Aphorism of the Day, February 28, 2021
Jesus as the suffering servant "Messiah," is derived from Isaiah 53. And since the Hebrew word for "messiah" is not found in that passage, and yet the Hebrew word for messiah is associated with Cyrus the Great, a foreign dictator, in Isaiah, how is Isaiah 53 a reference to the Messiah? Rabbinic interpretation of Isaiah 53, equate the suffering servant as a collective for Israel. One can see that New Testament era interpreters believed that the post-death-on-the-cross manifestations of Christ, gave him the qualities of a "powerful" Messiah, and yet his suffering and death at the hands of the Romans aligned him with the "suffer servant" template found in Isaiah 53. It also fit with the actual political realities of the time: The Roman Empire was not going to suddenly disappear. The way to "save" the more kingly and Davidic notion of Jesus as the Messiah, was to proclaim another coming of Christ, in the kingly mode. Such a return would then be the kind of Messiah for the Jews who didn't accept Jesus as Messiah in his first coming, would do so at his "Second Coming." One should note the interpretive "finesse" of the New Testament writers. The New Testament writers presented in various ways a "two track" system of "salvation;" one for the Gentiles and another for the Jews and they involved phases of identifying the "Messiah" and the manifestations of the "Messah."
Aphorism of the Day, February 27, 2021
In reading the Gospel one has to deal with different interpretations of how the "Messiah" would be manifest. In the political reality of Palestine, the expectation was was for an heroic David-like figure to evict the Romans. Any "Messiah" should at least restore Israel to be in control of their geographical borders. The Jesus Movement, in order to make the messianic claim for Jesus, had to center on the figure of the "Suffering Servant" as being the valid manifestation of the Messiah. This had some political realism about it since the Romans would not be evicted from Palestine. Jesus as a "Davidic" Messiah was a "failure" in his own day, since he did not free Israel from the Romans. Jesus as the Suffering Servant Messiah became an interior Risen Christ Holy Spirit force of conversion without the use of military force. So, Jesus as a Messiah was the "spiritualization" of the Davidic Messiah. The Risen Christ was seen as one who prevailed over the "interior" principalities and powers, not the very earthly and external Caesar of Rome.
Aphorism of the Day, February 26, 2021
Peter's misunderstanding about the nature of the Messiah represents the divide between the "wishful thinking" in Palestine about an imminent liberating hero and the reality of the Roman Empire. If the Caesar's representatives are able to put the Messiah to death on the cross, what kind of Messiah can he be? Not the Zealots Messiah who wanted the Romans evicted from their land. Jesus as the Messiah made his conquest in the inward lives of people as he reappeared in various ways over and over again through an apparent "transmitted" presence. The Risen Christ was an interior Messiah and to give the Messiah a "material" credibility, his next return would be as the one who would intervene in the external world. One of the fallacies is to assume that the interior reality of the Messiah does not have external consequences. Persons who know an internal Messiah end up changing their bodily habits in their exterior world. It could be that every appearance of the "Messiah" is an interior arising and not an external intervention from a divine military figure who arrives from the trap door entrance at the top of the sky dome, the "physical" abode of God.
Aphorism of the Day, February 25, 2021
The words of Jesus to his followers: "Take up your cross and follow me." If this is a "real time" saying of Jesus, would he be implying to all of his followers that they should be prepared daily to carry the instrumental of capital punishment? It would be very confusing if it were a real-time expression during the actual life time of Jesus. Can you imagine the disciples looking at each other confused, "Huh, what does that mean? Are we supposed to prepare for crucifixion to prove to be good followers of Rabbi Jesus." But what if we understood the Gospels as oracle words of the Risen Christ within the Gospel communities? In these Gospel communities, the Pauline like "identity with the death and the resurrection of Christ," became poetically descriptive of the spiritual method of transformation. In the Gospel genre, then one can understand how "taking up one's cross" had become a metaphor and catch phrase for the spiritual practice of taking identity with the death of Christ on the cross. In this way, the expression "take up one's cross" has literal significance.
Aphorism of the Day, February 24, 2021
Peter, a church hero, is presented by Gospel writers as an example of misunderstanding of how the Messiah would become manifest. Peter is rebuked by Jesus when Jesus said that the Messiah had to suffer and die. What kind of Davidic Messiah would suffer and die? If Peter misunderstood the Messiah and came to be corrected in his understanding, then the Gospel readers are encouraged to accept the "suffering servant" model for the Messiah as validly applying to Jesus of Nazareth.
Aphorism of the Day, February 23, 2021
The "living sacrifice' and "being crucified with Christ" identity spirituality of Paul becomes the die to self and take up one's cross in the Gospel narrative of Jesus and his oracular words within the Gospel "Christ communities."
