Table of Contents | MY SACRED JOURNEY: "Glimpsing the Mystery" Introduction. This story intends to provide an example, unorthodox though it may be, for people who aren't usually comfortable with religion yet are genuinely and earnestly seeking a life of meaning and belonging. The voices of other seekers, questioners and pilgrims are understood as valid by me. Although my commitment isn't a majority stance, it embraces much of the broad tradition of my Baptist background of openness and freedom. I am determined to be open to light from any source and that has made it essential for me to change my mind across the years. I am following some guidelines in these musings, namely, "commitment with civility," "conviction with openness" and "passionate belief short of dogmatism." I have already indicated in the Prologue, entitled In Una Voce Viva!, that I honor and welcome different, different not forte, voices and perspectives. This story comes from an unknown Baptist who warns you his peculiarities, religious views and commitments place him in the minority. Yet, if you read my article related to "Reclaiming Our Name" in The Church Room (3) then you may catch a glimpse of my particular perspective. The word of another expresses best my desire about other voices. "It's better to discuss an issue and never settle it than to settle an issue having never discussed it." Your thoughts on the perspectives reflected here are solicited. I welcome your response, your story. Why? Because I am eager to hear while I still have ears to hear and a tongue agile enough to reply! I invite you to describe your trek as a follower of Jesus. I am setting down a general picture of my years as a disciple. As I move inexorably to the segment of my personal pilgrimage wherein creative and reflective interchange with others diminishes, I have a growing hunger and yearning for the new world that is breaking in on us. I am utterly convinced that the dominant world view shaped by the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries and the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries is imploding. Moreover, "the mythology of Christianity," rooted in that world view, is being questioned, even rejected. For many people that world view neither explains nor clarifies anything anymore. So, with failing eyesight, I stretch to gain a view of the emerging new world through the dust and ashes of the old. That vision of a new world has revolutionized my life. So here's my story. Early years. I describe my early pilgrimage to help you understand my present perspective. My history has created crisis after crisis to push me to the future. The first crisis was thrust upon me by the voice of a secular and thoroughly modern peer when I was a teenager and my parents were my only authority in all things, religious and otherwise. The father of my neighborhood friend had just been cut from the Boston Braves! They moved into our neighborhood. The fact that he wasn't a baseball player anymore didn't mean anything to me. He was my hero and his son was my friend. This family had lived in several major cities and I believed that they were the most sophisticated people I had ever met. I was, literally, awestruck by this family that had experienced so much of the world. His alarming remark was framed like this late one Saturday night. "If you believe in God and religion and church and stuff like that because your parents tell you to do so then you are a fool. My parents tell me that there is no value at all in going to church and believing in God." I was so shocked that all I could muster was, "I don't know about you but I am going to Sunday School in the morning and I don't care what your parents think!" With that loving word of witness, I stomped inside and slammed the door in his face. I was dumb-founded by this friend. I had never before heard anyone express such shocking and unsettling ideas. My life was rooted in the church. The faith I was taught didn't make room for such heresy. My earliest brush with the teachings of faith was with fundamentalism, but a gentle and humble sort, not the abrasive and elitist brand I have encountered in my adult years. Yet I couldn't escape his words. I descended into a blue funk from which I never fully recovered until much later when someone pointed me to the Bible. My family had moved to Memphis by this time and I had become friends with the son of our pastor. When I admitted to some of my growing questions, his father told me that I ought to read the Bible for help in what was bothering me. Because it was respected and revered by more people than just my parents, I accepted the Bible as the final authority on all things religious. I didn't have to depend on my parents. I read it with relish and studied it regularly. The disruptive ideas of my friend were challenged by the insight, authority and wisdom of "the Book." This was a new foundation for my faith and life moved on with remarkable energy. But this didn't last long. At this point, I left home for college and was immersed immediately into new challenges. Another crisis grabbed me and shoved me toward the future. I found the intellectual discipline of a course in philosophy absorbing and challenging as well as threatening. I found that there were other holy books in the "ancient libraries" of the world's accumulated wisdom. For many other people the final authority in all things religious wasn't necessarily parents or the Bible. In that college class in philosophy someone pointed out that the Bible wasn't believed and trusted as a final authority by people in most of the Middle East. The Qu'ran was authoritative for the Muslim community around the world. The foundation that had supported me since my adolescent years began to crumble. I desperately needed some other place to stand. A book was recommended to me. I read it and found significant help but no foundational guidance for my struggle. The book was called Your God Is Too Small. Still, an understanding of faith rooted in a book, even a holy book such as the Bible or the Qu'ran, meant giving intellectual assent to the doctrines contained in the book. The difficulty of such a stance was apparent. I knew, for example, that much of what I had learned from my high school biology teacher conflicted with what I read in "the Book." Moreover, history is crammed full of the excesses of a view understanding the Bible in such fashion. According to Robert W. Funk in A Credible Jesus: Fragments of a Vision, when faith is narrowly defined, it is regarded as "a supernatural virtue that enables one to believe that God has revealed the divine will through Christ and the church." Faith, however, understood as trust, involves "seeing the world and other people for what they are when viewed through God's eyes." Thus, it is an avenue to the deepest dimensions of reality and to God. Faith, as intellectual assent, becomes legalism, fundamentalism and judgmental. Faith must be interpreted to mean trust. Funk writes, "The contrast between endorsing traditional religious