Progressive Christian Reflections by Chris Glaser: February 2015

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

"Today You Will Be with Me in Paradise"

Jesus’ Seven Last Words, sayings offered from the cross, may serve as guidance for the spiritual life. You are invited to contemplate each saying during the seven Wednesdays of Lent and Holy Week.

“Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom,” sings the Taizé chant. I often sing it as I drive to events in which this introvert is called upon to be an extrovert, this writer expected to speak or lead or counsel. It calms me, but it also reminds me who and what my work is all about. I believe I’m better at “selling” Jesus than myself. And God knows I have more inspiration to do so.

Of course “Jesus, remember me etc.” are the words of the “good” criminal who challenges the one who mocks Jesus as all three are crucified together. Jesus responds, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” What a comfort to hear this straight from Jesus!

But none of us have to be on a cross to hear these words. We could just be having a bad day. We could even be having a good day. Paradise is available in the here and now, not just the sky by and by.

“I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me,” the writer of Revelation hears Jesus saying. This is a mystic’s vision. This was also the experience of everyday disciples on the road to Emmaus after the crucifixion.

Theologian Karl Rahner famously said that the Christian of the future will need to be a mystic. Being a mystic, then, is not “above our pay grade.”

To see beyond Jesus’ suffering, just as to see beyond our own, a hopeful vision is required. For the early Christians, that hopeful vision was to view Jesus’ sacrifice replacing the need for animal sacrifice, just as child sacrifice was replaced by animal sacrifice in the story of Abraham and Isaac.

Though these visions may not inspire us today, both could be considered theological advances of their eras. I explained this in detail in Coming Out as Sacrament. I also explained that both Roman and Jewish legal cultures of Jesus’ time expected a transgressor to offer some kind of expiation or sacrifice to make things right. This is the context for the understanding that Jesus served as that expiation.

Julian of Norwich believed that sin and evil had no “essence,” and that, rather than blaming us for sin, God pitied us for the pain it causes us.

Several times on this blog I’ve mentioned the crucifixion arousing in us that which at-ones us with God: compassion. Reading Julian I realize that the cross is equally an emblem of God’s compassion.

Contemplating a crucifix, she observes, “Thus I saw how Christ has compassion for us because of sin.” Translator Father John-Julian paraphrases Julian, “Christ en-joys the Passion, that is, submerges it in and converts it into joy.”

The cross represents a God who is sacrificially forgiving in reconciling the world.

Last week this blog reflected on Jesus’ first words from the cross, according to tradition, “forgive them for they know not what they do.”

In the case of the one crucified alongside Jesus asking to be remembered, Jesus goes beyond forgiveness to welcome him into his kingdom. That can happen for each of us in this moment. And how differently we will live, now that we are in paradise.

For those who would like daily readings for this week of Lent, click here and scroll down to the end of “Spiritual Stretching.”

I will be speaking this coming Sunday, Mar. 1, at the Georgia Mountains Unitarian Universalist Church 11 a.m. service in Dahlonega, GA, followed by a free workshop on the mystic Evelyn Underhill, “Becoming What We Behold.”

Please support this blog ministry by clicking here or mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

This year, I offer a signed gift copy of my book, Communion of Life: Meditations for the New Millennium, to each one who donates $100 or more (at once or in installments) over the course of 2015.

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Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by readers’ donations. It is an authorized Emerging Ministry of Metropolitan Community Churches, a denomination welcoming seekers as well as believers.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

"Forgive Them, for They Know Not What They Do"

Most of the people who do us wrong or hurt us or diminish us have no idea.

Leaders take us to war. Legislators fail to protect our rights or reduce support for needed programs. Churches exclude many of us. Strangers do not welcome us. The “powers that be” frequently benefit the rich, the privileged, the powerful, the “in-crowd,” the beautiful, the popular, even the unjust and infamous—the few rather than the many. Families and friends sometimes disappoint us or hurt us unknowingly. Colleagues and co-workers may overlook our good work or decent efforts. Competitiveness rules, rather than collegiality, collaboration, cooperation, and compromise.

