Progressive Christian Reflections by Chris Glaser: Moses

Showing posts with label Moses. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Armchair Contemplatives

Mount Shasta photo by Bill Buchanan.

Bill and Ruth are regular readers of this blog.

At the end of Book One of The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross, I wrote, “I don’t like his God.” What I felt is that his God is incredibly demanding, and I found myself yearning for the homeliness of Evelyn Underhill’s God in her two-level House of the Soul.

But then it occurred to me that Juan de la Cruz’s book could be compared to a manual on how to climb Mt. Everest. To do that requires demanding training, sacrifice and investment. It’s not God who’s “demanding,” any more than it is Mt. Everest that’s demanding. What’s demanding are efforts to scale seeming insurmountable heights.

I’d rather see Mt. Everest from a distance than from the top. I guess the same goes for my preferences of seeing God. Ninety-nine+ percent of the Hebrews saw Mt. Sinai from the plain. Only Moses ascended to commune with Yahweh, sovereign of the universe.* And we have his testimony of what God calls us to be and do, along with the testimonies of all the prophetic mystics of every age, of every faith and culture.

With many of you, I am content to remain an armchair contemplative. I am grateful for the stories and writings of saints, contemplatives, mystics, and spiritual authors. The spiritual horizons they offer inform and inspire our own spiritual quests. “Success” is not my spiritual objective; in fact, I don’t consider success a spiritual objective, period.

I’ve written elsewhere that a sense of “having arrived” is when we may be in the most spiritual danger. John of the Cross understood this; he warns that such folk judge others as the boastful Pharisee contrasting himself with the Publican sinner. John writes that it may be best that God not free such people from their imperfections, despite their petitions, lest they “wax haughtier in their pride.”

So I guess I should thank God for my imperfections!

John of the Cross is the first to admit that the purgation of dark nights, first of the senses and second of the intellect, does not “earn” God’s companionship. Rather it allows God’s ever-present, unyielding love to touch us, to infuse our souls.

As I move into Book Two of Dark Night, however, I resist John’s supposition that he is sufficiently purged as well as his original premise of purging the sensual and the intellectual.

Moses first encountered I AM in a lowly desert shrub that was burning and yet unconsumed. Jacob physically wrestled with God in the middle of the night. Ruth embraced Yahweh in her fidelity to Naomi. Elijah heard God in a “sound of gentle stillness.” Hannah’s fervent prayers to get pregnant were answered. God blessed Solomon with wisdom at his request. Jewish faith has been traditioned in teaching and chavrusa, debating the meaning of sacred texts in small groups or partnerships.

Mary experienced birth pangs to give rise to a refreshing renewal of the faith of Abraham and Sarah. Jesus prayed in lonely places and was sought out for his healing touch and compassionate wisdom. The Christian story is that God has been embodied in Jesus himself, whose Spirit inspires and empowers his followers. And Christians believe themselves to be members of the Body of Christ, which cannot say to the head or the hand, the intellect or the senses, “I have no need of you.”

John of the Cross’s spirituality appears to be, to me at least, more a product of Hellenistic dualism than of the Bible. Though his concept of letting go of all that is not God is admirable, I myself find everything good is of God.

Four decades ago, an elderly gay Roman Catholic priest visited the congregation I was serving and joined us for brunch afterward. He told us he first learned of God as a child on his grandmother’s knee, and though he grew up learning and studying a harsher and more demanding God, he now, in retirement, was welcoming a gentler understanding of a “grandmother God.”

Related Post: My Dark Night of the Soul

*Moses was accompanied part way by others and further by Joshua but only Moses entered Yahweh’s cloud at the summit as described in Exodus 24.

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Wednesday, January 16, 2019

What Is the Chief End of Humanity?

Something that surprised and delighted me when I became a Presbyterian in 1970 while in college was the first question and answer of the Shorter Westminster Catechism, adopted as part of the Westminster Standards by the Scottish General Assembly for use in the kirk (church) in 1647 and by the first Presbyterian synod of the American colonies in 1729.

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?

A: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy him forever.

I had earlier been enthralled with the denomination’s then most recent confession of faith, The Confession of 1967, that confirmed my own beliefs in its call for reconciliation of all regardless of race, religion, or nationality.