doctrines and trusting that the world is so constructed as to provide for the basic needs of birds and lilies becomes evident when we observe the consequences of that trust." Marcus J. Borg, in his The Heart of Christianity, makes insightful distinctions between faith as assensus or fiducia or fidelitas or visio. Such a redefinition of faith occupied me for some years even if my reading of views such as those of Funk and Borg was decades ahead. The implications were in the distant future. Beyond the Book. My vocational interest in ministry pushed me to theological study so I set aside this crisis for a time. But my problems with authority and the Bible were only intensified. The more I examined these primitive documents of the faith the more I became suspicious of their value as the sole authority for religious life. However, the insight of scholars and theologians and writers offered me another perspective. These insisted that scripture has an instrumental purpose. It is like a compass, not a map. It pointed me in a specific direction but did not dictate to me the exact pathway. Scripture is means, not ends. The methodologies of biblical criticism that had been developed in Germany by scholars such as Rudolf Bultmann and Gunther Bornkamm were set before me. I drank deeply from these wells and came to see that the Bible was a thoroughly human document. Diverse, even conflicting, perspectives made this obvious. Moreover, the synoptic gospels didn't see Jesus through the same lens. The value of "the Book" was understood to be other than "the inerrant and infallible word of God." Such a view conveyed little meaning for me. That language describes a dimension of reality foreign to inanimate objects. You don't use a yardstick to measure electricity! Indeed, it may be possible to "hear" a word from God in the Bible but to declare it "word of God" is well-nigh incredible. Even though I didn't realize it at the time, the foundation for another place to stand was being laid. Behind these documents is a vision of history and a person stands at the heart of this vision of history. So I came to accept the Bible as a compass, not a map with precise instructions at every turn in the road. Rather, the Bible is a compass that keeps pointing to the north. That "north" is Jesus of Nazareth. He is, to confiscate Teilhard de Chardin's potent phrase, "the omega point" toward which all creation is drawn. The more I looked through the lens of scripture at him, the more I concluded that here was a new center for faith. Faith that is relational replaced faith that is propositional and cerebral. Indeed, "to the mystery of Godness, Jesus gave a face." Yes, here was a new place to stand! Jesus As Center. For many years, including many of those early in my life as a parish pastor, this vision of Jesus offered me a new sense of confidence and authority. As a friend asserted, I "bootlegged" gospel rooted in a person! "The Book" was simply a way of seeing and understanding faith as this one had faith. My faith was rooted in a person and I found that way of "doing life" exciting and challenging. But, even though this was the case, all wasn't well. Preaching may have found new authority for me but those who gathered for worship didn't share my excitement and enthusiasm. In that atmosphere I soon bought what Karl Heim wrote about the church in Christian Faith and Natural Science. "The church is like a ship on whose deck festivities are still kept up and glorious music is heard, while deep below the water line a leak has sprung and masses of water are pouring in so that the vessel is settling lower and lower though the pumps are manned day and night." The church seemed to me to be drifting aimlessly, caulking up the leaks as best it could and looking for some heavenly breeze to sweep it out to sea. But, even though the rudder seemed stuck, the motor missed and the captain on the bridge uncertain of the direction, I wasn't ready to jump ship. Still, the fact is that the stance of my faith failed to stave off the criticism of those in the church I was serving who differed with me over the questions and issues with which I felt compelled to wrestle. During the period when civil rights and Vietnam and peace claimed my energy and enthusiasm, I wrote a book that was entitled Radical Voices in the Wilderness: the Social Implications of the Prophets. In the process of writing that book and struggling with a congregation that rejected as inadequate and short-sighted much of what I thought as well as my take on gospel, I yearned for a new way of living my life and doing ministry. My support of those who were protesting discrimination, marching for peace, fighting the 'war on poverty' and calling for social changes to overcome the disparities between the have's and the have not's set me increasingly at odds with the people who paid my salary. I felt isolated and trapped in a provincial setting. My vision of Jesus placed him in those marches and protests. But where was I? Observing! Observing from safe sidelines! In Doubts and Loves: What Is Left of Christianity Richard Holloway confessed that for him it was "a chastening experience to realize that he had spent his life up to then talking about Jesus...rather than trying to walk in his footsteps." Those words felt like he had been peering over my shoulder! I decided that I should seek a perspective that could sustain me and diminish my reluctance to protest if conscience conscripted me to do so. If I were to continue as a parish pastor then I needed a perspective with some starch in it. I enrolled in the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University for guidance in my quest. I plunged into an intensive program in functional ecclesiology and wrote a dissertation that examined the dysfunction of the church as captive to race, class and culture. I entitled that study From Bondage to Freedom: A Model for Mission. I was committed to the task of determining whether there were theological tools available and potent enough to break the chains that deterred the church from its primary biblical and theological mission. Choosing the metaphor of Exodus, the "servant" theology in the poems of Isaiah and Bonhoeffer's notion of "the church for others," I developed a new vision of gospel and church. It was a compelling vision for me. I concluded that Colin Willliams, J. C. Hoekendijk, Robert Adolfs and others were on target with their views of the church. For example, in The Church Is Different, Adolfs argued that "the forms appropriate for the past are no longer appropriate or useful. The forms obedience took in response to a limited historical situation that no longer defines all of society are eroding away." "Gothic cathedral structures," wrote J.C. Hoekendijk in The Church Inside Out, "portray the image of a fortess, a bulwark of the quality of life symbolically acted out inside. The cathedral is symbolic of a stable society, a permanent rest point from which Christ the King stretches out his hands in blessing to all of life...." Because the