Aphorism of the Day, April 30, 2016
Sometimes one has to commit the incredible act of universal optimism. Perhaps the faith of all religions is best when it truly commits a verbal act of universal optimism which rides the energy of hope that we can have. Perhaps the best example of this optimism is Psalm 67 which we should offer every day for our world:
The future invents the past since one item of contrast does "not exist" until what it is not comes into being to make the contrast possible and define both items of contrast. The Gospels are the results of successful churches presenting the narratives of Jesus to account for the very success of the later churches. This is how the writing of history works. There is "authenticate" tradition from the time of Jesus but it is used and edited under the fresh judgments of the oracles of Christ in the Christian communities to show the origins of the success of the church that had become separated from Judaism. The future gives birth to the identity of things which happened in the past.
Aphorism of the Day, April 28, 2016
In the departure discourse of Jesus to his disciples, he promised that he would send an Advocate to be with them. The evidence of the Advocate would be an experience of a kind of peace which they could not receive elsewhere. Peace as continuing presence of Christ is still a legacy and we invoke that peace in our liturgy as an indication of our willingness to receive and practice this promised gift.
Aphorism of the Day, April 27, 2016
The reason St. John is called "the Divine" pertains to his writing of the "Apocalypse" or Revelation. Apocalypse means to uncover or unveil and the writings of John the Divine resulted from his retention of words and memories from being in a "divine, in the Spirit" visionary state. The images of the Apocalypse are very "surreal" with the plasticity of metaphors being like the melting images of a Dali painting. One could say that the apocalyptic vision of heaven presaged the loss of a "physical" heaven once modern cosmology and the discovery of endless outer space caused the abandonment of the "trap door" on top of the domed sky entrance to "heaven." The Revelation of St. John the Divine reveals that being in heaven and seeing the heavenly is a humanly possible experience now. Humanity is quite intrigued with the experiences of "savant-like" states and they come in many ways and inspire many responses.
Aphorism of the Day, April 26, 2015
A portion of John's Gospel is devoted to what might be called a "departure" discourse, one which presents Jesus as preparing his followers for his physical absence. Herein one can see the logic of the early church presenting the transformation of the physical Jesus to the body of Christ through the omnipresence of the Holy Spirit, which is also the Spirit of Christ in His continuing presence. Part of the writing motive of the Gospels has to do with this question: Why is the Jesus Movement so successful? Why didn't it go away after Jesus could no longer be seen? The Gospels present the developing self-understanding of the churches own existence.
Aphorism of the Day, April 25, 2016
The Gospel writers understood themselves to have the mind of Christ and they channeled his words in writing reporting the narrative of Jesus. This enabled the subsequent success and the meanings of spiritual practice in the church to both be seen as anticipated by the historical Jesus as well as using the narratives to be the mystagogy of the church. After the experience sof the Risen Christ, the disciples imported those experiences back into the presentation of the historical Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, April 24, 2016
The separation of followers in Christ from the synagogue was in part due to a "food fight" in that concessions were made to Gentiles regarding the dietary restrictions of Judaism.
Aphorism of the Day, April 23, 2016
The Gospel writings have "not so subtle ways of dating themselves" in not being "eye-witness" accounts. Jesus said to his disciples, "Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you.." During the life of Jesus, he was a Jew and so were his disciples. So why does it seems as though Jesus speaks about "the Jews" as referring to people unlike himself and his disciples? This is clearly an indication of writing done from the perspective of a mainly Gentile church.
Aphorism of the Day, April 22, 2016
The Psalmist exercises the role as a conductor who assumes that humanity can anthropomorphize everything in creation and treat every as having the volitional capacity to "praise" the Lord. So the Psalmist commands angels, winds, sea creatures, birds, trees, son, moon and stars to praise the Lord. The Psalmist is assuming that the divine, a non-human being, is enough like human beings to be able to appropriate the posture of praise from all created things and beings. The biblical writings are mainly forms of poetics and even when narrative is used, it is mainly for meanings to evoke spiritual identity and not provide exact eye witness accounts of what actually happens. Modern criteria of scientific and eye witness truth has cause many biblical supporters to forsake the value of aesthetic truths so poignant and obvious in the Bible. The way in which many people read the Bible is akin to an Amish buggy on the freeway; quaint but out of place. Modernity has not left the sublime aesthetic readings of the Bible; Modernity is an opportunity for people of faith to be true to the poetics of spirituality.
