Passion Narrative as Revisionary History

Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday Cycle A   April 13, 2014

Is.45:21-25     Ps. 22:1-11

Phil. 2:5-11    Matthew 26:36-27:66

Lectionary Link

   I can’t imagine what it would be like if my best friend and the greatest person I’d ever known were to be condemned to die a death of capital punishment.

  The death of capital punishment is a declaration that someone is a menace to the social order.  To watch a really good person die a criminal’s death would really be hard to fathom.  One could only think, “It has to be that the bad guys are winning.”  It has to be that people with money and power can use power to call bad anyone who seems to threaten their money and their authority.

  The death of Jesus was a political decision by the Roman authorities.  It was a way of getting rid of someone who had been perceived as a trouble maker.  A trouble maker would be anyone who could draw a significant crowd of people.  The Romans did not want crowds of people gathering that were not gathered for them and for their own purposes.

  The death of Jesus could only be a terrible event.

  But this most terrible event underwent many make overs.  The cross of Jesus became the very opposite of terrible.  The cross of Jesus became viewed as an expression of the glorious power of God.  God is so powerful that God can willingly empty the life completely out of Jesus in his death.  The earliest New Testament writer, St. Paul made the cross of Jesus a central theological focus.  The power of being emptied of life itself represented the power to end all things that needed to be ended.  The cross of Jesus became the metaphor for spiritual transformation in the theology of St. Paul.

   The growing number of the followers of Jesus meant that the message of Jesus was successful.  Success meant the message was the basis for establishing small social gatherings in the cities of the Roman Empire.  The church had to deal with the success of the message about Jesus; they had to teach it and put it in forms accessible to more people.  How did the death of a person result in a growing and popular new social movement within the cities of the Roman Empire?   The death of Jesus did not end the Jesus Movement; it only amplified it.  And so the Passion Narratives in the Gospels came as the Christian communities reinterpreted the meaning of the death of Christ in liturgical and narrative forms.  By the time the death of Jesus was used as a liturgy within the Christian gatherings it had already become the focus of spiritual transformation.  Because the life and death and the after life of Jesus had become so successful in the lives of people, the death of Jesus could only be as an event which was interpreted as ordained, scripted and triumphant.  The success of the message of Jesus in the Jesus Movement required that the death of Jesus be presented in the way in which it was experienced as an interior method of spiritual transformation by the followers of Jesus.

  As we have read today’s Passion account from Matthew's Gosepl, we can note that Jesus is both the main actor and the director of the event.  Jesus is following the script.  The references in the Hebrew Scriptures about a suffering apocalyptic or messianic hero had been found to provide the template for story.  There had to be a betrayer, deniers and deserting friends.  Somebody had to fulfill the pre-ordained roles in the script of the Hebrew Scripture.  The Christians who read the Hebrew Scriptures believed that the dynamics of events in the past repeated themselves in the events of the life of Jesus.  The church of the years 60-100 had become so successful in the Roman Empire, they could only look back at the life of Jesus as the evidence of the fully scripted plan of God in history to make the church reach the outcome that it had already attained.  On the day of the crucifixion, it was a horrible event.  When the Passion narratives were written, the death on the cross had become the glorious providence of God.

  The Passion Gospel is a literary truth of the death of Jesus; it is not the literal truth of what truly happened in Roman crucifixion.  The Passion Gospel is the literary and liturgical truth of the Church of people who had undergone the truth of a spiritual process of knowing their lives completely transformed because of this post-resurrection spiritual presence of Christ in their lives.  The reality of Christ within the lives of Christian writers could only inspire them to present the narrative of Jesus on the cross as the Victor.

  As we read the Passion Narrative, we are insulated by the alchemy of spiritual process which has turned the power of the death of a good and perfect Jesus into the power to end what is wrong within a human heart and bring to birth a new kind of resurrection life.  The power to die to everything that is unworthy and the power to let come to birth what is good, was given the passion – resurrection narrative to teach and renew the growing and successful Christian communities.

  We cannot blame the church for writing it in such a way.  The churches of the Gospel writers wrote it fully influenced by the transformation of their personal and social lives.

  We cannot blame ourselves either for continuing in this tradition.  Not because we cannot still shudder at the literal thoughts of such a death, but because we too know the transformation in our lives in having the power to bring to an end unworthy motives and habits and bringing to birth patterns of love, peace and justice.  If we were to decry the Passion Gospel writers for taking too much literary license, we too would have to deny the reality of transformation within us because of our baptismal lives.

  The Passion narratives are also preceded by Eucharistic Narratives.  This is where Jesus takes the food and drink of a meal and identifies himself with this food and drink and then feeds his friends.  This is the promise that he made to be very close with them forever in the transformation of their lives.

  So whether, in the Eucharist or in the highly literary Passion Narrative, you and I identify again with a power that can end what is evil and unworthy in our live.  We also can know a power to give birth to actions which will bring peace, love and justice to our lives.

  People can be cynical and dismissive about our Eucharistic liturgies and Passion narratives, but what matters to you and me is that we know power of the transformation of our lives which surely is anchored in the very same life power which was in Jesus in his death and resurrection.  Amen.

