Variety, they say, is the spice of life.
When I began teaching my current class on The Early Church, I asked each participant his/her reason for taking the course. Prominent among the answers was a desire to know about the way in which early Christians thought, lived and worshipped. At least one student said he and a friend felt called to establish a Christian mission that was modelled after the New Testament Christian community. He hoped to discover in this class what that should be.
I understand the interest in knowing what the Church was like in the beginning. Worship is more meaningful to me when I'm reminded that some of the prayers we pray, many of the words of the Eucharist, and more have centuries of history behind them. The very form of the worship service and the form of the Eucharistic Prayer date from the first century. This is an important emotional connection for me.
As an amateur historian, I'm taken by how many times in the 2000 year history of the Church, various Christians have been on the quest the young man mentioned above is on. In the U.S. in particular, a "return" to the purity of the early Church has shaped many denominations and even created a few.
The bad news is: there is no single "early Church." There was a variety of organizational models, (that is, who was to lead the assembly?), a variety of forms for baptism, for the Eucharist, for belief systems and on and on. Just on the matter of what was used in the Eucharist, some used bread and wine, some bread, wine, water, some bread and fish, some bread, wine and olives, and some bread, wine, water, and milk and honey. Some early communities were led by the householder who hosted the gathering--meaning some women presided at the Eucharist. Some were led by a council of elders; some a council with a senior elder as overseer or president; some by those who had some charism, such as prophecy or healing.
In short, variety seemed to have been the order of the day for a couple of centuries. And you know what, each community's individual members seemed to have been nurtured, some fed well enough they were willing to die for the faith. So, what I've been thinking about is: what does that say about today's variety of beliefs and practices? I know what I've concluded. What about you?
Peace,
Jerry+
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
A Simpler Time
Sorry about the delay between posts. Got distracted by more work than a retired guy should be doing.
As both my readers know, a few months ago I totaled my car and had to buy another. The new car has satellite radio, a trial anyway. One of the stations is called Classic Radio. It rebroadcasts old radio shows.
I was thrilled to discover it. I actually own a number of tapes of some old radio shows as well as a book titled The Encyclopedia of Old Time Radio. Born in 1940, I grew up listening to radio. My family didn't get a TV until I was 12, so the "theater of the mind" was a regular companion for me. I confess to a lot of nostalgia for the time.
Lately, when I have a trip of at least 15 minutes I tune into an old show. I've listened to a lot of mysteries, complete with dramatic (or over dramatic) organ music to create tension. Interestingly, the stories still hold up, though the settings are antique. Cars shifting gears, phones being dialed, odd sounding police sirens. Still, the stories work--perhaps a little melodramatically, but they still work.
Lately I've been listening to a lot of comedies. They hold up as well, too. Not necessarily knee-slapping funny, but I do find myself smiling a lot, and even laughing out loud a little. Fibber McGee and Molly, the Great Gildersleeve, Lum and Abner, Jack Benny--these were the programs of my youth. They are a bit antiquated too, but still amusing. Now, here's why I bring this up: they are all clean. Now foul language, no sexual innuendo, no outright sexual situations, no mean-spirited humor. Just funny stuff. Ordinary people doing and saying, what were for the times, ordinary things in a funny setting.
As I listen and remember all the happy hours of my childhood listening to Luigi and Judy Canova, and Bob Hope, I wonder what went wrong. When did funny always have to have a blue tint. The other night I watched the season opener of four comedies. In three of them, people slept together, even those who had just met or who were committing adultery. Did we really need that to make it funny. Plus one of the new series is based on the same premise as the movie Knocked Up. Boy and girl hook up for a one-nighter and she gets pregnant. Great. This is what we need more of on TV to normalize it even more.
I'm not a prude, but like the guy in the funny little commercial about putting the No in Innovation, I've got to ask, "Have we gone too far?" That's what I've been thinking lately. What about you?
Peace,
Jerry+
As both my readers know, a few months ago I totaled my car and had to buy another. The new car has satellite radio, a trial anyway. One of the stations is called Classic Radio. It rebroadcasts old radio shows.
I was thrilled to discover it. I actually own a number of tapes of some old radio shows as well as a book titled The Encyclopedia of Old Time Radio. Born in 1940, I grew up listening to radio. My family didn't get a TV until I was 12, so the "theater of the mind" was a regular companion for me. I confess to a lot of nostalgia for the time.
