Caesar and God

“Give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s”

Last week’s post was declined by at least two mainstream Christian Facebook pages that had always seemed to welcome my free, ad-free weekly posts. The admins who declined them determined them “political,” unsuitable for their Christian audience. One even claimed that spirituality had nothing to do with politics!

As long as everyday Christians avoid the marketplace of ideas, extremist Christians will seem the prevailing voice of Christianity and/or the church. As Bishop Spong has said, religion is like a public pool: all the noise comes from the shallow end.

My post challenged a reactionary politician’s rejection of one of my Celtic Christian spiritual saints, Pelagius. Yes, he was declared a heretic, but initially by the State and not by the Pope at the time. In J. Philip Newell’s words in Listening for the Heartbeat of God: A Celtic Spirituality: 

Two attempts were made to condemn [Pelagius] in 415, but twice Pelagius was acquitted by the Church in Palestine. In 416 Augustine and the African bishops reacted by convening two diocesan councils, at which Pelagius and his Celtic friend Celestius were condemned. In the following year the Pope himself convened a synod in Rome to consider the conflict; here Pelagius’ teaching was declared entirely true and orthodox. 

In an attempt to reconcile Pelagius’ emphasis on our essential goodness with Augustine’s emphasis on the prevalence of evil, the Pope wrote to the African bishops, “Love peace, prize love, strive after harmony. For it is written, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”  

The Pope’s guidance was not heeded by Augustine [who championed the concepts of “human depravity” and “original sin”] and the Western Church began to lose sight of the essential God-given goodness of the human. This loss would have implications for the Church’s perspective on the world, as a fundamentally unholy realm [p 20]. 

When tested by religious leaders about the relationship of faith to empire, Jesus famously said, “Give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s.” Of course, in our faith, everything belongs to God. Some conservative/reactionary Christians instead see Jesus drawing a line between religion and politics, citing the apostle Paul’s dictum about obeying authorities.  Progressive Christians, on the other hand, see Jesus declaring the political realm also an avenue for welcoming the kingdom, or commonwealth, of God. 

So many political advances would not have been made without Christian and more broadly religious investment: more humane treatment of those who break the law, which led to establishing prisons and reform movements instead of inflicting physical punishment or death; the abolition of slavery and the much later Civil Rights Movement; the establishment of social safety nets to alleviate poverty, hunger, homelessness, and lack of education. 

Jesus was crucified for his political views, even if betrayed by religious colleagues. The cross was an execution by the state, the Roman Empire. If it were for religious reasons, he would have been stoned. 

Some of our present religious colleagues would like to silence or betray those of us with progressive views on refugees, immigrants, racial justice, women, LGBTQ people, peace, and justice. Theirs should not be the only Christian voices heard in the media and on social networks.

 

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Copyright © 2021 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

From Loneliness to Solidarity

Greetings from the center of U.S. politics the day I write this, election day in Georgia January 5, 2021. I won’t know the results of our two senatorial elections determining the balance of the U.S. Senate until after you read this, perhaps not until l-o-n-g after you read this. I schedule each post on Tuesdays for publication on Wednesdays at 5 a.m. eastern time and, considering the volume of mail-in votes to be counted and the possible vote-twisting of the losers, delays are likely.

My senior status gave me the opportunity to vote weeks ago, Wade driving me to the only drop-box near us in downtown Atlanta where we had deposited our presidential votes in November. Wade voted before Christmas during early voting. We both received numerous texts, emails and voicemails reminding us to encourage everyone we know to vote, not to mention the television and radio commercials that bombarded us.

When I first moved to Atlanta, I was surprised that, unlike my home state of California, I did not get a non-partisan sample ballot automatically in the mail, explaining the candidates and the propositions. We still don’t receive sample ballots, non-partisan or otherwise, but now we receive mailings from various campaigns.

A Trump-voting relative asked in jest if we were exhausted voting so many times in the presidential election, and I kidded back about how much time it took to fill in all the extra ballots for Biden. “The real work,” I explained, “Was erasing all those filled-in ovals for Trump!”

I hope I don’t see this reported on social media or a certain network or Q-Anon as reality!

“This is Reality!” was a common refrain from the first Presbyterian pastor I worked alongside, the Rev. Dr. Ross Greek, in the late 70s and early 80s at what was then the West Hollywood Presbyterian Church. Reared a Quaker, his political instincts were left-of-center, and he had finely tuned a litany of societal wrongs which he punctuated with the response, “This is Reality!” waving his index finger for emphasis.

It was this left-leaning pastor who inspired our ministries with the Flower Children of the 60s on Sunset Strip, advised conscientious objectors, halfway-housed former prisoners and those with mental health issues, championed the Civil Rights Movement and the Peace Movement, welcomed LGBTQ people who provided worship for gay jail inmates and sack lunches for the homeless, and initiated a transition program for sex workers.

When California defeated a 1978 proposition that would have banned LGBT school teachers and any teacher who advocated gay rights, my personal “pride parade” was dampened by Ross’s dismay at the reinstitution of the death penalty and the election of a conservative governor.

