William D. Paine

Like most Americans, I spent a good portion of yesterday watching the Inaugural festivities on television.  Regardless of my personal politics, there is something truly awe-inspiring about the peaceful transfer of power between rival parties, especially when I consider how unusual it is in so many nations of the world today.  Even though I was not an Obama supporter during the elections, I do believe that he is a good man at heart, one who will wear the majesty of the office with the humility it requires.

I looked at yesterday’s Daily Office readings to see what inspiration I could find with respect to the Inauguration.  What caught my attention was Mark 3:19-35.  In the passage, a group of scribes are once again attempting to discredit Jesus’ preaching, this time by insidiously suggesting that since Jesus is so good at casting out demons, he must be in fact the ruler of those demons— he must be Satan or one of Satan’s minions.  Jesus responds with a passage often quoted in the context of the American Civil War:

If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.  And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.

This has application to our politics today as well.  Political debate has become so acrimonious, so charged with vitriol, that too many of our political leaders get lost in the tactics of political victory to the detriment of strategic visions of the greater good.  Much of the opposition to anything and everything done or proposed by Bush and the Republicans comes from knee-jerk hatred of the source instead of thoughtful consideration of the merits.  Now, I see Obama proposing and supporting concepts that are, on close analysis, not very different from his predecessor’s, yet, because it is coming from Obama, opposition is muted and largely confined to the fringes of the political spectrum.

Certainly there will be policies I will disagree with, but I hope that I do so from a position of respect with an open mind and an open heart.  I do not want to see my country divided the way it has been; instead, I want to see us working together to accomplish great things.  A house divided will not stand.

Those of you who know me well will wonder that I’m so willing to embrace the new President.  After all, I’m fiscally conservative with a somewhat libertarian bent when it comes to social issues.  For insight into my thinking, look at the final section of the reading from Mark:

A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.’  And he replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’  And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers!  Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’

In terms of political family, Obama may not be my ‘biological’ brother, but I believe he is striving to do the will of God.  As such, he is my brother, too.

In today’s epistle reading, Ephesians 2:1-10, Paul writes:

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Paul is reminding us that good works (giving to charity, volunteering for the soup kitchen, being active in the parish, etc) are not what defines us as good Christians. We do these things because we are Christians; we are not Christians because we do these things. It is God’s grace that saves us, not our own actions.

This can be a challenging concept. If I’m saved through my faith alone, through God’s grace alone, then what’s the point of struggling so hard to live the Christ-like life? Is a man who never does “good works” just as good a Christian as I am?

The answer to the first question is somewhat moot, in that my faith and the gift of God’s grace are what compel me to into that struggle to begin with. It is how I express my faith, and it is how I respond to the incredible gift of grace. As for trying to compare myself with those who do more or who do less “good works” than I do, that’s an impossible task. I must acknowledge that God’s grace manifests itself differently in each of us, and that another man’s expression of faith and response to God’s grace may not be visible to me. It may, in fact, be profound in ways I can’t begin to imagine, simply because I am not him.

Accepting the concept of grace is, itself, a leap of faith. It is also about trust—trusting in what God calls me to do without trying to judge that calling against those of others.

The Daily Office is not the only form of daily devotional practice available to Episcopalians, much less to Christians as a whole. Given that the Daily Office emerged from the monastic cycle of

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prayers, another very appropriate source for daily inspiration is the Rule of Benedict; written by St. Benedict in the Sixth Century as a guide and rule for the then-fledgling Monte Cassino monastic community, it still lives and breaths today in monasteries and convents all over the world. While not followed literally in all its detailed rules and strictures, it nevertheless defines and focuses what it means to be a Benedictine and to practice Benedictine spirituality. It is the archetype of what a monastic rule should be and forms the basis of nearly every monastic rule in practice today.

Like the Daily Office, the Rule of Benedict is read by Benedictines in daily chunks, organized so that each year contains three complete cycles. In the last few days, the Rule’s designated passages have focused on the role of the Abbott as the leader of the community. Yesterday’s section (note: this translation uses “Abbess” and female references, but is, of course, equally applicable to males) specifically admonishes the community leader not only to preach with words God’s commandments, but also to “[demonstrate] the divine precepts by her actions for those of harder hearts and ruder minds.” Benedict refers to this a “twofold” teaching, and is just one example of how this ancient document can resonate strongly in even the modern world.