Lately, when I have a trip of at least 15 minutes I tune into an old show. I've listened to a lot of mysteries, complete with dramatic (or over dramatic) organ music to create tension. Interestingly, the stories still hold up, though the settings are antique. Cars shifting gears, phones being dialed, odd sounding police sirens. Still, the stories work--perhaps a little melodramatically, but they still work.
Lately I've been listening to a lot of comedies. They hold up as well, too. Not necessarily knee-slapping funny, but I do find myself smiling a lot, and even laughing out loud a little. Fibber McGee and Molly, the Great Gildersleeve, Lum and Abner, Jack Benny--these were the programs of my youth. They are a bit antiquated too, but still amusing. Now, here's why I bring this up: they are all clean. Now foul language, no sexual innuendo, no outright sexual situations, no mean-spirited humor. Just funny stuff. Ordinary people doing and saying, what were for the times, ordinary things in a funny setting.
As I listen and remember all the happy hours of my childhood listening to Luigi and Judy Canova, and Bob Hope, I wonder what went wrong. When did funny always have to have a blue tint. The other night I watched the season opener of four comedies. In three of them, people slept together, even those who had just met or who were committing adultery. Did we really need that to make it funny. Plus one of the new series is based on the same premise as the movie Knocked Up. Boy and girl hook up for a one-nighter and she gets pregnant. Great. This is what we need more of on TV to normalize it even more.
I'm not a prude, but like the guy in the funny little commercial about putting the No in Innovation, I've got to ask, "Have we gone too far?" That's what I've been thinking lately. What about you?
Peace,
Jerry+
Thursday, September 10, 2009
The Kingdom
I've just completed reading The Gospel of Mark by Marcus Borg. The book is one in a series of books called Conversations With Scripture created by The Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars. The book comes with a built in study guide for individual or group use. I recommend it.
But this isn't a review of the book. I'm doing that later for someone else. Borg reminded me that if we take this Gospel seriously we have to conclude that Jesus was calling people to follow him. More than that, his calls to follow him seem really to be about following him to his inevitable conclusion: entering Jerusalem and all that represented. Borg reminds us that in the early decades after Jesus', his followers were even described as followers of the Way.
When Jesus enters Jerusalem, he does so on the same day that Pilate enters, but probably through a different gate. Pilate would have been coming because Jerusalem needed additional troops during Passover when the population likely tripled to something like 150,000 to 200,000 and feeling against the Roman oppressors ran high and hot.
Pilate makes a grand entrance with his troops to establish again the power of Rome over this city and the world. Jesus makes a grand entrance riding on a donkey colt, but wildly celebrated by the people. Why? At some level they understood his arrival as an announcement about the beginning of the end of Roman occupation.
Jesus had been preaching all along about the coming Kingdom, calling people to prepare for that Kingdom. It was a Kingdom not like Rome's, but a Kingdom brought in by God in order to restore justice and peace and to relieve the suffering of the poor--most people at that time.
Along the way, Christians have watered down Jesus' message and/or replaced it with believing the right things. But it would seem that Mark was saying what needed to be believed was the Jesus was God's son and was the embodiment of God's action in the world. God will bring the Kingdom in God's own time, and in the meanwhile, because we believe who Jesus is, we will act as if the Kingdom is here now. We will see that justice is done--that is, that oppressive and dysfunctional systems are replaced. We will attend to the poor while we change the systems that keep them poor. Jesus had little apparent concern, according to Mark, about our "going to heaven." The focus seems to need to be here and now.
As I teach the history of the Church in the first few centuries after Jesus, I can tell you that we went off the track early and radically. Now's the time to fix that.
Peace,
Jerry+
But this isn't a review of the book. I'm doing that later for someone else. Borg reminded me that if we take this Gospel seriously we have to conclude that Jesus was calling people to follow him. More than that, his calls to follow him seem really to be about following him to his inevitable conclusion: entering Jerusalem and all that represented. Borg reminds us that in the early decades after Jesus', his followers were even described as followers of the Way.
When Jesus enters Jerusalem, he does so on the same day that Pilate enters, but probably through a different gate. Pilate would have been coming because Jerusalem needed additional troops during Passover when the population likely tripled to something like 150,000 to 200,000 and feeling against the Roman oppressors ran high and hot.