Aphorism of the Day, April 21, 2016
Nietzsche said that truth is "objectivity" deriving from a long used metaphor. If people use a metaphor long enough, it becomes "truth." So how do "truths" get changed? How does innovation occur even to long used metaphors? The truth of dietary purity of Judaism was abandoned by Gentile Christianity. It had been the practice since the implementation of the Law of Moses. Peter had a vision from God about "non-kosher" animals being proclaimed as undefiled in preparation for Peter being able to accept the new truth of God's Spirit in the life of a Gentile being the sign of religious validity. The truth is that paradigm shifts happen and sometimes they are so much a part of one's cultural background, one does not know that one has implicitly embraced the outcomes. Modern science became the background of Western Christian culture in such expansive ways many Christians still have not adjusted to the fact that they tacitly accept scientific thinking even while denying it in the practice of their religion.
Aphorism of Day, April 20, 2106
The legacy of the presence of Christ is the practice of love. "By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." It is love which establishes communal identity with Christ but it was not theoretical love, it was the practice of love as exemplified in service, foot-washing service. For disciples who wanted important positions in the kingdom of God, Jesus said and demonstrated, "Just wash feet." One's profound gifts have more effect if they are expressed from a general character of love. St. Paul's complaint about the Corinthian church was they were often a gifted church but without love, and this rendered their gifts as ineffective and even counter-productive.
Aphorism of Day, April 19, 2016
We are so used to mushy romantic love which comes so easily when it happens, i.e., falling in love is a near pathological state and one cannot help oneself when it happens. So the command to love God with all of oneself and the command to love one's neighbor as oneself: How romantic is that? Such is the hard and tough love of doing justice to God and to each person in this world. And tough love is not always in line with our affinities, things which are likeable and easy to perform. The kind of love which is based upon justice is often hard but it is the kind of love which we want expressed towards us. Human experience involves many kinds of love, but the tough love of justice can never be forgotten.
Aphorism of the Day, April 18, 2016
"Glory" is a word found in the New Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures and refers to the self-authenticating value of God. It could be that such divine value is known in human experience as the Sublime when one experience an event of esteem which does not seem to have any predictable cause. Such events makes one feel beloved for no reason at all and can help free one from needing perpetual strokes from others for one's sense of worth. So the discovery of God's glory and one's own glory deriving from the sense of unconditional love is the cornerstone of personal worth.
Aphorism of the Day, April 17, 2016
Perhaps a way to appropriate the meaning of Christ as "Lamb of God" is to understood the lamb as symbolizing the condition of innocent suffering in our world due to the play of freedom. Everyone get caught in events of innocent suffering even when it is the collateral effect of some not so innocent willful acts. Jesus as lamb of God was able to transform his events of innocent suffering into a ministry as the shepherd of those who suffer innocently. We wish innocent suffering on no one, even as we know that probability theory about what can happen in the conditions of freedom indicates that it will occur in one way or another. But we hope that innocent suffering can be redeemed in a hopeful future when we look back and say, "I did not want that to happen, but since it did I hope that empathy on my soul's resume will allow me to be a useful ministerial presence to other innocent sufferers." Hereby lamb becomes shepherd. The wounded becomes healer.
Aphorism of the Day, April 16, 2016
The model of the Good Shepherd and the sheep gives a metaphor of the needed balance and reciprocity toward those who have strength, power, resources and ability to help those in need. Each person can find one to be one with strength to help but also be in the place of needing help. In a world where 1% of the population controls the majority of the world resources essentially for their own benefit we find that the balanced reciprocal roles of shepherd and sheep are not being fulfilled. A shepherd does not exploit; a shepherd cares and we need the wealthy people of our world to listen to the words of Jesus when he said, "To whom much is given; much is required." The purpose of the blessing of wealth, power and strength is to celebrate the privilege of generosity.
Aphorism of the Day, April 15, 2016
Language is always an issue when dealing with meanings of biblical writing. We have received the biblical writing through their transmission from people to people for thousands of years and we cannot verify exact correspondence of meaning of words in their original contexts with contexts in our lives today. When we project our own correspondences upon what we read in the Bible we do so because we accept our place in the transmission of the many traditions deriving from the biblical writings. Many of the correspondences between our post-modern lives and the pre-modern worlds of the biblical people do not have fitting ethical correspondences. The pre-modern world tolerated slavery and subjugation of women as the "normal" virtue of their cultures and even valorized such practices within the writings of the holy Book. Love and justice are the universal principles within the Bible and such principles should guide us today to innovate in their application toward justice and love among all people today. One cannot consistently make one to one correspondences with all of the biblical practices which had religious sanction in various ancient biblical societies with the obvious practice of love and justice for all today. Thankfully, we have innovating from "biblical ways" in the application of love and justice to people today.
