Another Voice

(Dear Friends, On the vigil of Palm Sunday, I am sending this reflection on the Apostles of Jesus. I will then be offline for two or three weeks. My first reflection, when I return, will be on Pentecost. After that I will focus more on theological reflections on current events. My very best wishes for the Easter season…..and now to the apostles!)

The Christian Scriptures provide four lists of twelve men whom Jesus chose during his ministry: Mark 3:16-19; Matthew 10:2-4; Luke 6:14-16; and Acts 1:13 (without Judas Iscariot). The Gospel According to John gives no list, but does mention “the Twelve” (6:67 and 20:24). Certainly there were three very prominent apostles, who belonged to “the Twelve”: Simon re-named Peter, and James and John the sons of Zebedee. We saw them at the Transfiguration.

The word “apostle” goes back to a Greek word meaning “one who is sent, a messenger.” Today we would probably best translate it in English as “missionary.”

When thinking about the early “apostolic” Christian community, however, I think it is important to understand that “apostle” in the early Jesus movement was a much broader term and included more people than just “the Twelve.” In the Christian Scriptures we see other people clearly designated as apostles, although they were not listed as members of “the Twelve.”

To begin with, we have James “the brother of The Lord.” (That designation opens another question which we cannot get into here.) Then we have Paul, Barnabas, Andronicus, and Junias (a woman). In the Gospel According to Luke (10:1-24) we have a post-resurrection narrative in which Jesus commissions seventy apostles. Jesus appointed them and sent them out in pairs on a specific mission which is detailed in the text. In Western Christianity, they are usually referred to as disciples. In Eastern Christianity they are usually called apostles. Clearly they were sent out on an apostolic mission. Thus really apostles.

In the early church, “the Twelve” had an historic meaning; but perhaps even a more important symbolic meaning: Jesus was seen as the founder of the New Israel, a term many in the early church began to apply to the Jesus Movement. The Old Israel had twelve tribes, by tradition formed by the twelve sons of Jacob. There was a strong sense, among early followers of Jesus, that the New Israel must also have twelve patriarchs who were the disciples of their founder, Jesus. “The Twelve” therefore became an important Christian term, even when some people were not always so certain about their names.

The Apostles were more than Leonardo ever imagined.

I suspect many contemporary people envision the apostles as Leonardo da Vinci painted them in his late fifteenth century mural in a convent dining room in Milan: mostly bearded older men sitting at a big table with Jesus. In fact, as scholars of ancient Jewish life and customs tell us, Jesus’ disciples at the “Last Supper” were probably eighteen years old or younger. At least one, Peter, was married. Perhaps others as well. And they didn’t sit at a big table. As was customary, Jesus and his friends reclined on the floor or on mats and pillows, leaning on their left elbow, eating with their right hand, and with their legs stretched out behind them. Well so much for the meal etiquette….One final point: if I were painting the Last Supper, I would add a few young women and a sprinkling of small children.

Ordination? Apostolic succession? Among biblical scholars and theologians there is a general consensus that Jesus knew nothing about ordination and certainly did not ordain anyone at the Last Supper. (Very disappointing to some bishops who imagine the apostles leaving the Last Supper with ancient crosiers in their left hands.) Ordination was created by the later Christian community about a hundred years after Jesus. It was a form of quality control: only well informed and trustworthy and officially approved men and women could lead Christian communities.

I understand that most bishops trace their leadership identity and role back to the apostles by way of “apostolic succession.” I have absolutely no problem with that, as long as they understand that “apostolic succession” is succession in the faith, witness, and ministry of the apostles. It has very little to do with an unbroken line of ordinations going back to the historic Jesus, because that frankly is a pious non-historical fantasy.

Jesus’ disciples were young, zealous, and energetic men and women. They were the foundation for apostolic leadership in the early church. And women were actively present and involved. No female tokenism for Jesus.
What a pity – what historical ignorance and/or nearsightedness – when contemporary church leaders fail to recognize that women played a major role in the early church.

Women appear prominently in accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion; in reporting that Jesus had been raised from the dead; and of course at Pentecost. Mary of Magdala was clearly a significant leader in the Jesus movement and doubtlessly the leader among women disciples. Texts in Mark (15:41), Matthew (27:55) and Luke (23:49) all attest that Jesus’ women disciples followed him all the way from Galilee.

So if we want to picture the members of the early Jesus Movement (the church), we would have to see a group of eighteen years old, or younger, women and men….and no doubt a few children as well. Men and women touched by God and full of youthful life and hope. A very exciting image.

What does this mean today? How do we recapture and pass on the energy and enthusiasm of those early church men and women? (Certainly not by pretending that marriage is not for priests and that women cannot be ordained.)

I am not anti-Catholic and have spent just about all of my professional life working for and with the church. But really……we really need to enliven our old church. It’s the eleventh hour and the Catholic eclipse is well underway (even with the Pope Francis positive PR). Let’s open the doors to a broad range of fresh thinking, community action, and creative forms of ministry for men AND women. Let’s do what Jesus did.

May Easter 2014 bring encouragement, joy, and hope to all in the community of faith!

Jesus’ ascension into heaven is a good case study of how Christian belief evolves over the centuries. Statements of belief are interpretations of our faith. Like all human understanding, they are ongoing and developmental.