sacral order that required the church be shaped as a Gothic cathedral is in a state of collapse, forms of the church must be developed based on a mythology expressive of this new world view. "What is struggling to be born is a new myth to replace the old myth of a metaphysical and sacral order. That myth aborning is the fundamental shift from a society of order to a society of change. This represents a shift from a fundamentally conservative view to an open, future-regarding view," contends Colin Williams in New Directions in Theology: The Church. I used that new vision to guide me across the years as a parish pastor. But the difficulty of leading a congregation from such a perspective in any denomination where growth and success and status are primary robs one of commitment to gospel. I felt like a traitor to my own vision at times. At this point I had the great good fortune of serving a parish that was struggling with its mission in a small town in southern Indiana. Moreover, it was near the St. Meinrad School of Theology where I was invited to be a professor of liturgy and preaching. My first offering was a course entitled The Theology of Preaching. It was a heady time for me as a Protestant parish pastor in a Roman Catholic school of theology. I examined the relevant documents of Vatican II and developed a viewpoint that took into account the Mass as an ellipse with the Liturgy of the Word as one focal point and the Liturgy of the Eucharist as the other. I argued that worship is rooted in the acts of God in history wherein God chose to disclose the divine nature and to share God's innermost joy with creatures who can freely respond. I asserted that preaching, understood as the "re-enactment of this redemptive event in history," took place in a human community identified in history as church. It came into being in response to a particular vision of reality, a vision defined by culture as well as by biblical and theological resources. I developed a series of lectures that included what I had written in my dissertation at Vanderbilt. The insights resulting from the collapse of the geo-centric world view hadn't been processed enough to influence my perspective. In this case, I tried to demonstrate the value of preaching in a sacramental community and rooted in the foundational documents of Vatican II. Moreover, the theoretical hypotheses of church gave way to concrete application as I helped the parish I was serving to open its life to people who were of a different race and to consider ministry to people in need. This period provided me the opportunity to reflect on the value of the functional ecclesiology I had developed. I didn't change my mind but I did struggle with the implications of my notion of church. The church did accept young men from the Job Training Center for worship but a Day Care Center wasn't within their vision of ministry and I felt like a failure even though their perspective had been enlarged. During those years I managed the "Monday morning syndrome" with a simple act. I took out a letter I had penned as my resignation. It ended with the confession, "I have the feeling that the better work I do for the gospel the less effective I am for the church." I read the letter and then I read the words of both Hebrew scripture and Jesus defining "whole religion." "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself." You see, my identity was described in that definition. When the congregation I was serving resisted, I found that I needed to have my faithfulness rechartered and renewed. I had to choose again the fundamental guidelines I would obey. It was a constant and unending struggle for me to stand by those words. Why was this the case? Well, I had an insatiable need to be successful. I had been raised on the wrong side of the tracks and the social status of my family was somewhere below zero. My father was a trucker and a member of the Teamsters Union, Jimmy Hoffa's union. I can even remember the first time I wore a pair of pants to school that hadn't been broken in by my brother! I can still remember being the only one who hadn't been chosen for a team to play baseball at recess and the humiliation I felt when some teacher insisted that I had to be chosen even though both captains objected. The details run on into my adult years but this sample is enough. Thus it was that I came to adulthood determined to be somebody, to succeed and to prove everybody wrong. This was still my modus operandi when I went away to seminary, when I began parish ministry and when, at 33, I stepped into a prominent pulpit in Tennessee to serve a congregation of 1,300 parishioners in the denomination Carlyle Marney referred to as "Baptists south of God." I write this because the way I went about ministry reflected my developmental struggle. Jesus was, indeed, the center and authority of ministry. Nevertheless, "doing ministry" was, essentially, the avenue to meeting my hunger for significance and status, not faithfulness to this one. Even in the face of the dictum of Billy Graham that the solution to all the problems of the world could be resolved by "accepting Jesus" and, therefore, having a "personal relationship" with him, I felt that the ground on which I was standing was shaky, to say the least. Civil rights, the war in Vietnam, the social changes promised by the "war on poverty," an imperial government that preferred deception and cover-up to honesty, doing ministry in a provincial and sectarian communion, the threat of nuclear conflict -- the litany was endless -- all of these challenges disturbed my vision of faith rooted in Jesus understood as lord and savior. I asked myself, "Why doesn't faith in Jesus provide a way to cope with these social problems? His lordship doesn't seem to have enough power to change anything. The only effect of Billy Graham's dictum is racially integrated crusades! His understanding doesn't keep him from embracing Nixon even when it is clear to 'the silent majority' that he is something close to a crook!" But I found no substantial perspective to replace that understanding. Other parishes received my energy during that time in my career. My emphasis on Jesus, not scripture, was acceptable to many if not all. I found that parishioners were intrigued by the modern critical view of the Bible. The understanding undergirding such ideas as the documentary hypothesis, source criticism, redaction criticism, the development of the canon, textual criticism and the synoptic problem was received with both curiosity and interest. With the urging of an inter-church group, I developed a curriculum for serious biblical and theological inquiry that was offered through the Department of Continuing Education at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. Moreover, one way to help with the issue of the centrality of Jesus was to deal specifically with the Bible. So, at times, I offered a series of talks on the Bible. They were understood as a means of whetting the appetite. I even admitted that I am a better "appetite whetter" than