Aphorism of the Day, March 31, 2016
John's Gospel begins by saying the Word is God and created all things. In John, Jesus says that his words are spirit and life. And the writer of John states that the reading of the Gospel words can result in belief in Christ. Word as Ground of human being; word as spoken; word as written. Word is the biggest elephant in the room of human existence. In fact in true circularity and reflexivity Word establishes its own identity. Word is established by Word. This is probably the most meaningful tautology of all. Word is Word or to say what something is, one has to continuously keep using words in strings of endless tautologies.
Aphorism of the Day, March 30, 2016
The "Doubting Thomas" story in the Gospel of John shows that the early church was dealing with the competition regarding valid experiences of Christ. "My experience of the Risen Christ is better than yours, because I was with Jesus. And yours is inferior because somebody just told you about Jesus and even further some of you have only "read" about Jesus. In the punchlines of the Doubting Thomas story the oracle of Christ in the early church says, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed." And the Gospel writer establishes the validity of Gospel writing by writing, "These things are written so that you might believe..." That the eyewitnesses to Jesus died out did not nullify the validity of experiences of the Risen Christ in those who were not eyewitnesses but who lived on the "fumes" of hearsay through oral accounts and writing. Somehow the Spirit of Christ still has the intensity of validating to the experiencers authentic transformative power in achieving peace and forgiveness.
Aphorism of the Day, March 29, 2016
We are inclined to "temporal provincialism" since we can realistically and actually only always be in the present, hence by being here now, we have a natural favoritism for the present. This does not mean that we need to have a superiority complex about the present and place the past in the role of the inferior underdeveloped child state of being. Some would valorize the past through the pain of nostalgia because the present is so frightening. Some would make the past manifestations of knowledge and traditions into idols and would ask us to worship and venerate those who obviously had superior experiences of life and God than we could ever had. The entire purpose of the resurrection was to free the limitation of Christliness to the body of Jesus and promote the discovery of divine omnipresence as the always already presence of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, March 28, 2016
Easter week is a time to note how immediately the early church began to appraise and compare the kinds of post-resurrection appearances of Christ. If "physicality" were the only valid criteria for such an appearance then Paul's experience would not qualify. Perhaps many have had experiences of the Sublime but they were not taught by their church that such sublime experiences could qualify as being touched by the Risen Christ. I hope that the church has not locked your experience of the Sublime out.
Aphorism of the Day, March 27, 2016
The Easter event supports the internal hunch that once we know consciousness of ourselves and life, we will always have it in some way.
Aphorism of the Day, March 26, 2016
What would convince a person that after one dies one is going to have recognizable continuity with the person that one was before one died? If the body becomes ashes which ultimately break down and are dissolved and dissipated into the physical world beyond a constituted recognition, does the psychic and spiritual energy of the self/soul/spirit/ego also get dissolved and dissipated to the point of being unrecognized in the future state after one's death? If the energy of the constituted "self" gets dissolved into the rest of the energy of the universe how can such a "self" have future "self consciousness" and consciousness of others or another kind of existence? What kind of "preserving act" can keep the self together in the state of existence after death? Is it egotistical to want to have "individual" eternal existence after one's death? Should one want to dissolve without identity and simply be dissolved energy for the continuing life of the rest of the universe? One of the reasons we believe in the Personhood of God is because personhood is what we regard to be the highlight of human experience, namely, attaining unique identity within a community of other persons. If we have received personhood from the past, we assume that we will be indispensable links to passing on personhood to the future. We are living proof that personhood has been passed on and so we assume that personhood will endure into the future. That the particular personhood of Jesus after he had died was known again by himself and by others is the particular significant and telling event which we celebrate at Easter.
Aphorism of Day, March 25, 2016
When the Passion Gospel were written, the church had long finished the stages of grief and had come to not just acceptance of the death of Jesus but glorious acceptance of Cross of Jesus. When the post-resurrection appearances bring about the re-interpretation of the Cross as a providential plan of God, it does change the presentation and increase the irony of promoting empathy for the suffering Jesus even while faith has already concluded that it was supposed to be. Not all suffering in life seems to end in the discovery of their necessity by a future over-riding event like the post-resurrection appearance which suddenly made the suffering necessary. The Cross resolved by the post-resurrection appearances is a model of faith based upon future reconciliation of all previous events. Before the future the pain and loss of the present can hardly be submitted to passively as "God-willed" suffering. That one can believe that all things one day will be gloriously reconciled does not minimize the actual current suffering. And we certainly have no right to declare reconciliation of the suffering of other people while they are suffering. Alleviation of suffering is the work now; leave the reconciliation to the future.
Aphorism of Day, March 24, 2016
Maundy Thursday is an event when Jesus sat with his friends for a meal and he realized that they were all "wannabe chiefs" and there were no "wannabe servants." His friends wanted to sit at his right and left hand in his glorious kingdom and with such aspirations it was easy to miss the fact that the common courtesy of washing dusty feet had been neglected. So Jesus the "chief" performed the obvious and Peter took offense at Jesus fulfilling the role of a servant or doing "women's work." (wives in the time washed their husband's feet) The one who presided at the "first Eucharist" took complete identity with service and with bread and with wine thereby showing us that the Risen Christ is not separated from anything in this world. We have the ministry of making Christ apparent everywhere and in everyone and service is the best way of making Christ apparent.