Once upon a time, for example, Jewish and Christian believers understood the story of Noah and the ark as an historic event. Today we understand it as biblical mythology. Jesus’ ascension up to heaven may not be a myth but it is highly symbolic.

Two brief accounts of Jesus’ ascension are found in the “longer ending” to the Gospel According to Mark (16:19) and in the Gospel According to Luke. (24:50-53). A more detailed account is found in Acts of the Apostles (1:9-11). Jesus’ ascension into heaven is proclaimed as well in both the Nicene Creed (written during the fourth century C.E.) and the Apostles’ Creed (developed between the second and ninth centuries C.E. as a baptismal creed for new Christians). The Feast of the Ascension, celebrated on a Thursday forty days after Easter has long been a major holy day in the Christian liturgical year. (In most Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States, however, the celebration of Ascension has been transferred to the following Sunday.)

Most basically, the Ascension reaffirms the Resurrection. The post-death glorified Jesus is with God. (Perhaps it makes good sense to celebrate Ascension on the Day of the Resurrection? The Gospel According to Luke has both occur on the same day. The U.S. bishops, however, transferred the feast to Sunday because so few people were showing up on Ascension Thursday.)

The imagery of the Ascension, of course, is based on the ancient Hebrew and early Christian cosmology of the flat earth and triple level universe. (See the illustration.) Today we find this explanation of our earth and the solar system quaint, archaic, and scientifically naïve. For people “back then” it was very real indeed and they constructed their theological understanding around it as well. A highly anthropomorphized God the Father sat high up in the upper heaven on his throne. When early Christians contemplated Jesus-raised-from-the-dead, it made good theological sense to them that the Son of God, in the glory of the Resurrection, should also be up there in the high heaven “seated at the right hand of the Father.”

Early Christians, like the author of Acts of the Apostles, pondered how the (overly physicalized) Resurrected Jesus would get up to the (very physicalized) high heaven. The cloud elevator was the obvious solution. (Actually, much later, there was a similar line of thought, when Pope Pius XII proclaimed in 1950 that the Virgin Mary was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.)

Neither contemporary science nor contemporary theology understands God to be up there on a heavenly throne. Our faith experience, our understanding of God, is one of nearness: loving and close intimacy. As we understand and rephrase our belief, we are keenly aware that all language about God is analogical: it points to God but does not contain nor confine God. Our words are pointers toward God. God is LIKE ultimate “Father,” or “Mother,” or “most supportive Friend,” or “Ground of Being,” etc., etc.,

And so the Ascension. What does it mean today? The Resurrected Jesus is so intimately linked with God that “he and the Father are one” and he is one with us as well. Closer to us than the air in our lungs…All Christian life is a Divine communion. No small thing indeed.

And the old cosmology drifts off silently into the past. It worked fine for a while….

(Next week some thoughts about being an apostle….)

Our Christian Faith is anchored in the experience we commemorate and celebrate each Easter.

The apostle Paul summarized that experience in his letter to the people in Corinth: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day.” (I Corinthians 15)

In my first three Lenten biblical reflections, I stressed (1) that our Christian Scriptures announce genuine and authentic Christian belief; but that (2) more often than people realize, they are not detailed historical accounts. The biblical authors used a variety of imaginative images designed to convey the meaning and impact of the Jesus event. This week, I stress that same understanding, as we read and reflect about Jesus’ resurrection.

What exactly was the experience that became the first Easter experience?

Reading the Christian Scriptures in the light of contemporary biblical scholarship — and reflecting as well on my own personal faith experiences — it is clear to me that those early Christians’ Easter experience was not in first instance a physical historically verifiable experience. It was however a true and genuine faith experience: an experience in another dimension of our human reality.

Paul, writing between the years 50 CE and 64 CE never described the resurrection of Jesus as a resuscitation of his physical body, after death on the cross. In the Pauline writings, we never see a Jesus who walks out of his grave. Resurrection is not resuscitation.

Paul is very clear and firm, however, in his belief that God raised Jesus out of death and into a new form of life in God. Jesus’ resurrection transformed and raised Jesus into new life.

“Someone will ask,” Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?’ How foolish!….When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed….So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, and it is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, and it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, and it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, and it is raised a spiritual body.” Another dimension of life.

Paul died somewhere around the year 64 CE and never read any of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. I suspect however that many Christians, coming after Paul, have always read Paul through the lens of the later-written Gospels, with their great and imaginative religious imagery. This is unfortunate, because we miss the concise and clear Pauline testimony about Jesus’ being raised from the dead.

The authors of the Gospels, as they wrote some decades after the death of Jesus, used creative imagery and imagination to convey the experience of early Christian faith encounters with the resurrected Lord. Some experiences — especially faith experiences — are best, though still inadequately, interpreted and expressed through symbols and imaginative imagery. Think for a moment about the symbolic and imaginatively charged (and sometimes erotic) testimonies of the great Christian mystics.

In Mark, the first of the Gospels that we have today, the Risen Christ never appears. Jesus’ deceased body is taken from the cross and placed in the tomb. Mark’s account of Jesus’ resurrection speaks of grief-stricken women confronting an empty tomb and meeting a messenger who tells them that Jesus has been raised from the dead. Later another ending was added to Mark’s Gospel; but contemporary biblical scholarship stresses that Mark’s Gospel probably ended without the Resurrected Christ ever being seen by anyone.