And then there are all those intentional slights and “slings and arrows.”

Forgiveness is central to spiritual progress. To do other than forgive is spiritually crippling. Failing or refusing to forgive means being stuck on a cross, a permanent “martyr.”

Jesus saw that, I believe. He knew forgiveness was key to spiritual advancement. Resurrection only comes when we let go of all that holds us back, that keeps us down, that prevents us rising.

“Forgive seventy times seven” was perhaps Jesus’ single most helpful spiritual guidance. The prayer he taught his disciples implied that the forgiveness we offer is the forgiveness we get, whether debts, trespasses, or sins. Think older brother as well as prodigal son. Think unforgiving forgiven servant. Think turning the other cheek or going the extra mile.

Jesus taught that if, when offering our gift at the altar, we remember wronging someone, to leave the gift and first be reconciled. The mirror experience of that also seems true, that, when offering our gift, we remember someone wronging us, first forgive. Maybe that’s part of what’s behind that saying in second Corinthians, “God loves a cheerful giver.” How can we be cheerful when we don’t forgive?

From the cross: Jesus forgave the Roman Empire, and within four centuries, it embraced him. Jesus forgave Peter his denial, and Peter proclaimed his gospel, not only to fellow Jews but to Gentiles. Jesus forgave his disciples for abandoning him, and they told his stories. If religious leaders did in fact play a role in his execution at the hands of Rome, Jesus forgave them too. Jesus also forgave Judas, who repented but could not accept forgiveness.

Jesus healed the devastating paralysis, the unyielding blindness, the disfiguring leprosy, the debilitating fever of lacking mercy. And he healed it with grace.

For those who would like daily readings for this week of Lent, click here and scroll down to the end of the post, “Cosmic Dust.”

Thanks be to God for the life, music, humor, and friendship of Ed McGee, for years our music leader and party organizer for the annual Kirkridge men’s retreat.

Posts relevant to Black History Month (U.S.):

As we begin this blog’s fifth year, I offer a signed gift copy of my book, Communion of Life: Meditations for the New Millennium, to each one who donates $100 or more (at once or in installments) over the course of this year, 2015.

When leaving a comment on this blog, a URL is requested but not required to submit your response.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

"Nothing Soft about the Quest for a Significant Life"

Why I Write This Blog

As we enter this blog’s fifth year, I offer a signed gift copy of my book, Communion of Life: Meditations for the New Millennium, to each one who donates $100 or more (at once or in installments) over the course of this year, 2015.

On this week’s fourth anniversary of the beginning of Progressive Christian Reflections, I am reminded that motivations are myriad for doing anything. “What’s my motivation?” actors ask to play a given scene, as if a single motivation suffices for any human action. We are more complex than that! (Read Dostoyevsky!) The reasons I’ve given in the past for writing these reflections still apply, but every week, actually every day, I find new reasons.

Today’s reason is being stunned and stumped by a cover essay in a recent New York Times Book Review entitled “Among the Disrupted” by Leon Wieseltier, a contributing editor for The Atlantic and recently resigned literary editor of The New Republic, which was “disrupted” by a new boss wanting to go digital.

I am stunned by insights I agree with and stumped by things in it I don’t quite understand. I have read it multiple times, each time underlining phrases and sentences that give me an “aha” moment or that I need to puzzle over. If I read it many more times, the whole essay will be underlined. (I can’t read without a pen in hand, btw!) It stirred controversy, judging by letters in response and an article in the Observer.

If I had to summarize it in 25 words or less, it’s about our contemporary confusion of technology with meaning. As the author suggests, “The character of our society cannot be determined by engineers.”