Death Is Encompassed by Another Kind of Life

5 Lent a        April 6, 2014

Ez. 37:1-14     Ps. 130 

Rom. 6:16-23    John 11:1-44     

Lectionary Link

  One of the teaching tools of Jesus that are found in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke is the parable.  In the Gospel of John, we no longer find the use of parables; we find long discourses of Jesus.  A parable is a story that is used to teach something in an indirect way.  One could say that the Gospels are parables too since they use stories about Jesus and dialogues and discourses of Jesus to teach lessons which are less about the actual time of Jesus and more about the issues of the early churches in the time after Jesus has gone.

  The writing context for John’s Gospel is significantly different than the contexts that are evident from Matthew, Mark and Luke.  In John’s Gospel, casting out of demon is no longer a method of folk medicine.  In John’s Gospels the miracles have become presented as signs in stories for discourses which teach the basic theology of the church of John’s Gospel.

  Today, we’ve read the story of the last sign, the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead.  And so here we are at the 5^th Sunday in Lent and we get to preview Easter in the Lazarus story of John’s Gospel.  John’s Gospel presents some elevated roles for women.  According to the Gospel of John Mary Magdalene has the most profound and first encounter with the risen Jesus.  According to the Gospel of John, Martha of Bethany, who gets some bad press as a non-contemplative busy body in another Gospel, Martha of Bethany is the one who hears first the most profound declarative statement of Jesus about the resurrection.  Jesus said to Martha, “I am resurrection and I am life.”  In the same story the disciples are presented as dull literalists thinking that when Jesus used the word “sleep” he meant sleep instead of “death.”  It is interesting to note that women are presented as those who understand the inner meanings of the heart, while the male disciples are often presented as the literalist clowns.

  John’s Gospel story of Lazarus presents a response to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in the Gospel of Luke.  When the leper Lazarus is in paradise with Abraham and the rich man is in Hades separated by an unbridgeable chasm, the rich man asks Abraham to send someone from the dead to warn his family.  Abraham said, “If they don’t believe the Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe even if someone comes back from the dead.”

  Do you see the obvious meanings of the Lazarus story in John?  It is evidence that not everyone was convinced or saw the resurrection as a valid reason for belief.  After the Lazarus story, we are told that some Jews believed in Jesus, but we are also told that other Jews saw this raising of Lazarus as something that was too much of an attention-getter and that it would bring the Romans down upon the Jews in a harsh way.  The resuscitation of Lazarus from the dead was reason for the Jewish authorities to plot the demise of Jesus.

  The Lazarus story in John’s Gospel has multiple functions including harmonizing it with the parable of Lazarus and the rich man.

  Miracles have been a major problem for our scientific age.  We live in an age where we have been taught to believe in a uniformity of natural causes in a closed system.  This closed system has allowed us to discover and develop scientific laws to describe consistent and repeatable occurrences in nature.  So, the alchemical changing water to wine, the suddenly healing a lame person and blind person, the walking on top of the water, the change of weather at personal command, the making of enough food for 5000 people out of five loaves and two fish, and the opening of a grave to bring a dead man back to life; these accounts to say the least, blow our scientific minds.

  They also blow our moral minds too.  Why do the needy conditions occur in the first place? If a miracle happens, why couldn’t a previous miraculous prevention of the need in first place have occurred?   Why did so few people have access to the few miracles?  Why did not the miracles become the obvious gift to give to the church to use them to completely heal all of the hurt, the disharmony and all of the death in life?  If food could magnificently be multiplied then why keep it to happening in just one event?  What makes the starving people with Jesus in the wilderness that day any more important that starving people who exists in our world today and who have existed throughout history?  How many of us do not have graves that we want to be robbed of some important people whom we have lost? What is the purpose of tantalizing us with the resuscitation of one dead man?  What is the purpose of tantalizing us with such miracles if they are only to accompany the ministry of Jesus and a very few chosen disciples?  It almost seems like a cruel use of the very notion of “miracles” if we truly think about the logical consequences.

  The writer of John’s Gospel already understood this dilemma and so the word Sign was used and the Sign is the marvelous event which signified the presence of Jesus Christ as triumphant for us in surviving all of the great dilemmas of life.

  When is Christ with us and how can we experience Christ being with us?  We can know Christ as the uncanny in the trivial bothersome events of life, such as running out of wine at a wedding.  We can know Christ in the various conditions of sickness.  Jesus is the Way.  Jesus is the one who heals our lameness so that we can walk in the way.  Jesus is the Light and Truth.  Jesus is the one who heals our blindness so that we can see with wise and honest perspective.  Jesus is living bread; Christ as Eucharistic bread is the unifying and constituting liturgy of the church. Jesus is the Life.  With Jesus Christ, we have found the healing of death.  The story of Lazarus is a sign of Christ’s presence with us even when his comfort seems delayed.  The way in which death is healed is that it is truthfully presented as a one-time event. Death is redefined and made different by understanding that it is only one event which is minimized by everything that happens before and after the event.

  The scientific closed system of the natural world is opened up by a new birth into the parallel world of the Spirit.  The natural cause and effect is totally turned on its head, not in a literal way but in the truly uncanny world of art, faith and the experience of the sublime.

