Gospel According to St. John: Unique

I’m not very skilled at digging deeply into Sacred Scripture, finding new meaning and writing paragraphs about a verse or two. But I love looking at the Bible from a 50,000 foot view, so to speak, and detecting patterns, themes, characteristics, and differences. So, here are thoughts and observations about the Gospel According to St. John which St. Augustine apparently Tweeted was “shallow enough for a baby to wade and deep enough for an elephant to swim.”

 

The chart below is an illustration of a simple difference among the Gospels, what they say about the ancestry of Jesus.

Mark is the earliest and shortest and has a wonderful beginning: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” So, if we had any doubt about what the Gospel of Jesus is, Mark makes it clear. Mark doesn’t, however, say anything about the birth or ancestry of Jesus. He just gets right to what happened.

Matthew, generally viewed as a Gospel targeted at a Jewish community, has a beautiful birth story with wise men and flight to Egypt and traces Jesus’s ancestry back to the patriarch Abraham, who begat Isaac, who begat Jacob, who begat the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel.

And Luke, generally viewed as targeted to a community of Gentiles, relates the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Benedictus, and traces the ancestry all the way back to Adam, father of all.

The writer of John had more time to think about the theology of Jesus and a Trinitarian God and copied the first words of Genesis, placing Jesus “In the beginning,” with God, and the same as God, at the creation.

Word counting is a great way to identify major themes in books of the Bible, and it is truly wonderful if one has software such as Bible Works which will do all the counting. Here are some important words in John, in each case having as many or more appearances in that Gospel than in the other three combined. A good way to explore use of these words is to use an online searchable Bible to find the uses of the words and meditate on them.

The “I I am” (which looks like 11 AM) deserves special consideration because the double emphasis, use of the pronoun “ego” which translates “I” even with the inflected verb (eimi) which translates alone as “I am” is understood by scholars and theologians as a reference to God identifying himself, at the burning bush, to Moses as “I AM.” (Exodus 3:13-14) Every religious Jew hearing that phrase from Jesus as in, “I AM the way, the truth and the life,” heard it as a claim to divinity. Believers bowed in awe and unbelievers charged blasphemy.

It is worthy of note also that the word usually translated as testify or bear witness is the Greek word from which we get the English martyr. For the early Christians, bearing witness as Stephen did often resulted in martyrdom.

A review of the use of “believe” can increase understanding of the fact that belief in john goes far beyond mental or intellectual belief to “believing in” or conversion or a change in direction of ones life. Here is an easy link to the list of 83 occurrences of “believe” in John.

John was written around sixty years or so after the resurrection, probably to a well-grounded Christian community that knew well the stories of the birth, baptism, and transfiguration, and the parables and celebrated the Eucharist routinely. Therefore those stories were not told again, though we do have John’s remembrance of the baptism, the Last Supper with Foot Washing, and John 6 explaining the significance of the Eucharist.
We have already mentioned in the first diagram that only John begins the Gospel of Jesus at the creation. It is worthy of note that John includes no parables or exorcisms but is organized around Seven Signs usually followed by long discourses by Jesus about key principles of the faith. One thing we can be especially thankful for is that all four Gospels begin the resurrection story early in the morning or at dawn on the first day of the week, Sunday.
Below is an index of sorts of the content of John, chapter by chapter. The seven signs are in chapters 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, and 11. The three extended dialogues, Jesus with Nicodemus, Jesus with the Samaritan Woman at the well, and Jesus with the woman caught in adultery, in chapters 3, 4, and 5, are very interesting and simple while being theologically deep. Major events are in the third column. For a good story that could be expanded into a movie, read the Chapter 9 full “Crime Scene Investigation” aimed at identifying the culprit in the Sabbath healing of the man born blind. Jesus only appears at the beginning and at the end of the story. And, finally, the discourses which are all familiar to us from Gospel readings at Mass.

Jesus and his followers spent a lot of time walking an area of around 900 square miles. In the Gospel of John, that includes three trips between Galilee and Jerusalem. No wonder Jesus instructed them, in Luke’s Gospel, to not carry anything with them. And no wonder that the writer of John declared that Jesus did many other signs not recorded in the Gospel.

The three trips “up to Jerusalem” are quite different from the single long journey in the other Gospels and are the basis for Church teaching that His ministry was three years. Note the two Bethany’s, one across the Jordan where John baptized Jesus, and one a suburb of Jerusalem.