But that such an early church document from the seemingly somber and sober Presbyterians and their Scottish heritage could use such words as “glorify” and “enjoy” in relation to God and the practice of their faith pleased me no end!

My Yale Divinity professor and subsequent friend, Henri Nouwen, would write of his stay in a Trappist monastery in The Genesee Diary that his spiritual director, John Eudes Bamberger, challenged him to take as his koan, “I am the glory of God.” He clarified, “In your meditation you can ask yourself, “Where is the glory of God? If the glory of God is not there where I am, where else can it be?” Interpreting the second creation story of Genesis in which God breathed life into the first human being, he told Henri, “We live because we share God’s breath, God’s life, God’s glory.”

The early church teacher, Irenaeus, declared, “The glory of God is man fully alive.”

Two of my prayers in Coming Out to God, ably edited and encouraged by Alexa Smith, took as their starting point this question about the chief end of humanity. The first may be used collectively with the italicized unison response; the second as a personal prayer.

Day 33

O Creator,

we glorify your name

and enjoy you forever.

You have immersed us in your world

and baptized us with your Spirit.

We see your beauty reflected

in our community and in your creation:

We enjoy you forever.

We feel your love in the warmth of sun,

the smiles of strangers,

the hugs of friends,

the bodies of lovers:

We enjoy you forever.

We taste your refreshment

of sleep, of breath,

of food and drink:

We enjoy you forever.

We smell your fragrance

of flower and field,

of flesh and flavor:

We enjoy you forever.

We hear your voice

from the winds of nature

to the winds of spirit:

We enjoy you forever.

O Creator, open our eyes

so we may see your goodness.

Sensitize our numbed senses

so we may feel your goodness.

Overcome our blandness

so we may taste your goodness.

Break into our vacuum

so we may smell your goodness.

Unstop our ears

so we may hear your goodness.

O Creator, our Creator,

we glorify your name

and enjoy you forever.

Alleluia!

Day 43

“What is the chief end of [humanity]?

To glorify God, and to enjoy [God] forever.”

And what is your chief end, O God?

To glorify us, and enjoy us forever?

Isn’t this heretical? At least presumptuous?

Forgive me, God, if I’ve wrongly described your agenda.

But, from the day you made us cocreators in Adam and Eve

to the day you made us heirs with Christ,

it seems you’ve been sharing your glory

and enjoying our participation in it.

Our courtship was rocky:

we kept running from you,

dating others less worthy,

pursuing our selfish desires

and our greedy lusts.*

Finally, you moved in with us in Jesus,

became our lover,

saved us from destruction

and gave up your life for us.

Now we’re haunted by your Ghost,

who brings us together,

different as we are,

reconciling us one with another

and with you.

“The world is charged with the glory of God”

(to slightly modify Gerard Manley Hopkins’s line).

So are we, because you have visited us,

and our faces shine with the Shekinah, your glory,

that lit up Moses’ face and made him veil himself.

Why are we afraid to lift the veil

and show ourselves and the world

the glorious riches of our spiritual inheritance?

God, help us lift the veil,

removing all that obscures your glory graciously given

in our creation, redemption, and inspiration.

By so doing, may we glorify you,

our glorifier in heaven,

and enjoy you forever.

Amen.

*In Christian tradition, “lusts” applies to every manner of greediness: money, power, possessions, etc.

On this upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, I’ll be reflecting on how King and the Civil Rights Movement helped inspire and shape my own ministry during Sunday’s 11:00 a.m. “Celebration of Life” for the First Existentialist Congregation (UU), 470 Candler Park Drive, Atlanta, GA 30307. You are welcome to attend!

A few of my posts related to Martin Luther King Jr. and Racial Justice:

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Wednesday, March 18, 2015

"I Thirst"

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.

When we carry bottles of water with us everywhere, run water from the tap to rinse a dish, or make a cup of coffee or tea, it’s a challenge to wrap our minds around a concept of thirst. Obviously I am speaking to the minority of the world’s population, for whom such conveniences are commonplace, the most probable readers of this blog. Maybe our “contemplation” of thirst will prompt our action environmentally and politically on behalf of those with limited access to unpolluted water. “Whoever gives a cup of cold water to one of these little ones” will be rewarded, Jesus said.