Using the lyrics of Judy Collins, I’ve seen politics “from both sides now.” As a 13-year-old I volunteered at Goldwater headquarters. By the next election, I supported Senator Eugene McCarthy who opposed the Vietnam war, and progressive has been my persuasion ever since. Education helped, but frankly, I believe I simply grew into the kind of person Jesus called me to be.

Jesus may have called you to be a different kind of person, but that, I believe, is why we are part of the same Body of Christ, to consider one another’s values and needs and hopes and beliefs, to pray for one another and call one another to serve God’s commonwealth.

President Trump caused me to pray daily for the president and vice president and all of our leaders in this nation and the world—praying for compassion, wisdom, knowledge, truth, and justice. I pray the same daily for our electorates as well, as our leaders reflect our own limitations and possibilities.

I pray too for humanity’s deliverance from the pandemic, giving thanks to God for scientists and chaplains, the medical profession, frontline workers, healthcare workers and volunteers, grocery clerks and stockers and pharmaceutical workers, mail carriers and delivery persons.

Coping with the isolation of the pandemic, our congregation is enjoying a January series, “From Loneliness to Solitude,” based on the first movement of the spiritual life described in Henri Nouwen’s book, Reaching Out. This has prompted me to name this post, “From Loneliness to Solidarity.” That, I believe, is our ultimate goal in spirituality, to feel a solidarity with all that transcends partisanship.

  

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Copyright © 2021 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

"Take Heart, It Is I, Do Not Be Afraid!"

The anxious uncertainty of the U.S. elections coupled with the anxiety of the worldwide pandemic prompts me to reprise the February 1, 2017 post entitled “You Can Walk through a Storm.” I schedule posts on Tuesday for Wednesday publication and thus have no idea how the election will turn out, but there may be a protracted process calming the electoral waters, thus the need to reach out to One who can “still the waters.”

There’s a wonderful biblical story about the disciples seeing Jesus strolling on a stormy Sea of Galilee. Peter decides to join him, only to falter, frightened by the strong wind, and begins to sink. He cries to Jesus, “Lord, save me!” Jesus comes to the rescue, chiding him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

I was helping with a spiritual formation course on discernment the week of the U.S. election in 2016. The morning after, sensing the downcast feelings of many if not most of us, instructor Marjorie Thompson (Soul Feast) began the class with a rhetorical question, “Does God still reign?” As I recall, she repeated it a couple of times for emphasis, smiling. “Does God still reign?” To the participants, however we felt about the election results, the answer was obvious. Yes, of course, God still reigns.

It reminded me of a visit to the Capitol Hill office of Mary Jane Patterson, the Presbyterian Church lobbyist in Washington, D.C., during the Reagan presidency. An African American longtime activist on behalf of all kinds of progressive causes, the plaque prominently displayed on her desk grabbed my attention, “This too shall pass.” My inquiry about it brought a mischievous smile and a twinkle of an eye to her face, and without a word, she communicated her hope about future administrations.

Teilhard de Chardin, whose essay “A Note on Progress” was the subject of my post last week, did not come to his faith in the future in a storm-free place, but rather, as a stretcher bearer in the trenches of World War I.  In Christ of the Celts, J. Philip Newell reminded me of that:

As Teilhard wrote after the harrowing Battle of Ypres in 1915, “More than ever I believe that life is beautiful.” … As he agonized over what was happening between the nations and personally despaired about the direction of the world, he heard himself being addressed by Christ, “Ego sum, noli timere (It is I, be not afraid).”

These were the words the disciples heard when they witnessed Jesus walking on the waters of the storm on Galilee, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Fellow Jesuit scholar John McNeill (The Church and the Homosexual) experienced Christ also on the battlefields, that of World War II.  As I wrote on this blog on the occasion of his death:

Being silenced by the church and then ousted from the Jesuits gave him the opportunity to fulfill a greater calling than he originally anticipated when, as a starving prisoner of war during WW II, a slave laborer, at risk of death from a vigilant SS guard, tossed him a potato, making the sign of the cross. John dated his priesthood from the moment of that courageous and compassionate act.

During the spiritual formation course on discernment, a participant came to me, her fear palpable, wondering what the election of Donald Trump and Mike Pence could mean for her and her partner. I had met this couple when they attended my course on Henri Nouwen earlier in the fall. I tried to assure her, but I’ve found similar apprehension among all kinds of people, even among likely Trump voters, who fear what this administration bodes for us.

It deeply troubles me how my hopes and so many others’ hopes in the future have been dashed.

“You’ll Never Walk Alone,” was my high school principal’s favorite song, and, with the school choir, The Chanters, I would sing it with passion and pride whenever we performed it for him. James B. Taylor, an African American, was very popular with students, faculty, and parents, but had been prevented from buying a home for his family in the neighborhoods surrounding the school, and this was in “liberal” California in the 1960s!

