voices in the trees

Love in the Fire

The first mention of Pentecost as a feast of the church comes in the second and third centuries. Before that, it probably remained a Jewish feast migrating from a harvest festival celebrated fifty days after Passover, to a celebration of the giving of the Law. 

In both the Orthodox and Western churches, Pentecost is a celebration of the animation of the church by the Holy Spirit. At one time, it was considered the second most important feast after Easter. In Canada, it has had a struggle as it often coincides with a major secular holiday —the first long weekend of the warmer season — Victoria Day. 

I was ruminating on how the people of Hawaii would react if they heard the Pentecost story this year for the first time. The early experience of the God of Israel was that of a thunder god who spoke from his mountain. I sometimes reflect how frightening it would be to actually experience uncontrollable, unexpected fire and gale force winds. We call out to the Divine to come to us, but I think we would like God in manageable pieces, not overwhelming like the magma from the earth’s core or the hurricanes and tornadoes that devastate the land.

The incarnation begins the conversation by inviting us to open ourselves to the divine, letting ourselves be filled and inspired from the inside out. Jesus attempts to encourage the disciples to make themselves part of the storm, both on the sea and in the courts of society. Standing apart leads to terror; embracing the storm with love and forgiveness brings power.

And so these peasants, these very ordinary people who have moved from cowardice to bravery, from doubt to faith, from simplicity to complex thinking, are now invited to embrace a new storm that will lead them to inclusivity and change, and for most of them, martyrdom. What makes what they do different than charismatic cult figures? Its the context. They are not living for their own glory or status any longer. They exist only to serve Jesus. 

Their passion is for the story of Jesus’ incredible compassion, his sense of justice and his promise of abundant life for all people. It is love now that fuels them, not ego. Their purpose will draw them away from their own people, their own safe assumptions. Their past will be burned away and they will be given new ways to assess the world, because their vision is that of Jesus. Their future too has moved from the safe and predictable to the uncharted seas of the unknown. The wind that has whipped around and through them will become the breath with which they speak with the authority of lived experience in relationship to Jesus. 

And what will animate us as the church? What will burn away our prejudice and fear and open our hearts to love and reconciliation? Here is a reading from the Gospel of Mary in which Levi has scolded Peter for attempting to silence Mary: “Instead we should be ashamed and, once we clothe ourselves with our full humanity, we should do what we have been commanded. We should announce the good news as the Saviour ordered, and not be laying down any rules or making laws.” As the church, it is time to open the doors of our hearts and minds again, and admit all the people. We have only one rule: to love without limit or exhaustion.

God of the Restless World

I wonder how many people arose at dawn to watch the royal wedding? I know all kinds of folks who recognized that something had changed in the world to make this wedding possible; and this couple, regardless or because of their wealth and talent, could make this a seed for more changes to come.

We all need hope. Although the couple moved through certain traditional and privileged routes, they re-arranged the scenery along that route and they themselves represented grace and simplicity in their persons. I was delighted to see it because I have otherwise felt discouraged this week. The church that I love and to which I have given my life, seems to have returned to old debates that those of us with greying heads had hoped were behind us. I think we are witnessing the last desperate gasps of christendom. I just hope it doesn’t grab and drag us all down too.

There are three areas in which I hope we will watch and react. The first is inclusive language. To insist on language that does not exclusively idolize male, powerful, monarchical imagery, is to embrace the vulnerability of Jesus who confronted that very same dominance with his the sacrifice of his life. Language has power to lift up and to destroy. We give permission for violence whenever we allow one kind of  exclusive imagery to dominate over others. When we speak of humanity, we acknowledge our common source which does not recognize any difference, even in terms of worthiness. And we blaspheme every time we say that our naming of the Divine is complete and closed. We cannot speak of the Divine except in the metaphors of experience because the truth is too large for our cerebral context. Thus, Jesus becomes the Law for us; his life the model, his love for others our method.

The second is the challenge of experience over traditional doctrine. I say traditional because doctrine means a teaching, but true learning comes from the fluidity of the teaching, a reciprocal relationship amongst the thing to be studied, the learner and the teacher. We know that light can be measured in different ways. We know that our world is not as simple as we once thought, from the nanosphere to the “vast expanse of interstellar space.” (BAS, p. 201) We commit a presumptuous sin every time we say that we believe something in the sense that we think we have all the information we need so the book is closed. History has taught us that even our lived past has perspectives and different layers of fact. Contemporary biblical and historical scholars challenge us to open ourselves to deeper and more demanding insights. 

One example may be how we deal with the incarnation. When I first started as a priest, I was astonished at how many lay people had given up on the idea of an immaculate conception but thought they shouldn’t upset their priests. I was delighted when Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan (“The First Christmas”) opened their analysis with an explanation of the underlying motivation, which was to challenge Rome’s presumption to divine authority. I offered this in the form of a little play called “A Tale of Two Mothers.” (It can be found on this blog site.) To see in this story not divine power but the holiness that lies within the creation waiting to be uncovered, waiting for us to become aware, waiting for us to open ourselves in joy and wonder. The incarnation is not about a simple girl impregnated by God but about a simple young woman who dedicated her pregnancy, her child to be, to the vision of God’s justice and favour; a devout person who gave her heart, in faith and trust. 