Here are 24 key verses from the Gospel according to St. John including presence of Jesus at the creation, the incarnation, teachings about Mary, use of “believe,” and importance of the “I AM.”

John – A Few Key Verses
1:1  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
1:14  And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.
1:29  The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
2:5  His mother said to the servers, “Do whatever he tells you.”
2:11  Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs in Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.
2:19  Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
4:13-14  Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again;  14 but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
5:24  Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life.
6:35  Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.
6:56  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.
8:12  Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
10:14  I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me,
12:44-45  Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me believes not only in me but also in the one who sent me,  45 and whoever sees me sees the one who sent me.
14:6  Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
15:1   “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
17:20-22  “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,  21 so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.  And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one,
19:26-27  When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.”  Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.
20:30-31  Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of (his) disciples that are not written in this book.  But these are written that you may (come to) believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.

Read the Gospel According to St. John at one sitting. It won’t take that long (without all the footnotes and references.)

 

Reading the Bible, Cover to Cover

In a recent morning prayer group discussion, the difficulty of cover-to-cover reading of the Bible was mentioned. The problem is that after the stimulating stories of Genesis and Exodus, it is easy to get bogged down in the legal details of Leviticus and lose interest. Even if an ambitious reader survives Leviticus, Deuteronomy looms ahead.
It reminded me of an exhibit I created a decade or so ago outlining where in the Old Testament to find stories of various events and including a suggested order of reading if one just wants to get the narrative without the digressions into legal issues or side stories. Please excuse my exclusion of the Deuterocanonical Books since this chart was created during my Lutheran years.The chart features a little segment across the bottom just above the timeline suggesting an order of reading of books for one who just wants to get the story from creation through the patriarchs and favorite son Joseph, enslavement in Egypt, deliverance from slavery by Moses, wilderness wandering, entrance into Canaan led by Joshua, the period of judges including Deborah, Samson, and Samuel, the first three kings, Saul, David, and Solomon, division of the kingdom, civil war, defeat, exile, return, and rebuilding by Ezra and Nehemiah. The books that are not key to that narrative are above this segment on the chart. It’s a great story. Here is a clip of that suggested order of books.
 
 
For Christians, it is important to remember to look for Jesus even in the Old Testament. To quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “All Sacred Scripture is but one book, and that one book is Christ, because all divine Scripture speaks of Christ, and all divine Scripture is fulfilled in Christ.”  And there is the famous quote attributed to St. Augustine: “The New Testament is in the Old Testament concealed; the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed.” (My apologies to our Jewish friends who have an entirely different view of the Hebrew Scriptures which we have co-opted and renamed.)
 
Anyway, here is the chart. If it helps, use it. If not, ignore it. And, yes, I am sure it can stand some improvements and fine tuning. I think Leviticus is probably misplaced.
 
 
 
 
 