Aphorism of the Day, March 23, 2016
Darkness and shadows have macabre metaphorical association with association and Tenebrae is a liturgy which gives us orientation to the dark Event of Holy Week with the highly ambiguous celebration of the Death of Jesus. Ambiguous because proleptically, we approach the death of Jesus from the side of his post-resurrection appearances. Darkness is a positive metaphor for the state of sleep and rest and in Christian liturgies we are trying to provide our community with rites of passages to embrace the full range of life experience. Let us prepare to make our station at the cross and the tomb and enter into the deathly rest of Jesus as preparation for the New Morning of our lives.
Aphorism of the Day, March 22, 2016
In light of the Brussels attack, we ponder out loud as to how our human relations world might be healed. We find a significant number of persons either as individuals or as groups or cells whose identities are constituted by revenge. Many people have been caught within the collateral damages of the warfare between greater empires and lesser empires. The people who are constituted by such revenge have adopted the irrationality of what can only be called "death cults." When the greater empires have inevitable control, the weapons of those constituted by revenge are mainly psychological. If they can caused the members of the Hobbesian Leviathan states perpetual uncertainty, anxiety and fear about when and where violent acts might happen then their revenge is exacted. Earthquakes, fire and tornadoes could have all of us who live by probability theory to let our life decisions be motivated by what ills may befall us. When we factor in what revenge acts of terror may befall us due to the deliberate choices of terrorists, we obviously feel differently about the probable occurrences of acts of nature than the acts which derive from the deliberate acts of people to whom we impute a higher degree of culpability than the random acts of nature. What we can pray for is that the world's "super powers" will have creative wisdom to regard all of the people of the world who do not have "super powers" in such a way that justice might be applied and relative to each situation on the ground. We pray that a long period of living in perpetual reactive fear for safety might give way to a time when the energy of revenge is sublimated into people being able to live at peace in their neighborhoods with enough food, clothing, shelter and education. What we find in experience is that super empires cannot transplant and force other cultures and countries to attain our perceived privileged values overnight. And since our world is so interconnected there is great impatience about perceived differences in human rights, women's rights, children's rights, gay rights and political expression. Let us pray that those who have super power and therefore more super freedom will express that freedom and power creatively with wisdom from God about how to manifest the winsomeness of truly superior values based upon loving our neighbor as ourselves.
Aphorism of the Day, March 21, 2016
Environmentalist might be troubled by the Gospel account of Jesus cursing a fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season. However, if one understands the Gospels as parables about Jesus who also spoke in parables one can find in this parable of Jesus the early Christian teaching about the fruits of the Spirit always being in season and available. The parable message is this: Don't use times or seasons as an excuse for not manifesting the fruits of the Spirit. If we don't appreciate the Gospels as parables using the life of Jesus to illustrate the spirituality of the early church, one can get trapped into some silly meanings of "literalism."
Aphorism of the Day, March 20, 2016
The Passion Gospel can be read only in the face value of the words and evoke many emotions. Sadly in the past some Christians have allowed the reading of the Passion to be an occasion to act out their anger against the Passion Story accusers of Christ. The Passion Story was compiled when the church and synagogue had become painfully separated and the Passion Gospels reflect the anger of this separation. We today should be comfortable with and supportive of the different missions which Judaism and Christianity have in our world and the very ancient hurt between communities should be long healed. Now mutual respect bring us together to work for love and justice in our world.
Aphorism of the Day, March 19, 2016
Can we have it both ways? Believing that the crucifixion was God's plan and then witnessing in the Gospel the blaming of the religious leaders for their role in causing the crucifixion. If there was no "alternate" plan then why blame the religious leaders? There is a danger of removing real freedom from this world by assuming God and some people know the future as present and know the possible as actual. Rather than conceiving of the entire cosmic order as already predetermined by God, it is better to honor genuine freedom and the art of providence based upon the future making the past seem like it was trumped by a superior subsequent act. When the brothers of Joseph asked mercy of him for sending him as a slave to Egypt, he said, "You meant evil for me, but God meant it for good." A superior serendipitous future event can make an previous evil event seem providential and we are not sure that every evil event has a future serendipitous event to make every thing in the past get reconciled. We do not know if all evil and badness ever does have just and future reconciling counter events. This is one of the reason for believing in a afterlife where everlastingness keeps giving chances to everyone to experience the winsome lure of a loving God. On the other hand one could easily trivialize the afterlife by letting us off the hook for tolerating so much evil and injustice in this life.
Aphorism of the Day, March 18, 2016
If the Passion Narratives came to textual form later than the writings of Paul, then they integrate the theology of early church practice into the presentation of the suffering of Christ. The Passion Narratives then become a parable encoding the kinds of relationship with Christ. Peter would represent all who had doubts about the Jesus Movement and even waivered in commitment before embracing the new movement. Judas would represent those who sought to put it to an end. Other figures like Herod and Pilate represented those who saw the movement in terms of being a possible political inconvenience. The Passion Narrative invites the reader to project upon the characters and the events and one's position toward the interpretation of Jesus as a suffering messiah is clarified.
Aphorism of the Day March 17, 2016
The Passion Narrative was used by the early church to present the different views of the meaning of the Messiah. The Jewish accuser told Pilate that Jesus said he was a king, and the Messiah and for them the Messiah would be someone like David who never be in the situation of captivity. The Passion Narrative contrasts the notion of a conquering kingly messiah with the view of the messiah which prevailed in the Christian communities, Christ as a suffering servant.