Joan Chittister, in her book The Rule of Benedict: Insight for the Ages (Crossroad, New York, 1992), says of this:

Autocrats and militarists and spiritual charlatans and abusive parents and corporate moguls want the people under them to obey laws from which their exalted positions hold them exempt. Benedict says that the only authentic call for obedience comes from those who themselves demonstrate the value of the law.

For a document nearly 14 centuries old, this is timely advice indeed. I need only look at today’s headlines to see evidence of a culture of entitlement and privilege in both private industry and government, evidence so glaring that it is no wonder that many of us have developed an extremely cynical outlook on our putative leaders. Congress passes onerous employment and workplace rules, then exempts itself from compliance; a governor sees nothing wrong with venally extracting whatever benefit to himself he can from the authority granted him by the people of his state; an investment manager gives generously to charities yet robs those same charities of their hard-earned endowments. You, no doubt, can add many more examples to the list.

Perhaps the most egregious examples come from the world of religion itself. How often have we seen so-called religious leaders twisting Christ’s message of simplicity, love and service (radical and challenging enough, don’t you thing?) into messages of intolerance, narrow mindedness and political agenda making?

To quote Joan Chittister again:

Benedict is saying that if the laws are good, then people will be able to see that in the lawgiver. But Benedict is saying even more than this. Benedict is saying that the function of spiritual leadership is not to intimidate people into submission by fear or guilt. The function of spiritual leadership is to show in our own lives the beauty that oozes out of those who live the spiritual life to its fullness. The function of spiritual leadership is to enshirine what a good life can be.

Wow. I would count myself truly blessed to achieve that kind of leadership in anything I do. With Christ’s help, I hope to achieve it someday, and in the meantime support those leaders under whom I serve in their quests to achieve this level of real leadership.

The gospel reading for today is John 10:7-17, part of the “Good Shepherd” discourse found in Chapter 10 generally. A favorite and familiar passage, it presents a comforting image of Jesus as a benevolent, self-sacrificing shepherd willing to lay down his life to protect his flock from the wolves.

A few verses always have been difficult for me to wrap my head around. For example, Jesus talks about being “the gate,” and states, “Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.” This has often been interpreted to mean that salvation is dependent on being a Christian, that all others are denied God’s grace. Traveling down that path has led to ever-narrowing definitions of what constitutes being a “true” Christian, putting more and more of the world’s population beyond the pale.

Here is where I depart from orthodox belief, even within the relatively open-minded Episcopal Church. Later in this passage (verse 16), Jesus says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they weill listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” In orthodox interpretation, this is a reference to the gentiles (“this fold” being the original Jewish followers of Jesus and “other sheep” being the non-Jewish Christians of the Evangelist’s day). I choose to view this passage differently. I have seen, in my study of other major world religions, too many similarities of basic fundamental messages between faiths for me to believe that God did not have a hand in them. To me, when Jesus talks about his “other sheep,” he is talking about assuming different guises in different cultures, tailoring his message to the unique faith histories of different peoples.

Does this mean that I see all other faiths as equal, that I am some form of unitarian? No. For me, God’s grace as expressed through Jesus’ incarnation, life, death and resurrection is indeed the only gate to my salvation. What I refuse to do, however, is impose that paradigm on everyone else. God’s love is universal, and I cannot see a loving God denying his grace to good people simply because they are not Christians (as defined by institutional Christianity). After all, if I’m right, and Jesus has spoken to “other sheep” in many other voices, then we are indeed one flock with one shepherd, even if we call that shepherd by different names.

There’s a Hindu prayer that I heard while at school many years ago. Paraphrasing, it asks God to forgive us for worshiping him in this form (shape), because he is in all forms; for worshiping him in this place, because he is in all places; and for worshiping him with this ritual, because he needs no ritual to be worshiped. Being imperfect mortals, the prayer concludes, we are not capable of understanding God as he really is, so we use this form, this place, and this ritual because we can understand these, and thereby know a pale reflection of the unknowable.

Today the Church calendar celebrates the Holy Innocents; in Matthew’s gospel, the story goes that King Herod, hearing from the Magi of the birth of a “King of the Jews” and fearing for his throne, orders all male infants in Bethlehem put to death.  Historically, there is no evidence that such an event ever took place, of course, but the Church celebrates the Holy Innocents as martyrs for the Gospel (“martyrs in fact though not in will”) nonetheless.  In modern times, Christians opposed to abortion have used the Holy Innocents as a metaphor for the potential children lost through abortion.