“When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high, and don’t be afraid of the dark,” the Rodgers and Hammerstein song from Carousel begins, and “though your dreams be tossed and blown,” concludes with the assurance, “You’ll never walk alone.”

“Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

“Does God still reign?”

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Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

God and the Emperor

Congressman John Lewis quote and mug shot on our street.

This is a guest post from our pastor, the Rev. Jenelle Holmes, from her sermon of October 18, 2020 to Ormewood Church over Zoom. Used by permission.

Then the Pharisees plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, [asking] “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”  (See full text, Matthew 25:15-22, NRSV.)

As we inch closer to the election, any scripture that mentions anything political is bound to hit harder. This particular story about Jesus has been used as a political defense throughout history. It’s been used to defend a separation of church and state: give to the emperor, king, or president what is theirs and to God what is God’s. It’s been used to bolster the defense of high taxation when people start to grumble. It’s been used to support the argument that Christians must submit to the powers of government, just like they submit to the powers of God.

As you can tell—it is truly a very useful story for people in power.

However, before you use this passage in these ways you need to know exactly what was going on between the Herodians, the Pharisees, and Jesus.

This story in the book of Matthew happens in the dead center of Holy Week. Jesus has entered Jerusalem triumphantly on a donkey, thrown out the money changers, and offered some radical teachings that challenge those in power. All of this is leading up to the Friday of Jesus’ crucifixion. In the meantime, the religious leaders are closing in on Jesus.

And the identity of the different leaders play a really important role in understanding Jesus’ words. The Pharisees must be really desperate to get rid of Jesus because they are partnering with the Herodians, their enemies. The Pharisees are religious rule followers. They want to do their religion correctly. The Herodians, on the other hand, are the region’s ruling people for the Roman empire and have been known to make Jewish rule-following tough.

Case in point: the Jewish folks do not want to own, use, or touch the denarius coin used for the tax to Caesar. This coin not only has a graven image on it (a religious no-no), it also reads “Caesar is the son of God.” Well, the tax that the Herodians collect is exactly one denarius--so the Jewish folks HAVE to touch them.

And now the ambush. After a little false flattery the Pharisees ask Jesus a trick question: Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?

Trick question. First, revisit what you now know about the denarius. If Jesus says yes, we should pay the tax, the Jews would feel betrayed by Jesus. They would claim Jesus is siding with the empire that forces them to break their religious laws. But if Jesus says that Jews should not pay the tax because of religious reasons, he is a traitor to the empire and in very deep trouble with the Herodians.

It’s a trick question. The answers of yes or no will land him in hot water either way.

But Jesus musters a rather clever response: Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Now, to the non-Jewish listener, this is a decent and satisfactory answer. The emperor gets his money and the people get their God. The Herodians most likely see this as a compromise between the state and the church, a binary of sorts that suits them just fine.

But, to the first-century Jewish listener, especially a Pharisee, there would have been no binary in this answer. Jesus answered this question in just as tricky a way as it was asked. Jesus’ final statement is “to God the things that are God’s.” Do you know what the Bible says are “God’s things?” ALL OF IT.

In fact, Psalm 24, which was used at the entrance to the temple, starts like this: The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it. No Pharisee would have missed Jesus’ meaning when he says we should “Give to God the things that are God’s.” All things are God’s--even that denarius.

So while the Herodians see a nice division of labor in Jesus’ response, so too do the Pharisees see his play on words and cannot condemn him.

All things are God’s things.

And for us in 2020 this offers some insight and perhaps comfort.

In a political time like ours, where it’s easy to see people dividing up their lives based on power and political party, it is all the more important to remember that all that we have and all that we are, are ultimately to live in and grow out of the love of God. There is no binary where Christians get to divide some of our priorities to the state and some to God. That type of quarantine does not exist.

As my friend Rev. Dr. Richard Floyd says, “we only give to Caesar what can be done as a faithful service to God.” We only give to our government, to our communities, what can be done as a faithful service to God. God is our first loyalty and our first calling. In what is perhaps our most momentous and divisive election in the history of our nation, we as Christians are called to only give to Caesar what can be done as a faithful service to God. There is no part of our lives that can be lived outside of the scope of God’s reign. All things are God’s things.

And while saying that all things are God’s things is an exhortation to live a certain way, it is also a declaration of comfort. It is a declaration that God’s love knows no bounds. The Heidelberg Catechism proclaimed this comfort long ago: What is your only comfort in life and death? That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.

When you feel pulled in different directions, disappointed in the loyalties of others or maybe even yourself, when you are exhausted by all the graven images being tossed around, know that in the end you can rest in the comfort that your life belongs to God. The loyalties on earth cannot tear you apart, you are made whole and wholly made by and for God.

 

Copyright © 2020 by Rev. Jenelle Holmes. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author, venue (Ormewood Church, Atlanta) and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

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Forgiveness and Neighborliness

Our neighbor Mary took this slip from

her rosebush and rooted it for us.

Reminds me of The Little Prince.