Reformation Lamentation

I just finished reading A Column of Fire, the third of Ken Follett’s volumes of historical fiction set in the Middle Ages. This one portrays life in the 1500’s in the wake of Catholic Priest Father Martin Luther’s October 31, 1517, courageous attempt to inspire reform of his church.
Follett’s novel and all the current celebration of the 500th anniversary of Father Martin’s action inspired me to review the Reformation years as described in my Lutheran Seminary textbook, The Story of Christianity by Justo L. Gonzalez. Follett’s thousand or so pages are an elaboration of probably a dozen or so in the textbook, mostly focused on the people driving and caught up in the competition between Catholic “Bloody Mary” Tudor, Protestant Elizabeth I, and Catholic Mary “Queen of Scots” Stuart, potential successor put to death on orders of Elizabeth.
Elizabeth and Mary Tudor were half-sisters and Elizabeth and Mary Stuart were cousins so I suppose one could say it was just a murderous family squabble. A summary statement from Gonzalez: “The total number of those executed for religious reasons during Elizabeth’s reign was approximately the same as those who died under her half sister Mary Tudor though it should be remembered that Elizabeth’s reign was almost ten times as long as Mary’s.” The heroes of Follett’s story are those suffering the persecution and fighting for religious freedom.
The Gonzalez text relates the burning at the stake, in Calvin’s Geneva, with Calvin’s consent, of Michael Servetus, a Spanish physician condemned by both Protestants and Catholics for heresy. Servetus is credited with having argued “that the union of church and state after Constantine’s conversion was in truth a great apostasy.” I think Servetus was exactly right and that it was that union, entangling the Church, the Body of Christ, in political intrigue and granting it political and temporal power, even the power to identify, label, and condemn to death heretics, which nurtured corruption and finally triggered the destructive reformation of the sixteenth century. Well, at least Calvin is reported to have argued for beheading rather than burning Servetus because it involved less suffering.
So, I find little to celebrate about the Reformation but much to lament.
I lament that union of Church and State which actually was finalized under the Emperor Theodosius I who decreed that all citizens of the Roman Empire were to be Christian. That, of course, led to lots of mass baptisms without the benefit of catechesis, either before or after the event, never a good idea.
I lament the Church corruption that was nurtured and grew in that atmosphere of temporal power and motivated Martin Luther’s posting of a formal list of grievances. Lord Acton spoke the truth: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men…”
I lament Henry VIII’s “Dissolution of the Monasteries” of England, Wales, and Ireland. It was worse than it sounds.
I lament the torture and killing, by Protestants and Catholics, of thousands of Catholics and Protestants, for heresy. At least during the early years of persecution of the Church, Christians were being killed and burned by pagan rulers and not by “professing” Christians.
I lament the killing of those poor folks who were not “Protestants” because they followed neither Luther, nor Calvin, nor Zwingli, nor Knox, but who decided that baptism was valid only if by total immersion of professing believers, received such a baptism, and then suffered death by “the third baptism,” drowned at the hands of “Protestant Christians.”

I lament the Thirty Years War, fought over enforced geographic religious divisions based only on political and personal considerations, “Christians” fighting “Christians,” which resulted in the death of approximately 20% of the population of Germany. I lament that even a hundred years after the Thirty Years War, thousands of Protestants were expelled from Catholic Austria and became refugees, some settling in Georgia and South Carolina and founding a bank. Google it if you want the details.

But that is all ancient history. Most of all I lament the current fragmentation of The Church, The Body of Christ, that is the residue of that violent reformation. I lament the existence of hundreds, some say thousands of “denominations” differing and sometimes arguing, criticizing, or condemning each other over theological fine points.

I lament the consumer market that has developed for faith seekers. Now I can seek, or even organize, a church that suits me rather than seeking to be part of a global Body of Christ with a common universal statement of belief and common resources and worship practices. It becomes all about me if I do that.

I lament that even within “denominations,” we are fragmented into thousands of little churches sprinkled around the country, sometimes within blocks of each other, many struggling to pay their bills and their pastors, if they have pastors, many with little Christian Education or outreach, sometimes clinging to the past and serving as hospices for their declining memberships.There is power in unity and in numbers and in working together in ministry in highly visible churches sitting on high ground and attracting curious multitudes just as Jesus attracted the multitudes. The early Middle Ages “powers that were” had the right idea, huge cathedrals as the centerpieces of the towns, though Father Martin certainly had valid complaints about the fund raising methods used at the time to finance some of those cathedrals.

I do, however, celebrate the religious freedom that gradually evolved over the past five hundred years and that most of the world enjoys today. Now most Christians can just focus on Jesus and not worry about political power and persecution even as we lament that part of the world is still trapped in a Middle Ages mindset, willing to imprison and kill people over theological issues. Unfortunately, the world still needs heroes fighting for religious freedom.I just look forward to the day that freedom brings us together rather than further separating and dividing us.

Isaiah 2:2-4  In days to come, The mountain of the LORD’S house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills. All nations shall stream toward it; many peoples shall come and say: “Come, let us climb the LORD’S mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and impose terms on many peoples. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.

John 17:20-23  “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me. 

Ephesians 2:19-22  So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. 