Aphorism of the Day, March 16, 2016
By the time St. Paul wrote the Epistle to the Roman churches (see chapter 13), he had "made peace" with the Roman situation. He advised the church to be subject to the authorities, to pay taxes and he wrote that the authorities were God's servants. This means that he made peace with the "Caesar situation" so that the churches could be born and "fly under the radar," so to speak. If being subject to authorities was a stated practice of Paul who wrote before the Passion Narratives were written, it throws a completely different light upon the context for understanding the Passion Narratives. Because the church had made peace with the "Roman and Caesar situation" when the crucifixion was recounted, the Romans who were the chief perpetrators of crucifixion were presented more as puppets in bringing Jesus to the cross rather than as those who had the regular habit of making the spectacle of crucifixion out of any riot which had tinges of being "anti-Caesar."
Aphorism of the Day, March 15, 2016
In the New Testament there is writing about the many different meanings of the death of Jesus. The writers were seeking for a higher logic regarding the death of one they regarded to be most innocent. But this most innocent One was shown to be a threat to various persons of power in Jerusalem. Jesus was shown to be caught within the competitive disagreements of parties in Jerusalem. The Roman governor was the final judge and arbiter to make the problem go away through crucifixion. In the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, peace occurred through the forceful removal of any troublesome elements in society. Jesus who was called the Prince of Peace was the victim of the Roman Peace in his crucifixion. By the time that the Passion narratives were written a growing number of people were quite certain that Jesus had never gone away but was multiplying in the lives of more and more people who believed that the Risen Christ was present in them.
Aphorism of the Day, March 14, 2016
We move toward Passion Sunday and the makeover of death by Christian mystagogy. In Christian mysticism the Cross of Christ is the metaphorical dark and negative energy being transformed because it was applied to one so perfect that His Death became the agent for the ending of the separate egotistical self in order that the Christ nature might arise to be the new creation in each person realizing daughtership, sonship with God.
Aphorism of the Day, March 13, 2016
Putting lipstick on a pig does not change the fact that a pig still is a pig. Mary of Bethany, placed prophetically, perfume on Jesus as anticipation for the anointing of his dead body. Certainly we prefer perfume on live bodies than dead bodies. The Gospels in part involve the artistic application of perfume on death because of the resurrection of Christ. Instead of "Death where now is thy sting, it's Death where now is thy smell?" This kind of artistic pastoral acceptance of death relativizes death as a gateway to another kind of life and so the Death of Jesus is a gateway transformative event experienced in spiritual identity with Christ. The Gospel presentation of the death of Jesus is the narrative form of the spiritual metaphor of Christ's Death being a Higher Power to end or die to what is unworthy in one's life.
Aphorism of Day, March 12, 2016
Perfume to anoint the feet of Jesus and then wipe them with one's hair? Such an excessive act of devotion is culturally far from our experience today. The correspondence for us is that we know that we can be excessive in devotion when we have had life changing events by the love of another person or an experience of uncanny providential intervention of rescue. Some people have given the excessive expression of lifetime sobriety in the aftermath of knowing the intervention of the help of the Higher Power.
Aphorism of Day, March 11, 2016
In the Gospel of John, Judas Iscariot, the treasurer of the Jesus Movement criticized Mary of Bethany for her olfactory excess when she spent money for anointing the feet of Jesus with perfume, whilst we are told that he was also a thief. Judas feigned that the money should have been given to poor. And Jesus defended her saying, "The poor are always with us." Sometimes devotional acts of excess with our time, talent and treasure co-exist with the perpetual need of those who are poor. The life of faith involves accepting the ambiguities and contradictions of tolerating different socio-economic conditions of people, while performing faith acts which express our thanksgiving for how Christ has touched our lives and still not being absolved of our continuing responsibility to help those in need. Expressing one's love of Christ happens in spite of socio-economic conditions even while we work towards all having "enough."
Aphorism of Day, March 10, 2016
St. Paul wrote that he "might become like Christ in his death." The death of Christ had a complete "make-over" after the post-resurrection appearances and manifestations of the continuing afterlife of Jesus in the lives of his followers. The Death of Jesus was converted to a spiritual method of being able to "die to oneself" or significantly check the ego at the door so as to permit one new insights to transform one's life. Death of Christ as spiritual method was the practice of the church before the Gospels were written down and so when the Gospel's were written the death of Jesus is presented as a progression toward providential destiny. The Gospels build toward the Passion because they are in story form the dynamic spiritual transformation of the believer.
Aphorism of Day, March 9 2016
The resurrection appearances of Christ to his disciples made them re-write the history of his death. His death became known to be absolutely providential and in the latest written canonical Gospel of John, the destiny of the death of Jesus was declared by John the Baptist calling Jesus "The Lamb of God." So the Gospel of John proclaims, "If the death of Jesus had not have occurred, then his resurrection appearance would not have happened and we would not have the resurrection narrative as a witness to the state of being in a continuous afterlife." So the death of Jesus must have been planned. Sometimes future outcomes make the past absolutely providential in the way in which the past is told. That death now implies a certain resurrection bring an understand of death not as an abrupt end but as a transitional doorway or threshold to the next phase of life.