In recent weeks I’ve been writing about the relationship of community and compassion. Last week I summed up my post, “Loving our neighbors as ourselves requires first recognizing them as neighbors.”  That post also explained the role of confrontation on behalf of our neighbors. This post from October 22, 2014 talks about how forgiveness plays into neighborliness.

I recite the Lord’s Prayer daily, and often the most challenging phrase for me is the second part of “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

Though I’ve received everything I have from a generous and gracious God, it’s hard to let go of grudges and wrongs and the feeling that others owe me something or that somehow I have unfairly missed out.

Or if I pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” I think about how often I impinge on God’s territory by profaning the sacred, by judging or pre-judging others, by invading the space of one of God’s creatures, by polluting God’s property: earth, water, and air; or by playing God—a role which, in all modesty, I play rather well. 

To the poor who followed Jesus, “forgive us our debts,” must’ve sounded pretty good. It sounds pretty good to us today, weighed down as we are with loans, credit cards, church pledges, expectations from elderly parents or children of any age or our beloved pets, not to mention Comcast bills.

To the sinners who followed Jesus, “forgive us our trespasses” or “sins” must’ve sounded pretty good. It also sounds pretty good to us today, burdened by moral failings, hurt we’ve inflicted on those we love most, toes we’ve stepped on or boundaries we’ve crossed, injustice we’ve ignored.

Thank God, there’s a lot of forgiveness in the Bible, and, according to Old Testament professor Walter Brueggemann, longtime oracle of Columbia Theological Seminary, forgiveness may involve money, land, power, politics, morality, and religious pretensions.

Religious scruples are what the late-converted apostle Paul often addressed. Paul when he was Saul was a Torah fundamentalist who followed every jot and tittle of the Law of Moses, not simply the Ten Commandments on which it’s based, but all the interpretations, applications, court rulings, and explications of Mosaic Law.

As we know from our own Christian tradition, no one can claim the moral high ground better than a self-righteous legalist, traditionalist, or fundamentalist. As an aside, Brueggemann also points out that no one can claim the moral high ground better than a self-righteous liberal, progressive, non-literalist such as myself. All of us tend to equate God’s views with our own, what Brueggemann calls “the cunning little secret of certitude.”

And that’s the tension in the early church—legalists wanting other Christians to follow the Laws of Moses, including dietary restrictions and Sabbath observance, and others who experience freedom in Christ as to such spiritual beliefs and practices. Paul comes down on the side of freedom in Christ, but urges all Christians to respect and regard one another’s positions. Paul is truly a recovered fundamentalist, but doesn’t twist others’ arms to come to 12-step meetings of Legalists Anonymous.

“Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another?” Paul rhetorically questions the Romans, and then observes, “It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.”

Christians have entered into a covenant with Jesus and with one another that requires the interweaving of our lives, beliefs, and practices. Every strand is needed to create the fabric of our spiritual community, one that hopefully reflects Jesus’ meaning for our neighborhood and for the world.

Discussing the Ten Commandments in his book of essays, The Covenanted Self, Brueggemann affirms that the first three commandments about Yahweh give rise to the other seven, which all have to do with living in community, being good neighbors, and loving the neighbor as oneself.

In awe of God, we are called to, in a sense, privilege the neighbor to be truly neighborly and faithful to God. We are to consider their needs, their beliefs, their practices above our own needs, beliefs, and practices. It’s like what is said about marriage, each partner must give 150%. 50% doesn’t cut it, not even 100%. But if we strive to give 150% we are more likely to make a marriage or a spiritual community work.

That requires forgiveness—forgiving that the other is not all we expected, forgiving mistakes and ignorance and insensitivity, forgiving wrongs and inabilities and limitations. And forgiving ourselves these things as well. We are not perfect people. We are forgiven people.

Our model is Jesus, of whom our Christian tradition says that he emptied himself to be a servant. Jesus emptied himself into the neighbor, Brueggemann asserts, and urges us to “imagine that neighborliness is more important than good economics or good politics or good morality or good orthodoxy.” While accepting that challenge, I would add that truly good economics, politics, morality, or orthodoxy must be based in neighborliness.

In Living Buddha, Living Christ, the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh tells the story of a woman who invoked the name of the Buddha hundreds of times a day for ten years, but “was still filled with anger and irritation.” Noticing this over the years, a neighbor knocked on her door and called to her. Annoyed, she struck her meditation bell hard to make it clear she was chanting. The neighbor called again and again, and finally the woman shouted, “Can’t you see I’m invoking the name of the Buddha? Why are you bothering me now?”

The neighbor responded, “I only called your name twelve times, and look at how angry you have become. Imagine how angry the Buddha must be after you have been calling his name for ten years!”

 

Related posts:

Recovering Compassion

Compassion and Community

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Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Recovering Compassion

Mosaic along Philadelphia's South Street

For the past four years, I have prayed daily for compassion within our nation’s leadership. So it’s high time I read the only Henri Nouwen book I don’t recall reading, Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life, co-authored in 1982 with Donald P. McNeill and Douglas A. Morrison.