Pilate makes a grand entrance with his troops to establish again the power of Rome over this city and the world. Jesus makes a grand entrance riding on a donkey colt, but wildly celebrated by the people. Why? At some level they understood his arrival as an announcement about the beginning of the end of Roman occupation.
Jesus had been preaching all along about the coming Kingdom, calling people to prepare for that Kingdom. It was a Kingdom not like Rome's, but a Kingdom brought in by God in order to restore justice and peace and to relieve the suffering of the poor--most people at that time.
Along the way, Christians have watered down Jesus' message and/or replaced it with believing the right things. But it would seem that Mark was saying what needed to be believed was the Jesus was God's son and was the embodiment of God's action in the world. God will bring the Kingdom in God's own time, and in the meanwhile, because we believe who Jesus is, we will act as if the Kingdom is here now. We will see that justice is done--that is, that oppressive and dysfunctional systems are replaced. We will attend to the poor while we change the systems that keep them poor. Jesus had little apparent concern, according to Mark, about our "going to heaven." The focus seems to need to be here and now.
As I teach the history of the Church in the first few centuries after Jesus, I can tell you that we went off the track early and radically. Now's the time to fix that.
Peace,
Jerry+
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Called
When I was a young man, still a teenager in fact, I had an experience which I interpreted as a "call to preach." In my religious tradition, to be "called to preach" meant, of course, much more than that. It usually meant "called to ordained ministry" and ordained ministry meant not only preaching, but all the usual tasks and responsibilities of being a clergyperson. But that wasn't our language nor the language of much of the Church.
In the tradition of which I am a part now, The Episcopal Church, one is "called to the priesthood" or "called to the diaconate." Both mean "called to ordained ministry," though the ministries are usually different. But in both traditions, being "called" means having a higher authority declare that you are somehow "fit" to be an ordained leader, and then having a bishop and others lay hands on you to signify that. Or not.
That is to say, you can believe you are called by God to a particular ordained ministry and have others decide you're not. Exactly how they decide is, of course, a subjective process full of mystery. I am very aware of people being "turned down," that is, having the legitimacy of their call questioned for, say being overweight or being abrupt. Now the fact is that the ordained ranks are peppered with fat people and abrupt people, and for that matter fat, abrupt people. Yet the fat, abrupt and FaA people still manage to be at least adequate ministers--sometime much more than adequate. And one wonders: did they become F, A, and/or FaA only after ordination?
Today, a woman shared with me that her bishop had recently said to her something to the effect, "Don't ruin your spirituality and ministry by seeking ordination." Was he really giving her the low down on what happens to many who go through the process and become ordained, or was he just trying to discourage one more potential candidate for ordination from clogging the system? In either case, what of her call? What must she do now? Be content with a lay ministry--an important lay ministry? But is she being really faithful if she does?
It's all a mystery to me.
Peace,
Jerry+
In the tradition of which I am a part now, The Episcopal Church, one is "called to the priesthood" or "called to the diaconate." Both mean "called to ordained ministry," though the ministries are usually different. But in both traditions, being "called" means having a higher authority declare that you are somehow "fit" to be an ordained leader, and then having a bishop and others lay hands on you to signify that. Or not.
That is to say, you can believe you are called by God to a particular ordained ministry and have others decide you're not. Exactly how they decide is, of course, a subjective process full of mystery. I am very aware of people being "turned down," that is, having the legitimacy of their call questioned for, say being overweight or being abrupt. Now the fact is that the ordained ranks are peppered with fat people and abrupt people, and for that matter fat, abrupt people. Yet the fat, abrupt and FaA people still manage to be at least adequate ministers--sometime much more than adequate. And one wonders: did they become F, A, and/or FaA only after ordination?
Today, a woman shared with me that her bishop had recently said to her something to the effect, "Don't ruin your spirituality and ministry by seeking ordination." Was he really giving her the low down on what happens to many who go through the process and become ordained, or was he just trying to discourage one more potential candidate for ordination from clogging the system? In either case, what of her call? What must she do now? Be content with a lay ministry--an important lay ministry? But is she being really faithful if she does?
It's all a mystery to me.
Peace,
Jerry+
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