 

 

Like Mother, Like Son: Growing Up and Growing Old Together

My Mother, Wilma Irene Shelley (Brownie) Williams was born January 9, 1921 and died September 20, 2017. This is a remembrance and tribute I read at her funeral.
_______________________________________
When I think of growing up with my mother, both of us young but I younger, I am very thankful for the sometimes unjustified trust she placed in me, the somewhat dangerous freedom she allowed, and the self-confidence she always exhibited and encouraged. She was a strong, empowering mother, a woman who knew what she wanted. She couldn’t have paid a better compliment to my fiancé, Karen, in the summer of 1964 when, after going through the planning and activities leading up to our September wedding, she said to me, “Karen is a young woman who knows what she wants.”
One thing I learned from Mother, and Daddy, in my childhood and adolescent years was that a life like theirs, centered on work and home and family and church, is a good life. Thanks to her and the example she and Daddy set, my goal, what I wanted, from adolescence, was to live such a life. I was blessed with the appearance of Karen, who seemed to have a similar goal, and we got an early start, getting our family well under way while Mother was still working on raising hers.
Through all the middle years Mother and I had a good but also somewhat distant relationship. I was always interested in what she and Daddy were up to, and they were always interested in what we were doing. I don’t recall getting any advice or guidance from her and Daddy in those years, nor do I recall feeling any need to offer them any. We didn’t phone or write often or spend a lot of time together, just visiting three or four times a year and always enjoying each other’s company, but not a lot of deep or serious discussion.
I’ve often wondered what life would have been like if I had spent it all in Maryville in pretty much constant contact with Mother and Daddy, maybe even running a little furniture business. I believe that, as independent as Mother and I both were, we were better off with some distance. I might have driven her into an early grave had we been closely monitoring and commenting on, and perhaps hearing gossip, or just opinions, about each other’s activities all those years.
Then, over the last ten or fifteen years, there was a change, both of us old, but she older. I am again very thankful for the trust she placed in me and freedom she gave me to take care of her financial and property and legal issues. I never was able to mow the lawn to her complete satisfaction, and she was a very tough sell on moving to an assisted living environment, but she always trusted me to handle the money and pay the bills and would sign whatever I put in front of her. That made my job easy, and I am thankful for that.
Mother didn’t want to live this long. (Yes, I might have helped her die younger, as I mentioned, by staying in Maryville.) Her dream was to die peacefully in her sleep just before losing control and becoming dependent on others. When Daddy died in 2003, she told some of us that she would be following right behind him. When, ten years later, she moved to assisted living at Sterling House, I said something about the upcoming Christmas, and she informed me she wouldn’t be around at that time. I always told her I had her on a ten year plan and that she needed to find something to do.
I remember in her middle years one of Mother’s favorite things was to visit elderly folks and take them some beautiful item she had made at her speedy sewing machine or something delicious  grown in her very productive garden or made in her efficient kitchen from her extensive recipe collection. I think she must have decided during those years that she did not want to be one of those people, sitting or lying and waiting for visits and gifts. I believe that feeling was strongly reinforced when she saw Daddy move to a “memory care” facility and saw her younger sister die in nursing and hospice care. So, in her last years, Mother had to learn patience, a very tough lesson for an impatient woman.
If you didn’t know her, you might think Mother was lacking in faith and optimism, but that would be wrong. She was very optimistic about going to Heaven soon, and, note taker and list maker that she was, I suspect she had written and memorized a list of things to go over with Clyde Williams as soon as she got there and was looking forward to doing so.
Through all her declining years, my prayer for her was always for peace and comfort, if not joy, and hopefully a little joy mixed in along the way. I believe those prayers were answered partially as she lived and now they are answered in full.
Thanks be to God.
Her obituary can be found here.

Just a Mouthpiece

Hearing Sacred Scripture is a key element of Catholic worship. Usually, from the Old Testament, we hear a reading from the Law, Prophets, or Writings and sing a Psalm responsively. Then we hear a reading from one of the New Testament books other than the Gospels. Finally a selection from one of the Gospels is read by an ordained priest or deacon and heard with special reverence, followed by a homily. Often some important theme connecting the readings is reflected in the homily as well.