The copy I’m reading was my gift to my mother on Valentine’s Day, 1993, “remembering your own gracious gifts of compassion,” I wrote in it.

It’s an eye-opening experience, replete with many surprising considerations. Though I’ve written elsewhere that caring for those in need is considered by archaeologists a sign of civilization, compassion is not universally considered the highest human value. There are those who have argued that a compassionate society impinges on the “higher” value of individual freedom. Small wonder Hillary Clinton’s book It Takes a Village was problematic for some!

The authors interviewed many people and many communities to prepare for writing Compassion. Of particular interest to me was their conversation about compassion in politics with the late U.S. Senator and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a progressive of his time:

Senator Humphrey walked back to his desk, picked up a long pencil with a small eraser at its end, and said in his famous high-pitched voice: “Gentlemen, look at this pencil. Just as the eraser is only a very small part of this pencil and is used only when you make a mistake, so compassion is only called upon when things get out of hand. The main part of life is competition; only the eraser is compassion. It is sad to say, gentlemen, but in politics compassion is just part of the competition.”

The authors observe, “Compassion erases the mistakes of life… To be compassionate then means to be kind and gentle to those who get hurt by competition.”

Compassion is neither our central concern nor our primary stance in life. What we really desire is to make it in life, to get ahead, to be first, to be different. We want to forge our identities by carving out for ourselves niches in life where we can maintain a safe distance from others. We do not aspire to suffer with others.

Is this the basis of “white grievance”? Do some straight white males see themselves diminished by the ascendance of women, LGBTQ people, and people of color? For the life of me, I can’t work up compassion for those who oppose rights and opportunities for those who have been marginalized. But I can understand those who feel they have been left out of the system because I was for so long as a gay man. Yet perception is not always reality. Leaders who play up that perception to gain power are not honest brokers. They are mistreating the same people they claim to empower.

“Must we simply recognize that we are more competitive than compassionate and try to make the best of it…?” the Catholic Christian authors ask in their introduction. “This book says No…” and then quotes Jesus in Luke 6:36: “Be compassionate as your [God] is compassionate.”

The authors don’t use the terms, but the call of Jesus is counter-cultural and revolutionary: “it is a call that goes right against the grain; that turns us completely around and requires a total conversion of heart and mind. … God’s own compassion constitutes the basis and source of our compassion.”

Here [in the example of Jesus] we see what compassion means. It is not a bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position… On the contrary, compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there.

In a time so filled with methods and techniques designed to change people, to influence their behavior, and to make them do new things and think new thoughts, we have lost the simple but difficult gift of being present to each other. We have lost this gift because we have been led to believe that presence must be useful.

But what really counts is that in moments of pain and suffering someone stays with us.

I have reordered some sentences within the spirit of the authors.

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Copyright © 2020 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

"A Flower Does Not Talk"

One of our orchids.

I had a great idea (or so I egotistically thought) for a justice/politically-minded post that would have pleased many of you, but I decided “what the world needs now,” as the song goes, is Zen! Today and next Wednesday I am revisiting two posts that are Zen-like in orientation, one from 2018 and the second from 2016. I pray they bring peace to our troubled souls!

The whole world today, both East and West, seems to be going through a period of convulsion, a time of travail, as it seeks to give birth to a new culture. There cannot be one simple cause for the tensions in so many parts of the world, but one of the major factors may be that while remarkable progress has been made in the use of new scientific knowledge, we human beings have not developed sufficiently spiritually and ethically to meet the new conditions.

It is most urgently required, therefore, that we must work to create a new human culture by striving for a truer understanding of humanity and a higher level of spirituality.

This seems to echo the observations of Teilhard de Chardin, writing just after World War II, and speaks to our own time nearly two decades into the 21^st century. But it comes from a book written in 1970 by Zenkei Shibayama, a Zen master and then abbot of Nazenji Monastery in Kyoto, Japan. The book is titled, A Flower Does Not Talk: Zen Essays, and was translated into English by one of the author’s disciples, Miss Sumoko Kudo.

I took this from my bookshelves very early morning of the Saturday I write this, a little more than a week before leading a contemplative retreat, which I should continue preparing for, but I prefer to write this post, to be published a week after the retreat. The title possibly appealed to me because I am a little anxious about my impending leadership. In her helpful book, Be Still: Designing and Leading Contemplative Retreats, Jane E. Vennard writes that the best way to lead contemplation is to be a contemplative. A flower that does not talk seems a good role model.

As I read Shibayama’s preface and Daisetz T. Suzuki’s introduction, I wondered how I had never read this book that has sat alongside my books of Eastern wisdom for at least three decades. I was moved to find that the introduction was the famous D. T. Suzuki’s last writing, having completed it the day before he took sick, dying the day after that at the age of 95.

Only when I sat down to write this post did I see “Culbertson” handwritten on the title page and realize that this was either a loan or a gift from my friend, Linda Culbertson, recent executive of the Presbytery of the Pacific.