The daily office readings for today, however, focus on another episode involving children.  In Matthew 18:1-14, Jesus is asked by his disciples to say who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  Probably, their question was meant either to resolve boastful competition amongst themselves as to who was the “best” disciple, or to settle niggling scriptural arguments over the relative worth of various patriarchs and prophets.

Jesus, as he does so often, produces a very unexpected and challenging answer.  Bringing forward a child, he tells them “Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

Now, in my experience, children are not always humble.  I think many parents would agree that children are frequently very selfish and have difficulty accepting that they are not nor should be always the center of attention.  So is this simply an idealized vision of childhood innocence, or is there something deeper involved?  What does it really mean to change and become like a child in order to enter the kingdom of heaven?

What is important about children, especially in the ancient world, is that they are fundamentally very fragile.  Many children, in fact most if you include infants, did not survive to adulthood.  Jesus sees this fragility as a metaphor for faith; like children, faith is itself fragile and vulnerable to destruction.  In verses 6 and 7, Jesus condemns those who who would put “stumbling-blocks” in front of “these little ones who believe in me,” but what he’s really talking about are stumbling-blocks placed in front of our own fragile, immature faith.

This becomes more explicit and more personal in the following two verses, where our own hands, feet and eyes cause us to stumble.  Hands, feet and eyes are all agents of action in our bodies, thus are metaphors for the choices we make in our daily actions.  If these choices cause us to stumble in our faith, then Jesus admonishes us to stop making those choices—metaphorically to cut off the hand and pluck out the eye that threatens our faith’s journey.

The metaphor acknowledges that giving up those choices can feel like a sacrifice, a handicap.  However, God will be there to support us.  In the final section of the reading, verses 10-14, Jesus relates the parable of the lost sheep, reminding us that God rejoices in the return of a single sheep gone astray, that he will look for us when we’re lost and guide us home again.

I’ve been thinking a good deal on the nature of mission and what it means to have a calling from God.  Much of my spiritual life the past six years has been focused on discerning my calling and identifying my mission, yet I still struggle with what mission and calling mean in a more general Christian context.  What is it that Jesus expects of us, and what does he send us out to do?

The daily office gospel readings for yesterday and today (Luke 9:51-10:16, cumulatively) offer some guidance, albeit very stark and disturbing guidance.  At the end of Chapter 9, Jesus is met by several aspiring disciples who are all asked to “follow me” in one form or another.  In each case, however, there’s something the disciple must do first before being free to join Jesus’ band.  One has had a death in the family and must go bury his father, another wants to bid farewell to his family before leaving.  In both cases, Jesus demands that they drop everything and immediately follow him.  “Let the dead bury their own dead,” he says, and, “No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Then, as Chapter 10 begins, Jesus commissions pairs of disciples to go out as advance men, preparing the way for Jesus and proclaiming his message.  His instructions are quite austere (this is where the 12th Century Cathars get their extreme vision of the “perfected” Christian life) but in particular his condemnation of those towns that will not listen to his disciples is particularly harsh—so unlike Luke’s “gentle Jesus” portrayal that it truly stands out in my mind.

What to make of all this?  It’s possible to attribute some of the harshness to the bitterness early Christians felt about being rejected by their contemporary Jewish neighbors, but Luke’s gospel is more oriented towards Hellenized Jews (the “Greeks” in scriptural terminology), a group that was already culturally apart from more orthodox Hebraic Jews; anger over rejection is not a thread in Luke’s writings the way it is in John, for instance.

No, there’s something deeper going on.  Although I still struggle with what these passages really mean, I take away a lesson in committment:  there are no half-measures in being a follower of Christ.  I’m either in or out, and to be in means to give my whole self over to God’s will, even when that will takes me to places that are uncomfortable, disturbing.  This is a hard concept, and I temper it with the knowledge that God’s essential message is one of love, both of and for God and of and for my neighbors.  If God takes me to places that are uncomfortable and disturbing, it is for the sake of love—it is up to me to discern where love comes into play and what my role is in manifesting it.

The Gospel reading for today is Luke 7:36-50.  In it, Jesus is dining at the home of a Pharisee named Simon; a woman, known to be “a sinner,” arrives and proceeds to wash Jesus’ feet with her tears, drying them with her hair, and anointing them with ointment from an alabaster jar.  The Pharisee, with his class’s typical obsession with ritual purity and cleanliness, is appalled that Jesus would allow an unclean woman to do this.  Jesus then tells a parable about the creditor who forgives the debts of two debtors, one for a large sum, the other for less; when Jesus asks Simon which of the debtors will love the creditor more, Simon naturally says the one forgiven the larger debt.