Aphorism of the Day, March 8, 2016
In the teaching progression of the Gospel of John, Lazarus the brother of Mary and Martha was brought back to life and the sisters knew Jesus as the resurrection and life. This is a set up for the preparation of death to be relativized by resurrection life. So Mary anoints Jesus with perfume as preparation for the significance of his death. Seems rather macabre that the body of Jesus was unwittingly being prepared for interment before his death. The Gospel writers can put the fragrance of perfume upon impending death because they are living from the side of their experience of the Risen Christ. The writer of the Gospel of John writes about the death of Jesus as something which "will have been glorious" because of the subsequent event of the resurrection.
Aphorism of the Day, March 7, 2016
Mary of Bethany poured expensive perfume on the feet of Jesus and dried his feet with her hair. It seems like such an excessive act of love and devotion, an act that should at best be done in private. Why does the Gospel portray the interaction of Jesus with women in such a way in a time when the culture actually segregated men and women? The portrayal of a woman touching Jesus would be quite culturally shocking. The men disciples are presented by the Gospel writers as "clueless," "deniers," "doubters," betrayers," and "faithless." But the women are presented as being devoted and close to Jesus, especially Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene. This closeness of Jesus to women stands in contrast to the way in which patriarchal "Christian" cultures have diminished the significant roles of women, especially their public roles.
Aphorism of the Day, March 6, 2016
The very permissive father in the Prodigal Son parable evokes the permissive freedom of God in allowing humanity to be impulsive and unwise and to squander all that we have been given. But such permissive freedom also allows for wisdom to be gained from the punishing outcomes of our own folly and in freedom choose a path of repentance. What is the difference between the wisdom that comes from learning from one's mistakes as opposed to learning from not having made the mistake of serious rebellion? The older brother of the parable did not have any mistakes to learn from except when he got angry about his brother's return and his father's joy, he finally had a major mistake of an unforgiving heart to learn from.
Aphorism of the Day, March 5, 2016
St. Paul said that we are called to be ambassadors of Christ and our ministry is that of reconciliation. Those who worked on reconciliation in post-apartheid South Africa at some point had to embrace a very radical forgiveness which did not absolve the past injustice or attempt to rewrite the history of injustice. The radical forgiveness of the merciful Father in the parable of the Prodigal Son rightly offends the justice as exemplified in the reaction of the older brother to his father's forgiveness. Many situations of active revenge in our world still exists because the grace of radical forgiveness has not yet found a place to give the younger generation a new start in practicing new relationships not sabotaged by the "eye for an eye" justice requirements from the past.
Aphorism of the Day, March 4, 2016
In simplistic biblical interpretation one can use the parable of the Prodigal Son to make precise and exact identification between the story figures and actual people. So the Father is God, the prodigal son represents all of the rejected sinners accepted by Jesus and the older brother represents all of the self-righteous religious prigs who do not want obvious sinners in their club. A parable can be interpreted in this way and people can become smug in thinking that they have "cracked" the real and final meaning of the parable. A parable is an art of language which may be more elusive than precise and exact meanings. A parable is more like a Rorschach Ink Blot projection device onto which readers project their own versions. A person who is so sure about the precise meaning of the parable of the Prodigal Son may end up unwittingly instantiating the spiritual smugness of the "older brother." Watch out; stories usually have a way of putting one in the cross hairs of judgments. And it is better to accept oneself as a fluid moral and spiritual agent than as a stable and fixed robot of some pre-determined moral stance.
Aphorism of the Day, March 3, 2016
The parable of the prodigal son was told because Jesus was accused of eating with sinners. This is an indication that the early church was made up of people who did not have religious "status" in society but one of the implications of the prodigal son story is that everyone begins in God the Father's house and some rebel and return. Some never "rebelled" but were upset that those who were rebellious were allowed to return. The parable of the Prodigal Son is based upon a belief that everyone belongs originally to the home of the Heavenly parent and all are welcome to return even if they have tried to deny their spiritual origins.
Aphorism of the Day, March 2, 2016
We do a disservice to the writers of the Bible in assuming that they only were smart enough to write in one way, the way of plain reporting. Many have made the parables of the presentations of the life of Jesus into journalistic "eye-witness" reporting rather than seeing these parables as oracles of the risen Christ dealing with "church situations" in the eight decades after Jesus was gone from this earth. Appreciating the "art" of writing in the Bible only can enhance sublime encounters.
Aphorism of the Day, March 1, 2016
One of the results of the Gospel "prodigal son" tradition is that we make heroes out of really notorious sinners who repent. America tends to lionize great political sinners who repent and publicly confess. The people who just seem to be "boringly" faithful day by day do not fit the great Christian trope of "having to be a great" sinner in order to be transformed into someone who sublimates all of the sinning energy into super over-compensating spiritual energy. The poor older brother of the Prodigal Son parable is seen as the "bad guy" because he stayed at home and was faithful to his Father, and because his sense of fairness was offended when the younger sibling is made a celebrated hero because he returned from his sinful ways. St. Paul was a notorious sinner, complicit in killing, but he also wrote the rhetorical question, "shall we go on sinning that grace may abound?" Yes, it is great that St. Paul was converted from his ways of seeking to kill religious opponents, but if he had his choice, he would rather never have sought to kill in the first place. We need to be careful about the subtle profiles we can promote from the ways in which we read the Gospel stories.