Aphorism of the Day, February 22, 2021
By the time the Gospels were written, the oracles of Jesus in the Jesus narratives were presented to place the death and rising identity with Christ metaphor of Paul within the "logia" of Jesus. When Jesus is presented as saying you must lose your life to save it, the words don't refer to physical/biological life, but the process of the continual renewal of "soul life" or pseuche life. Identity with the death and resurrection of Christ was seen as dying to the "old mind" and being "renewed" in one's mind. This is also a metaphor for transformative education.
Aphorism of the Day, February 21, 2021
One could say that the entire human situation is a constant test. Living is the test of dealing with the harmonies and disharmonies of the experience of freedom. Some harmonies and disharmonies just "happen" to us. Others involve us being in the orchestra of life and having lyrical choices to make in our practice and being predisposed toward either the resulting disharmony or harmony in musical outcomes. And how do we "harmonize" the unwanted disharmonies which come to us unawares and integrate such unwanted events into faithful living without special exemption from what may happen to anyone?
Aphorism of the Day, February 20, 2021
The writer of 1 Peter presents Jesus during his three day of "grave time," as an evangelist to the spirits of the departed. This belies a belief in the endless work of reconciliation which in on-going. When do we get over wanting eternal punishment for people we perceive to be the worst? Why would they get a second chance even as we declare that their evil is a sign of deep mental disorder? God as reconciling love is never finished in the task of persuading, "don't you think love would have been better, and don't you think that love is the way that one heals toward the future?"
Aphorism of the Day, February 19, 2021
"Save us from the time of trial," or "Lead us not into temptation?" The Greek word is translated as temptation and trial. A temptation involves the volitional factor in impulse control and delaying gratification so that things can be done at the right time and in the right way for the right purpose, i.e. according to the "law." Trial implies things which happen to a person which are out of the person's control and thus threatens how a person might continue in a faithful relationship with God, or be so crushed by the trial and so blaming of God's permissive will as to be disillusioned about a God who wouldn't exempt one from such a severe trial. There is quite a difference in translating a word as "temptation" or "trial."
Aphorism of the Day, February 18, 2021
Jesus is referred to as the "second Adam," or the one whom God started over again with to build a different kind of family, a spiritual one, not a flesh and blood one. The second Adam had to be a hero against the tempter to be contrasted with the failure of the first Adam against the tempter. The temptation of Jesus is presented to show how second Adam succeeded where first Adam failed. The presentation of the temptation of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark does not go into the details of the event, but represents Jesus as the one who was "tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin." Reading the Bible involves understanding the symbolic presentation and then dealing with the distance of modern life from the symbolic structures of ancient time. The making of Scriptures relevant to our time involves finding correspondences for the universal patterns embedded in language. Temptation or the mistiming between desire and action is relevant in our time since delaying gratification and impulse control are features of person in community in any age or time within any symbolic structure.
Aphorism of the Day, February 17, 2021
An ordained thumb redrew the cross of ashes on my canvas forehead again. An ordained thumb once drew a branding cross there in invisible chrism stating that I was sealed by God's Spirit and belonged to Christ. I belong to Christ even as my body belongs to the earth. Perhaps God will use my best tiny ash to clone a future version of my best self in continuing the path of self-surpassability. Imagine that on Ash Wednesday as we cherish our lives in our bodies.
Aphorism of the Day, February 16, 2021
Interesting to note in "Catholic" areas how Mardi Gras became excessive days of bacchanalia, gluttony, glitz, glitter, parades and the removal of public inhibitions regarding all sorts of behaviors. New Orleans Mardi Gras and the Carnivale of Rio are two prime examples. Whereas those "drab puritanical Protestants" eschew such shameless display of excess. In social systems of control, the notorious and very creative sinners were perhaps kept under control through the rite of private confession. The confessor and absolver on behalf of God was something of a referee who sent members to the "sin bin" with assigned penance. One can get the impression from the Prodigal Son tradition of the New Testament that God prefers really excessive sinners who convert excessive sin to excessive deeds of goodness, over the boring older brother of the Prodigal Son who just followed the rules. Are excessive social public events like Mardi Gras pressure valve release mechanisms for desire? How does the pressure get released when the rules of suppression are in place? Things can remain hidden and secret as in the statistic that online pornography is more widespread in "Bible Belt" states, where biblical values of suppression are supposed to reign. Do Protestants and Catholics have different traditions of social sublimation of desire and its misdirection and their systems for the taming of it? Interesting to ponder on Mardi Gras.