Forty years in the wilderness seeking the Promised Land or forty days in the wilderness discerning the Commonwealth of God would have made thirst a frequent companion.

The Hebrews complained to Moses, Moses kvetched to God, and water was provided from solid rock. In his hunger, Jesus was tempted to turn rocks into bread, and responded that we don’t live by bread alone, but by God’s word to us.

But what was his temptation when thirsty? Are we missing a fourth temptation? A convenient oasis, perhaps, or rain, if only he would bow to “the powers that be”?

Did Jesus long for the plentiful waters of his baptism, which had initiated this trek into the wild? We too know what it’s like for our baptism to wear thin in the real world.

How would Jesus have answered? Maybe quoting Yahweh from Isaiah 55? “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters… For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout…so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish what I purpose.”

Or his own beatitude in Matthew 5? “Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they shall be filled.” Or, “happy are those who hunger and thirst for saving justice, they shall be satisfied.”

Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for water, and offered her “living water,” which is water from a stream moving beneath the surface of the ground, thus living, and of course also implies something deeper than earthly needs.

Jesus’ supplication “I thirst” was true on the surface, the well-being of his body, but maybe was more, a confession of his spirit, like that of the Psalmist: “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?”

The writer of this psalm (42-43) was prevented from going to the house of God and laments, “As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?’ … Why must I walk around mournfully because of the oppression of the enemy?” In his ministry and on the cross, Jesus endured wounds that went deeper than Roman torture and execution.

Every day in the paper and on the news, in our neighborhoods and in our cities, we witness those who thirst physically, spiritually, grieving oppression, prevented from entering houses of God.

“I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.”

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

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Wednesday, February 26, 2014

God Is Bigger than Yours (and Mine)

Please join me for “The Passion: In Arts, Texts, and Music: A Contemplative Retreat for Lent,” 9 a.m. – 12 p.m., Saturday, March 8, 2014 at Columbia Theological Seminary.

Reading “The Archaeology of the Stars” about Population I, II, and III stars in the Science Times of the February 11, 2014 edition of The New York Times, I realized again how tiny are our imaginations when it comes to God.

The tribal*, nationalist, and creationist gods are the tiniest of all. To think of God favoring a tribe or a nation, or to insist that earth is a mere 6000 years old, is a sign of hubris and ignorance that actually “disses” God—in Anglo terms, disrespects and dismisses God.

The movement gods are closer to recognizing the reality, I believe, whether that of the Jesus movement, for instance, or the gods of the ecumenical, interfaith, progressive, New Thought or New Age movements, to name a few examples. But these gods too can be trapped when enshrined in inflexible doctrines and institutions, domesticated like a pet to respond to our expectations.

The god of nature, of the environment, of the cosmos at least de-centers our anthropomorphic way of limiting God. The agnostic god recognizes our inability to imagine God adequately, while the god of atheism too often is a mirror reflection of a god rightly resisted. These three options, despite their alleged disbelief, seem preferable to a god that is nothing more than a tribal, national, fundamentalist, or movement pet.

As a participant in the Jesus movement, as much as I love Jesus—what he taught and how he lived and the life he still gives me—I have needed to move beyond the claim that he is the only child of God.

Rather, I have come to believe that he and many who followed him remind us that ALL are children of God, including the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, and that we are each to have, in author Karen Blixen’s words, “faith in the idea that God had when God made us.” To paraphrase the sage Rabbi Zusya** in my own faith context: in the life to come, they will not ask me why I was not Christ, but, “Why was I not Chris?”

And further, why didn’t I recognize that my god is not God?

*I intend that “tribal” includes any group that thinks only their group knows God.

**Rabbi Zusya famously said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me, ‘Why were you not Moses?’ but ‘Why were you not Zusya?’”

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Related post:

Knowing Your Place

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Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Vacation and Vocation

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Readers are this blog’s only means of support. Tax-deductible donations to this Emerging Ministry may be given online or by mail to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232, designating in the memo area, “For Progressive Christian Reflections.” Thank you!