John's Gospel begins by saying the Word is God and created all things. In John, Jesus says that his words are spirit and life. And the writer of John states that the reading of the Gospel words can result in belief in Christ. Word as Ground of human being; word as spoken; word as written. Word is the biggest elephant in the room of human existence. In fact in true circularity and reflexivity Word establishes its own identity. Word is established by Word. This is probably the most meaningful tautology of all. Word is Word or to say what something is, one has to continuously keep using words in strings of endless tautologies.
Aphorism of the Day, March 30, 2016
The "Doubting Thomas" story in the Gospel of John shows that the early church was dealing with the competition regarding valid experiences of Christ. "My experience of the Risen Christ is better than yours, because I was with Jesus. And yours is inferior because somebody just told you about Jesus and even further some of you have only "read" about Jesus. In the punchlines of the Doubting Thomas story the oracle of Christ in the early church says, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed." And the Gospel writer establishes the validity of Gospel writing by writing, "These things are written so that you might believe..." That the eyewitnesses to Jesus died out did not nullify the validity of experiences of the Risen Christ in those who were not eyewitnesses but who lived on the "fumes" of hearsay through oral accounts and writing. Somehow the Spirit of Christ still has the intensity of validating to the experiencers authentic transformative power in achieving peace and forgiveness.
Aphorism of the Day, March 29, 2016
We are inclined to "temporal provincialism" since we can realistically and actually only always be in the present, hence by being here now, we have a natural favoritism for the present. This does not mean that we need to have a superiority complex about the present and place the past in the role of the inferior underdeveloped child state of being. Some would valorize the past through the pain of nostalgia because the present is so frightening. Some would make the past manifestations of knowledge and traditions into idols and would ask us to worship and venerate those who obviously had superior experiences of life and God than we could ever had. The entire purpose of the resurrection was to free the limitation of Christliness to the body of Jesus and promote the discovery of divine omnipresence as the always already presence of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, March 28, 2016
Easter week is a time to note how immediately the early church began to appraise and compare the kinds of post-resurrection appearances of Christ. If "physicality" were the only valid criteria for such an appearance then Paul's experience would not qualify. Perhaps many have had experiences of the Sublime but they were not taught by their church that such sublime experiences could qualify as being touched by the Risen Christ. I hope that the church has not locked your experience of the Sublime out.
Aphorism of the Day, March 27, 2016
The Easter event supports the internal hunch that once we know consciousness of ourselves and life, we will always have it in some way.
Aphorism of the Day, March 26, 2016
What would convince a person that after one dies one is going to have recognizable continuity with the person that one was before one died? If the body becomes ashes which ultimately break down and are dissolved and dissipated into the physical world beyond a constituted recognition, does the psychic and spiritual energy of the self/soul/spirit/ego also get dissolved and dissipated to the point of being unrecognized in the future state after one's death? If the energy of the constituted "self" gets dissolved into the rest of the energy of the universe how can such a "self" have future "self consciousness" and consciousness of others or another kind of existence? What kind of "preserving act" can keep the self together in the state of existence after death? Is it egotistical to want to have "individual" eternal existence after one's death? Should one want to dissolve without identity and simply be dissolved energy for the continuing life of the rest of the universe? One of the reasons we believe in the Personhood of God is because personhood is what we regard to be the highlight of human experience, namely, attaining unique identity within a community of other persons. If we have received personhood from the past, we assume that we will be indispensable links to passing on personhood to the future. We are living proof that personhood has been passed on and so we assume that personhood will endure into the future. That the particular personhood of Jesus after he had died was known again by himself and by others is the particular significant and telling event which we celebrate at Easter.
Aphorism of Day, March 25, 2016
When the Passion Gospel were written, the church had long finished the stages of grief and had come to not just acceptance of the death of Jesus but glorious acceptance of Cross of Jesus. When the post-resurrection appearances bring about the re-interpretation of the Cross as a providential plan of God, it does change the presentation and increase the irony of promoting empathy for the suffering Jesus even while faith has already concluded that it was supposed to be. Not all suffering in life seems to end in the discovery of their necessity by a future over-riding event like the post-resurrection appearance which suddenly made the suffering necessary. The Cross resolved by the post-resurrection appearances is a model of faith based upon future reconciliation of all previous events. Before the future the pain and loss of the present can hardly be submitted to passively as "God-willed" suffering. That one can believe that all things one day will be gloriously reconciled does not minimize the actual current suffering. And we certainly have no right to declare reconciliation of the suffering of other people while they are suffering. Alleviation of suffering is the work now; leave the reconciliation to the future.
Aphorism of Day, March 24, 2016
Maundy Thursday is an event when Jesus sat with his friends for a meal and he realized that they were all "wannabe chiefs" and there were no "wannabe servants." His friends wanted to sit at his right and left hand in his glorious kingdom and with such aspirations it was easy to miss the fact that the common courtesy of washing dusty feet had been neglected. So Jesus the "chief" performed the obvious and Peter took offense at Jesus fulfilling the role of a servant or doing "women's work." (wives in the time washed their husband's feet) The one who presided at the "first Eucharist" took complete identity with service and with bread and with wine thereby showing us that the Risen Christ is not separated from anything in this world. We have the ministry of making Christ apparent everywhere and in everyone and service is the best way of making Christ apparent.