Aphorism of the Day, April 14, 2016
Deconstruction of any statement of meaning occurs when the statement is re-stated through paraphrase and each paraphrase of the first statement is produced from a slightly different context. Any statement could be endlessly paraphrased which means that the writing event or speaking event purports to "freeze" a particular meaning and a particular context. Such freezing of particular meaning "in situ" can serve as the community's temporary objectivity and extended temporal use of agreed upon meaning then attains "truth" status within the community, and such truth even becomes hidden since it becomes the tacit, "it goes without saying" background of the community's values. The plethora of interpretations of New Testament stuff has occurred because it is harder to gain precision in the control and promulgation of meaning in what is essentially "poetics." It is hard to gain precise meanings in poetics, since poetics is appealing to more that what can be empirically verified. We could opine endlessly about how Jesus the Christ is both shepherd and lamb since the metaphors of poetry play with the empirically grounded common sense mind.
Aphorism of the Day, April 13, 2016
A condition posed to Jesus in the Gospel of John, "If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly." This indicates the on-going discussion about the nature of the Messiah which characterized the parties within Judaism which eventually brought about the separation of Christians from the synagogues. In the Gospel of John, the works of Jesus were presented as proof of his messiahship, like the various signs which he performed, culminating in his resurrection. The work of the Messiah which many Jews wanted to see was the work of a restored Israel with a David-like king upon the throne and the people free from occupation by Rome. The suffering "Lamb of God" Messiah was a voice which could not be heard by those who were taught another definitive meaning of the Messiah.
Aphorism of the Day, April 12, 2016
The Fatherization of God is very pronounced in the Gospel of John. Jesus said, "The Father and I are one." The Gospel agenda of the writer of John was for people to realized that they had been born "from above" to gain access to another quality of life. Simultaneously a person has natural birth and entry in the world as God's child because of the divine DNA image implanted upon each person. This divine identity is not always realized because the demands of the life of natural birth communities cause a forgetting of our original blessing. Jesus is God's Son who fully realized the Original Blessing and expressed it as experiencing full identity with his heavenly parent. The church has busied itself with making Jesus so unique while Jesus was trying to share with everyone the reality of being "one with the heavenly parent."
Aphorism of the Day, April 11, 2016
John 1:1, "and the Word was God." Hence word has endless possible morphing capacity even to the point of signifying contradictions with no problem at all. For example, Jesus the Christ is both Lamb and Shepherd. Makes no sense if one limits the meaningful use of language to empirical verification. Let's set our minds free with the endless metaphorical capacity of language.
Aphorism of the Day, April 10, 2016
The continuity of the church does not just depend upon the fact that Jesus made the post-resurrection appearances recorded in the Gospel and other New Testament writings; continuity has happened because the very energy of resurrection is able to be known in the many guises of the sublime which kiss our lives today.
Aphorism of the Day, April 9, 2016
One can probably underestimate the success of the Jesus movement in the cities of the Roman Empire. It could be that synagogue and church separated as fast as it did because of the amazing success of the Gospel within the Gentile peoples. The paucity of history does not give a full record of the success of the message in so many places; the New Testament preserves the message of the Gospel in the succession of leaders centering around Peter, Paul and the Beloved Disciple and community. Other strains of Christian succession are found in apocrypha Gospels often labeled as "Gnostic" by modern day scholars or as "heresy" by competing Christian leadership groups. There was great diversity in the Jesus Movement; the New Testament writings are the result of need to standardize the Christian presentation as Christianity was becoming the preferred religion of the Roman Empire. Today we find so many different Christian traditions comprised of people who interpret the biblical writings so different to fit the projections of the needs of their personal and social situations. Meanings are hard to control inside the minds of people even when apparent standardized "objective" meanings are enforced by church administrations. Diversity prevails even under the guise of uniformity.
Aphorism of the Day, April 8, 2016
The Gospel of John presents the disciples trying to back to fishing after the death and resurrection of Christ. And fishing can never be the same; what they used to do simply becomes the occasion to know Christ in a different way. A kairotic event in one's life will make the repetition of familiar things new and different.