The authors of Matthew, writing between 80-85 CE, and Luke, writing between 88-92 CE, changed and greatly expanded Mark. They wanted their audiences to have no doubts about Jesus truly raised from the dead and divinely transformed. Their imagery is more physical yet spiritual.

Matthew changes Mark’s story about the women at the tomb. Mark’s messenger becomes an angel; and Matthew asserts that the women did see Jesus in the garden. They grasp him by his feet and worship him. Here Jesus’ resurrection seems, at first, more like a physical resuscitation of the deceased Jesus. When Matthew narrates the account of Jesus’ resurrection to the disciples, however, the resurrected Jesus is on a mountaintop in Galilee, where he comes out of the sky with heavenly power.

Luke echoes Mark’s narration about the women at the tomb, and they do not see Jesus in the garden on Easter morning. Luke, however, transforms Mark’s messenger into two angels. Luke greatly emphasizes as well the physicality of Jesus’ resurrected body. He wants his readers to to see that this is really Jesus. Nevertheless the resurrected Jesus in Luke is not a resuscitated Jesus, because although he walks, talks, eats, and teaches, he also appears and disappears at will. He invites the disciples to touch his flesh, and stresses that he is not a ghost. The post-death Jesus is real. Luke then removes the resurrected Jesus from the earth, by imagining the story of Jesus’ Ascension up to heaven: A cloud comes down and, like a heavenly elevator, whisks him up to heaven. Don’t forget the ancient Jewish and Christian cosmology, with God on God’s throne up in the heavens.

When it comes to the Ascension, Luke however is not consistent: In his Gospel the Ascension occurs on Easter Sunday afternoon; but in Acts, the Ascension occurs 40 days after Easter. Ongoing imaginative development.

In John, written between 95 CE and 100 CE when most eyewitnesses of the Jesus event were already dead, the physicality of the Resurrection is enhanced even more. Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene in the garden and tells her not to cling to him. John then suggests that Jesus ascended up to heaven immediately; and from there he appears to the disciples. A transformed spiritual being, he enters a room with closed windows and locked doors, yet he is described as quite physical. A week later Jesus appears a second time to the disciples. This time Thomas is invited to touch Jesus’ nail wounds and pierced side. Later in the Gospel Jesus appears to the disciples fishing in Galilee and eats with them. John wants to affirm that the resurrected Jesus is really Jesus….

Over the years, we see therefore that accounts of Jesus’ resurrection grew rather dramatically. Something Divine happened after Jesus’ crucifixion that convinced his disciples that Jesus shared in the eternal life of God and was very much a living presence in their own lives. Human imagination, words, and images cannot adequately describe what happened. They are simply pointers. Pointers to the Divine in Jesus.

And so for us today? it is not enough to just study and ponder texts and events from the past. We live today. In today’s world.

Nevertheless, God’s working through Jesus in the past is God’s working through Jesus today; and just like the early Christians, our lives too are anchored in Jesus’ resurrection experience. Life is changed, not taken away. Through him, with him, and in him we meet the living God. Jesus in fact is the great sacrament of the human encounter with God. And “where two or three are gathered,” Jesus is present as well.

This Easter, and throughout the year, our biggest challenge is big indeed. It is not always delightful nor easy to realize and accept that we see and meet the living God in the man or woman standing next to us: whether handsome or ugly, whether gay or straight, whether “friend” or ” enemy,” they all have dignity and worth; and all can be channels to the Divine.

And like Jesus, when this life is over, we too shall continue on a new journey with God.

http://anothervoice-greenleaf.org/2014/03/20/crucified-under-pontius-pilate/

Crucifixion is a form of slow and painful execution. The victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead. Crucifixion was used by many ancient peoples; but the Romans used it extensively, as a form of punishment and terrorism, from the 6th century BCE until the 4th century CE. The Roman Emperor Constantine I abolished crucifixion in 337 CE out of respect for the “crucified Jesus.”

There is a general consensus among biblical scholars and historians of antiquity that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed crucified by the Romans around the year 30 CE. It happened under Pontius Pilate when he was the fifth prefect of the Roman province of Judea between the years 26 and 36 CE.  What role did Jewish religious authorities play in this? Certainly, as a conquered people, Jews did not have the power to execute. Jesus’ crucifixion was clearly a Roman act, done in the Roman way. The Romans therefore, not the Jews, were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.

There is also a general consensus that many of the crucifixion details in the Gospels are imaginative religious imagery and embellishment. I touched on this briefly last week.

Depending on time and place, Roman Crucifixion methods varied considerably. It was always a gruesome, terribly painful, and humiliating event. Quite often the condemned person’s arms were tied and/or nailed to a beam, which the condemned person then carried to the place of execution. Once there the person was stripped of all clothing and the beam (crossbeam) was fastened to a post already in the ground. This is probably what happened to Jesus: he carried the crossbeam.

A crucifixion was an extremely torturous execution. The Roman philosopher and writer, Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BCE – 65 CE), tells us that Roman executioners got a kick out of ramming a stick upwards through the victim’s groin. Quite often the legs of the crucified were shattered with an iron club, an act designed to frighten onlookers and hasten the death of the victim.