Though a lector at St. Peter’s Catholic Church for a few years now and, before that, at Ebenezer Lutheran Church, it was Dr. Monte Luker, professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, who first instructed me in lector best practices. I’m not going to try to blame any of my bad habits or errors on my friend and former teacher, but will try to explain what I took away from the directions he offered and why I read as I do.
The objective of a lector in worship is to draw the attention of the worshipers to the words without any injection of personality or slant or opinion and without calling any attention to himself or herself. This principle links back to the first sentence of the blog which states the importance of “hearing” over that of reading. I believe this is the reason that, at Ebenezer Lutheran, lectors wore simple robes at the ambo. Even clothing and style should not distract from the hearing of The Word.
My way of fulfilling that objective is to read with sincerity, reverence, and awe, slowly and carefully pronouncing and emphasizing each word, completely without drama, while avoiding a monotone. I admit that may be a fine line. But, if I am reading the words of St. Paul, I want the hearers to hear and consider all the words but not any interpretation I may have of them. I am not playing the role of St. Paul, trying to imagine how he might have spoken, but am simply conveying what he wrote, omitting or diminishing nothing. To quote my former Pastor Frank Honeycutt, “There are no throwaway words in the Bible.”
So, I keep my eyes on the written page and do not try to make eye contact with listeners. Intermittent eye contact seems to me would imply that the words being spoken at the time of eye contact are especially important and are from me to the hearer. Even if I were to memorize the scripture to be read, I would still consider it important to keep my eyes glued to the printed page to assure accuracy and to avoid the impression that it is I doing the speaking or that I am emphasizing one point more than another. As a lector, I am only a mouthpiece.
Let me hasten to say that these guidelines I try to follow do not apply in any way to the pastor or priest or teacher charged with exegetical responsibility. The best delivery for such persons is without script and with continuous eye contact and appropriate drama and emphasis to make the points deemed most important for the persons present, at the current time, after careful, prayerful, and inspired study of the written expression of the Word of God. That is a much heavier burden than just reading it.
And, I must confess that my practices are contrary to the instructions in the Workbook for Lectors, Gospel Readers, and Proclaimers of the Word, United States Edition, produced by Liturgy Training Publications.But, I do the best I can and am always willing to step aside for someone who wants to serve.

Yes, it is I at the ambo, reading, eyes down as promised. I do look up for the announcement, “A reading from the____ chapter of ______,” and for the closing, “The Word of the Lord.“

 

The Church of My Youth: Six Points

I was thinking this morning about the church of my youth and the Southern Baptist Sunday School which was the center of it. There was the Six Point Record System, the extensive organization, class officers, weekly Teachers’ Meetings, Assemblies, rigorous age grading, separation of men and women, the weekly Sunday School Report at the following Church Service, etc.  And then there was BTU (Baptist Training Union) with its Eight Point Record System. It was all good disciplinary training if perhaps a bit legalistic and short on spirituality and divine mystery.

Fortunately all that history is documented in an online full text of a 1936 book on the subject. Anybody who grew up Southern Baptist in that era will enjoy looking through it. I wonder if anything has changed!

Below are a couple of screen shots about the Six Point Record System. These are from the book linked above.

 

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Christian Faith, A Three Legged Stool

A Peter Beinart article in the April 2017 issue of The Atlantic points out a correlation between the increasingly vicious and hateful political climate in the USA and decreasing participation in organized religion. The differences in positions between left and right have always been present, but we seem to be losing respect for each other and, in Beinart’s words, “have come to define “us” and “them” in even more primal and irreconcilable ways.”

Beinart provides statistics showing that the percentage of US citizens rejecting any religious affiliation increased almost 300% from 1992 to 2014. And even the “percentage of white Republicans with no religious affiliation has nearly tripled since 1990.” Beinart quotes Geoffrey Layman of Notre Dame: “Trump does best among evangelicals with one key trait: They don’t really go to church.” And, Beinart states, “… liberal non-attenders fueled Bernie Sanders’s insurgency against Hillary Clinton.

You can read the article to see why Mr. Beinart believes these religious and political trends are related, but I have a slightly different take on it. It seems to me that if we give up on the idea that we are all the result of the creative activity of a benevolent God who is “gracious, merciful, and abounding in steadfast love,” we lose respect for each other and one of the most important bases of our civilization crumbles. And we fight.

What are we to do? Well, one possibility for Christians is to do a much better job of learning and teaching the essentials of the Christian faith. What a mish-mash of Christian theologies we have allowed to develop in the American culture of freedom!

Now, before launching into theological issues, let me make it clear that I am not ordained, am not a preacher, and am not speaking with any authority. What I am describing below is more personal testimony, a description of what I have come to believe, at this point, over a lifetime in Christian churches of various labels and a smattering of Lutheran seminary education about theology and Church history. So here goes:

It seems to me that the Christian faith stands on a three legged stool.