a "hunger satisfier!" Some of the lectures were (1) The Book in the Making; (2) The History of the Book; and (3) The Authority of the Book. I found that this was a valid way toward understanding Jesus as the center of faith, not the Bible. But, the more seriously I understood the "fragments" of the life of Jesus in "the Book," the more often I was at odds with received orthodoxy. Preaching about Jesus as lord and savior seemed bland, anemic and impotent in the modern world where "evangelism" was suspect as emotionally manipulative, religion was increasingly irrelevant and the church was re-arranging chairs on the deck of the Titantic. Somewhere along the way of my "perpetual journey to an unreachable destination," I decided that I needed a period to consider my remaining years as a parish pastor. I was awarded a Merrill Fellowship to the Divinity School of Harvard University. At fifty years of age I spent three months reflecting on human development as described by Robert Kegan in The Evolving Self, the nature of the Bible as seen through the lens of lectures on 1 Corinthians by John MacRae, the theology of Jonathan Edwards with Richard R. Niebuhr and the shape of ministry in dialogue with colleagues. I chose those areas because of my own interests. A free-church tradition has few liturgies that contribute to faith development. And, in my judgment, the tradition is passed along through liturgy, a claim of John Westerhoff and William Willimon in Liturgy and Learning Through the Life Cycle. Worship and preaching are quite different when the emphasis is on catechesis, not decision. So I spent time considering the implications of developmental psychology with Robert Kegan. He was a student of Lawrence Kohlberg, a recognized authority in the area. Here was a potential resource for understanding faith development. Again, my fundamental theological training in the fifties approached the documents of the faith from their rootage in Greek language and culture. But what if "the Book" is viewed through Jewish eyes? What fresh insight breaks through? Is Jesus understood differently? Only critical examination of a biblical document could satisfy this curiosity; what began then continues. The seminar wiith Richard Niebuhr was foundational. While at Harvard I attended Friday Eucharist in Andover Hall with Krister Stendahl presiding. I was enthralled and mesmerized by his gentleness, humility and insight. His homilies always startled me with their relevance for my need. He had made it and so could I! But maybe not as the Bishop of Sweden! My conclusion was that my love for the church would galvanize as well as guarantee my survival in parish ministry. So, as a trial balloon, I designed experimental classes rooted in what I described as Rediscovering the Bible. The results weren't impressive! Yet, my conviction that Jesus is the center of my faith was strengthened through this honest struggle. Jesus' Radical Love. But the challenges of modern society simply shoved me, reluctantly at times, to embrace Jesus as a first-century peasant who talked about "Empire of God" or "realm of God" in pithy sayings and parables and aphorisms. John Dominic Crossan's book The Birth of Christianity paints a vivid picture of what his life must have been like as "a first-century peasant" under pagan imperial domination. In his book entitled The Bible and the Literary Critic Amos N. Wilder claims, rightly I think, that "a cosmic outlook and orientation" is back of what Jesus expressed in his "alternative social vision" or "reign of God." This was a perspective developed against the backdrop of Roman rule. It was a vision of "the reign of God in which Jesus asks his hearers to trust God's goodness and power absolutely and to imitate God's indiscriminate generosity unconditionally." To do this, says Roy Hoover in Profiles of Jesus, "is to live the good life....This is the visionary way in which Jesus responded to the problematic social and religious situation of his time." So I came to see that he had a captivating charismatic flare and was one who espoused a radically inclusive love as the heart of his "alternative social vision." This simple perspective seemed adequate. Yet, it seemed too impotent to explain many centuries of dogmatic theology that had placed a halo over his head and a frame of moral perfection around his life. Why, for example, did Jesus opt for a radical program? Bernard Brandon Scott helps at this point. In his essay entitled The Reappearance of Parables in Profiles of Jesus, he confesses that there is a paucity of data and notes that the social sciences have provided a way to understand why Jesus made such a choice. But this approach isn't fully satisfying. What such an approach does explain is why the Empire of Rome was such an unstable society and why the Jews revolted. "What no social model can explain," he argues, "is why an individual decides to revolt. Social sciences deal with social groups, not individuals." Therefore, he looks in the direction of an "impressive and controversial study" by Frank Sulloway called Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics and Creative Lives. After a summary of the thesis of Sulloway's book, he concludes that latter-born birth rank, absence of a father and family conflict would put Jesus in the group most inclined to support a radical response. The data Scott uses to come to this conclusion includes James as his elder brother, the absence of Joseph from the stories in the gospels and known family conflict described by Mark and Luke. I was intrigued when I came across a parallel perspective about one of our nation's most famous founders. It's in a recent biography written by Walter Isaacson and entitled Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. Is it possible that Franklin was innovative and creative, in part, because he was the youngest son of a youngest son who chose to make his own way in the world marching to the beat of a different drummer? Isaacson writes, "Being the last of the litter often meant having to strike out on your own." The book by Sulloway may be "controversial" but it is also "impressive." Then, just as Professor Scott seems prepared to "profile" Jesus as a political revolutionary, he takes the road less traveled by recent scholarship and argues that Jesus, the oral storyteller, used parable as the window through which to gaze on his "alternative social vision" or Empire of God. That to which he points isn't a concrete program or blueprint. It is a "glimpsed alternative" or "re-imagined alternative" and, clearly, a "vision of a counter-world." Thus, he could be identified as a "poet!" Even a subversive one! "Born to rebel" isn't just a provocative description. It is a vocational choice with an "ordering vision" that transcends the present historical order by offering our life in history a sense of direction and purpose. Therefore, the one who is "born to rebel" just may turn out to be a "creative life!" With Seamus Heaney in The Redress of Poetry Scott concludes that the poet* "envisions