Aphorism of the Day, February 15, 2021
The ashes of Ash Wednesday symbolize the biblical metaphor for the human body. In the creation story God creates the human body from the dust of the earth. And if a dead body is left in the ground long enough, it will become one with the dirt again. The ashes of Ash Wednesday represents the bookends of the life of the body. In the Ash Wednesday imposition of ashes, with imagination we "fast-forward" the life of the body to its ashen phase. Is this a macabre fascination with death? Is this an attempted inoculation from death? Or is it a reminder that bodily life in time is short and therefore we should make the most of life in our bodies, for individual good and for community good, because bodily life is good and precious.
Aphorism of the Day, February 14, 2021
The appearance of Elijah and Moses at the Transfiguration event was apocalyptically significant. They both figured in the apocalyptic writings available during the time of Jesus. They both had unique "departures" from the world; Moses died unwitnessed and was "buried by God" and Elijah was assumed into heaven on the chariot of fire. So they were "apocalyptic" time-travelers who could "reappear" as they did at the Transfiguration to affirm the significance of Jesus Christ as one is special continuity with the Law and the Prophets.
Aphorism of the Day, February 13, 2021
The short life cycles of a butterfly means that the phases are visible and easily recognizable. The traversing of phases is the process of metamorphosis. Human metamorphosis would be the span of human life from conception to death, and there are physical age markers and social "rites of passage" to distinguish human phases. But there can be metamorphoses within the Life Metamorphosis of a person. There can be explicate recurring cycles of intellectual, emotional and spiritual events in what we call growth process. Living a "transfigured" life is accepting that Spirit-life is impelling one through cycles of progressive spiritual insights which have ramifications for social, mental and physical life as well.
Aphorism of the Day, February 12, 2021
Metamorphosis refers to repeating cycles of life and the phases of the cycles have limited duration in the cycle of the life of a butterfly. How do we transfer the notion of metamorphosis to the life of a human being who lives 70 plus years? There is a limited "vocabulary" of human experiences and a repetition in time of experiences. In the transfiguration-metamorphosis phase of the Shining Jesus on the Mountain, one can find the Gospel writer implying a Shining Divine Spiritual Energy which flowed in the life of Jesus through the phases of his life. The transfiguration was like the "resurrection" which was different and later in the life cycle of Jesus. Spiritual life can be seen as life cycles between mountain top experiences, or phases of enlightenment which subsequently get tested as we make the effort in the valley to continue to live up to the highest ideals and insights of our lives received in the clarity of sublime moments.
Aphorism of the Day, February 11, 2021
The Transfiguration event happened on a mountain. A mountain is a metaphor for "being high" or elated with the experience of a theophany that one confesses to be divine and sublime. Transfiguration means "metamorphosis" and it includes events of the same as well as designating the continual process. Spiritual metamorphosis is a rising spiral of phases of metamorphosis, and when we return in spiritual experience to another "mountain top" experience, we are given a vision to live up to while we transverse seeming less exciting phases of being spiritual eggs, larva, caterpillars and cocoon. On a spiritual spiral, we return to butterfly and and mountain top phases. Embrace the mountain, even while you can't live there as metamorphosis assumes all of the phases of spiritual transformation.
Aphorism of the Day, February 10, 2021
Why might an extremely elated person say, "I'm high as a kite?" Elevation is used as a metaphor for interior experiences which might be characterized as "sublime." In biblical geography, mountains are the highest place between flat earth and heaven and mountains are metaphors for the meeting of heaven and earth. The theophanies recounted in the Bible took place on mountains. Theophanies are more likely interior events in people and to explain them they need the exterior mountain to express the height symbolizing the closeness to God in heaven of the theophany. The Transfiguration has all of the elements of the spiritual geography of biblical theophanies.
Aphorism of the Day, February 9, 2021
The Gospels are narratives of Jesus used for the purpose of connecting the practices in the early Jesus Movement and churches to the life of Jesus. One of the narrative methods is to present Jesus in events which correspond to the heroes of Hebrew Scriptures as a way of indicating connection with them even while being a new representation of what God was doing in a new way and new time.
Aphorism of the Day, February 8, 2021
The presentation of Jesus is laden with the templates from Hebrew Scriptures. One cannot miss the comparison of Mt. Sinai and the Mount of the Transfiguration. The use of comparison in the presentation of Jesus is obvious in the appeals that were being made to people who would have the background in Hebrew Scriptures to understand the comparison. The Christian religion has made the reading of the Hebrew Scriptures equal to reading the New Testament because the persons who "voted" on the canon of Scriptures self-consciously wanted to keep the derivation of the church from the synagogue identity. In church history, those who were less committed to the Hebrew Scripture moorings of the Jesus Movement, came to be called "heretics," and their Gospels became to be call apocryphal or "Gnostic" in their diminished status.