  If we can find a way to coexist, with minor frustration, disease, natural disasters, blindness and infirmity, hunger and thirst, and to co-exist with death, then we have found an abundant life, we have found an encompassing way to live.

  This is the encompassing life of faith to which the writer of John’s Gospel invites us.  This Gospel invites us to not pout in literalism and wonder why we don’t get miracles that defy science.  This Gospel of John invites us to the experience of the Risen Christ, who accompanies and encompasses all of life in such a way that the only way to show this wonder is to tell us “great sign” stories.  Because people who live by faith can come to live by this “jaw dropping” “O my God” wonder of the Holy Spirit encompassing all of our life.

  The Gospel of John reminds us that the Gospel is about a new birth, a new seeing, a new way of living which encompasses and ultimately heals everything, including death.  We can be in the place of Martha today to hear again these ultimate words of health and salvation:  “I am the Resurrection and the life.”  May God help us to access and live within this life today.  Amen.

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual" Aphorisms

End of an aphorism thread today. "I'm not religious. I'm not spiritual. I'm an aphorist."

Aphorism of the Day, March 31, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual." St. Paul wrote in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male and female.  Yet religion has been used to uphold differences to be used for purposes of bigotry, shunning and exclusive practices for years.  Perhaps the "spirit" of Christ is no longer to be found in religious organizations which still practice such shunning and so the "spiritual" has gone extra-ecclesiastical in a world of global closeness that hardly needs religion to be divisive. It is a good time for the welcoming "Spirit of Christ" to be evident in churches without making people pass through such "narrow" doctrinal "detectors" at the door.

Aphorism of the Day, March 30, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual." The late John C. Lilly of dolphin study fame and friend of Ginsberg and Leary, wrote a book, "Simulations of God: The Science of God" in which he explicates from his own experience multiple ways to achieve the "brain states" of spiritual experience.  This scientific approach of believing that the human being is always already open to experience of "optimal states,"  "peak events," and ways to be in the "zone" or "flow" of things without religious tradition narrative content seems to be attractive to people who are wearied by religious organization being exclusive and seemingly wanting to prove that Freud was right about lots of religious behaviors being disorders.

Aphorism of the Day, March 29, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  This expression may be an indication of the loss of anthropological soundness of the rites of the church because the rites were not experienced as connected with true life events and they have not always been taught as transformational practice.  So the spiritual has become "supplemental" extra-religious "self-help" individual strategies.  Religion needs to find its re-connection to life in helping people explicate the realities of the stage of life that they are in and promote practices which help toward the achievement of "optimal" states of being within the variety of occurrences within any stage of life.

Aphorism of the Day, March 28, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  For many people of faith, the terms religious and spiritual may not have any relevance.  They don't seem to apply to people in their own self-understanding of faith because they do not live in some "academic and pollster" wake of analysis of what they are doing and feeling when they say that they believe in God.   Such people live in the continuous primary naivete of what is a personal relationship with Persons of Greatness whom they know to be Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  And they are not sure about the academic value of characterizing such a vital relationship, in fact, such academic aloofness seems to be the untrue analysis of people outside of and foreigners to the type of relationship which they think that they have with God.  So religious and spiritual can simply be the linguistic coats which academics and pollsters force people to wear.  Some people of faith believe such coats don't fit their experience and so they refuse to don them as how they would show their faith in the public.

Aphorism of the Day, March 27, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  Some analyze religion as consisting of exoteric and esoteric aspects, the the former being all of the externals of religion and the latter being the spiritual center for which religious tradition and institutions actually exist.  So the external aspects of religion can seem to be mainly about "crowd" control and administration of people in having a significant "club" for social integration in a larger society.  And the kernel of of religion is the call of the path to the beatific vision of God which only the saints and the holy ones seem to want to travel on.  In the bifurcation of religion and spiritual, one might use the analogy of having body without spirit or being simply ghostly without a body.  It may mean that we live in a situation of double alienation; religion alienated from spiritual life and religious life inapplicable to everyday life.

 Aphorism of the Day, March 26, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  Such an expression seems to be nostalgic aspiration for the Presocratic notion by Anaximenes who essentially held that "spirit" =pneuma= (πνεῦμα) was the basic matter of the universe.  As the metaphorical term accrued meanings in the theological and psychological mappings of the interior terrain of the unknowable but metaphor inspiring inner self there developed massive institutional and social structures around the many notions and practices of the "spiritual" within successive social contexts.  And some have thought that the institutional shell is now "empty" of "spirit" or the institutional furniture has become like idols distracting  away from the spirit that seemed to be the founding spring.  So a post-institutional spirituality is expressed in more local or individual modes until post-institutional spiritual gatherings become their own institutions.  It could be that such spiritual institutions are and will be more a part of the "for-profit" economic structures, e.g., every yoga based spiritual establishment.  When one pays for yoga classes one may be paying for the way in which one chooses to learn how to map one's spiritual-psychological-physical being.