a reality that can only be imagined" and creates a counter-world. Scott uses the parables of Jesus as the way Jesus created a counter-world and it was a vision utterly intolerable for the Empire of Rome. A subversive wasn't welcome even in a distant outpost of the Empire. Jesus chose a radical program and used parables to function as a revolutionary symbol of his "alternative social vision." Here was a story-teller using parables much the way Vaclav Havel used hope in his book Disturbing the Peace. "Hope," Havel wrote, is "a state of mind, not a state of the world....it trancends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons....It is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." A counter-world is one in which hope is understood in this fashion. It enables a person to "transcend the world" and enter the "counter-world." That's what Jesus glimpsed and what he wants us to glimpse too. Over the centuries, in an effort to explain the power and magnetism of this one, the church chose interpretations rooted in Hebrew tradition and Greek philosophy and compatible with life in "the Holy Roman Empire." For example, in an attempt to explain the meaning of the death of Jesus, early theologians developed a view that came to be called "penal satisfaction" doctrine. More recently, in his The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion, Gary Dorrien demonstrates how this view was displaced by a "moral government" theory at a different time in history. Theology as well as the shape of the church were impacted by the social environment of the day. Such categories, though understandable and descriptive for many in the context of ancient thought as well as historical development, were no longer meaningful to me. A striking, charismatic human? Yes. A divine Christ? No. But Jesus remained at the center of my faith, a place he still commands. In fact, he has become a more vital part of my life than was the case in any other time of my trek on a "perpetual journey to an unreachable destination!" Toward the end of active parish ministry and in retirement I began to embrace another perspective. The global environmental crisis, the transition from the industrial to the ecological age, the post-modern world view -- issues emerging from these changes called into question much of my understanding since the existing cultural paradigms were all flawed. Without turning away from the insights I had gleaned across the years, I began to read about "the new cosmology," the Jesus Seminar and the rediscovery of the human Jesus. I learned that many scholars are concerned with the way that "the mythology of Christianity" is geo-centric, anthropo-centric and metaphysical and, therefore, an interpretation inadequate as an explanation of the post-modern world. Too, I read about the shape of faith in a cosmo-centric universe. I kept hearing about this "new cosmology" and how it calls for a re-statement of "the mythology of Christianity." Some were even claiming that "the mythology of Christianity," since the Chalcedonian Creed and before the advent of "the new cosmology," was rooted in a theism reflecting a metaphysical view that has imploded. The Copernican revolution saw to that. Thus there are views, such as Christianity Without God, the title of a book by Lloyd Geering, and Why Christianity Must Change or Die and A New Christianity for A New World, both books by John Shelby Spong, that dismiss theism as a way of talking about God. Marcus Borg and Sally McFague present panentheism as a perspective to replace theism. His The God We Never Knew and her Models of God present this view. What I hear and read claims that the human needs some shape of mythology. But this "new mythology" should reflect a perspective that is cosmo-centric, ecologically responsible, egalitarian and religiously inclusive. Brian Swimme's The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos and The Universe Is A Green Dragon and Thomas Berry's The Dream of the Earth are books by some pioneers who are articulating the pathways into this new future. For example, Brian Swimme's book entitled The Universe Is A Green Dragon was an electrifying eye-opener for me. He recognizes that the cosmology of the old world view is usually depicted as originating in the rise of classical science in the 16th and 17th centuries and in the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. This renaissance of science was the work of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Descartes and Darwin. We came to regard the universe as a great machine and understood it to operate primarily in a mechanistic and linear way. But Swimme sees the universe as a living organism evolving in intelligence. All of the universe comes from the same stardust. The human species is a partner with all species in preserving the health and sustainability of the planet. Science and faith are reconnected and mystery and awe can be experienced once more. The universe cannot revolve around the human any more. He wrote, "We enter a period of enormous promise. The scientific-technological, Christian, masculine, individualistic, Northern European spirit joins with the ecological, animistic, feminine, communal native spiritualities in the creation of a new form of society whose significance towers over that of all other political or social events." And so he ends this astounding description of "the universe." Reluctantly, I came to the shattering conviction that revelation is a human construct. Years ago Joseph Campbell demonstrated this view in The Hero With A Thousand Faces. This meant that "the mythology of Christianity" was useful only in a world prior to "the new cosmology." Mirabile dictu! I have been here before. This concern for "a new cosmology" was parallel to the perspective I had encountered in my research while working on my dissertation at Vanderbilt. In The Church Inside Out J. C. Hoekendijk had argued, "Under the onslaught of a modern scientific understanding of the world, the underpinnings of the sacral order are being destroyed and the sacral order itself has virtually collapsed." Then, I discovered, the mythology that gave power, order and glory to human beings, since Plato and Aristotle, was that of the duality of reality. There was a sacred order "out there" from which truth was introduced into life "in here." The church was that reality, usually in the form of a Gothic cathedral, that mediated the sacral influence to us. Copernicus exploded this primitive geo-centric view centuries ago. At long last, we are processing his findings! In retirement and after some fifty years of active ministry, I moved to Indianapolis and became identified with the First Baptist Church of Cumberland as interim pastor. The congregation was still hemorrhaging from wounds inflicted by a relational Waterloo. I sensed in them an acceptance and openness that elicited from me a determination to help the church lay claim to a future of accepting grace and inclusion. Here I used all the skills that I had in my tool chest in developing