Jesus then draws an analogy with his present situation.  The Pharisee, presumably with few sins to forgive, did not offer to wash Jesus’ feet or anoint his head with oil;  the woman, with many sins to forgive, not only washes and anoints, but does so with her own tears and expensive ointment.  Therefore, because of her faith and her great love, her sins are forgiven.

There’s a double message contained in this story.  The obvious one is that Jesus’ mission is to forgive our sins, thus those with the most to forgive are those with whom Jesus is most concerned.  But there is also a message here about what it means to be forgiven, to accept forgiveness.  Jesus says, “The one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”  This is not entirely a cut on Simon the Pharisee, but is also a warning about the linkage between love and forgiveness.  To forgive is to love, and to love is to be forgiven.  This holds true not only in our relationship with God, but in our relationships with each other.  Forgiveness, both in its giving and its receiving, is an act of love which binds us more closely to one another and, ultimately to God.

I’ve said many times before that scripture taken out of context can become a terrible weapon in the hands of the narrow-minded. Two of today’s readings are an example of this: Acts 13:44-52 and John 10:19-30.

Both readings are about conflict between “the Jews” and either the proto-Christian community or Jesus himself. In Acts, Paul and Barnabas are faced with rather virulent opposition by “the Jews” while preaching about Christ. The two apostles then state that, having rejected the word of God, the Jews have also judged themselves “unworthy of eternal life.” For this reason, Paul and Barnabas turn to the Gentiles to deliver the word of God. In rage, the Jews then stir up enough opposition among the leaders of society that the apostles are finally driven out of the city entirely. John’s gospel similarly draws lines between “the Jews” and Jesus himself, implying that they have been told of Jesus’ status as the Messiah but still refuse to believe because they “do not belong to [Jesus’] sheep.”

You can see at once how these passages can fuel anti-semitism. On the surface, both appear to cast Jews as enemies of Christ and of Christians, a bypassed people who, from stuborness or willfulness, reject God’s word and are, consequently, eternally damned. From this, the narrow-minded can all too easily believe the worst that anti-semites have spewed forth since the middle ages right up through the Nazis to the present day.

But there are context to these passages that the narrow-minded consitantly refuse to acknowledge. First and foremost there is Jesus’ over-arching message of love, forgiveness and acceptance. Second, there is the historical context of what was happening in Jewish society both at the time of the events described and at the time these events were recorded in what are today the canonical books of scripture. Lastly, all scripture must be seen in the context of the people and cultures that produced them; as I have said many times before, scripture is divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit but written by imperfect men with the cultural and personal biases of their society at their moment of time.

God’s unqualified love for his creation, as expressed through Jesus, requires us to re-examine the idea that Jews are being rejected by God. What, then, is really going on? I am willing to accept that those Jews at that time rejected God’s word. I do not accept, however, that this means all Jews in all times are unloved by God and unworthy of salvation. I believe that it was necessary at that time and place for Paul to be rejected by his own kind so that he would take his message to the Gentiles. God’s plan for the spread of his word required that it expand beyond the relatively insular Jewish society into the wider Romano-Greek society, and the only way to do this was to force Paul, a devout Jew himself, to undergo a painful rejection by his own kind.

John’s gospel is the last of the canonical books to be set in writing, and was probably composed after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. At that time, Jews were undergoing a difficult process of redefining their faith in a world without the unifying symbol of the Temple. Previously, the existence of the Temple and its rituals made Judaism relatively flexible—there were many sects with often quite divergent views on fundamental ideas like resurrection, for example. All were Jews, however, because all looked to the Temple as the unifying symbol of who and what they were. With the Temple gone, Jews began to seriously consider what was, and what was not, a Jew. Followers of Christ, up until then considered a fringe Jewish sect called the Nazarines, were defined as not Jews. John’s gospel reflects the awful sense of betrayal and rejection felt by proto-Christians as they were excluded from communion with their brother Jews.