Aphorism of the Day, April 7, 2016
One of the most favorable reports in the Gospels of a companion of Christ is found in the Gospel of John, where the person is referred to as the "beloved disciple." This disciple is the to whom Jesus commits the care of his mother from the cross. Scholars speculate that portions of John's Gospel were written by the beloved disciple or within the beloved disciple's community. Is it John, son of Zebedee? John, son of Zebedee was involved in the dispute about having the best seats in the kingdom of Christ. John and the beloved disciple may not be the same person. In John's Gospel, Lazarus is referred to as one who was loved by Jesus. Sometimes we might get hung up on historical identity of Gospel personalities rather than to read the personalities as thematic personalities bearing the projections of all who were in a process of realizing a relationship with a Christ who had taken up internal residence in each person. The Gospels project outwardly in story form the dynamics of what was happening inwardly in the disciples spiritual progress. It is a better insight to read the Gospels as mystagogy in the transformation of one's life than as specific details of historical data. There need be no apology for the truth of literature of transformation of character.
Aphorism of the Day, April 6, 2016
A Gospel writing perspective to note is this: How does one write about events in the life of Jesus after great events have occurred, like the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple? One cannot help but present Jesus with a voice of predictive clairvoyance as a way to assert that major traumatic events did not overthrow God's purpose or cease the existence of the church. In the last chapter of John's Gospel, Jesus is quoted as saying to Peter, "someone will take you where you did not wish to go." This was written many years after the death of Peter, supposedly by being crucified upside down. The one who had denied Jesus on the way to His crucifixion later has the boldness to embrace the same method of death. The Gospel writer writing in the first quarter of the second century knew well the traditions about Peter.
Aphorism of the Day, April 5, 2016
April 4th marks the anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. One cannot underestimate the witness of his life in bringing to light malpractice of justice in our country. Dr. King with non-violence reminded all about the normalcy of loving one's neighbor as oneself and that all of us are neighbors. Today, the work of love is still not finished and we still need to practice neighborly love more than ever.
Aphorism of the Day, April 4, 2016
While the Roman senate could confer "august" or divine status upon an Emperor, the birth stories of Jesus out did Roman Emperor "divine" propaganda. The divinity of Jesus was conferred beginning with an announcement from a heavenly angel to the one chosen to be God's child-bearer. In the Roman context, the birth narratives of Jesus really outshone the Caesar birth propaganda stories. One might say that the birth narratives of Jesus upstaged the origin stories of the "divinized" Caesars.
Aphorism of the Day, April 3, 2016
We know so little about Thomas of Doubting Thomas fame that he has easily become a caricature representing a kind of seeing is believing faith. We should realize that in reading about biblical figures we initially treat them as actual people even as we realize that they are presented by biblical writers as instances of faith experience and so in the Bible as a spiritual manual the people presented therein become mirrors onto whom we the readers can projects aspects of the life of faith. Apparently Thomas went onto to live down his moments of doubt. Peter went on to over come his time of denying Jesus. Judas did not go on after his betrayal. People still name their children Thomas and Peter today; not many children named Judas Iscariot today. It is a shame how perfectly good names can get "ruined" by the kind of deeds associated with the people of those names.
Aphorism of the Day, April 2, 2016
The Doubting Thomas story is evidence of the early churches supporting valid alternative "presences" of Christ. The Real presence of Christ could be known through the Spirit, the experience of peace, the practice of forgiveness and through Gospel writing. The story is evidence that the physical body of Jesus had escaped limitations to retain identity with God as Eternal Word and hence could morph and be found to be an endless Real Presence to anyone who has the occasion to know such a Presence.
Aphorism of the Day, April 1, 2016
Sometimes one has to commit the incredible act of universal optimism. Perhaps the faith of all religions is best when it truly commits a verbal act of universal optimism which rides the energy of hope that we can have. Perhaps the best example of this optimism is Psalm 67 which we should offer every day for our world:
Psalm 67
Deus misereatur
1 May God be merciful to us and bless us, *
show us the light of his countenance and come to us.
show us the light of his countenance and come to us.
2 Let your ways be known upon earth, *
your saving health among all nations.
your saving health among all nations.
3 Let the peoples praise you, O God; *
let all the peoples praise you.
let all the peoples praise you.