Aphorism of Day, March 25, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  To assume people of faith to be saying, "I'm not spiritual; I'm a religious person," is something like the rotund baseball player John Kruk who was eating, drinking and smoking in a restaurant and a shocked woman asked him if he was an athlete.  To which he replied: "Lady, I'm not an athlete, I'm a baseball player."

Aphorism of the Day, March 24, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  It could be that we got to this commonly expressed belief by social process.  Modernity in wealthier societies allowed more individualism, more nomadic freedom and the proliferation of all kinds of products for every kind of entertainment.  Sports and entertainment have become more specialized and expansive.  Church as once having an exclusive place on weekly calendars had fewer things to compete with and church fulfilled a major socio-entertainment aspect of a person's life.  Bible words have a much greater ocean of words in the modern era where world knowledge doubles daily; Bible words have had more difficulty in avoiding "saturated meanings" in the plethora of word products including modern historical scholarship where scholars purport to know more about the Bible than Jesus did in his time, i.e., that Moses did not write the Torah and that David did not write all of the Psalms.  Can there be a rapprochement between the notion of the religious and the spiritual?  It could be that Sabbath time in the past was structured around "market time" so that trading of products did take place before after the time of prayer.  So even Sabbath "fit" in with the local economy.  Can we think outside of the box and return to the "individual body as temple" theology of Jesus and Paul in times when actual Temple was destroyed or church buildings did not exist?  If each person's body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit, then there is the collective body of Christ as a Temple in its gathering together but there are also satellite and connected altars in each person's body as a Temple of the Holy Spirit.  A rapprochement strategy would mean that the religious authorities would give up their guilt production by acknowledging that the enforced obligatory regular group gathering in the group's building may not be omnicompetent to the spiritual/social/psychological needs of persons and families. At the same time the satellite spiritual people, freed from those who would make them feel guilty about church, would understand the importance of preserving the religious gatherings and its locally adapted accoutrements to their lives and their society.

Aphorism of the Day, March 23, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  For people who claim this it means that there was some point in their lives when religion and spirituality became separated.  What has happened to a person for religion no longer to be regarded as spiritual.  Such experience must have been widespread enough for it now to be a common claim.  Could it be that churches have been perceived as lagging behind society at large in willingness to extend justice of full inclusion to lots of people who were willing to consider themselves religious Christians but did not feel welcome?  Was spirituality a refuge to find inclusive justice? 

Aphorism of the Day, March 22, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  Being religious in a day when we like to believe that each person is a free agent and not caught in a web of obligations and commitments either to church rules  which seem out of date or with forced ways to read the Bible which contradict all of the scientific ways of one's life;  it seems easy to latch upon a spirituality which provides visualizations of the insides of one's being to re-organize one's life to the hum of the the Om of the universe and find "peace."  But there may be some things which atrophy by "going it alone."  What about a religion which totally understands the aesthetic sublime of religious and biblical discourse, allows you continuity with a tradition which you can "doubt, disagree with and argue with" (one doesn't agree with grandpa and grandma about everything and yet one still loves and does not deny the continuity)?  What about a religion with expressions that are not regarded to be absolutes and one which reforms and adjusts to how love and justice is perfected in life situations?  What about a religion which keeps our social natures from atrophy by being an intergenerational mentoring community, in part organized to help those who need help?  And what about a religion which encourages as much private prayer and extra-ecclesiastical meditation as one wants?  How about the Episcopal Church?

 Aphorism of the Day, March 21, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  The words "religious" and "spiritual" are words which give us good reason to avoid pollsters.  Pollsters use words which have thousands of nuances and could easily "die the deaths of a thousand qualifications" but one is put on the spot in a "religious poll" to be "either/or" for the sake of the rhetorical purpose of the poll to enlighten the American people on the nature of religious life.  Church leaders do fear irrelevance and obsolescence of their "totemic" traditional forms being able to continue to inspire a participatory identity for people.  And it could be for many that "spirituality" expresses for some a moment of discontinuous break from the religious traditions which have been so formative in the "story" background of our society even as actors in the foreground have lost vital touch with that background.

 Aphorism of the Day, March 20, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  Does this have some historical roots in the "Boomer" generation who experienced a disillusionment with public institutions including  churches when such institutions seemed to support or tolerate war with less than pure motives and racial discrimination and social inequality for women and minorities?  A naive bubble of our false national righteousness got burst and there was the reception of a wave of meditating gurus from the East who provided more religious neutral modes of spiritual, physical and psychological practice (yogic practices)  that could be done alone without having to live in church communities which upheld social practices which were no longer regarded to be just. 

Aphorism of the Day, March 19, 2019

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  This may parallel the general disillusionment with public institutions and may express the irony of our political sector: "I'm an American; I don't vote." Meanwhile people with "skin" in the game and wanting more are fanatic about controlling all public institutions including religious organizations.  Being spiritual can be used as a naive excuse for political quietism (passivity).  We may only awaken from the quietism when we realize atrocities that are done in the public sector while we slept politically, did not vote, but consoled ourselves that we were spiritual.