An example of how modern thinking can widen our appreciation for biblical insight is the story of the Ascension. Buckminster Fuller remarked once that there is no up or down in a round world. A theological conclusion now for the story is not that Jesus has “Gone Up” to a heavenly power, but that the good news of Jesus is released everywhere in the round world. Jesus’ love belongs to neither tribe nor culture but encircles the world with the blessing of compassion. It is yet another sign of how the good news is inclusive, available, without price or condition, or even awareness perhaps.

The third area I have alluded to is how we make decisions as a church. What informs our values? Is it obedience to the past, or deep attention to the stirring of the Spirit as the theological furnishings in the present house is rearranged? In Matthew 13:52, we hear the parable of the householder who becomes a disciple and brings out of the storehouse treasures old and new. I love discovering underneath something worn the possibility of something new. And I love seeing in something new the thing that will become tradition. We don’t have to force this. It is a natural process. We should neither have to rush this process nor delay it. More praying, less arguing; more creativity and “tinkering” and less fearful withholding and the erection of barriers. As we move from dualism to a sense of the whole world of God’s creation and love, we are invited to be less divisive and more a force of reconciliation. We need to stop thinking of darkness and light as opposites, but see them as balances for each other. No more us and them, no more orthodox and heretical. We will be in a state of holy chaos becoming order becoming chaos as long as we are part of this material universe that we know. Perhaps there is another doorway that leads to a less/more vibrant, less/more burgeoning path, but this is the world in which we live within the embracing love of God.

Finally, I think we need to learn how to trust that the Holy Spirit is at work within our institutions and within our lives. When I remember that, my serenity is restored. It is not up to me to save anything; the Holy is at work always and all ways. We can slow the process down by digging in our heels, “kicking against the pricks,” in the words of the old translation of Acts 9:4. We know how well that worked for Paul, who became completely bound to the inclusive, welcoming, demanding vision of Jesus. Even if we fight the innovation and passion of the spirit, we will only blind ourselves to possibility of life lived inside the miracle of Jesus, who brings the holy Trinity of Love, Life and Passion to those who would become his hands in the world.

In change, wisdom

Let me hear the question that teaches me to hear the question

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Source of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your intentions and commitment enlightened you may know what is the hope to which he has called you…. (Ephesians 1:15-23)

What was Paul suggesting to the community of the Way, the disciples of the resurrection? The first thing to unpack in this excerpt is that heart in Greek has less to do with feelings and more to do with moral character and resolve. 

The other comment to consider is the nature of wisdom and revelation. Wisdom traditionally means the capacity to learn from teachings, teachers,  and experience. To be wise in Hebrew Scriptures requires humility, discipline, and trust in the Holy One, regardless of the circumstances of our lives at any given time. 

Revelation, rather than being what we learn, relates more to our awareness of the working of the Spirit; it lies in our openness to recognizing the Holy and the activity of holiness in our midst. 

Paul and the early church were working through what it meant to feel this mysterious but powerful calling to Christ, and how to understand this calling in the light of their traditions. For Jews, Christ sounded like many of the Wisdom teachers. They recognized him as a rabbi. He embodied the qualities of humility, discipline, and trust that were the hallmarks of the enlightened person. His capacity for compassion and inclusivity challenged those first churches to be courageous, audacious even, in expressing their calling. 

This new sect of Judaism found its faith to be a way of life, more than a set of doctrines or cultural rules. In many ways, I think they could hear the message of the prophets in these new expressions of faith. They re-invented or dismissed practices that collided with the mandate to love, to connect, to tell the good news of the power of life, and the power of freedom from fear and guilt.  It must have been an incredible struggle as they sorted through what they valued, what had defined them and what they they were becoming. It is clear that Paul, too, was prodded by competing questions about traditional practice and worried about what to keep and what to release. 

Despite the condemnation of Rome and others with power, people were drawn initially to the spirit of liberation and compassion that prevailed in those first communities. Even with the enthusiasm of converts, however, the fledgling communities had difficulty maintaining their focus.If you read the first chapters of the book of revelations, you will see that they too had failures and confusion about their mission.

The church became an institution, then we became a failing institution, because we forgot the Way, we forgot our purpose; we lost our moral imperative. Whenever we find ourselves in trying times, we need to remember that historically, when we forget our task: to be bearers of compassion, to be orators of hope, to love everyone, we are failing. There is only one way and it will always be blessed with the presence of the Risen Christ, not up in the sky but in the lives and faces of others. Our spiritual focus must be fixed on the sacred in the ordinary, on an openness to revelation, and a conviction that it is in sacrifice that we find wealth.

The hope to which we in the church have been called is to believe, with passionate fervour, that when we are in error we will be winnowed until we get it right again. And when we are serving the one who loved all people, we will experience the abiding presence of love and life, community and peace.  

A prayer for Wisdom

Holy Wisdom, Sophia,
Word that is both intention and action
Be our guide
Teach us you truth, our experience broadened
by your insight, the breath that is Divine

In your gaze across the millennia,
The birth of and death of
Stars and civilizations.

Show us the holiness that began with you
That leads us to completion and new birth
Teach us to be slow as mountains and trees in knowing,
and quick to learn from your sacred teachers,
Who wear the marks of compassion and courage

Be our gateway and our companion
through our lives and throughout the
Garden of our world
May we learn Wisdom, the heart of the Maker
And the Spirit of Jesus

Ainu (Indigenous people of Northern Japan) totem located in Kushiro Park,Burnaby Mountain, BC. This is one of a group of beautiful sculptures that make up The Playground of the Gods envisioned and realized by Toko Nuburi, an Ainu woodcarver. Kushiro, Japan is the sister city of Burnaby, BC.