4 Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, *
for you judge the peoples with equity
and guide all the nations upon earth.
for you judge the peoples with equity
and guide all the nations upon earth.
5 Let the peoples praise you, O God; *
let all the peoples praise you.
let all the peoples praise you.
6 The earth has brought forth her increase; *
may God, our own God, give us his blessing.
may God, our own God, give us his blessing.
7 May God give us his blessing, *
and may all the ends of the earth stand in awe of him.
and may all the ends of the earth stand in awe of him.
Aphorism of the Day, April 29, 2016
The future invents the past since one item of contrast does "not exist" until what it is not comes into being to make the contrast possible and define both items of contrast. The Gospels are the results of successful churches presenting the narratives of Jesus to account for the very success of the later churches. This is how the writing of history works. There is "authenticate" tradition from the time of Jesus but it is used and edited under the fresh judgments of the oracles of Christ in the Christian communities to show the origins of the success of the church that had become separated from Judaism. The future gives birth to the identity of things which happened in the past.
Aphorism of the Day, April 28, 2016
In the departure discourse of Jesus to his disciples, he promised that he would send an Advocate to be with them. The evidence of the Advocate would be an experience of a kind of peace which they could not receive elsewhere. Peace as continuing presence of Christ is still a legacy and we invoke that peace in our liturgy as an indication of our willingness to receive and practice this promised gift.
Aphorism of the Day, April 27, 2016
The reason St. John is called "the Divine" pertains to his writing of the "Apocalypse" or Revelation. Apocalypse means to uncover or unveil and the writings of John the Divine resulted from his retention of words and memories from being in a "divine, in the Spirit" visionary state. The images of the Apocalypse are very "surreal" with the plasticity of metaphors being like the melting images of a Dali painting. One could say that the apocalyptic vision of heaven presaged the loss of a "physical" heaven once modern cosmology and the discovery of endless outer space caused the abandonment of the "trap door" on top of the domed sky entrance to "heaven." The Revelation of St. John the Divine reveals that being in heaven and seeing the heavenly is a humanly possible experience now. Humanity is quite intrigued with the experiences of "savant-like" states and they come in many ways and inspire many responses.
Aphorism of the Day, April 26, 2015
A portion of John's Gospel is devoted to what might be called a "departure" discourse, one which presents Jesus as preparing his followers for his physical absence. Herein one can see the logic of the early church presenting the transformation of the physical Jesus to the body of Christ through the omnipresence of the Holy Spirit, which is also the Spirit of Christ in His continuing presence. Part of the writing motive of the Gospels has to do with this question: Why is the Jesus Movement so successful? Why didn't it go away after Jesus could no longer be seen? The Gospels present the developing self-understanding of the churches own existence.
Aphorism of the Day, April 25, 2016
The Gospel writers understood themselves to have the mind of Christ and they channeled his words in writing reporting the narrative of Jesus. This enabled the subsequent success and the meanings of spiritual practice in the church to both be seen as anticipated by the historical Jesus as well as using the narratives to be the mystagogy of the church. After the experience sof the Risen Christ, the disciples imported those experiences back into the presentation of the historical Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, April 24, 2016
The separation of followers in Christ from the synagogue was in part due to a "food fight" in that concessions were made to Gentiles regarding the dietary restrictions of Judaism.
Aphorism of the Day, April 23, 2016
The Gospel writings have "not so subtle ways of dating themselves" in not being "eye-witness" accounts. Jesus said to his disciples, "Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you.." During the life of Jesus, he was a Jew and so were his disciples. So why does it seems as though Jesus speaks about "the Jews" as referring to people unlike himself and his disciples? This is clearly an indication of writing done from the perspective of a mainly Gentile church.
Aphorism of the Day, April 22, 2016
The Psalmist exercises the role as a conductor who assumes that humanity can anthropomorphize everything in creation and treat every as having the volitional capacity to "praise" the Lord. So the Psalmist commands angels, winds, sea creatures, birds, trees, son, moon and stars to praise the Lord. The Psalmist is assuming that the divine, a non-human being, is enough like human beings to be able to appropriate the posture of praise from all created things and beings. The biblical writings are mainly forms of poetics and even when narrative is used, it is mainly for meanings to evoke spiritual identity and not provide exact eye witness accounts of what actually happens. Modern criteria of scientific and eye witness truth has cause many biblical supporters to forsake the value of aesthetic truths so poignant and obvious in the Bible. The way in which many people read the Bible is akin to an Amish buggy on the freeway; quaint but out of place. Modernity has not left the sublime aesthetic readings of the Bible; Modernity is an opportunity for people of faith to be true to the poetics of spirituality.