Aphorism of the Day, March 18, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  In case you haven't noticed for sometime now spirituality has been quite a "cottage industry" and has gone from extra-institutional supplemental support to becoming separate "spiritual" institutions.  Wisdom teachers and gurus, sheikhs and masters have come from around the world; Edgar Cayce, Madame Blavatsky, Guerdijeff, Ouspensky have generated eclectic and syncretistic styles of spiritual practice coloring widely outside of the lines of religious institutions.  Religions can become more popular in "other" countries; the global South is now the center of Christianity.  Spiritual people ultimately realize they have bodies too and that they are not just spirit and so they develop institutions to support their physical existence in this world.  Today the world has many "spiritual" institutions which have all of the signs and indications as replacement for the traditional religious institutions.  Meanwhile many plumb their own religious institutional traditions for the spiritual practices found in the rich devotional practices of the Quakers or the profound monastic traditions of the various churches.  And what is spiritual?  Spirit is wind or breath.  Breath is an invisible but real sign of life.  To be spiritual, in a metaphor, is to be the "wind instrument" of divine presence.

Aphorism of the Day, March 17, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  Frankly the word "spiritual" can have as many accrued meanings as the word "religious."  Spiritual or spirituality can be a modern day marketing label tool like "natural" and "organic" is to the food sector.  It can be an unwitting way of saying that I am eccentrically special from the rest of the herd who are only "religious."  One needs to be careful that "spirituality" does not become an identity worn like the person who is proud of their humility.

Aphorism of the Day, March 16, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  To be religious probably means for most that one makes a commitment through regular attendance and participation with a religious organization or church in one's locale.  Such a commitment was more obvious when people lived in the area for the duration of their lives.  Modern life and modern economic life has actually helped to diminish the participation in religious life through a forced nomadic lifestyle.  Corporations do not want commitment to home and local institutions to compete with "all out" loyalty to the profit line of the company.  Moving people means that people don't make commitments to "local" situations since they know that they can at anytime be moved.  Others, like migrant workers are forced to move to wherever the work is.  One can see how people have been forced to become more isolated "spiritual" islands to adjust to a continual uprooted existence.

Aphorism of the Day, March 15, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  It could be that religion is often presented with such rigidity for "community" belief controls that what gets covered up is the fact that sacrament, dogma, sermon,  creed and holy biblical writings are but highly funneled abbreviations and reductions for the great mystery of God and the incredible Plenitude of All.  God or mystery cannot be domesticated for our control of either.  If God and mystery are reduced to proposition then we have fooled ourselves with inadequate replacements and lost the posture to be in "awe," which one would imagine is the very basis of what might be called "spirituality." 

Aphorism of the Day, March 14, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  Is this a way of saying that one can love God without going to church?  Is it because one has never tried church because one was not raised that way or has heard all of the bad press that religion gets?  Has one tried church and not found the serendipity of the kind of engaging fellowship that one looks for?  Do we need to have matchchurch.com and eharmonychurch.com for churches and people to find good matches for serendipitous commitment?

Aphorism of the Day, March 13, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  Is this expression revealing of the post-modern tendency to oppose "totalizing" views of life?  Religion would be such a totalizing view in that it would include the entire person in society.  Is the modern world of specialization characterized by dividing the human person into constitutive "parts" and then treating those parts something like the offerings of a cafeteria.  "Hmm...I'll have spiritual but I don't want sacraments, or priests or pastors and I don't want creeds or doctrine or dogma or religious community or too much Bible, just the good parts about love."

Aphorism of the Day, March 12, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  People may say this because they may think that religious organizations have accrued too much baggage in the long years of their existence.  And they find that the institution is tending too much to the baggage rather than the people for whom the baggage is supposed to be supplying the necessities for the life journey.  So, this metaphorical stripping oneself down to but the "spiritual" seems to be their individual response. If one is going to go alone to summit one cannot carry all of the baggage and it could be that the quest alone characterizes how "people weary" some have become.

Aphorism of the Day, March 11, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  But I will bask in the collateral effects of the religious witness in the world, like Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Mardi Gras; not to mention the conversion of modern governments to be responsible for Health, Education and Welfare.  The results of religion in society have given people the freedom to see themselves as individual spiritual persons who can deny the parentage of religion in their very formation.  Religions as "Mom and Dad" organizations have certainly not been perfect parents in all of their activities but they do represent the attempts at having a social effect and formation by being fellowship gatherings for societal cohesion.  That everything has not been perfect is not the issue; finding a social boat to make it through the full play of freedom in the morass of particulars in our world is a significant mission.  "Spiritual" people who pretend to be free agents unwittingly ignore all that they have and do receive from the effects of religion.

Aphorism of the Day, March 10, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  What other rejoinder to this might one generate?  I'm not religious, I'm natural?  I'm a Democrat?  I'm Libertarian?  I'm Republican?  I'm scientific?  I'm Vegan?  I'm superstitious?    I'm an agnostic?  I'm a Cubs fan (talk about faith?) I'm Musical, I believe in the Muses.  One can be religious and be lots of other things too, including spiritual.  It is a no-brainer to include spirituality as an inherit part of the Christian religion, but not just by title but also by practice.