  • The first leg is Sacred Scripture, the written expression of “The Word,” the Bible Jesus knew and read from and quoted and referred to and to which the writers of the New Testament referred, and the New Testament, written and assembled, by the Church, after, sometimes long after, the ministry of Jesus. The first complete listing of the NT Canon, after all, is from the fourth century AD.
  • The second leg is Jesus, The Christ, eternal Anointed One, God in flesh, Immanuel, who came and lived among us and showed us The Way and died, at our hands, for us.
  • The third leg is The Church, The Body of Christ, established by Jesus, and led by the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised, to follow his example and to develop and teach the basic theologies of the faith, the Holy Trinity, and the divinity of Jesus.

The diagram below is an attempt to show how these three legs, Sacred Scripture, Jesus, and The Church, fit together and to present a pretty complete picture of the theology of Christian faith as I currently understand and experience it.

 

Don’t like diagrams? I’l try to explain. I believe that Sacred Scripture is the story of our developing understanding of God, that Jesus was God in flesh, with us for a specific period of time, and that the Church is his legacy, his body, through which we jointly can be in union with The Triune God, and abide in Him. That is pretty much unbelievable, isn’t it. It almost sounds ridiculous. Well, I just label it Divine Mystery, subject to our best efforts to explain the unexplainable.
Church is where Christians belong. Church is not a civic club, a social club, a networking organization, or a social service agency. Nor is it a hospice, just taking care of old folks as they die off. It is the Body of Christ, intended to go about doing good just as Jesus, the original Body of Christ did.
Just as Jesus and his followers took up space and attracted attention in the first century, the Church is supposed to take up space and attract attention in the world today. We are to be a community, salt and light and leaven, always going out from the church building and having a positive influence and inviting and drawing people in. That is not evident from what we see? Well, Jesus never promised that the Church would be perfect but only that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it.
If we did a better job with Christian education, maybe we could reduce the mish-mash and focus on these essentials and maybe the Body of Christ would grow and some of the viciousness and hate would moderate.
If these ideas seem strange, Google “church as the body of Christ scripture” for more food for thought. And read John 6 closely for a better understanding of worship, Holy Communion, and unity with Christ. These are not easy or simplistic teachings as evidenced by the response to talk of flesh and blood by some disciples as described in these verses from John 6:

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

 

Last Two Dollars

I was having trouble understanding the man, but I believe his last words as the police walked up were, “I’m down to my last two dollars.”
One of my favorite workouts is a five mile or so walk in the City of Columbia at a 17 minute per mile pace. It is a good time for thinking as well as exercising. I do it once a week or so, and yesterday was the day. On such a journey, one sees and experiences the city much differently than driving.
I do not stick to busy and crowded Main and Gervais but take the side streets through neighborhoods and by smaller businesses. Lots of lawyer offices, medical offices, non-profits, historical homes, etc. Today I walked south on Pickens, crossed Taylor, and saw something unusual at the bus stop on the southwest corner.
There were two men there, a forty something Black man sitting on the bench, and an elderly Black man, legless, lying flat on the concrete sidewalk on his back beside a wheelchair. I wasn’t easily distracted from my walking and whatever was going through my mind at the time so I just kept moving on.
I assumed the two were together, the younger looking after the older, but I wondered if I should have said something or perhaps asked if he needed help getting the man back in his wheelchair. I thought of the Good Samaritan and began to feel a little guilty for just passing on by. So, a hundred yards or so further along, I stopped and turned to look just as the younger man got up and walked off. Maybe he was going to call for help.
So, at that point, I had to walk back and do a little investigating. I asked the man if he was taking a nap. He said he was trying to. I asked if he was OK. He said yes. I asked if he needed help getting in his chair. He said no. So, I left again. But I still felt there was unfinished business so I went around the block and passed the man again.
On this third pass, I bent down and tried to talk to him, though he was difficult to understand. I asked if he needed me to call an ambulance. He said no, that he was OK. I asked where he lives, expecting that perhaps he is a resident of the Marion St. Tower, nearby home to many poor and disabled. He said, “Right here.”
Then a police car with two officers pulled up. Just as the man mentioned the “two dollars,” one of the officers asked the man if he was OK. He said he was. Then an ambulance arrived. The officer thanked me and said, “We’ve got it.” I felt dismissed. Maybe the officer was thinking I had called in the situation. It looked like the ambulance drivers were about to get a stretcher out, but I didn’t stick around to see what happened.
So, what is wrong with that situation. It’s not lack of “health care” since the man is obviously on Medicare, probably because of age and certainly because of disability. There is a good chance he suffers from some mental illness because almost certainly he has had opportunities through the SC Department of Social Services for some housing and has rejected those opportunities. Surely he has!
I hope the ambulance drivers took the man to the closest emergency room and that the police called the Department of Social Services to send someone to meet him there and arrange appropriate nursing care and housing for him. If the man insists on being on the street during the day to panhandle and enjoy some social interaction and independence, let him do so. But the City of Columbia should not allow him to spend helpless nights on the street. It is dangerous, unhealthy, unsafe, and unacceptable.
Mental health reforms, apparently inspired by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, might have had some good results but also had a lot of unintended and unfortunate consequences. I frankly don’t have any sympathy for people wanting the government to provide their flu shots and birth control pills and pay for their annual physicals, but our system for caring for the helpless needs a lot of improvement. That is a priority.
I’ll be keeping my eyes open for the man. He won’t be difficult to spot. Next time I see him, hopefully in his chair, I will find out his name, how old he is, how he lost his legs, how much income he has, and the name of his social worker. I’ll give him a few dollars. Then I will call that social worker who will tell me that she can’t discuss the case because of privacy concerns. Then I’ll find Mr. ______ and give him a few more dollars and tell him that he must give his social worker permission to talk to me if he wants any more help from me.