Aphorism of the Day, April 21, 2016
Nietzsche said that truth is "objectivity" deriving from a long used metaphor. If people use a metaphor long enough, it becomes "truth." So how do "truths" get changed? How does innovation occur even to long used metaphors? The truth of dietary purity of Judaism was abandoned by Gentile Christianity. It had been the practice since the implementation of the Law of Moses. Peter had a vision from God about "non-kosher" animals being proclaimed as undefiled in preparation for Peter being able to accept the new truth of God's Spirit in the life of a Gentile being the sign of religious validity. The truth is that paradigm shifts happen and sometimes they are so much a part of one's cultural background, one does not know that one has implicitly embraced the outcomes. Modern science became the background of Western Christian culture in such expansive ways many Christians still have not adjusted to the fact that they tacitly accept scientific thinking even while denying it in the practice of their religion.
Aphorism of Day, April 20, 2106
The legacy of the presence of Christ is the practice of love. "By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." It is love which establishes communal identity with Christ but it was not theoretical love, it was the practice of love as exemplified in service, foot-washing service. For disciples who wanted important positions in the kingdom of God, Jesus said and demonstrated, "Just wash feet." One's profound gifts have more effect if they are expressed from a general character of love. St. Paul's complaint about the Corinthian church was they were often a gifted church but without love, and this rendered their gifts as ineffective and even counter-productive.
Aphorism of Day, April 19, 2016
We are so used to mushy romantic love which comes so easily when it happens, i.e., falling in love is a near pathological state and one cannot help oneself when it happens. So the command to love God with all of oneself and the command to love one's neighbor as oneself: How romantic is that? Such is the hard and tough love of doing justice to God and to each person in this world. And tough love is not always in line with our affinities, things which are likeable and easy to perform. The kind of love which is based upon justice is often hard but it is the kind of love which we want expressed towards us. Human experience involves many kinds of love, but the tough love of justice can never be forgotten.
Aphorism of the Day, April 18, 2016
"Glory" is a word found in the New Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures and refers to the self-authenticating value of God. It could be that such divine value is known in human experience as the Sublime when one experience an event of esteem which does not seem to have any predictable cause. Such events makes one feel beloved for no reason at all and can help free one from needing perpetual strokes from others for one's sense of worth. So the discovery of God's glory and one's own glory deriving from the sense of unconditional love is the cornerstone of personal worth.
Aphorism of the Day, April 17, 2016
Perhaps a way to appropriate the meaning of Christ as "Lamb of God" is to understood the lamb as symbolizing the condition of innocent suffering in our world due to the play of freedom. Everyone get caught in events of innocent suffering even when it is the collateral effect of some not so innocent willful acts. Jesus as lamb of God was able to transform his events of innocent suffering into a ministry as the shepherd of those who suffer innocently. We wish innocent suffering on no one, even as we know that probability theory about what can happen in the conditions of freedom indicates that it will occur in one way or another. But we hope that innocent suffering can be redeemed in a hopeful future when we look back and say, "I did not want that to happen, but since it did I hope that empathy on my soul's resume will allow me to be a useful ministerial presence to other innocent sufferers." Hereby lamb becomes shepherd. The wounded becomes healer.
Aphorism of the Day, April 16, 2016
The model of the Good Shepherd and the sheep gives a metaphor of the needed balance and reciprocity toward those who have strength, power, resources and ability to help those in need. Each person can find one to be one with strength to help but also be in the place of needing help. In a world where 1% of the population controls the majority of the world resources essentially for their own benefit we find that the balanced reciprocal roles of shepherd and sheep are not being fulfilled. A shepherd does not exploit; a shepherd cares and we need the wealthy people of our world to listen to the words of Jesus when he said, "To whom much is given; much is required." The purpose of the blessing of wealth, power and strength is to celebrate the privilege of generosity.