a vision of church as "accepting, non-judgmental and open." I dusted them off and offered them as gifts for their common life. So, as a result of a year of intensive study, when a staff member announced that he was a "gay, Christian man," the foundation I had helped construct held even though a substantial number of "nickels and noses" rushed away like tumbleweeds before a west Texas windstorm! A loyal and committed congregation, though diminished in numbers yet buoyed by a hopeful and unflagging spirit, determined that "open, non-judgmental and accepting" still described their vision of the church. They retained the man who is gay on the staff and called a pastor. And are journeying in their "land of promise." I set down the story, in broad brush strokes, because this is the clearest example I have encountered in ministry of a gospel of grace. Other churches, maybe even all, insist that their welcome is extended to everyone even when their rejection of people who are different undercuts their claim. But, here, there is empirical data to substantiate the claim! In companionship with this congregation I have been set free to pursue the full implications of what I am thinking and reading. The writings of John Shelby Spong, the Jesus Seminar, Walter Wink, Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, Karen Armstrong, Sally McFague, Harry Moore, etc., have challenged me to explore faith in a world without the trappings of institutionalism, theism and orthodoxy. The Subversive Storyteller. Even though it took me a long time to arrive at this understanding, the vision of a human Jesus as "a subversive Galilean sage," as one who ate at an open and inclusive table, as one who forgave without exacting penalties or promises, as one who rejected open displays of piety as religious posturing and who insisted that immediate access to God is always available -- this revised understanding gave me another place to stand! So I now understand Jesus as companion for my journey, model for my life, the symbol of God and the way to the eternal embrace of God's love. Of course, this wasn't the way my life as a follower of Jesus began. Early in my life faith was determined by acceptable behavior and right belief and believing in Jesus as savior and lord and attending church faithfully. This would guarantee me a spot in heaven, at least in the bleachers! I concluded that H. G. Wells was accurate when he described Jesus as "easily the dominant figure of history." The impact and attraction of Jesus was understood to mean he was an exciting and uncompromising person. His teachings were rigorous and demanding. I drank freely from the inexhaustible source of his love. My burning passion during this lengthy period of my life was to make others aware of this one whose life was of supreme significance. A sermon entitled The Challenging Personality of Jesus typified my perspective. In that sermon, I quoted the striking words of James S. Stewart, from The Strong Name, about the power of this one in the face of the Empire of Rome. "Yes, Rome pitted her power against him. But the fact still remains that neither laughter nor with force nor with the massive arguments of her philosophers nor by the might of her thundering legions could Rome stop Jesus. What actually happened was that Jesus stopped Rome and, on the dust and ashes of her broken splendor, set the foundations of the Empire of God. And men and women of all the centuries and all the nations have found that in him the quest is over and the goal is won." I said, quoting Harry Emerson Fosdick, "One name alone is stamped on the brow of the hurrying centuries and it is the name of Jesus Christ. Here is a peasant in the darkest age of the world; he lived in a subject province; he never wrote a sentence which has been preserved; he died when he had scarcely reached manhood and he died cast out by his own people and abandoned by his scanty handful of followers. And, yet, twenty centuries after he hung on the cross, his birth is accepted, by believers and unbelievers alike. His birth is accepted as the point from whence all the centuries must be counted. He has lifted, with his pierced hands, empires off their hinges, turned the stream of the centuries out of its channel and still governs the ages." Jesus was, for me, savior and lord, even if he was ever so much more human. But a strong and vital human being! I preferred what Donald Miller wrote in his book, The People of God, "The sentimentalized Jesus...is not one before whom people would fall on their faces and certainly he would frighten away no devils! He is one whom nobody would crucify and for whom few, if any, would be willing to die. He could not have brought the church into being nor could he have sustained it through all the tortuous course of the long centuries. In this day we need, yes, even demand, one who is a courageous example." At the essential core of my faith was the conviction that the challenge of Jesus was such that he brought about the change of people of every walk of life and of every century and every nation and I yearned for parishioners to experience that change. I can illustrate that change with an experience. In 1960, while living in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in Central America, I travelled to a little village called Los Cedros or, in English, "the cedars." A local missionary had invited me to visit a tiny mission station in the backwoods some three hours drive from the capital city. When we arrived at Los Cedros we found a small group of believers. I thought to myself, "Here is evidence of the power of Jesus to change." As I sat at a rough-hewn table in abject poverty, eating a cake that was less than appetizing and drinking a cup of coffee, I saw something of the power of Jesus. This was the shape of my faith as well as illustrative of the One who was at its center. So, if I had faith in this Jesus as lord and savior then "Beulah land" was surely attainable. I tried this way but.... Companion for My Journey. My "sacred journey" isn't eschatological anymore; it is geographical and rooted in a specific understanding of discipleship. Marcus Borg, in Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, says that discipleship "means to be an itinerant, a sojourner; to have nowhere to lay one's head, no permanent resting place. To journey with Jesus," he says, "means listening to his teaching -- sometimes understanding it, sometimes not quite getting it." It means "eating at his table and experiencing his banquet." It means sitting down at the banquet table of grace and finding that some of the very people others can't accept are right there at your elbow and across the table and laughing and singing because God set a place for them and invited all of them to the table. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said as much in an interview when he was at Notre Dame University to give an address entitled The Struggle for Social Justice in Post-Apartheid South Africa for the Conference on Peacebuilding After Peace Accords. He observed wryly, "We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low." Maybe I won't ever arrive in "Beulah land" but I don't care because the journey is so exciting and fulfilling! Besides, "playing a harp" and "treading streets of gold" and "singing in the angels' choir" aren't for me. I'd rather look up Paul and hear his explanation of why he said what he did concerning women and homosexuality! Someone needs to correct him. Assuming the women ahead of me will want to hear his "final answer" before they let me at him. At the same time, the provocative and shadowy figure of one who spoke in parables and aphorisms and appeared to glimpse a reality beyond anything I presently understand seems always out ahead beckoning for me to follow. He keeps inviting and encouraging me to probe and explore his vision of God, a vision that isn't tyrannical and vindictive. Moreover, he keeps on nudging me in the direction of a human existence that is life-affirming, open to light from other sources and is both compassionate and passionate. The more I listen to that haunting voice, the more I am intrigued by this one. Did he, like Moses, get a glimpse of God that explains his "alternative social vision?" According to Exodus 33 Moses glimpsed God's back side. Then he acted on what he had seen. He trumped the ancient legal code of reciprocal justice by replacing it with covenant, a radical social vision rooted in distributive justice. Moses saw something or Someone that called into question ancient rules. Was it more than "a cosmic outlook and orientation?" Was Jesus' glimpse of God the epiphany from which emerged his astonishing vision? Would just a glimpse change a person so radically? Did he see something or Someone who utterly changed him? Must I embrace his vision? Do I need to see what he saw before I am able to continue on "my perpetual journey to an unreachable destination?" I think I know the answer to my dilemma. I find it illuminating to describe my discipleship as journeying with Jesus or "a sacred journey" or moving on "a perpetual journey to an unreachable destination." My vision isn't behavioral anymore; it is a dynamic journey. Thus, it is appropriate to indicate that I have paused at every oasis along the way to slake my thirst, to refresh and assess my most recent learning, to check out who is still traveling with me, to reflect on my trek and to engage in conversation with others who are companions. My commitment to Jesus as companion, model, symbol and a way into the embrace of God's love has laid hold on my imagination again. I have come to the conviction, a jarring insight I admit, that my faith is now moving to envision God as the core of my faith. I don't need a glimpse or a place to stand because the Holy One has embraced me! O happy day! Another Stance. Do I dare voice this new stance? I choose the words of Robert W. Funk in Honest to Jesus to express what I am trying to articulate. You see, I am not primarily concerned any more with Jesus and who he is. I know this may be heard as scandalous and heretical by some but, remember, I said primarily. I am concerned with "the truths that inspired and informed Jesus...." He pointed to "something he called God's domain, something he did not create, something he did not control. I want to discover what Jesus saw, or heard, or sensed that was so enchanting, so mesmerizing, so challenging that it held Jesus in its spell...." I yearn to see what he saw. And he was just as eager for me to see! Glimpses of "the mystery." Intimations from "beyond." Sightings of "the holy." Visions of "God." All of these are hints or clues to what he saw. Do I see what he saw? With trepidation and humility, I whisper, "Yes! I see!" And the image of that one, as well as the domain to which he yearns to alert us, grows ever clearer! It's the "shining possibility" of a new domain! It's a realm of incredible love and peace and justice! Jesus saw it and that's why he talked so much about an "alternative social vision" or Empire of God. He yearned for the human community to enter that domain and to encounter that one whose embrace is unutterable grace and love. I still wonder about this new glimpse of another way of accompanying Jesus on "a perpetual journey to an unreachable destination." Maybe, like Moses, it isn't for me to cross over to the promised land. Maybe I am to be simply a pilgrim wandering in the desert, checking out the lay of the land, avoiding wrong turns, watching for any straggler who may have stumbled and keeping my compass steady and pointing north. But as long as I have companions for my trek and Jesus at my side, I am content. At least, as Marcus Borg puts it, "Jesus is the side of God turned toward us." So, somehow, he is more than a guide or compass or a beacon. Moses saw God's back side and had to be satisfied with his holy wanderings short of "the promised land." But he was content. Maybe, what I have sighted from afar is enough too. I am utterly convinced that I have seen "that merciful mystery." It has taken me most of my life to see what Jesus saw. But I am grateful for the incredible life my pilgrimage has been because of Jesus. I still believe that life is richer when lived as a disciple of Jesus, that grace is at the heart of life and that he is out ahead calling me on to a life of splendor. I still seek to listen to his voice. Then, while my venture of exploration is vivid, I look up and there is Jesus out ahead beckoning and luring me on and urging me to join him because he has seen God's realm in all its simple glory and he wants me to see it too! Maybe, just maybe, I can follow. At least, I know he's not going to run off and leave me. He just wants me to see what he sees. And there are other stragglers among his friends. Some of them even limp! My "perpetual journey to an unreachable destination" has had numerous phases. At the center of each phase was a specific understanding of authority, the Bible and Jesus. First, it was my parents. Their perception of the faith was always that which served as my guide. It can be described or labeled as a pious form of fundamentalism without an elitist claim. This was followed by the Bible as the center of faith and I took delight in what I found in its rules, stories and examples while avoiding those who didn't. I memorized bits and pieces to provide guidance. My life was consumed by seeking out the rules, examining the various injunctions found in scripture and living by them blindly and uncritically. It was biblicism of the most conservative type. But this perspective never ignored new light. So, next, Jesus Christ as savior and lord moved to center stage in my vision of "the story" and I relished the challenge of sharing this perspective with others. Jesus was the center of my faith, not the Bible. It was a Christo-centric perspective. Then I moved on to see that my source of authority was rooted in the understanding of Jesus as an authentic human being. Still I hadn't been challenged by "the new cosmology." So I had another leg of my journey