Chris hopes to see those of you in or near Roanoke, VA, this weekend at one or more of his events related to the theme “Claim the God in You!” beginning with lunch, Fri. July 13, two events on Sat. July 14, and morning worship Sun. July 15, hosted by the MCC of the Blue Ridge. Everyone is welcome! See details on the church’s website, clicking on the far right box: MCCBR Retreat.

Very early one morning I saw a woman doing a walking meditation, such as Buddhists do, pausing after each step taken, perhaps pondering a koan. As I drew closer, I realized the “koan” she concentrated on so intently was, in truth, an iPad.

Running through the park, I approached a young man sitting in the lotus position, his face downturned in meditation. As I passed by, however, I saw his thumbs busily texting.

On each occasion, the only hope of my original fantasy was that they were tweeting or texting their spiritual directors or gurus!

We all know of such impulses to check tweets, messages, e-mails, and news media! C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters comes to mind, in which Screwtape advises Wormwood, his tempter in training, to put into his ward’s head the impulse to take a break just as he’s about to discover something important to his spiritual progress, thus distracting him.

One dictionary defines vocation as “an impulse to perform a certain function.” Vacation is defined as freedom from such an impulse, a letting go of our compulsions to do things we have always done, a release from doing things the way we have always done them. Thus vacation invites play.

I’ve known too many people, including clergy, who brag about never or rarely taking a vacation. In my view, vacation is a vital balance to vocation, as necessary to one’s work as sleep and nutrition and compensation.

Some of us get away from our work by going away, but others of us get away from our work by going within: inside ourselves, listening to that inner voice that is the root of the word “vocation.”

I’ve been reading a lot about the spiritualities of the desert: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. The desert is an excellent place to listen for God’s voice, our own voice, the voice of a lover or friend or calling. Distractions are diminished, silence surrounds, we may breathe easier, we may breathe.

In deserts, Moses heard God’s voice, Miriam danced, Elijah listened for “a voice of a gentle stillness,” Naomi accepted Ruth’s vow, Jesus pondered his vocation and found lonely places to pray, Amma Theodora identified acedia (spiritual lethargy), Muhammad received his divine mission.

Progressive Christians have our wilderness too. We are letting go of religious compulsions to rediscover the God of the desert (metaphorically).

Writing of desert spirituality in Contemplative Prayer, Thomas Merton concluded that “without the disquieting capacity to see and to repudiate the idolatry of devout ideas and imaginings…the Christian cannot be delivered from the smug self-assurance of the devout ones who know all the answers in advance, who possess all the clichés of the inner life and can defend themselves with infallible ritual forms against every risk and every demand of dialogue with human need and human desperation.”

Perhaps vacation from religious compulsion is also our vocation.

+++

Read Glaser’s recent Huffington Post columns:

Modern Marriage Is Not Biblical

Anderson Cooper, Welcome to the Club!

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

"Bad Theology"

Liberals should not allow ourselves to be bullied by self-styled conservatives who accuse us of “bad theology.”

“Our sociology is predictably derived from, legitimated by, and reflective of our theology. And if we gather around a static god of order who only guards the interests of the ‘haves,’ oppression cannot be far behind,” Old Testament seminary professor Walter Brueggemann wrote in The Prophetic Imagination.

The frequent mistake of liberals in our politics of justice and compassion, Brueggemann suggests, is that we fail to claim our theological basis in God’s freedom to identify with the “have nots” over against the status quo. So, “Social radicalism has been like a cut flower without nourishment, without any sanctions deeper than human courage and good intentions.”

On the other hand he says, “A case can be made that unprophetic conservatives [do] not take God seriously enough to see that our discernment of God has remarkable sociological implications.”

From Moses through the prophets to Jesus, the biblical witness is of a God who cares about the oppressed, the widow, the orphan, the alien, the poor, and the religious outcast. Unless we are caring for “the least of these,” we are not taking the theology of the Bible seriously. And yet those who oppose caring for “the least of these,” from social security to health care to immigration reform, are the most likely to claim our theology is “bad.” (BTW, Jesus said nothing about contraception or homosexuality, the frequent litmus tests of “good” theology, and more than once he affirmed the rights of women.) In preserving the biblical tradition, liberals are the true conservatives.

Religious freedom is not freedom from responsibility to provide for the underserved or underprivileged. It is rather freedom from the gods and the demagogues that prevent us from doing so.