Ridiculing “transhumanism,” the notion that computers and the internet “will carry us magnificently beyond our humanity” overcoming distinctions “between human and machine,” Wieseltier instead questions if we are just having another wave of posthumanism:

The notion that the nonmaterial dimensions of life must be explained in terms of the material dimensions, and that nonscientific understandings must be translated into scientific understandings if they are to qualify as knowledge, is increasingly popular inside and outside the university, where the humanities are disparaged as soft and impractical and insufficiently new.

The recently passed Charles Townes, the Nobel laureate physicist behind the maser and laser who was also awarded the 2005 Templeton Prize for contributing to our understanding of spirituality, “saw science and religion as compatible, saying there was little difference between a scientific revelation, like his maser brainstorm, and a religious one,” according to The New York Times. Quoting from a 1966 essay:

Understanding the order of the universe and understanding the purpose in the universe are not identical, but they are not very far apart.

The parallel in my field are those who study, research, and teach religion “objectively” outside any personal faith. We need such “engineers,” as long as we take what they say with a grain of salt, which, as I mentioned quoting Colossians a few weeks ago, means with “spiritual understanding.” Early Christian catechumens were taught the meaning of baptism and the Eucharist only after they had received those sacraments, because it was believed they could not comprehend what they had not first experienced. Spiritual understanding is an inside job.

Wieseltier asserts, “Aside from issues of life and death, there is no more urgent task for American intellectuals and writers than to think critically about the salience, even the tyranny, of technology in individual and collective life. All revolutions exaggerate, and the digital revolution is no different.”

We live in an internet world “in which words cannot wait for thoughts, and first responses are promoted into best responses, and patience is a professional liability. … Digital expectations of alacrity and terseness confer the highest prestige upon the twittering cacophony of one-liners and promotional announcements.”

Wieseltier’s solution is to “regard the devices as simply new means for old ends. … The new order will not relieve us of the old burdens, and the old pleasures, of erudition and interpretation. … Never mind the platforms. Our solemn responsibility is for the substance.”

His answer is a welcome of humanism and the humanities, concluding, “There is nothing soft about the quest for a significant life.”

I would add a welcome of spirituality and religion, also because there is nothing soft about a quest for a significant life.

Entertaining these concepts and welcoming this conversation are additional reasons I write this blog.

An early post describing initial reasons for writing this blog:

Why Progressive Christians Need Contemplation

Consider visiting the first three blog posts:

Dolphins and Sharks

The Church of Rosacea

The Right Word

Click below for listing of my posts on these additional sites (I am not paid for these, btw.):

Huffington Post

Progressive Christianity.org

BelieveOutLoud

The seven most visited posts on this blog:

(Numbers do not include subscribers and followers, currently nearly 500.)

The Magic Kingdom (1189)

What I Don’t Believe, What I Do Believe (1014)

A Pragmatic Guide to Prayer (957)

Jesus: Introvert or Extrovert? (941)

“Faggot”Jesus (886)

My Loneliness Led Me to God (766)

Put Yourself in the Nativity Story (702)

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Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Fundamentals Without Fundamentalism

Dad in Japan.

Mom's senior photo.

Had they lived, my mother and father would have celebrated their 100^th and 99^th birthdays this past weekend. Gratefully I share some of the things they taught me by example that have shaped my spirituality.

They considered themselves fundamentalists, but this in the day when fundamentalism did not have quite the edge it does today. They were kinder, gentler fundamentalists, unafraid to laugh at themselves and to express doubt and uncertainty, able to cope with a daughter’s divorce and my homosexuality and even my progressive Christianity! My Mom openly questioned whether spirituality could adequately be covered by the “Four Spiritual Laws” popular with fundamentalist campus groups at the time.

Readers will know I am not a fundamentalist Christian by any stretch of the imagination, but my parents did provide me with the fundamentals of my spirituality, some of which follow:

Read and study, reflect and pray. First and foremost, the scriptures. Mom taught first grade at a Christian school and both Mom and Dad taught Sunday school at various times in our Baptist church, and the Bible was their central source of inspiration, as it is mine. Dad also read biblical commentaries and Mom also read mystics, as do I. When I travelled Europe after college, Mom asked me to take with me her marked and worn copy of Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ. They ended every day by kneeling together for prayer beside their bed. And of course we never failed to say grace before meals, even in restaurants (while my brother, out of embarrassment, was under the table “looking for his napkin”).