New Testament writings about Jesus’ crucifixion do not specifically mention the shape of his cross, but writings from about the year 100 CE describe it as shaped like the letter T.

A cruel prelude to crucifixion was scourging, which led to severe blood loss and put the victim in a state of shock. The convicted then had to carry the horizontal beam (after scourging one would not have been strong enough to carry an entire cross) to the place of execution. Once there, a specialized crucifixion team stripped the person naked, made insulting and derogatory remarks about the condemned, and then finished the job. Roman soldiers had perfected the technique down to the last details.

Jesus’ crucifixion is described in all four canonical gospels, referred to in writings by Paul the Apostle, attested to by other ancient sources, and is firmly established as an historical event confirmed by non-Christian sources.

There are several details that are only found in one of the Gospel accounts. Only the Gospel According to Matthew mentions an earthquake, resurrected saints who then go into town, and Roman soldiers assigned to guard the tomb. Only Mark gives a time for the crucifixion (the third hour, or 9 am) and a centurion’s report about Jesus’ death. The Gospel According to Luke gives Jesus’ words to the women who were mourning and one criminal rebuking the other. The Gospel According to John (written about seventy years after the event, when most eyewitnesses would have been already dead) is the only account mentioning a request that Jesus’ legs be broken, a soldier piercing Jesus’ side (echoing a Hebrew Scriptures prophecy), and Nicodemus assisting Joseph with the burial.

How many of the biblical details describing Jesus’ crucifixion were actual historic events? Perhaps fewer than many people think. As I wrote last week, the Gospels were written to promote faith and to interpret the deepest meaning of the Jesus experience.

Let’s begin with events as narrated in the Gospel According to Mark, which gave us the first account of the crucifixion that we possess. Mark says it was the Passover that brought Jesus to Jerusalem. A week prior to his crucifixion, Mark says Jesus rode into Jerusalem in what we today call “the Palm Sunday Procession.” The crowds waved “leafy branches” and shouted words from the 118th psalm, “Hosanna in the highest, blessed is the one that comes in the name of the Lord.”

A week before Passover in the Middle East would have put the “leafy branches” procession in either March or April. However, in that part of the world, there are no leafy branches that time of the year. Perhaps we see here a bit of early Christian religious symbolism?

In the Jewish liturgical year, Sukkoth, the autumn harvest festival, does indeed have some leafy branch activities. Early Christian evangelists borrowed and moved these from the autumn to spring. During Sukkoth a procession through the streets and to the Temple was a major part of the celebration. The worshipers carried in their right hands a bunch of leafy branches made up of myrtle, willow, and palm which they waved while marching. They also shouted the words of the 118th Psalm. This was, however, during an autumn harvest festival. The gospel writers clearly moved the symbols from Sukkoth in the fall to the spring season of Passover.

Trying to convey the impact of Jesus’ crucifixion and death, the Gospels use powerful and dramatic imagery: darkness over the land, the earth shakes, rocks are split, tombs are opened, the dead are raised and walk into town; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

And what is the meaning of all of this?

What does Jesus’ crucifixion and death say to us today? All week I have been thinking about that tortured fellow on his lonely way to execution. It changes our entire perspective on human life. What courage. What commitment. What faith and love. What a frightening and awful way to die. Yet his death becomes our hope and encouragement. Powerful indeed. He gives us the courage to continue on our journey.

As my favorite poet, T. S. Eliot, writes at the end of his Journey of the Magi:

“I should be glad of another death.”

In this weekend’s liturgical readings, we have the account of the Transfiguration as written in the Gospel According to Matthew (17:1-9).

”

After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’

While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!’

When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, ‘Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’

When telling a friend yesterday that I would be writing about Jesus’ Transfiguration, he chided me a bit and hoped I would reaffirm and stress it was an historic event. “Actually,” I said “when considering biblical belief, biblical events, and historical events we need to make some important distinctions….” He then muttered something about the “dangers of liberal theology.”

In any event, here, as a contemporary believer, is how I understand the Transfiguration…..

In the accounts of the Transfiguration, Jesus is suddenly changed and becomes a radiantly divinized Son of God, up on a mountain. The Synoptic Gospels describe it (Matthew 17:1–9, Mark 9:2-8, Luke 9:28–36) and 2 Peter 1:16–18 refers to it.

The content of the narrative is richly symbolic with people and imagery from the Hebrew Scriptures, as we saw last week, when John baptized Jesus. Once again the three-level universe with God up in heaven, and speaking in a cloud. Jesus takes three key disciples up high in the mountains — getting as close as possible to God’s heavenly dwelling place. Moses you recall did the same thing when God gave him the Ten Commandments.

Then the wondrous vision occurs. Moses appears. He brought God’s people the law and led them up to the Promised Land. Now in this visionary experience, the radiant Jesus, standing with the old Moses, becomes the New Moses. God says: “This is my son. Listen to him.” Jesus is the new law-giver. And then of course we have an appearance of Elijah. Last week we saw that John the Baptist, preparing the way of the Lord, was an Elijah figure. Now we have the old Elijah, standing next to the Lord who has come at last. For Moses and Elijah, standing with Jesus, the great day has arrived. Up on the mountain of the Transfiguration, all messianic expectations of the Hebrew Scriptures are summed up and completed with the radiant Jesus.