Suzuki evokes a smile with his very first sentence, “Zen claims to be ‘a specific transmission outside the scripture and to be altogether independent of verbalism,’ but it is Zen Masters who are most talkative and most addicted to writings of all sorts.” As a would-be contemplative who obviously loves words, I find this comforting.

He then writes how Zen Masters enjoy bringing their readers “to bewilderment with their apparently irrational and often irrelevant utterances.” I underlined “bewilderment” because yesterday I used a fanciful version of the word preparing a guided meditation for the retreat, writing, “We will flee from the familiar to the wild-ness and bewilder-ness of the wilderness.” Suzuki asserts that their purpose is to lift students to “the higher way of observing things.”

“Zen tells us to change or reverse our usual way of understanding,” he writes. “Zen always aspires to make us directly see into Reality itself, that is, be Reality itself, so that we can say along with Meister Eckhart that ‘Christ is born every minute in my soul,’ or that ‘God’s Isness is my Isness.’”

Yet the author, Abbot Zenkei Shibayama, cautions in his preface, “We should not too easily conclude that there is just one Truth, and that East and West are after all the same.”

Hallelujah!

The book’s title is that of the author’s poem:

A Flower Does Not Talk

Silently a flower blooms,

In silence it falls away;

Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,

            the whole of the flower, the whole of the world is blooming.

This is the talk of the flower, the truth of the blossom;

The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.

I think I’ve found my personal reading for the retreat.

I will be leading a virtual, at-home retreat open to the public for Columbia Seminary’s Spiritual Formation Program September 17-19, 2020 entitled An Open Receptive Place: Henri Nouwen’s Spirituality. You are invited!

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Copyright © 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Why Must Politics Intrude on Our Faith?

Photo by Bassam Khabieh for Reuters and The New York Times.

A few days after Christmas [2014] I picked up our morning paper and, before I put on my reading glasses, I saw on the front page a child on a sled in the snow, confirmed by the caption that began, “Heavy sledding…” I wondered where in the world the photograph was taken.

As I drew the paper closer and put on my reading glasses I was stunned by my mistake. This was no child laughing as he rode a sled through snow—no, this was a child crying out in pain, being carried on a stretcher over a caption that read not “heavy sledding” but “Heavy Shelling…” as in “Heavy Shelling Reported Near Damascus.” What I imagined was snow on the boy’s clothing must have been debris from the blast.

I felt much the same way when I read the Gospel lesson for the Sunday following Christmas. After spending Christmas Eve hearing and singing about the holy infant Jesus, so tender and mild, enjoying a silent and holy night in which all is calm, all is bright, I found Matthew’s text about the slaughter of the innocents disturbing and violent (2:13-23).

Here Jesus had just been born to Mary and Joseph, and was lying in a manger, sleeping in heavenly peace, visited in Matthew by three spiritual sages from another country who brought gold and frankincense and myrrh and, in the Christmas carol, Silent Night, visited by shepherds enjoying the “radiant beams from his holy face” that meant “the dawn of redeeming grace.” The only thing that had disturbed their silent night earlier had been angels in the heavens singing “alleluia to our King; Christ the Savior is born.”

Why, oh why, must this beatific image be shattered by political realities? Escaping from King Herod, who, if he can’t find this baby that threatens his political power, chooses to slaughter all the innocents—infants the age of Jesus, causing wailing and lamenting in his birthplace of Bethlehem. And why, upon their return from Egypt, must Mary, Joseph, and Jesus go into hiding once more, this time in Galilee, to escape the even more heinous son of Herod, Archelaus, who had ascended the throne upon his father’s death?

Why can’t we just have a nice little Christmas? Why can’t we all just get along? And why must politics intrude on our faith, disturb our praise and worship, interrupt our contemplative mantra of “peace on earth, goodwill to all”? Why must we read of slaughtered innocents and wailing mothers? Why must I pick up a newspaper and see such a disturbing scene as a terrified child in pain after the president of Syria has bombed his hometown?

If we learn nothing else from the subsequent life of Jesus, it is that spirituality is never an escape—it is always an engagement with reality. Jesus’ prayer “forgive us our debts” meant a lot to his poor, impoverished fellow Israelites. “Thy kingdom come” meant the end of the Roman Empire. If a Roman soldier compels you to carry his gear one mile, carry it two miles, because “Loving your enemies” is a revolutionary act.

“Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, but give to God that which is God’s.” “Don’t be like these Pharisees…,” rather, “consider the lilies of the field.” Whether waiting for the bridegroom or your master or the owner of the vineyard, be strategic in your preparations. “Be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.” “If a town (or church) does not welcome you, shake its dust from your feet.” “Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and come follow me.”

“Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” “Let the one without sin cast the first stone.” God’s “house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples, but you have made it a market place!” All of these quotes bring to mind real world applications of Jesus’ gospel.

And then there’s the cross: a political execution awaiting our “holy infant, so tender and mild.”

So I wrote this prayer for the children of the world:

In the name of Jesus who lifted children to his lap

and said “of such is the kingdom of heaven,”

we pray for the children of the world:

We pray for those who live in poverty,

            from our own neighborhood to those in hidden corners of the world.