Aphorism of the Day, March 9, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  This is what many tell the pollsters about their religious preference.  This expression should be a wake up call to churches about an aspect of faith which is not being fostered by the church.  As the extra-religious identity features of religious commitment break down, chiefly the ethnic religious tradition identity, and as modern individualism has happened to make it seem as though everyone is truly a "free agent" because of the seeming economic independence, the individual may be asking oneself, "What's missing in the midst of my apparent self-reliance?"  It could be that disillusionment with all human organizations makes the individual seek an unattainable "utopia" or "perfection" and it goes under the name of "spirituality."  Such is probably chimerical but still a valid impulse that should be a concern of churches.

 Aphorism of the Day, March 8, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  This phrase might unwittingly assume the following words from the mouths of religionists:  "I'm not spiritual; I'm religious."  But how many people who find themselves within religious community would assume that they are not spiritual in any way. If spirituality cannot be separated from religion either religion is being presented wrongly or those who are "spiritual without being religious" missed the message.  It is our responsibility to awaken people who are religious to the spirituality that is found within the religious tradition. 

Aphorism of the Day, March 7, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  There may be a subtle judgment in this confession that people who are "religious" are not "spiritual."  It may be the case the religious people are religious for the "wrong reasons" but "spiritual" persons may be spiritual for the "wrong reasons."  The relevant question might be how a person is filling out the fullness of one's humanity in one's acknowledgment of God.  Religious people balance their spirituality with corporate prayer and the community context to practice intergenerational mentoring and outreach.  Religious people may not "toot" their spirituality on street corners and leave that as the secret side which they perform in their prayer closets.  Spirituality as merely individual religion may leave a person impoverished in the social dimensions which are provided by religious community.  Why would one want to leave the social dimension of spiritual maturity out of a full definition of "spirituality?"

Aphorism of the Day, March 6, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  As modern science has become the main criteria for determining "truth," traditional religious literature has been "demythologized" and the old truths have been diminished in comparison with scientific truths and historicism.  Oddly enough we find spirituality of UFO's and healing crystals and much more New Age re-mythologizing of all sorts. Wonder has not disappeared it only looks for new topics once traditional topics have been condemned as no longer worthy for the projection of our wonder.  Religionists have defended their books on the grounds of "scientific" truth and come across as being silly, e.g. the world is only a few thousand years old.  Having scientific truth does not necessarily make us better moral beings, as our "marvelous?" inventions of weapons of mass destruction prove.  We need to look to the life transforming truths of our traditions in gaining better integration of excellent living for persons in society today.  Some forms of modern spirituality are as   eccentric and exclusive as the expressions of the "old" religions which have been abandoned.

Aphorism of the Day, March 5, 2014

Ash Wednesday Haiku

Body on fast forward
as ashy paint
on canvas forehead
God's Art?

Aphorism of the Day, March 4, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  This can be a form of the subtle oxymoronic misanthropism of Charley Brown when he said, "I love Mankind; it's people I can't stand."  The writer of the Epistle of John counters, "how can we say we love God whom we can't see if we don't love our brothers and sisters whom we see." Theory is less messy than practice.  Religion expresses a devotion to God; a "binding" connection but religion is done collaboratively since Word and Language make us necessarily always already oriented toward collaboration.  Spirituality as an individual "impossible" retreat from the always already of collaboration as a given because we are languaged beings, is a dishonest way of living.

Aphorism of the Day, March 3, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  How did religion and the spiritual ever get to be so antithetical? Has religion become associated with the organizations of people who mostly are known in the news as people who fight over arcane religious topics or about who is welcome to their churches?  To say, "I'm spiritual" may mean that I want to be a political quietist or passive about some important issues of justice and inclusion of people in our society.  We need to be careful about using "spiritual" as an excuse for non-involvement because it may represent a real naivete about the truth of the "messiness" of life.  The whole point of the Good Samaritan story is that the so-called spiritual people did not want to get involved in helping the man who was left beaten by the road.  Let not the spiritual be an unrealistic escape from the messiness of life.  Being spiritual means that we work to clean up some of the mess.

Aphorism of the Day, March 2, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  A child may feel so pressured by the family baggage of being over-determined and want to "escape" a family heritage.  Something similar may happen in how people want to leave their religious tradition for a new start.  This new start may happen with cursory brushes with imported aspects of Eastern religions.  The most accessible contact with other religions has been what we call "meditation" technique.  The appeal of meditation technique perhaps has to do with the presentation of Christianity as being something that happens from the outside in.  Even the Spirit is supposed to come upon one from outside. The meditative traditions seem to emphasize an arising from within of Life that has always been. This should be a signal that Christianity should see redemption and salvation as a progressive recovery of what already was within us.  Salvation is allowing original grace to arise within us to new events.  The apparent external stories of our faith are the screens of the interior arisings. The disillusionment with "religion" may only be with religious practices that have radically bifurcated the interior and exterior worlds.

Aphorism of the Day, March 1, 2014 

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  This attitude might be symptomatic of frustration with established religious bodies and a revolt against the hegemonic mediating tendencies of church hierarchies.  It might be healthy and phase specific in one's spiritual life to "go it alone" in the sense of taking personal responsibility for one's creative advance in integrating the spiritual into one's overall life but it would seem that in healthy adult psychological development the end result of spiritual development is a giving mentoring within a community, which in the thinking of the church is stated as, baptism is also ordination to ministry.  If the notion of being religious is divorced from baptism as ministry then we do have a problem.  Even when infants are baptized, they minister.  How many have been won and converted to goodness by a baby's smile?