As recorded in the Gospels, the Transfiguration becomes a deeply symbolic preview and a powerful faith affirmation of the Post-Resurrection Jesus. An important piece of Resurrection catechesis.

When editing their final versions of the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel writers felt their audiences needed some support and moral encouragement, as they began to contemplate Jesus’ sufferings and death. Yes I call it a catechetical moment: a reaffirmation of faith in Jesus raised from the dead….before the Gospel accounts become so heavily laden with suffering, rejection, pain, and death. (It is like saying: “don’t worry, in the end it will all come out OK for Jesus.”) A deeply symbolic visionary experience and a powerful re-affirmation of the Easter faith of historic people back then….as well as for us today.

So my friend asked me yesterday: “was it an historic event?” Actually I reminded him that in the Hebrew biblical tradition there was little interest in the fact of an historic situation. Those early believers were concerned about the meaning behind what happened. Their tradition — passed on of course to early Christian believers — is one of story telling. They combined history, allegory, and symbols to communicate their experiences. Asking “did it really happen?” is the kind of question that comes from a Western mind-set, not the Ancient Near East culture of Jesus and his followers. For that biblical faith culture, the main question was “what is the meaning in these things.”

I would suggest the Transfiguration is a powerfully symbolic testimony to the faith experiences of Jesus’ early followers. And they were really historic men and women.

As contemporary believers, we need to appreciate that biblical language (in the Hebrew Scriptures as well as the Christian Scriptures) is not the same thing as our scientific factual language. We are at times too empirical. We need to understand that faith truths are expressed in a variety of ways.

We will see later this Lent that the details of Jesus’ passion are not strictly-speaking literal history. We must ask: “what is the meaning of these things?” They are devout interpretations of the end of Jesus’ life. Testimonies of faith: showing evidence of creative growth and development over the years, as biblical authors began to fill in the blanks, in imaginative ways, and with a judicious use of the Hebrew Scriptures.

My belief? Yes. I believe we are on a journey with Jesus-raised-from-the-dead. He reveals God to us. He reveals authentic humanity to us. He is “Lord,” “Son of God,” and our brother.

As I told my old friend, our faith has nothing to do with being a progressive or a conservative Catholic. And it is not some kind of sugar-coated piety. It is anchored in real life, with all its ups and downs…..

Perhaps during these forty days, we can best read a narrative like that of the Transfiguration and then calmly reflect what it means to be a traveller with Jesus in 2014.

I often think about the faith experience of the disciples, on the road to Emmaus. They didn’t recognize the Lord at first. When he disappeared, they commented: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us and opening the Scriptures to us?”

We continue on our Lenten journey.

Dear Friends

I am doing some technical updating with the domain name for my blog……

It may take a few days but I have not disappeared!

Jack

PS: You can always contact me at   jadleuven@gmail.com

What are you giving up for Lent?

For Lent 2014, I am giving up writing here about contemporary church events and people. I may come back to that, but right now I want to spend more time thinking about Jesus.

Back to the source!

This Lent I will offer my own historical and contemporary theological reflections on seven themes in our Christian tradition: Jesus’ Baptism, the Transfiguration, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost, and Being an Apostle. In no way will I simply rehash old stuff.

I intend to explore and explain who Jesus is for me today: the personal thoughts of a believer and an older historical theologian…..and I invite you to journey with me in your own exploration.

Jesus of Nazareth

Nearly all contemporary scholars agree that Jesus of Nazareth (7-2 BCE to 30-33 CE) was an historic person. There are questions about how closely the biblical Jesus reflects the historical Jesus; but general agreement that Jesus was a first century Jewish teacher, was baptized by John the Baptist; and was crucified in Jerusalem on the orders of the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate. Believers of course have a much fuller faith-picture of the man from Nazareth.

Baptized by John the Baptist

In the first chapter of the Gospel According to Mark — which most contemporary scholars now regard as the earliest of our existing gospels, written around 66-70 CE, during Nero’s persecution of the Christians in Rome — we read about Jesus coming to John the Baptist to be baptized. There is no birth story and nothing about Jesus’ childhood. We are told that Jesus was believed to be the fulfillment of the hopes and the writings of the prophets.

Then Mark gives a description of John the Baptist that identifies him with the prophet Elijah.

According to the Books of Kings, Elijah (in the 9th century BCE) defended the Israelite worship of Yahweh over that of the Canaanite god Baal. At the end of his life, he was taken up to the heavens in a whirlwind with fiery horses and chariot. In the Book of Malachi, Elijah’s return is prophesied “before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord.”

John the Baptist was well known for calling people to conversion and marking their conversion with baptism, a ritual purification. Jesus, and probably some of his young friends (in their late teens or early twenties), felt a call from God to lead a more devout life of faith. In the beginning they were all followers of John.

John the Baptist, in Mark, wears the clothing of the prophet Elijah and is a man from the desert. He lives on Elijah’s diet of locusts and wild honey. By portraying John the Baptist as an Elijah-figure, Mark directs his readers’ attention to the messianic images that suggested that Elijah must come first to prepare the way for the messiah.

John the Baptist is used by the author of Mark to play this role in our oldest existing gospel. This is not strict history. This is interpretive theological painting; and the audience for whom the evangelist was writing could immediately understand the symbols being used.