Aphorism of the Day, April 15, 2016
Language is always an issue when dealing with meanings of biblical writing. We have received the biblical writing through their transmission from people to people for thousands of years and we cannot verify exact correspondence of meaning of words in their original contexts with contexts in our lives today. When we project our own correspondences upon what we read in the Bible we do so because we accept our place in the transmission of the many traditions deriving from the biblical writings. Many of the correspondences between our post-modern lives and the pre-modern worlds of the biblical people do not have fitting ethical correspondences. The pre-modern world tolerated slavery and subjugation of women as the "normal" virtue of their cultures and even valorized such practices within the writings of the holy Book. Love and justice are the universal principles within the Bible and such principles should guide us today to innovate in their application toward justice and love among all people today. One cannot consistently make one to one correspondences with all of the biblical practices which had religious sanction in various ancient biblical societies with the obvious practice of love and justice for all today. Thankfully, we have innovating from "biblical ways" in the application of love and justice to people today.
Aphorism of the Day, April 14, 2016
Deconstruction of any statement of meaning occurs when the statement is re-stated through paraphrase and each paraphrase of the first statement is produced from a slightly different context. Any statement could be endlessly paraphrased which means that the writing event or speaking event purports to "freeze" a particular meaning and a particular context. Such freezing of particular meaning "in situ" can serve as the community's temporary objectivity and extended temporal use of agreed upon meaning then attains "truth" status within the community, and such truth even becomes hidden since it becomes the tacit, "it goes without saying" background of the community's values. The plethora of interpretations of New Testament stuff has occurred because it is harder to gain precision in the control and promulgation of meaning in what is essentially "poetics." It is hard to gain precise meanings in poetics, since poetics is appealing to more that what can be empirically verified. We could opine endlessly about how Jesus the Christ is both shepherd and lamb since the metaphors of poetry play with the empirically grounded common sense mind.
Aphorism of the Day, April 13, 2016
A condition posed to Jesus in the Gospel of John, "If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly." This indicates the on-going discussion about the nature of the Messiah which characterized the parties within Judaism which eventually brought about the separation of Christians from the synagogues. In the Gospel of John, the works of Jesus were presented as proof of his messiahship, like the various signs which he performed, culminating in his resurrection. The work of the Messiah which many Jews wanted to see was the work of a restored Israel with a David-like king upon the throne and the people free from occupation by Rome. The suffering "Lamb of God" Messiah was a voice which could not be heard by those who were taught another definitive meaning of the Messiah.
Aphorism of the Day, April 12, 2016
The Fatherization of God is very pronounced in the Gospel of John. Jesus said, "The Father and I are one." The Gospel agenda of the writer of John was for people to realized that they had been born "from above" to gain access to another quality of life. Simultaneously a person has natural birth and entry in the world as God's child because of the divine DNA image implanted upon each person. This divine identity is not always realized because the demands of the life of natural birth communities cause a forgetting of our original blessing. Jesus is God's Son who fully realized the Original Blessing and expressed it as experiencing full identity with his heavenly parent. The church has busied itself with making Jesus so unique while Jesus was trying to share with everyone the reality of being "one with the heavenly parent."
Aphorism of the Day, April 11, 2016
John 1:1, "and the Word was God." Hence word has endless possible morphing capacity even to the point of signifying contradictions with no problem at all. For example, Jesus the Christ is both Lamb and Shepherd. Makes no sense if one limits the meaningful use of language to empirical verification. Let's set our minds free with the endless metaphorical capacity of language.
Aphorism of the Day, April 10, 2016
The continuity of the church does not just depend upon the fact that Jesus made the post-resurrection appearances recorded in the Gospel and other New Testament writings; continuity has happened because the very energy of resurrection is able to be known in the many guises of the sublime which kiss our lives today.
Aphorism of the Day, April 9, 2016
One can probably underestimate the success of the Jesus movement in the cities of the Roman Empire. It could be that synagogue and church separated as fast as it did because of the amazing success of the Gospel within the Gentile peoples. The paucity of history does not give a full record of the success of the message in so many places; the New Testament preserves the message of the Gospel in the succession of leaders centering around Peter, Paul and the Beloved Disciple and community. Other strains of Christian succession are found in apocrypha Gospels often labeled as "Gnostic" by modern day scholars or as "heresy" by competing Christian leadership groups. There was great diversity in the Jesus Movement; the New Testament writings are the result of need to standardize the Christian presentation as Christianity was becoming the preferred religion of the Roman Empire. Today we find so many different Christian traditions comprised of people who interpret the biblical writings so different to fit the projections of the needs of their personal and social situations. Meanings are hard to control inside the minds of people even when apparent standardized "objective" meanings are enforced by church administrations. Diversity prevails even under the guise of uniformity.