We pray for those who live in danger

            of abuse, exploitation, violence, war, and disaster.

We pray for those who live in hunger and thirst,

            those who starve and those who are malnourished,

those enduring droughts and those whose water is polluted.

We pray for those who suffer illiteracy or disease, those who are refugees,

those who are illegal immigrants, those with disabilities,

those who are oppressed, those whose religion, culture, tribe, or nation distort their view of themselves and the world.

Your child, Jesus, suffered with all the children of the world

“because all are precious in his sight.”

In the name of Jesus who lifted children to his lap

and said “of such is the kingdom of heaven,”

we pray for the children of the world. Amen.

I posted this on January 15, 2014 and thought new blog followers might like to read it. Have a meaningful and hopeful new year!

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Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

Thomas More's Utopia

The current tenor of politics has given rise to dystopian analogies. As in Handmaid’s Tale, fundamentalist Christians and the state are coercing women to carry unwanted pregnancies in a growing number of states. With similar reasons for the burning of books in Fahrenheit 451, print media is ridiculed as fake news. Like the animals in Animal Farm, all citizens are equal, but some citizens are more equal than others, especially corporations and the very rich. As in 1984, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

So how refreshing by contrast for me to happen onto Sir/St. Thomas More’s utopian fantasy at a yard sale last week, appropriately entitled Utopia. I had read excerpts in my Norton Anthology in college but had never held a full copy in my hands. I treated this 1947 version as if it were the original sacred Latin text from 1516. I resisted my usual underlining and markings in pen and used a less permanent and less damaging pencil instead.

OMG, a few holier-than-thou folk might say, you’re reading another “dead white man,” adding, didn’t you hear about that recent hullabaloo about how harsh More was in the trials of heretics?! Well, as I’ve written before, saints are not perfect people who always got everything right, even as he has been revered as A Man for All Seasons. He got many things right, such as educating his daughters, a counter-cultural move, and, refusing to recognize the king as head of the church (an example we sorely need today), for which he was martyred in 1535 and sainted 400 years later.

In her Introduction to my newly-acquired-for-one-dollar version, Mildred Campbell makes some observations about the times of More’s writing of Utopia that sound familiar:

An expanding economy had many benefits to bestow, but, as More was aware, not all of its effects were beneficial; nor did everyone share in its bounty. … The malpractice in currency manipulation that kings and their ministers indulged in and an increased demand for goods of all kinds were producing an upswing in prices that eventually brought ruinous dislocations to the social and economic systems of nearly every country in Europe. …

It was a period of growing competition… It put a premium on individual initiative and aggressiveness; riches increasingly became the measure of achievement. It was this spirit of competition and materialism that More deplored as much as he grieved over the suffering of those who fell victim to it.

Thomas More carefully put descriptions of Utopia (which means “nowhere”) in the mouth of a fictional mariner, Raphael Hythloday (whose first name comes from the Hebrew for “God has healed” and whose last name comes from Greek words meaning “a skilled conveyer of trifles or nonsense”). In their conversation, More defends private property, as would be expected of an English nobleman, but it is also clear that Hythloday serves as his alter-ego, a representation of his serious bent as a Christian humanist, which Campbell describes as a “fusion of Christian faith with the pagan belief in reason and virtue.” She adds, “It formed a basis for the religion that More gave to the Utopians, a kind of humanitarian deism which abhorred religious intolerance.”

Next week’s post will describe the religion of the Utopians, but this week I lift quotes about their economy with contemporary relevancy from a 1949 translation from the Latin by H. S. V. Ogden, the version used in the Norton Anthology:

But in Utopia where there is no private property and where they zealously pursue the public business, there the name commonwealth is doubly deserved. … In Utopia where everything belongs to everybody, they know that if the public warehouses and granaries are full, no one will lack anything for his personal use. Among them there is no maldistribution of goods. …

Comparing Utopia to other nations, More’s fictional character asks,

What justice is there in this, that a nobleman, a banker, a money lender, or some other man who does nothing at all for a living or does something that is of no use to the public, lives a sumptuous and elegant life? In the meantime a servant, a driver, a blacksmith, or a farmer works as hard as a beast at labor so necessary that the commonwealth could not last a year without it. …

Is not a government unjust and ungrateful that squanders rich rewards on noblemen (as they are called), bankers, and others that do not work but live only by flattery or by catering to useless pleasures? And is it just for a government to ignore the welfare of farmers, charcoal burners, servants, drivers, and blacksmiths, without whom the commonwealth could not exist at all? …

Furthermore the rich constantly try to whittle away something from the pitiful wages of the poor by private fraud and even by public laws. To pay so little to men who deserve the best from the state is in itself unjust, yet it is made “just” legally by passing a law.