Jesus is baptized by John in the Jordan River. Jesus is pictured simply as an adult, a fully human male. Following the custom of the day, Mark introduces Jesus, by name, followed by his home town: “Jesus of Nazareth.” And then we see Mark’s first reference to something supernatural.

Mark says the heavens opened. Biblical authors pictured the earth as a flat disk floating in water, with the heavens above and the underworld beneath the earth. The firmament was a solid inverted bowl above the earth, which kept the waters from flooding the world. (When there was a need for water down below, God could open little windows and let the rains water the fields.) The realm of God was in the heavens above. The realm of humans was on earth down below.(On Ascension day a cloud comes down to get Jesus and take him up to the heavens; but we will explore that a bit later.)

Mark says the heavens opened, God’s Spirit came down and settled over Jesus like a dove; and a voice calls out from the heavens proclaiming Jesus to be God’s “beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Once again Mark draws from the Hebrew Scriptures. In Isaiah 42 we read: “here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul delights.” In Psalm 2 we read: “You are my son, today I have become your father.”

God’s Spirit does not come down on Jesus just for a short time. It dwells in Jesus permanently: Jesus of Nazareth becomes a God-infused human person. This was Mark’s way of explaining the source of the divine presence that was found in Jesus. (The later developing supernatural story of Jesus’ miraculous birth had apparently not yet been thought of or composed by anyone.)

Very quickly in the Gospel According to Mark, we see that John the Baptist and Jesus have a very different perspective on how God deals with the world. When John is arrested, we see Jesus and his followers, called by God, taking off in a new direction.

John the Baptist was rooted in Elijah’s vision of “the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord.” John was a fire and brimstone kind of preacher. When he looked at all the evil in the world, he saw a problem so radical that it would take some radical action from God to solve it. For John the Baptist, the coming of the Kingdom of God would have to be some sort of a divine catastrophic event to cleanse the world: “the great and terrible day of the Lord.”

We see something very different in Jesus. In the perspective of Jesus, the coming of the Kingdom of God is not what God will do to us in some great and fearful day but what God expects us to do right here and right now. And this is “Good News.”

God is waiting for us. That is what Jesus is talking about in the Kingdom of God. We are called to do something in conjunction with God, because we live in the Kingdom of God. And it becomes very clear, as Jesus, after baptism, so quickly begins his public ministry. Living in conjunction with God —being a person of faith — is much more than being simply an observant religious person. “The Sabbath was made for humans,” Jesus tells his critics, and “humans were not made for the Sabbath…”

Throughout his public ministry, Jesus, the God-infused, continually reminds his followers and reminds us about what God is waiting for us to do. The words of Isaiah, a prophet close to the heart of Jesus, become the words of faith.

We see it already in Isaiah chapter one: “What are your endless sacrifices to me?’ says the Lord. ‘I am sick of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of calves. I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats….Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean. Take your wrong-doing out of my sight. Cease doing evil. Learn to do good. Search for justice. Discipline the violent. Be just to the orphan. Plead for the widow….”

Good News indeed!

Pope Francis stressed on Thursday (February 27, 2014) in his address to the Congregation for Bishops that the church needs better bishops. “Genuine pastors,” the pope said. Amen.

The National Catholic Reporter stressed on Thursday (February 27, 2014) in its editorial that Pope Francis must act faster on the clerical sexual abuse issue: “When it comes to sex abuse, church officials continue to cloak themselves in secrecy, deceive the faithful, and act with impunity.” Amen.

Indeed, we continue being confronted with the age-old Catholic irony: an appeal for pastoral bishops and selective Vatican barrel vision.

I am still amazed, for instance, how the Vatican can so quickly dump priests and bishops who are open to new forms of ministry and not discipline those bishops who knowingly condone and allow the sexual abuse of children.

By way of example, I have very good recollections of what the Vatican did to a wonderfully pastoral bishop, Bill Morris, from the Diocese of Toowoomba in Australia.

In November 2006, Bishop Morris issued an Advent pastoral letter addressed to priests and pastoral leaders in Toowoomba. He predicted that by 2014 the diocese would have only 19 active priests left, including the bishop. He considered possible future options: ordaining married, single or widowed men; welcoming former priests, married or single, back to active ministry; ordaining women; and even the possibility of recognizing the validity of Anglican and Lutheran orders.

Three very angry Vatican cardinals began to call for his removal. Heated discussions followed. Finally in May 2011, in a face-to-face meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, he was sacked. Morris relates what happened: “Benedict says to me, ‘You are very gifted, you are very practical, you’ve got a role to play in the life of the Church, and it’s God’s will that you should resign.’” Morris was removed as Bishop of Toowoomba on the grounds of “defective pastoral leadership.” (A key instigator responsible for his removal was fellow Australian George Pell, the Australian cardinal recently appointed by Pope Francis to one of the Vatican’s most senior roles: Prefect for the Economy of the Holy See.)