And maybe once he has a safe place to sleep and bathe and get clean clothes and eat three meals a day, his SSI or SS income will be enough that he won’t always be down to his last two dollars.

The Same as if it Were

It was the fall of 1990, and I was in a new member class led by Pastor Saresky at Faith Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) in Penfield, NY. He was discussing Communion, The Lord’s Supper, Eucharist, the celebration of that Last Supper Jesus celebrated in the Upper Room with his closest followers and commanded that they continue in remembrance of Him. It seemed to me that my new pastor was presenting a quite different view than what I had learned in my Southern Baptist and Presbyterian backgrounds so I asked, “You aren’t saying that the bread and wine are literally the body and blood of Christ, are you?” He answered, “No, but it is the same as if they were.”
That was one giant step in my journey from young Baptist to elderly Catholic. Pastor Saresky was expressing Lutheran doctrine, a theology of “the real presence” of Jesus, “in, with, and under” the elements of bread and wine. I believe that is a bit divergent from Luther’s position which, even for the time of the Reformation, was a bit at odds with Catholic teaching. Luther apparently believed that the 12th century doctrine of Transubstantiation was an unnecessary attempt to explain the divine mystery and that it was adequate to just say that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ.
But, all that is just an introduction to what I want to write about. There is a bit of an uproar going on now in social media about Trump supporters, even some of the picks for his administration, taking the early chapters of Genesis, those that cover the prehistoric events before historical figure Abraham appears on the scene in Chapter 12, as literally true. Such believers are sometimes referred to as Young Earth Creationists, a handy label used to disrespect and marginalize.
Those early Genesis events include two divergent creation stories, the story of Adam, Eve, Eden, and that nasty serpent, the first shedding of blood in jealousy, rapid population growth and the spread of wickedness, the story of Noah and his family, a couple of conflicting stories about a great flood covering the earth, and the Tower of Babel story about why there were so many languages and about the desire of humans always to be God, or at least to worship themselves.
Here is the problem. Many people who would never think of taking the words of Jesus in John 6 literally, want to take the stories in Genesis 1-11 literally. There is no way to submit the John 6 teachings to any kind of scientific investigation. Whether we believe those words is simply a matter of personal faith. But we know from scientific investigation that the earth is not just a few thousand years old. And, given the way continents have shifted position and risen and sunk, we may not be able to prove scientifically that the land masses comprising the highest mountains were never under water, but we do know they were not under water in the last five thousand years.
I recall another former pastor, maybe 25 years after the Saresky lesson, saying that when we ask difficult questions sparked by literal understanding of those first 11 chapters of Genesis, questions such as, “Where did the wives of Cain and Able come from?” or “Where did the waters in Genesis 1:2 come from?” we are simply asking the wrong questions. The questions we should be asking are about the theological truths taught in those ancient stories. Nothing we have learned from scientific investigation of the origins of the universe and humankind takes anything away from those lessons.
Those ancient stories, first written down perhaps 3000 years ago, represent hundreds or perhaps thousands of years of oral tradition, stories told and retold in an attempt by the people to explain how things were, and why they were that way. Where did the earth and its people come from? Why did they have to work so hard? Why was there so much sin and suffering? Why were people selfish and jealous? Why did people want to be God? And, as a believer in the One Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, active in the lives of people from the beginning, I accept these stories as part of Sacred Scripture revealing spiritual truth. In other words, theologically speaking, “It is the same as if those ancient stories were literally true.”
The thing that concerns me, the reason for this little essay, is that when we Christians take the position that the ancient stories refute what we have learned through scientific investigation, with our God-given intelligence, about creation, we lose credibility and fail to help people understand the great spiritual truths taught in both Old and New Testaments, the truths that lead us to The Church, the Body of Christ. We make an easy target for those who want to ridicule and discredit the Church. Some non-believers even argue that, when we insist on such literal interpretations, we are worshiping the Bible, the written expression of the Word of God, instead of The Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We should not let that happen. Jesus Christ is the Word of God, and, according to Catholic teaching, Sacred Scripture is all about Him.
It is interesting to reflect on the words at the beginning of Genesis and at the beginning of the Gospel of John, the theological or spiritual gospel.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” – Genesis 1:1-2
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.” – John 1:1-4
And, by the way, the two most basic spiritual and eternal truths taught in the ancient stories are these:
  • God created and it was good (but we don’t know exactly how)
  • Humankind has a strong tendency to be bad and to blame somebody else for it

