if whole communities, formed by people inclined to Mindful discipline, treated prophecy as a human gift, conveyed by the Spirit, rather than an unusual and random occurrence? St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Pursue love, be zealous for spiritual things, and above all that you prophesy.” (1 Corinthians 14:1). To him it seemed obvious that an awareness of God active among us should bring prophecy to the leading role in the guidance of communities. What is obvious to see, of course, is not always easy to do. To move from possibility to action will be the achievement of Mindful practice.” (Capital letters for Mindful were Chilton’s.)

In 2010 the Tony Blair Faith Foundation launched the Religion and Globalization initiative at the Centre of Research on Religion (CREOR) at the Faculty of Religious Studies of McGill University, Montreal, Canada. This year a series of leectures on "Religion and the Brain." These lectures will likely be published at a later date. I wait with anticipation to read them.

I am convinced that further research will bring to light how God uses the basic elements of our bodies and minds to reveal to us the nature of faith. Whatever the technical details may be, it is not likely to take us beyond the biblical revelation that the true nature of God is love, a love that embraces all humanity and wills that all humanity embrace each other.

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REVELATION - Part 1

The story of the call of Moses to lead the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to freedom and a home in Canaan is a story about revelation. It reveals in that it makes something known. It discloses a kind of knowledge that the Israelites interpreted as re-establishing their God-given promise of a homeland and their mission in a world of much hostility. According to the biblical record that promise and mission were first given to Abraham (Genesis 17:2-9).

These days we are flooded with information, with new knowledge about ourselves, the world and the universe we live in. Conflicting religious traditions and cultures tend to blur or blot out entirely our understanding of what revelation is. In theological terms, revelation is transcendental. It exists apart from, beyond, and not subject to the limitations of the physical universe. The late Prof. Wilfrid Cantwell Smith, a prominent Christian scholar of comparative religious history, used the word Transcendent to refer to our human experience of the divine in all religious traditions.

In the biblical sense revelation is not about us or our material universe at all, but about God. The God who is Spirit beyond our sight and other senses, but whose presence can yet be experienced by ordinary human beings. That is why the familiar story of Moses and the burning bush is so important to the Christian and Jewish traditions alike.

There are several kinds of divine revelation in this narrative. There is mediated revelation. There is direct revelation. There is spiritual revelation interpreted by faith. There is revelation of God’s own nature. There is revelation of divine purpose and mission. There is revelation in a historical context. Above all, there is revelation of the real presence of God in human life and history.

Throughout the Bible these several kinds of revelation can be found again and again. This is particularly true in the experience of Israel’s prophets of whom Moses was the first and perhaps the greatest. The prophets of Israel appeared to have a special sense of what God was about. This was often couched in words that came directly from God to the prophets who the declared, “Thus says the Lord ….”

We must not infer this to mean that the actual words of scripture are in and of themselves the literal revelation. Some people do believe that; I do not. Instead it means that God uses the words of scripture to show people of faith what God is like, what God is doing, and how that matters to us in our historical context. Revelation through the words of scripture is a religious experience. That is true even in this atheistic age when reason is so emotionally espoused as the only acceptable alternative.

To Christians the supreme revelation of God is a person, Jesus of Nazareth. He has been revealed to us the Messiah/Christ, Son of God, since the first writings of the New Testament were composed in the 1st century CE. In Jesus the essence of all that is divine and all that humans may become has now been disclosed. This revelation brings people of faith into a personal relationship with God and with each other.

The danger of this revelation is that we can turn it around to believe in God as anthropomorphic – very much like humans, made in our image. Psychologists and psychiatrists following Sigmund Freud and others have consistently made that claim. But does this really affect our understanding of revelation?

It is true that many passages in the Bible also give this same impression. Numerous texts cite God speaking, as in the story of Moses receiving his call to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. Through the ages, numerous people of faith have heard God speaking. Have they all been deceived?

The history of our Christian tradition tells us that they have not. Rather, they perceived a revelation, experienced and interpreted through faith, and formed a personal relationship with God and with Jesus Christ. God had become a real presence in their lives and consequently they have acted accordingly. We call this the work of the Spirit of God within them. They have been given prophetic powers that shape their lives in unique ways and help us discern the will and purposes of God in the context of everyday life. These prophetic gifts are not exclusive to a few but available to all people of faith.

(More of this note on Revelation will follow in Part 2.)