In February 2012, Fr.Tony Flannery, a Redemptorist and founder member of the Associ­ation of Catholic Priests in Ireland, bestselling author and regular columnist with Reality magazine, was informed that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), was unhappy with some of his writings relating to priestly ministry in the church. In April 2012, he was suspended by the Vatican and was told that he would be allowed to return to ministry only if he agreed to write, sign, and publish a statement agreeing, among other things, that women should never be ordained as priests and that he would adhere to church orthodoxy on matters like contraception and homosexuality. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith pointed out that Flannery’s views could be construed as “heresy” under church law, and threatened “canonical penalties,” including excommunication, if he did not change his views.

On March 18, 2011, Fr. Roy Bourgeois was given a letter from Fr. Edward M. Dougherty, Maryknoll’s Superior General, and Edward J. McGovern, its Secretary General, warning Bourgeois that he had 15 days to recant his support for women’s ordination or he would face expulsion from the society. Bourgeois responded in a letter dated April 8, 2011, stating that he could not recant without betraying his conscience.

On July 22, 2011, 157 Catholic priests signed a letter, addressed to Dougherty, in support of Bourgeois’s priesthood and work, and his right to conscience.

On November 19, 2012, the Maryknoll Society’s Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers issued an official statement indicating that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had ruled, on October 4, 2012, that Bourgeois had been canonically dismissed from both the Maryknolls, and the Roman Catholic priesthood.

Pope Francis, as well, has been quick to sack “pastorally defective” priests. In September 2013 Francis excommunicated the Australian priest, Greg Reynolds. According to Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart, Reynolds’s excommunication was “because of his public teaching on the ordination of women,” which are grounds for automatic excommunication.

Nevertheless, encouraged by the public persona of the new Bishop of Rome, on January 14, 2014 Roy Bourgeois wrote to Pope Francis: “My pain at having been kicked out of the priesthood has allowed me to glimpse the exclusion and discrimination that people of color, women, and gay people in our Church have experienced for centuries. I will never forget how Blacks were restricted to the back pews of my childhood church in Louisiana. While the Church has made great gains in valuing and respecting Catholics of all races, we continue – with flawed theology and dogma – to make God our unwilling partner in discriminating against women and gays.”

No response yet from Pope Francis about Roy Bourgeois……nor about, pastorally defective bishops.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, Nigeria’s president has signed a new law criminalizing homosexuality. Arrests, physical abuse, and the victimization of gay people have increased tremendously in Nigeria. Key members of the Nigerian Roman Catholic hierarchy, however, have fully supported the country’s new law. In a January 2014 letter on behalf of the Catholic hierarchy of Nigeria, Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama praised Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan for his leadership in signing the new legislation.

The anti gay witch-hunt in Uganda is also now in full-force, since Uganda President Yoweri Museveni signed a new an anti-homosexuality bill into law on February 24, 2014. Uganda’s Catholic bishops have reaffirmed their opposition to homosexuality, but reserved judgment on the recently ratified bill imposing harsh punishment for homosexual acts in the East African nation.A spokesperson for the Uganda Episcopal Conference, Msgr John Baptist Kauta, said Uganda’s bishops were on retreat and would not be available for comments about the new law until March. “We normally don’t want to overreact,” he said.

Support for women’s ordination get a quick response from Rome. Why is there mo quick response — a reprimand or disciplinary sanction — for the African bishops whose support for anti-gay legislation has launched a reign of terror and cruelty against gay and lesbian people? Why no quick response from the man who so famously said, in July 3013 when asked about gay people: “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?”

Closer to home in the United States, there are ongoing concerns about bishops who should have been sanctioned by the Vatican for their complicity in the sexual abuse of children. So far these men are still comfortably in place on their episcopal thrones. NCR, of course and other major papers have covered their cases in great detail.

In Los Angeles, thousands of pages of documents have been made public that clearly show that retired Archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony, and his diocesan collaborators clearly shielded abusive priests from public scrutiny and law enforcement. Where is the Vatican outrage about Mahoney’s defective pastoral ministry?

Minnesota Public Radio reported earlier, in February 2014, that despite official archdiocesan reports that the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese’s list of “credibly accused priests” numbered 33, the existing list is closer to 70. Minnesota Public Radio further reported: “There were handwritten lists and emailed lists and memos about lists stored on computers and in filing cabinets at the chancery in St. Paul. Some men appeared on every list, others on one or two. All of the lists obtained by MPR News contain information that police have never seen. Chancery officials later stopped writing lists for fear they could be obtained in lawsuits, former chancellor for canonical affairs Jennifer Haselberger told MPR News.”

And of course…….the Oscar for delinquent diocesan bishops has to go to — envelope please — Bishop Robert Finn from Kansas City, Mo.

Robert Finn, Bishop of the Diocese of Kansas City – St. joseph, was convicted in 2012 of a criminal misdemeanor for failing to report suspected clerical child abuse. Nevertheless, Finn remains a bishop in good standing, while serving two years’ probation in Jackson County, Mo.

Finn is also a strong defender of Catholic orthodoxy and has warned the National Catholic Reporter (editorial office in Kansas City) that it is on Catholic thin ice.

In a January 25, 2014 column in the diocesan paper, The Catholic Key, Bishop Finn wrote: “In the last months I have been deluged with emails and other correspondence from Catholics concerned about the editorial stances of the Reporter: officially condemning Church teaching on the ordination of women, insistent undermining of Church teaching on artificial contraception and sexual morality in general, lionizing dissident theologies while rejecting established Magisterial teaching, and a litany of other issues.”