Aphorism of the Day, February 28, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  This could mean practicing a purely individualistic religious belief which may be oxymoronic since religion imply traditions.  How does one then become the infallible pope in a church of me, myself and I?  Or does it mean that I am the ultimate consumer in cafeteria religion?  I simply pick and choose from different religious offerings without the insight of knowing the profound social experience which brought each tradition into existence and without the commitment to get myself dirty in the continuance of a tradition particularly if the tradition needs to be reformed.  Being in a church of one is a way of saying, "I am really only going to tolerate one imperfect person, namely, myself."  

Aphorism of the Day, February 27, 2014

"I'm not religious; I'm spiritual." This self description often given to religious preference pollsters bespeaks of the loss of the church as a significant society where spirituality has been replaced with jumping through hoops to maintain the institution.

Aphorism of the Day, February 26, 2014

What does "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual" really mean?  It probably means something different for anyone who uses the phrase.  Does it mean "I am so eccentrically and individually spiritual that I cannot tolerate the rules and the social strictures of religious organizations?"  Does it mean that religious organizations have too much "old" baggage and cannot adjust to the rapidly changing new world?  Does it mean that the modern era has allowed me the illusion of being an individual and self reliant free agent so that I don't have to rely on religious community to negotiate my existence within a larger society?  Does it mean that work society and family are enough of a social hassle; why should I add another social unit like the church to my "hassle" schedule?  The challenge for the church today is to make the human fellowship of religion and spirituality completely compatible.  Spirituality without religion might be a bit disconnected or "disembodied;" religion without spirituality might be boringly lifeless.

Quiz of the Day, March 2014

Daily Quiz, March 31, 2014

What English cleric and poet and Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral is known for "No Man Is an Island?"

a. George Herbert
b. T.S. Eliot
c. John Donne 
d. Rudyard Kipling

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 
It tolls for thee. 


Daily Quiz, March 30, 2014

In John's Gospel who ask Jesus the following question about the blind man:  "Who sinned, this man or his parents that we was born blind?"

a. the Pharisees
b. the Sadducees 
c. the disciples of Jesus
d. Thomas


Daily Quiz, March 29, 2014

Where did Jacob bury his wife Rachel?

a. Bethlehem
b. Ephrath
c. Jericho
d. at the Oaks of Mamre 
e. a and b

Daily Quiz, March 28, 2014

According to the book of Genesis, what area of Egypt was given to Jacob and his family to settle in?

a. Memphis
b. Giza
c. Goshen
d. Avaris

Daily Quiz, March 27, 2014

When Jacob went to Egypt to reunite with his son Joseph, he and his family settled there to practice their occupation which the book of Genesis was "abhorrent" to the Egyptians.  What was that occupation?

a. dyer of wool
b. cloth makers 
c. farmer of a grain not common in Egypt
d. shepherding

Daily Quiz, March 26, 2014

After having John the Baptist beheaded, King Herod heard about the fame of Jesus.  According to the Gospel of Mark, who did Herod think that Jesus was?

a. a prophet
b. Elijah
c. John the Baptist raised from the dead
d. Moses

Daily Quiz, March 25, 2014

Why is the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25th, sometimes moved on liturgical calendars in some churches?

a. the Orthodox celebrate a different day for Christmas because they use a different calendar
b. because it occurs in Lent (can't have a major feast in Lent)
c. to avoid "competition" with Holy Week and Easter when they occur on March 25
d. because of Leap Year

 Daily Quiz, March 24, 2014

What modern day saint became a martyr because he spoke the truth to the kleptocratic powers which ruled his country to neglect of the poor?

a. Oscar Romero
b. Jacques Berthieu
c.  Pedro Calungsod
d.  Giovanni Battista Piamarta 

Daily Quiz, March 23, 2014

Who was named "Legion" in the Bible?

a. the centurion whose son was healed by Jesus 
b. another name for Satan 
c. a fellow ship passenger of St. Paul
d. a group of demons who possessed a man in the Gerasenes

 Daily Quiz, March 22, 2014

Why was Benjamin the favorite brother of Joseph?

a. because they had the same mother Rachel
b. because they had the same mother Leah
c. because the they the same mother Hagar
d. because they had the same mother Rebekah

Daily Quiz, March 21, 2014

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was the one most responsible for bringing the prayers of the English Church from Latin into the "Common" language of the English people, hence the Book of Common Prayer.  The issue of the Crown's relationship with "catholic" control led to his death under a "Catholic Christian"  monarch.  Who was this monarch?

a. Elizabeth I
b. Henry VIII
c. Mary I
d. Edward VI

Daily Quiz, March 20, 2014

Who wrote the words for the doxology often used at the offertory presentation of the gifts and begins, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow"?