to traverse. Finally, I came to see the center of my faith in the "gracious mystery" Jesus described with relational terms such as "Father." What the church has to give the world isn't its creeds, dogmas, doctrines and liturgies, even though these traditions have power and validity for many. What the church has to give is a glimpse of the "holy one." Even a glimpse is life-changing! At least for me. Years ago in The Quest of the Historical Jesus Albert Schweitzer expressed something of what I see. "He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake side, he came to those men who knew him not. He speaks to us the same word, 'Follow thou me!' and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey him, whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the toils, the confllicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in his fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who he is." Yes, in my own experience, I have, indeed, learned who he is. Even though I look beyond him to catch a glimpse of "the ineffable mystery," he is the one who pointed me in the direction of grace! Thanks be to him, I have "glimpsed the mystery." Thus, I am eager, using John Shea's description quoted by Marcus J. Borg in Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, "to gather the folks, tell the stories, break the bread," and, then, continue my "perpetual journey to an unreachable destination" in company with all kinds of human beings who have invited me to journey with them. Conclusion. Care to tell me about your journey? As Steve Hartman of CBS News reminds us, "Everybody has a story." I'd sure like to hear yours. On my trek, there's always room for one more story or one more pilgrim or one more venture! Maybe my journey is over and I'm home at last with plenty of time to listen. As far as I know, however, my number isn't due to be called anytime soon. Therefore, just in case, I keep the drapes open, my door ajar and my bags packed! If any new glimmer of light beckons, I'm ready. I just might get another glimpse of the merciful Mystery if I am ready to see. Or, like Moses, of God's backside...! If not that One then maybe Jesus. I sure want to be ready in case I get the summons before "the roll is called up yonder." After all, I did say that it's "a perpetual journey to an unreachable destination!" Most of my life I have wondered about what I was seeing. I've had a lot of well-meaning and earnest evangelicals badger me across the years about who I was seeing and that I should get to know him personally as lord and savior. I took them at their word and, lo and behold, as I got to know him personally during these many years, I found one who was rugged, courageous, friend of the outcast and down-trodden and the center of controversy. He ate at table with many social rejects of his day. So he wasn't welcome in very many places in Nazareth or Jerusalem. I doubt that he would be all that welcome in the churches of those evangelicals who were determined to convert me to their brand of religion. I am certain he wouldn't be welcome in the homes of many religious folk today because he is so careless with his invitations about who can journey with him. He invites everyone. Their social status or sexual orientation or race or gender or financial standing doesn't disqualify anyone. I found that he bears little resemblance to the portrayal by the evangelicals of one who is for what we are for, against what we are against, goes where we go and stays away from people and places we stay away from, goes to a "seeker friendly" church when and where we go, blesses our business and makes us prosperous, flies our flag, waves our banners, fights our wars and cites our orthodox dogma. Despite the fact that he did none of these things while he was here, some believe that he would do all of these things now. What I found was a distant relative, at best, of the Jesus of my earlier years. With mind and heart open to new light and insight, I found that he is "a subversive poet" with "an alternative social vision!" Or, if you prefer, I glimpsed "a subversive story-teller" with a unique gift for framing a counter-world with aphorisms and parables, a counter-world he called the Empire of God and scholars call his "alternative social vision." In effect, according to Marcus J. Borg in The Heart of Christianity, Jesus says, "Faith is not about me" and then points beyond himself to God -- to God and that counter-world of unutterable grace and peace and love. I now understand this human Jesus as companion for my journey, model for my life, the symbol of God and the way to the eternal embrace of God's love. I am willing to bet that this wasn't what they had in mind for me. But I see what I see! Any way, maybe, maybe, I am already living in "the promised land." Jesus kept pointing me to the Empire of God that is this realm of love and peace. Maybe I have seen all that I'm going to see. Maybe I need to simply enjoy. Perhaps I should go into the banquet hall where a bountiful feast of grace is already on the table. There I can forget about seeing and see about eating! It's a sumptuous feast and the menu is grace, love, compassion, acceptance, justice, peace and six stone jars of wine from the wedding reception of Cana. Folk from every race and nation are already there laughing and singing and dancing and drinking and eating. I don't know the names of all of them but the doors of the banquet hall stand wide open! I'm guessing that someone went out into the highways and hedges and brought them in to the party. They are rich and poor, male and female, gay and straight, educated and uneducated, laborers and management, Protestant and Catholic and Orthodox, religious and irreligious, black and white and people of color and maybe even Muslims and Jews. I think I caught a glimpse of Jesus at the far end of the hall lifting a toast to one and all. A glimpse is about all my poor eyesight permits and the food is so rich and tasty that a little goes a long way. But that fleeting glimpse of him has been luminous. And enough! Would you believe it? Life is indeed about meaning and belonging. Both found me when I finally looked up and glimpsed the mystery to which Jesus had always been pointing! At long last, that counter-world that Jesus called Empire of God was embracing me and I felt as if I were in a cocoon of love. ______ *In Context for April of 2004 Martin E. Marty describes what he calls "a poetic spirituality;" he is reporting what he learned by reading a review of Jane Kenyon: A Literary Life. There are striking parallels between reviewer John A. Timmerman's description of a poet's faith journey and what Scott sees in Jesus. Timmerman writes, "Often this quality -- this powerful immersion -- gives rise to poems of such luminous beauty that they haunt the inner eye and change the way we look at the world...." Jesus used parables, according to Professor Scott, to point to "an alternative social vision" or counter-world or Empire of God. And when you see it, that's "the blazing light!" |