So when I weigh in my mind all the other states which flourish today, so help me God, I can discover nothing but a conspiracy of the rich, who pursue their own aggrandizement under the name and title of the Commonwealth. They devise ways and means to keep safely what they have unjustly acquired, and to buy up the toil and labor of the poor as cheaply as possible and oppress them. …

And yet they are far short of the happiness of the Utopians, who have abolished the use of money, and with it greed. What evils they avoid! What a multitude of crimes they prevent! … Fear, anxiety, worry, care, toil, and sleepless nights would disappear at the same time as money! …

Certainly rich men know this. They also know that it would be more practicable to provide the necessities of life for everyone than to supply superfluities for a few, and much better to eradicate our innumerable evils than to be burdened with great concentrations of wealth.

If that one monster, pride, the first and foremost of all evils, did not forbid it, the whole world would doubtless have adopted the laws of the Utopians long before this, drawn on by a rational perception of what each man’s true interest is, or else by the authority of Christ our Saviour, who in His great wisdom knows what is best and in His loving-kindness bids us do it. Pride measures [its] prosperity not by [its] own goods but by others’ wants.

When Raphael Hythloday finishes his tale of Utopia, Thomas More explains to the reader that he was constrained from questioning Utopia’s values and practices because “I remembered that [Hythloday] had spoken ill of certain men who feared they would not be thought wise unless they could find something to criticize in other men’s opinions.”

Though More says he can’t agree with everything described, he concludes, “Yet I must confess that there are things in the Utopian Commonwealth that I wish rather than expect to see followed among our citizens.”

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Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

The Psalmist, Judas, and Today's Politics

“I never knew what the psalmist meant by ‘enemies’ until I came out in the church,” a seminarian told us. Her poignant words hung in the air, resonating in the experience of the small support group of LGBT Christians.

I’ve been revisiting the Psalms, and must admit many of them no longer touch me as they once did when facing opposition in the church. The praising and awe-filled ones still uplift me; but many more sound whiny, petulant, and self-absorbed—especially those attributed to the king: reminds me too much of the self-pitying tweets we’ve been exposed to lately.  I also cannot claim the innocence or the righteousness before God that many psalms do.

I believe it was Bonhoeffer who recommended understanding the psalms that plead for justice as voiced by someone else in the world more needful than we. But even this act of the imagination has taxed me during my morning prayers.

Until last night.

We watched Netflix’s Get Me Roger Stone, a film about a master of political dirty tricks, one arrogantly proud of his lies and innuendo and misinformation to elect his clients and betray their opponents.  And this morning I read Psalm 64 (NRSV), which I believe speaks to this betrayal of both the righteous and the innocent: 

Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint;

            Preserve my life from the dread enemy.

Hide me from the secret plots of the wicked,

            from the scheming of evildoers,

who whet their tongues like swords,

            who aim bitter words like arrows,

shooting them from ambush at the blameless;

            they shoot suddenly and without fear.

They hold fast to their evil purpose;

            they talk of laying snares secretly,

thinking, “Who can see us?

            Who can search out our crimes?

We have thought out a cunningly conceived plot.”

For the human heart and mind are deep.

But God will shoot [God’s] arrow at them;

            they will be wounded suddenly.

Because of their tongue [God] will bring them to ruin;

            all who see them will shake with horror.

Then everyone will fear;

            they will tell what God has brought about,

            and ponder what [God] has done.

Let the righteous rejoice in the Lord

            and take refuge in [God].

Let all the upright in heart glory. 

Then I turned to my continued reading of Matthew, which happened to be the passage about Judas’s betrayal of Jesus. Judas tells his “clients”: “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” The footnoted alternative, “Other ancient authorities read righteous,” seems truer. “Righteous blood” seems more valuable than “innocent blood,” as it suggests the life of someone who, against all odds, has done what was right and good and just.

That would be Jesus, in Matthew’s story. In our own story, that could be compassionate and justice-seeking leaders besmudged by false accusations.

“I would rather be among the killed than among the killers,” I once heard the German theologian Dorothee Sölle tell an anti-nuclear arms gathering in Los Angeles. She clarified, saying something like, “I wouldn’t want fear to change my nature as non-violent.”

Nor can we let anger change us or our methods.

“Hate is more motivating than love,” is one of Roger Stone’s axioms.

A case in point: a few verses after Judas’s betrayal in Matthew’s gospel, the fickle crowds, roused by Jesus’ enemies, elected the volatile and violent Barabbas over the peaceful and compassionate Jesus.

I pray to God that I may hate injustice rather than those who inflict it, hate “alternative facts” rather than those who promote them, hate the lack of compassion rather than those who fail at empathy.

But…

Self-righteous straight Christians claimed (and many still claim) about LGBT people that they “hated the sin, but loved the sinner.”  But we knew this was misinformation.

And Holocaust survivors should not be expected to hate anti-Semitism rather than those who inflicted theirs.

That’s why the psalmist is so honest, so truthful, so real while saying of those “shooting from ambush at the blameless”:

“Because of their tongue God will bring them to ruin.”

P.S. After watching Get Me Roger Stone, watch HBO’s The Words that Built America to get the bad taste out of your mouth.

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Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.