a. Isaac Watt
b. Bishop Thomas Ken
c. John Wesley
d. Charles Wesley

Daily Quiz, March 19, 2014

According to Eastern Orthodox tradition St. Joseph was a widower with children from his wife 

a. Mary
b. Salome
c. Hannah
d. Judith


Daily Quiz, March 18, 2014

How did the people of Israel get into Egypt so that they eventually had to be delivered from slavery there?

a. Joseph was sold as a slave in Egypt and his family became the people of Israel
b.  Abraham settled in Egypt long before the time of Moses
c.  Jacob went with his family to Egypt during a drought because there as food there
d.  The Israelites were a rebel group of the Egyptian Hyksos dynasty

Daily Quiz, March 17, 2014

Who was the best known saint born in Ireland and a real authentic Irish saint?

a. St. Patrick
b. St. Aidan
c. St. Kevin
d. St. Ita
e. St. Brigid
f.  St. Columba

Daily Quiz, March 16, 2015

How are the people of Egypt and the people of Israel linked in biblical genealogy?

a. through inter-marriage during the time of their sojourn and slavery there
b. Ephraim and Manasseh, had an Egyptian mother
c. The Pharaoh's people were also ancient Semites
d. All peoples in the Middle East are related to one another

 Daily Quiz, March 15, 2014  (Ides of March, Ancient Roman Calendar)

Dreaming is cited as a mode of communication with divinity often with signs of warning about impending events.  Which of the following does not have record of a dream in the Bible?

a. Nebuchadnezzar
b. Pharaoh during the time of Joseph
c. Joseph, Mary's husband
d. St. Paul
e. Peter
f.  Matthew
g. the Pharaoh's cup-bearer

  Daily Quiz, March 14, 2014

When Joseph was in the Egyptian prison he interpreted the dream of two tradesmen.  What were their occupations?

a. baker and herdsman
b. cup bearer and valet
c. baker and cup bearer
d. farmer and herdsman

Daily Quiz, March 13, 2014

Who was the first bishop of African-American heritage?

a. Richard Beamon Martin
b. Henry Beard Delaney
c. James T. Holly
d. John Walker

Daily Quiz, March 12, 2014

Gregorian Chant derived from what person?

a. Pope St. Gregory the Great
b. no known person but attributed to Gregory the Great three centuries later
c. Gregory II
d. Leo I

Daily Quiz, March 11, 2014

Jacob whose name was also Israel had a favorite son to whom he gave a coat  or garment of many color.  Who was Jacob's "favorite" son?

a. Reuben
b. Benjamin
c. Joseph
d. Judah


of many Daily Quiz, March 10, 2014

Lent is

a. Forty days not including Sundays
b. Forty six days including Sundays
c. a time when alleluia is omitted from the liturgy
d. includes two fast days, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday
e. all of the above

Daily Quiz, March 9, 2014

Which archbishopric in England is second to the archbishopric of Canterbury and whose archbishop is refer to as the Primate of England? 

a.  Durham
b.  London
c.  Winchester
d.  York


Daily Quiz, March 8, 2014

Which actor has not played Jesus in a major cinematic role?

a. H.B. Warner
b. Claude Heater
c. Jeffrey Hunter
d. Victor Mature
e. Max von Sydow
f.  Ted Neeley
g. Victor Garber
h.  William Dafoe
i.  Jim Caviezel
j.  Diogo Morgado

Daily Quiz, March 7, 2014

Which was not one of the temptation of Jesus poses by Satan during his wilderness fast?

a. command to change stones into bread
b. a vision and promise of world power
c. a promise for a higher place than the angels
d. imploring Jesus to jump from the Temple to be caught by angels

Daily Quiz, March 6, 2014

Lent, was the English word which translated what Latin word when sermons began to be given in vernacular languages?

a. tessarakoste
b. quadragesima
c. cuaresma
d. quaresma

Daily Quiz, March 5, 2014

The number 40 in the 40 days of Lent comes from biblical numerology where forty stands for a time of testing or ordeal.  Which biblical event did not last 40 days and nights?

a. fast and temptation of Jesus in the wilderness
b. the days of rain of the great flood
c. the days which Moses spent on Mount Sinai
d. the number of years it took to build Solomon's Temple
e. the number of years that Israel wandered in the wilderness

Daily Quiz, March 4, 2014

The shrove of Shrove Tuesday is an archaic English words which means

a. the lard used for the pancakes of the day
b. the English equivalent of the gras in Mardi Gras
c. hearing/ making confession and receiving and giving absolution
d. the act of getting rid of animal fat before Lent begins

Daily Quiz, March 3, 2014

Why is Aldersgate important to the Methodists?

a. It is the street location of their first church
b. It is the location of the birth place John and Charles Wesley
c. It is the street on which which John Wesley's Evangelical conversion took place
d. It is where the first Methodist pastor was ordained

Daily Quiz, March 2, 2014

Who was not mentioned as being present at the Transfiguration event?

a. Peter
b. James
c. John
d. Jesus
e. Moses
f. Elijah
g.God the Father by voice only
h. Andrew

Daily Quiz, March 1, 2014

Eglwys yng Nghymru is the name of which Anglican Church?

a. the church in Ireland
b. the church in Central African
c. the church in Wales
d. the church in old Northhumberland