Aphorism of the Day, February 7, 2021
"I have become all things to all people that I by all means might save some." This phrase of evangelical empathy of St. Paul also describes what Paul thought about Jesus. He believe Jesus to be the ultimate expression of God's empathy with humanity. Jesus was emptied of "God likeness to take on human likeness." He was "made to be sin so that we might be made the righteousness of God." By dying, Jesus represented God entering the low point of human experience, death itself. So Paul could have written, "In Christ, God became all things to humanity so that God by all means might save all." The poetic Paul also wrote that Christ was, "all and in all." Think of Jesus as Divine empathy for humanity.
Aphorism of the Day, February 6, 2021
"I have become all things to all people..." This is the Pauline phrase which enshrines the gift of empathy. Can we with imaginative hearts and attending words and actions cross the great divides between us and others? We cannot literally walk in someone else's shoes, but we can acknowledge that we share enough common humanity with others to acknowledge the validity of the life experience of others and from there one can look for bridges to connect one's world with the worlds of others.
Aphorism of the Day, February 5, 2021
When Christianity is reduced to "individualism" as one person being isolated in transacting with God in Christ for one's salvation, it has led to a disengagement from the social sins, things done in our name, for which "I" as an individual has transacted with God and so "I" am not responsible. Salvation as practiced by Jesus of Nazareth was also social health. He told a very rich man to sell all he had and give to the poor for this man's "salvation" or health. The man was very disappointed because he did not see his personal spiritual health as being associated with the health of the persons in his world. Extreme individual "salvation" has reigned in our country for a long time and in practice we can live as though everyone is completely "individually" responsible for all of the conditions of their lives. It is easy for individuals living in a context of social privilege to assume that being "born on third base" means that they have "individually" hit triples. And those same people can blame poor people for their condition of "not even being invited to the ballgame." For Jesus of Nazareth, Individual and social health/salvation were not divided.
Aphorism of the Day, February 4, 2021
Paul's evangelism was described as "I have become all things to all people so that I might by all means save them." This could be regarded as a shady sales technique or a political method of gaining votes, or it could be the results of having an unshaken self-esteem established in knowing God's love, that one does not have to sharp edges to one's ego to prove oneself as important to others. If God's love melts the edges of our egos and softens them to receive and make room for other people, them we have the freedom to meet people where they are in their life identities. To save people means that you are an important placebo for them to experience a fuller more holistic health.
Aphorism of the Day, February 3, 2021
If the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it has taught us that health is social in nature. If we don't choose as a people to "be well" together, the result can lead to the disaster of the number of deaths beyond our imagination. Health for Jesus of Nazareth was social and relational even while modern day "faith healers" like to reduce Jesus to a "cure zapper." Health care for Jesus meant restoring people in their relationship to God and with their primary communities. If we reduce Jesus to a "cure zapper," why not make him a "death zapper" and have it so we don't have to die? While we live in our bodies health is never final or finished and even though we can know the joy of recovering from various states of disease, we know that we only recover before we will eventually die. The eternal life of the Spirit is the "death cure" promised in our faith in the resurrected Christ and it is good to know that the overall health of Christ embraces every human condition in this life and the next.
Aphorism of the Day, February 2, 2021
Salvation and healing go together for Jesus. The origin for Gospel as good news derives from the Isaiah words about the one who could heal, relieve oppression and set the prisoner free. To reduce salvation to "fire insurance" at the end of one's life is to trivialize the fullness of health implied in the words and deeds of Jesus who was the healer for the whole person within society.
Aphorism of the Day, February 1, 2021
The notion of Shalom Peace, is a very holistic notion comprising personal and community harmony. The notion of salvation is holistic in the Gospel too. Certain presentations of salvation seem to reduce it to being "saved" from hell after one has died. Salvation is illustrated in the Gospel stories in the healing stories of Jesus which often are coupled with the expulsion of the inner unworthy forces within a person, called demons or unclean spirits. Anyone who has been ill or sick with a variety of maladies knows the singular blessing of coming back to the condition of better health. Too often Jesus is seen as "cure zapper" and a "demon zapper" and we fail to understand that the Gospel writers illustrate salvation as coming to holistic health in manifold ways. The stories of healing or coming to health or salvation time-lapse the role of Jesus as Savior into these seeming singular events of "cure zaps and demon zaps", when they programmatically illustrate to the early churches the continuous reality of the saving presence of the Risen Christ.