Aphorism of the Day, March 23, 2016
Darkness and shadows have macabre metaphorical association with association and Tenebrae is a liturgy which gives us orientation to the dark Event of Holy Week with the highly ambiguous celebration of the Death of Jesus. Ambiguous because proleptically, we approach the death of Jesus from the side of his post-resurrection appearances. Darkness is a positive metaphor for the state of sleep and rest and in Christian liturgies we are trying to provide our community with rites of passages to embrace the full range of life experience. Let us prepare to make our station at the cross and the tomb and enter into the deathly rest of Jesus as preparation for the New Morning of our lives.
Aphorism of the Day, March 22, 2016
In light of the Brussels attack, we ponder out loud as to how our human relations world might be healed. We find a significant number of persons either as individuals or as groups or cells whose identities are constituted by revenge. Many people have been caught within the collateral damages of the warfare between greater empires and lesser empires. The people who are constituted by such revenge have adopted the irrationality of what can only be called "death cults." When the greater empires have inevitable control, the weapons of those constituted by revenge are mainly psychological. If they can caused the members of the Hobbesian Leviathan states perpetual uncertainty, anxiety and fear about when and where violent acts might happen then their revenge is exacted. Earthquakes, fire and tornadoes could have all of us who live by probability theory to let our life decisions be motivated by what ills may befall us. When we factor in what revenge acts of terror may befall us due to the deliberate choices of terrorists, we obviously feel differently about the probable occurrences of acts of nature than the acts which derive from the deliberate acts of people to whom we impute a higher degree of culpability than the random acts of nature. What we can pray for is that the world's "super powers" will have creative wisdom to regard all of the people of the world who do not have "super powers" in such a way that justice might be applied and relative to each situation on the ground. We pray that a long period of living in perpetual reactive fear for safety might give way to a time when the energy of revenge is sublimated into people being able to live at peace in their neighborhoods with enough food, clothing, shelter and education. What we find in experience is that super empires cannot transplant and force other cultures and countries to attain our perceived privileged values overnight. And since our world is so interconnected there is great impatience about perceived differences in human rights, women's rights, children's rights, gay rights and political expression. Let us pray that those who have super power and therefore more super freedom will express that freedom and power creatively with wisdom from God about how to manifest the winsomeness of truly superior values based upon loving our neighbor as ourselves.
Aphorism of the Day, March 21, 2016
Environmentalist might be troubled by the Gospel account of Jesus cursing a fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season. However, if one understands the Gospels as parables about Jesus who also spoke in parables one can find in this parable of Jesus the early Christian teaching about the fruits of the Spirit always being in season and available. The parable message is this: Don't use times or seasons as an excuse for not manifesting the fruits of the Spirit. If we don't appreciate the Gospels as parables using the life of Jesus to illustrate the spirituality of the early church, one can get trapped into some silly meanings of "literalism."
Aphorism of the Day, March 20, 2016
The Passion Gospel can be read only in the face value of the words and evoke many emotions. Sadly in the past some Christians have allowed the reading of the Passion to be an occasion to act out their anger against the Passion Story accusers of Christ. The Passion Story was compiled when the church and synagogue had become painfully separated and the Passion Gospels reflect the anger of this separation. We today should be comfortable with and supportive of the different missions which Judaism and Christianity have in our world and the very ancient hurt between communities should be long healed. Now mutual respect bring us together to work for love and justice in our world.
Aphorism of the Day, March 19, 2016
Can we have it both ways? Believing that the crucifixion was God's plan and then witnessing in the Gospel the blaming of the religious leaders for their role in causing the crucifixion. If there was no "alternate" plan then why blame the religious leaders? There is a danger of removing real freedom from this world by assuming God and some people know the future as present and know the possible as actual. Rather than conceiving of the entire cosmic order as already predetermined by God, it is better to honor genuine freedom and the art of providence based upon the future making the past seem like it was trumped by a superior subsequent act. When the brothers of Joseph asked mercy of him for sending him as a slave to Egypt, he said, "You meant evil for me, but God meant it for good." A superior serendipitous future event can make an previous evil event seem providential and we are not sure that every evil event has a future serendipitous event to make every thing in the past get reconciled. We do not know if all evil and badness ever does have just and future reconciling counter events. This is one of the reason for believing in a afterlife where everlastingness keeps giving chances to everyone to experience the winsome lure of a loving God. On the other hand one could easily trivialize the afterlife by letting us off the hook for tolerating so much evil and injustice in this life.
Aphorism of the Day, March 18, 2016
If the Passion Narratives came to textual form later than the writings of Paul, then they integrate the theology of early church practice into the presentation of the suffering of Christ. The Passion Narratives then become a parable encoding the kinds of relationship with Christ. Peter would represent all who had doubts about the Jesus Movement and even waivered in commitment before embracing the new movement. Judas would represent those who sought to put it to an end. Other figures like Herod and Pilate represented those who saw the movement in terms of being a possible political inconvenience. The Passion Narrative invites the reader to project upon the characters and the events and one's position toward the interpretation of Jesus as a suffering messiah is clarified.
Aphorism of the Day March 17, 2016
The Passion Narrative was used by the early church to present the different views of the meaning of the Messiah. The Jewish accuser told Pilate that Jesus said he was a king, and the Messiah and for them the Messiah would be someone like David who never be in the situation of captivity. The Passion Narrative contrasts the notion of a conquering kingly messiah with the view of the messiah which prevailed in the Christian communities, Christ as a suffering servant.