Aphorism of the Day, April 8, 2016
The Gospel of John presents the disciples trying to back to fishing after the death and resurrection of Christ. And fishing can never be the same; what they used to do simply becomes the occasion to know Christ in a different way. A kairotic event in one's life will make the repetition of familiar things new and different.
Aphorism of the Day, April 7, 2016
One of the most favorable reports in the Gospels of a companion of Christ is found in the Gospel of John, where the person is referred to as the "beloved disciple." This disciple is the to whom Jesus commits the care of his mother from the cross. Scholars speculate that portions of John's Gospel were written by the beloved disciple or within the beloved disciple's community. Is it John, son of Zebedee? John, son of Zebedee was involved in the dispute about having the best seats in the kingdom of Christ. John and the beloved disciple may not be the same person. In John's Gospel, Lazarus is referred to as one who was loved by Jesus. Sometimes we might get hung up on historical identity of Gospel personalities rather than to read the personalities as thematic personalities bearing the projections of all who were in a process of realizing a relationship with a Christ who had taken up internal residence in each person. The Gospels project outwardly in story form the dynamics of what was happening inwardly in the disciples spiritual progress. It is a better insight to read the Gospels as mystagogy in the transformation of one's life than as specific details of historical data. There need be no apology for the truth of literature of transformation of character.
Aphorism of the Day, April 6, 2016
A Gospel writing perspective to note is this: How does one write about events in the life of Jesus after great events have occurred, like the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple? One cannot help but present Jesus with a voice of predictive clairvoyance as a way to assert that major traumatic events did not overthrow God's purpose or cease the existence of the church. In the last chapter of John's Gospel, Jesus is quoted as saying to Peter, "someone will take you where you did not wish to go." This was written many years after the death of Peter, supposedly by being crucified upside down. The one who had denied Jesus on the way to His crucifixion later has the boldness to embrace the same method of death. The Gospel writer writing in the first quarter of the second century knew well the traditions about Peter.
Aphorism of the Day, April 5, 2016
April 4th marks the anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. One cannot underestimate the witness of his life in bringing to light malpractice of justice in our country. Dr. King with non-violence reminded all about the normalcy of loving one's neighbor as oneself and that all of us are neighbors. Today, the work of love is still not finished and we still need to practice neighborly love more than ever.
Aphorism of the Day, April 4, 2016
While the Roman senate could confer "august" or divine status upon an Emperor, the birth stories of Jesus out did Roman Emperor "divine" propaganda. The divinity of Jesus was conferred beginning with an announcement from a heavenly angel to the one chosen to be God's child-bearer. In the Roman context, the birth narratives of Jesus really outshone the Caesar birth propaganda stories. One might say that the birth narratives of Jesus upstaged the origin stories of the "divinized" Caesars.
Aphorism of the Day, April 3, 2016
We know so little about Thomas of Doubting Thomas fame that he has easily become a caricature representing a kind of seeing is believing faith. We should realize that in reading about biblical figures we initially treat them as actual people even as we realize that they are presented by biblical writers as instances of faith experience and so in the Bible as a spiritual manual the people presented therein become mirrors onto whom we the readers can projects aspects of the life of faith. Apparently Thomas went onto to live down his moments of doubt. Peter went on to over come his time of denying Jesus. Judas did not go on after his betrayal. People still name their children Thomas and Peter today; not many children named Judas Iscariot today. It is a shame how perfectly good names can get "ruined" by the kind of deeds associated with the people of those names.
Aphorism of the Day, April 2, 2016
The Doubting Thomas story is evidence of the early churches supporting valid alternative "presences" of Christ. The Real presence of Christ could be known through the Spirit, the experience of peace, the practice of forgiveness and through Gospel writing. The story is evidence that the physical body of Jesus had escaped limitations to retain identity with God as Eternal Word and hence could morph and be found to be an endless Real Presence to anyone who has the occasion to know such a Presence.
Aphorism of the Day, April 1, 2016
In the Gospel of John, Word is equivalent with God, Word creates the human world as we can know it, the word oracles of Christ in the discourses of John are called "spirit" and "life," and the written word of the Gospel of John has the creative power to invite belief in Christ. As much as we may take comfort in making an idol out of the physical Jesus of Nazareth, the Gospel of John indicates that Word Constituted Divinity was from the beginning. In actual human practice we process physicality by virtue of using words. We may think that physicality and "presence" is before word, but we can only know it through words.