 

And one final thought: Efforts, such as this one to “prove” the Bible is true seem to me to completely miss the point and, for me, would be an expression of lack of faith. They ignore not only the characteristics of ancient writings but the simple fact that Christianity is a spiritual matter of personal faith. After all, if we could “prove” that everything in the Bible is true, no faith would be required.

Confessing Failure to Help

It’s 10pm in the parking lot of a hotel, and we are just arriving, tired and looking for a good night’s sleep. A minivan pulls up, window down, and a young Black woman says, “Sir, I’m not asking for any money or anything but we just need a place to sleep tonight. We can check into a shelter in the morning, but they don’t have room for us tonight.”

Well, I’m not going to ask her to share a room with my wife and me, and I’m not going to check her in on my credit card and ID, taking responsibility for anything that might happen in the room, regardless of how long she might stay. I doubt the Holiday Inn would even allow that under the circumstances.

I admit that I am suspicious, thinking that it is really just money she wants and that she may be going home somewhere at bedtime. I’m concerned about who else might be in the car and whether it is an organized scam, maybe even a setup for armed robbery if I get too close to the car, wallet in hand. My wife has walked on to the hotel entrance and is waiting there for me.

So, I ask the woman, from some distance, if she has a credit card, and she says she doesn’t. I suggest that the shelter that has agreed to take her in the morning should have a referral system for some place she can get temporary shelter. Surely suburban Atlanta has such a system in place for single women with children, if that is, in fact her situation. I don’t see the children but there seems to be a child seat in the car. I would have known where to send her in Columbia SC.

I tell her that I can’t help her, and she drives away.

After getting to the room, I still have her on my mind and wonder if she is circling through the parking lot and soliciting other arrivals, so I go back outside and look around. My plan is that, if I see her, I will ask her to park her car at the door of the hotel and come inside by herself, in view of security cameras, so I can see her ID and discuss her dilemma with her. I have a couple of hundred dollars in cash and will be glad to give her enough to pay for a room somewhere that does not require a credit card, a small gift of no consequence to me and possibly very helpful to her.

I don’t see her anywhere. So, I go back to the room feeling guilty for passing up an opportunity to help somebody, obviously in much worse shape than I, even if she is lying and scamming.

If I ever face that same situation again, I now have a plan. I will say to the driver, “Drive to the front door of the hotel, step out of the car by yourself and go just inside the door by yourself, where there will be security cameras and I can see your ID and we can discuss your situation in a public place. Maybe I can help.”

If she takes me up on that, I will be glad to give her enough money for a night in a hotel. And I won’t have to feel guilty, and she can do whatever she wants to with the money. If she doesn’t take me up on that, I will know it is a scam.

As for the young woman I encountered Friday night, at least, if she was telling the truth, she is in a shelter now.