It is no surprise, then, that scripture written at such dark times reflects the passions and biases prevalent in them. What is remarkable is how so much of scripture transcends these passions and biases, turning them through the inspiration and influence of the Holy Spirit into lessons on hope, love, forgiveness, and all the other virtues of living the Christ-like life. Yes, some Jews in the early first century rejected God’s word and, perhaps, suffered as a result. But how many of us nominal Christians have done the same? We who presumably should know better have time and again re-crucified Christ on crosses of hatred, prejudice, self-righteousness and pride. The Jews in Acts and in John’s gospel are not, after all, such strangers. They are, in fact, us.

Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration, celebrating an event described in Luke 9:28-36 where Christ is revealed in full glory (transfigured) on a mountain top, attended by Moses and Elijah (representatives of the Law and the Prophets) and witnessed by Peter, John and James.

The story of the Transfiguration serves to illustrate Christ’s true nature, but what is far more interesting are the reactions of his apostles, and Jesus’ own response to their reactions. As is so often the case, the apostles completely misunderstand what they have just seen—they want to preserve it as justification of their faith, the physical manifestation of their hopes and dreams of messianic salvation, by erecting “dwellings” for Jesus and the others. They want to contain what they have seen and make it physical, real, touchable, in-the-world as they knew it. And, of course, this desire misses the point. The Transfiguration is a glimpse of timelessness, a look beyond Jesus as the incarnate God then dwelling amongst them to Jesus the eternal member of the Trinity, always with us.

The apostles failure to understand the meaning of the transfigured Christ is more darkly echoed in the Daily Office readings for the Transfiguration, especially in 2 Corinthians 4:1-6 and John 12:27-36a. Paul speaks to the Corinthians of how difficult it can be to preach the Gospel because what it says is not always clear to the listener. He rejects the tempting expedient of tweaking the Gospel message to make it more palatable to others, and claims that “seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” is not something easily achieved. John’s gospel passage is a case in point: the crowd does not understand what Christ’s message is, with all this talk of light and darkness, and in the end Jesus himself departs and hides himself from them. It’s not that easy, is it, to follow me… I’m not handing it to you, you must come find the path.

As one who is trying to follow Christ, I know that I exist in a shadow. I see the landscape illuminated by the transfigured Christ, but I cannot see the source of the light itself. So my faith is all about what I believe is making all that light.

But what about that shadow? If I am not standing in the light, then something is between me and Christ that casts that shadow. I haven’t decided yet what that is; perhaps it is a function of the human condition, something that only a completed life and the reunion of my spirit with God will solve—but that is too fatalistic an answer. I believe that my shadows are there to be named, and that by naming them I may, with God’s help, peek around them for a glimpse of God’s glory.

Call it divine providence or just one of life’s funny little quirks, but once in a while I experience a thought-provoking convergence of otherwise disparate elements of my daily existence.

My friends know of my involvement in a men’s organization called the Mankind Project (“MKP” for short). As part of this involvement, I was called on to visualize a mission, something grand and all-encompassing that expresses my purpose in life; my mission is to create a world of faith and hope by sharing my truth. At a recent meeting, I was challenged to take some immediate, realistic and achievable action in furtherance of this mission. My choice was to commit to updating this blog at least once between then (Wednesday night) and this coming Monday.

How is writing this blog related to my mission? My truth is all about being real with myself, and about removing the masks I so often wear in public that get in the way of letting that true self shine forth. My faith and my spirituality are important parts of that truth, are in fact two of the primary media I use for defining what is true about who I am, what I am, where I am. So, this blog is how I share those aspects of my truth.

The challenge to make this commitment to update the blog came at a timely moment, as I have become lax in maintaining both the discipline of performing the Daily Office and the discipline of blogging my thoughts as a form of meditation—a nifty convergence on its own.

Then I looked at today’s readings (Ecclesiastes 11:9-12:14, Galatians 5:25-6:10, and Matthew 16:21-28) and an even more powerful convergence occurred to me. Ultimately, the mission challenge serves to pull the mission into reality, to connect my daily mundane reality to the greater purpose I aspire to. These readings ask us to do the same. “Remember your creator in the days of your youth” says the Preacher in Ecclesiastes: lift your consciousness up from the immediate pleasures (and pains) of daily life and consider why you’re here. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, asks us to remember why we toil in the fields of faith: “for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.” And, finally, Matthew’s gospel recounts how Jesus rebukes his disciples for setting their minds on human things instead of divine things, challenging us with one of the most beautiful and terrifying passages in all of scripture: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

So in all life’s little moments, the good and the bad, remember that we all have a purpose here. Live life, but keep God in mind.