Do good. One Saturday morning, Mom invited a homeless man into our dining room and prepared him bacon, eggs, toast and coffee much like her mother had fed the unemployed men traveling the rails near their house during the Depression. Dad fetched an intoxicated church member for coffee to sober up before taking him home to his wife. They both invited a sad server at an Arizona café to join us at the table and recount her troubles. Dad led a weekly jail ministry for many years, preaching and toting a heavy portable organ to accompany the inmates’ hymn singing. These are just examples of how kind they were.

Seek justice. Mom’s Christian school (which I had attended) wanted to publish an article and photo about my receiving an award, but rejected the picture because I had a beard. My mom, who was never keen on the beard, informed them that I had won the award having that beard, and if they didn’t want the photo she would not give them the article! During the Vietnam War, Dad suggested we send Congress to fight it, and that would be the end of it. He once gave chase to a young man who had snatched a woman’s purse and returned it to her.

And, before I came out to them as gay, Dad said to my mother of homosexuals, “If they feel for each other what I feel for you, I can understand why they want their relationships.” When my ministry within the LGBT community first appeared in The Los Angeles Times in 1978, Mom supported me and, though popular with students and their parents, was “let go” after three decades of teaching first grade at sacrificial wages. Shortly before Dad’s death, after another devastating defeat for LGBT people at a Presbyterian General Assembly, he encouraged me, “I hope the next time you go tilting at windmills, they fall down!”

Attend church. We were in church virtually all and certainly every Sunday: Sunday school and worship in the morning, Baptist Youth Fellowship and worship in the evening. Wednesday evening was Prayer Meeting and testimony time. Dad was a deacon and Mom was a deaconess, and there were plenty of church meetings and work days.

Support the church. Years after Dad’s death, I volunteered to Mom that I would clean out their garage. I discovered their old financial records and learned that Dad basically gave the church his first week’s salary every month before taxes. Their income was minimal, though we had what we needed, so this was sacrificial giving. After Dad died, Mom continued tithing (10 %) of her small Social Security income. Additionally, they gave generously to the church’s building fund (even though they did not like the design of the new sanctuary!) and multiple charities, including the parochial school where Mom taught.

Love well. My parents and our family had our ups and downs, but when first married, they covenanted never to go to bed angry, following the biblical admonition not to let the sun go down on your anger. Mom and Dad were high school sweethearts and absolutely loyal. Cleaning their garage I found well over 100 multipage letters exchanged during three circumstantial periods of separation, including World War II, each expressing their passionate love for one another.

Dad worked hard, delivering bread to grocery stores and maintaining our yards and house, and Mom, in addition to teaching, cleaned house and fixed all the meals—both with some help from us kids. Thinking back on it now, I see that they were practical ministers of both word (teaching and preaching) and sacrament (delivering bread and meals). They offered loving hospitality to their children and those important to us, as well as their grandchildren, great grandchildren, other relatives, neighbors, friends, and strangers.

Follow Jesus. This was central to all my parents did, in word and deed, in spirit and body, and I am still trying to catch up!

A few of the posts that mention my parents:

Acts of God and Acts of War ( About Dad’s letters on board a troop ship docked at Nagasaki.)

The Making of You

The DoubleFeature

Thanks be to God for the life, writings, and ministry of the Rev. Richard McBrien (1936-2015)“who unflinchingly challenged orthodoxy in the Roman Catholic Church for five decades and popularized and perpetuated the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.” He is quoted as saying, “The theologian’s job is one of critically reflecting on [Christian] tradition or raising questions about it, even challenging it, and that’s how doctrines evolve and move forward.”

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