Aphorism of the Day, March 16, 2016
By the time St. Paul wrote the Epistle to the Roman churches (see chapter 13), he had "made peace" with the Roman situation. He advised the church to be subject to the authorities, to pay taxes and he wrote that the authorities were God's servants. This means that he made peace with the "Caesar situation" so that the churches could be born and "fly under the radar," so to speak. If being subject to authorities was a stated practice of Paul who wrote before the Passion Narratives were written, it throws a completely different light upon the context for understanding the Passion Narratives. Because the church had made peace with the "Roman and Caesar situation" when the crucifixion was recounted, the Romans who were the chief perpetrators of crucifixion were presented more as puppets in bringing Jesus to the cross rather than as those who had the regular habit of making the spectacle of crucifixion out of any riot which had tinges of being "anti-Caesar."
Aphorism of the Day, March 15, 2016
In the New Testament there is writing about the many different meanings of the death of Jesus. The writers were seeking for a higher logic regarding the death of one they regarded to be most innocent. But this most innocent One was shown to be a threat to various persons of power in Jerusalem. Jesus was shown to be caught within the competitive disagreements of parties in Jerusalem. The Roman governor was the final judge and arbiter to make the problem go away through crucifixion. In the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, peace occurred through the forceful removal of any troublesome elements in society. Jesus who was called the Prince of Peace was the victim of the Roman Peace in his crucifixion. By the time that the Passion narratives were written a growing number of people were quite certain that Jesus had never gone away but was multiplying in the lives of more and more people who believed that the Risen Christ was present in them.
Aphorism of the Day, March 14, 2016
We move toward Passion Sunday and the makeover of death by Christian mystagogy. In Christian mysticism the Cross of Christ is the metaphorical dark and negative energy being transformed because it was applied to one so perfect that His Death became the agent for the ending of the separate egotistical self in order that the Christ nature might arise to be the new creation in each person realizing daughtership, sonship with God.
Aphorism of the Day, March 13, 2016
Putting lipstick on a pig does not change the fact that a pig still is a pig. Mary of Bethany, placed prophetically, perfume on Jesus as anticipation for the anointing of his dead body. Certainly we prefer perfume on live bodies than dead bodies. The Gospels in part involve the artistic application of perfume on death because of the resurrection of Christ. Instead of "Death where now is thy sting, it's Death where now is thy smell?" This kind of artistic pastoral acceptance of death relativizes death as a gateway to another kind of life and so the Death of Jesus is a gateway transformative event experienced in spiritual identity with Christ. The Gospel presentation of the death of Jesus is the narrative form of the spiritual metaphor of Christ's Death being a Higher Power to end or die to what is unworthy in one's life.
Aphorism of Day, March 12, 2016
Perfume to anoint the feet of Jesus and then wipe them with one's hair? Such an excessive act of devotion is culturally far from our experience today. The correspondence for us is that we know that we can be excessive in devotion when we have had life changing events by the love of another person or an experience of uncanny providential intervention of rescue. Some people have given the excessive expression of lifetime sobriety in the aftermath of knowing the intervention of the help of the Higher Power.
Aphorism of Day, March 11, 2016
In the Gospel of John, Judas Iscariot, the treasurer of the Jesus Movement criticized Mary of Bethany for her olfactory excess when she spent money for anointing the feet of Jesus with perfume, whilst we are told that he was also a thief. Judas feigned that the money should have been given to poor. And Jesus defended her saying, "The poor are always with us." Sometimes devotional acts of excess with our time, talent and treasure co-exist with the perpetual need of those who are poor. The life of faith involves accepting the ambiguities and contradictions of tolerating different socio-economic conditions of people, while performing faith acts which express our thanksgiving for how Christ has touched our lives and still not being absolved of our continuing responsibility to help those in need. Expressing one's love of Christ happens in spite of socio-economic conditions even while we work towards all having "enough."
Aphorism of Day, March 10, 2016
St. Paul wrote that he "might become like Christ in his death." The death of Christ had a complete "make-over" after the post-resurrection appearances and manifestations of the continuing afterlife of Jesus in the lives of his followers. The Death of Jesus was converted to a spiritual method of being able to "die to oneself" or significantly check the ego at the door so as to permit one new insights to transform one's life. Death of Christ as spiritual method was the practice of the church before the Gospels were written down and so when the Gospel's were written the death of Jesus is presented as a progression toward providential destiny. The Gospels build toward the Passion because they are in story form the dynamic spiritual transformation of the believer.
Aphorism of Day, March 9 2016
The resurrection appearances of Christ to his disciples made them re-write the history of his death. His death became known to be absolutely providential and in the latest written canonical Gospel of John, the destiny of the death of Jesus was declared by John the Baptist calling Jesus "The Lamb of God." So the Gospel of John proclaims, "If the death of Jesus had not have occurred, then his resurrection appearance would not have happened and we would not have the resurrection narrative as a witness to the state of being in a continuous afterlife." So the death of Jesus must have been planned. Sometimes future outcomes make the past absolutely providential in the way in which the past is told. That death now implies a certain resurrection bring an understand of death not as an abrupt end but as a transitional doorway or threshold to the next phase of life.