Meanwhile, a group of Roman Catholics in Kansas City has taken the responsible step of petitioning Pope Francis to discipline Bishop Finn. The formal request was sent to the Vatican along with an online petition signed by more than 113,000 people worldwide asking for Bishop Robert Finn’s removal.

So what does it really mean to be “pastorally defective”?

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A very short post script: Due to his very positive PR image, a few of my friends have begun to really chide me for any critical remarks about Pope Francis. All I can say is that, as I have been for most of my life, I am a believer and a Catholic convinced that critical thinking and questioning is a virtue and not a vice. It also alarms me when I read people, like New York’s Cardinal Tim Dolan, asserting that people who question church authority are basically secularists with an anti-Catholic agenda.

Annie Selak is a Roman Catholic lay minister who is Rector of Walsh Hall at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana. She holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. A year ago on Valentine’s Day, her reflections about the kind of church young people really want were published in the Washington Post. She had four main points. Sorting through my files, I came across her article and it remains as timely as ever. And of course: what young people want from the church is what a lot of older people want as well!

Annie wrote about a church that: (1) takes people seriously, (2) that is inclusive, (3) that embraces God everywhere, and (4) that struggles with big questions and is open to dialogue.

Annie’s four points launch my reflection for this week.

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Pope Francis is certainly changing the media’s perception of the Roman Catholic Church. Nevertheless the Catholic exodus continues. Francis is aware of the problem and focused on it this past July in Rio. “I would like all of us to ask ourselves today,” he said, “are we still a Church capable of warming hearts?”

If someone told you that only 20% of the students that graduated from a particular university could find employment, I suspect you would say that university really needs some shaping up.

This in fact, however, is exactly what’s happening in our American Catholic Church.

Yes. Only 20% of American Catholics, who pass through “our system,” are still with us by the time they reach 23. The other 80% drops out. A bishop friend told me recently that parish closings across the country are due to population shifts and not decreased numbers of Catholics. I agreed that he had a point, but I also suggested that when his gas gauge says empty and his car stalls on the expressway, he is probably out of gas.

The Bishop of Rome is great, when it comes to positive papal PR. Too many of his brother bishops, however, just don’t seem to get the point. Former Speaker of the U.S. House Tip O’Neill said famously that all politics is local. I would like to stress that all church is local; and that is where Annie Selak’s four points do or do not become real.

What about, for instance, the local church in Newark, New Jersey? The local archbishop there, known for his steadfast orthodoxy, is adding an addition to his “retirement home.” Archbishop John Myers’ currently inadequate 4,500-square-foot retirement home has five bedrooms, three full bathrooms, a three-car garage, and a big outdoor pool. The new wing on the archbishop’s humble residence (which he currently only uses on weekends), will include an indoor exercise pool, a hot tub, three fireplaces, a library, and an elevator. Perhaps someone should put a plaque in the front yard: “The poor you will always have with you.”

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(1) At all levels in the church, I want a church that takes seriously the life experiences of contemporary men and women. When it comes to the shortage of ordained ministers, the closing of parishes, exclusion of divorced and remarried, the firing of gays and lesbians from Catholic schools, or the firing of single parent mothers (to mention just a few recent church events and  issues) the local church seems terribly distant from what is actually going on in people’s lives. The church can recover from institutional sin and mistakes. It cannot, however, recover from being irrelevant.

(2) At all levels in the church, I want a church that embodies the inclusive kind of ministry we see in the life of Jesus. He consistently reached out to the marginalized. Nowhere in the Gospels do we see Jesus banning or excluding people from the community because they are women, or divorced, or have gay or divorced parents. He did say, once upon a time: “There was a certain rich man who was splendidly clothed in purple and fine linen and who lived each day in luxury.” (Were he speaking today he might have added: “…and he had a three-car garage, two swimming pools, and three fireplaces.”) At the rich man in purple’s gate lay a poor man named Lazarus who was covered with sores.  As Lazarus lay there longing for scraps from the rich man’s table, the dogs would come and lick his open sores……The story about the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) is an exhortation about living a new kind of life. It is an exhortation that the local church be a home (a church capable of warming hearts) for people who have no home: physically, psychologically, financially, socially, emotionally, and spiritually. All church is local.

(3) At all levels of the church, I want a church alert to the Divine presence in other Christian churches and in other religions. The pope emeritus warned about relativism; but diversity and unity are two concepts that go together. Younger Catholics especially, have grown up living with and alongside people from different churches and different religions, or no religion; and they see holiness and signs of the Sacred there. And they ask what the big God picture is really all about.

(4) At all levels of the church I want a church that struggles with the big ethical and religious questions and is genuinely open to dialogue. The hierarchy does not have all the answers to life’s big questions. It doesn’t even hear many of the big questions. And there will be new ones tomorrow. In all of our contemporary “relativism” and “secularity” we meet the living God. All of us in the church – and all of us in dialogue with each other — need to wrestle with the hard life questions. And, with one foot in Scripture and Tradition and the other in contemporary life, we need to engage the world. We don’t need to be spoon-fed static old theology. We need to wrestle with and grapple. We need to use our minds and engage our hearts. We need to debate, to think, and to pray. And we need to do all of this in parishes, schools, and chanceries across the country.