Aphorism of the Day, March 8, 2016
In the teaching progression of the Gospel of John, Lazarus the brother of Mary and Martha was brought back to life and the sisters knew Jesus as the resurrection and life. This is a set up for the preparation of death to be relativized by resurrection life. So Mary anoints Jesus with perfume as preparation for the significance of his death. Seems rather macabre that the body of Jesus was unwittingly being prepared for interment before his death. The Gospel writers can put the fragrance of perfume upon impending death because they are living from the side of their experience of the Risen Christ. The writer of the Gospel of John writes about the death of Jesus as something which "will have been glorious" because of the subsequent event of the resurrection.
Aphorism of the Day, March 7, 2016
Mary of Bethany poured expensive perfume on the feet of Jesus and dried his feet with her hair. It seems like such an excessive act of love and devotion, an act that should at best be done in private. Why does the Gospel portray the interaction of Jesus with women in such a way in a time when the culture actually segregated men and women? The portrayal of a woman touching Jesus would be quite culturally shocking. The men disciples are presented by the Gospel writers as "clueless," "deniers," "doubters," betrayers," and "faithless." But the women are presented as being devoted and close to Jesus, especially Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene. This closeness of Jesus to women stands in contrast to the way in which patriarchal "Christian" cultures have diminished the significant roles of women, especially their public roles.
Aphorism of the Day, March 6, 2016
The very permissive father in the Prodigal Son parable evokes the permissive freedom of God in allowing humanity to be impulsive and unwise and to squander all that we have been given. But such permissive freedom also allows for wisdom to be gained from the punishing outcomes of our own folly and in freedom choose a path of repentance. What is the difference between the wisdom that comes from learning from one's mistakes as opposed to learning from not having made the mistake of serious rebellion? The older brother of the parable did not have any mistakes to learn from except when he got angry about his brother's return and his father's joy, he finally had a major mistake of an unforgiving heart to learn from.
Aphorism of the Day, March 5, 2016
St. Paul said that we are called to be ambassadors of Christ and our ministry is that of reconciliation. Those who worked on reconciliation in post-apartheid South Africa at some point had to embrace a very radical forgiveness which did not absolve the past injustice or attempt to rewrite the history of injustice. The radical forgiveness of the merciful Father in the parable of the Prodigal Son rightly offends the justice as exemplified in the reaction of the older brother to his father's forgiveness. Many situations of active revenge in our world still exists because the grace of radical forgiveness has not yet found a place to give the younger generation a new start in practicing new relationships not sabotaged by the "eye for an eye" justice requirements from the past.
Aphorism of the Day, March 4, 2016
In simplistic biblical interpretation one can use the parable of the Prodigal Son to make precise and exact identification between the story figures and actual people. So the Father is God, the prodigal son represents all of the rejected sinners accepted by Jesus and the older brother represents all of the self-righteous religious prigs who do not want obvious sinners in their club. A parable can be interpreted in this way and people can become smug in thinking that they have "cracked" the real and final meaning of the parable. A parable is an art of language which may be more elusive than precise and exact meanings. A parable is more like a Rorschach Ink Blot projection device onto which readers project their own versions. A person who is so sure about the precise meaning of the parable of the Prodigal Son may end up unwittingly instantiating the spiritual smugness of the "older brother." Watch out; stories usually have a way of putting one in the cross hairs of judgments. And it is better to accept oneself as a fluid moral and spiritual agent than as a stable and fixed robot of some pre-determined moral stance.
Aphorism of the Day, March 3, 2016
The parable of the prodigal son was told because Jesus was accused of eating with sinners. This is an indication that the early church was made up of people who did not have religious "status" in society but one of the implications of the prodigal son story is that everyone begins in God the Father's house and some rebel and return. Some never "rebelled" but were upset that those who were rebellious were allowed to return. The parable of the Prodigal Son is based upon a belief that everyone belongs originally to the home of the Heavenly parent and all are welcome to return even if they have tried to deny their spiritual origins.
Aphorism of the Day, March 2, 2016
We do a disservice to the writers of the Bible in assuming that they only were smart enough to write in one way, the way of plain reporting. Many have made the parables of the presentations of the life of Jesus into journalistic "eye-witness" reporting rather than seeing these parables as oracles of the risen Christ dealing with "church situations" in the eight decades after Jesus was gone from this earth. Appreciating the "art" of writing in the Bible only can enhance sublime encounters.
Aphorism of the Day, March 1, 2016
One of the results of the Gospel "prodigal son" tradition is that we make heroes out of really notorious sinners who repent. America tends to lionize great political sinners who repent and publicly confess. The people who just seem to be "boringly" faithful day by day do not fit the great Christian trope of "having to be a great" sinner in order to be transformed into someone who sublimates all of the sinning energy into super over-compensating spiritual energy. The poor older brother of the Prodigal Son parable is seen as the "bad guy" because he stayed at home and was faithful to his Father, and because his sense of fairness was offended when the younger sibling is made a celebrated hero because he returned from his sinful ways. St. Paul was a notorious sinner, complicit in killing, but he also wrote the rhetorical question, "shall we go on sinning that grace may abound?" Yes, it is great that St. Paul was converted from his ways of seeking to kill religious opponents, but if he had his choice, he would rather never have sought to kill in the first place. We need to be careful about the subtle profiles we can promote from the ways in which we read the Gospel stories.
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