Acts 2: 1 - 21
Ps 104:23-35,37
I Cor 12: 3b-13
John 20:19-23
The Gospel is another case of the standing joke, the ordinary made to appear extraordinary, so that we can see how extraordinary the ordinary is. The Disciples, like all of us, already have the Holy Spirit, as part of the natural world. But we -- and even they -- are not aware of this fact, nor taking advantage of this presence. So Jesus here focuses them on this reality and gives them a clue to what to do with it.
Notice, Jesus doesn't say "I give you the Holy Spirit," either factually nor performatively. but "receive". This sounds fairly polite and mild, like receiving an honored guest. But the Greek, while it can mean that, mainly means "snatch, grasp, hold on to, seize" It is what you do when you conquer a city, or take a captive. So the disciples are being told not just to acknowledge that they have the Holy Spirit but they are wrestle with it to get their advantage from it.
The first lesson is the more familiar, the eponymous, lesson for today. Here again we have a dramatic display to call attention to the indwelling spirit and an immediate application (? it is not clear whether the Pentecostals actually spoke in a dozen different languages -- more or less at once -- or whether they spoke their Aramaic or ghetto Greek and got a simultaneous translation for each listener into his own tongue), And, as promised, the first fruits of this were a new heart of flesh, not stone (the alternate first reading) and true community in all things. But as the single cell became many cells, complications arose, involving, among other things, a notion that some gifts of the spirit were better than others and so Paul has to come and make (yet again, in all likelihood) the point that all are necessary for the whole and that each person is unique and thus receives of the spirit the gifts s/he can uniquely contribute to the whole. Without any of them, the whole is incomplete (and so -- going beyond Paul -- the body is not fully functional until all are in it. And yet, since all are in it in the sense of being connected, perhaps unawares, to the spirit, the body can function in an automatic sort of way)
Clearly, our task is to recognize the spirit within us and to direct ourselves under its guidance to the fulfillment of the community, body. And chief among those tasks is arousing the recognition within others. And the way to do this is love.
[Don't forget ShekinNAH, the crazy gal. who goes against convention and gives us the strength to do so for what she says is right -- not caught by the Hymnal, not dovish, etc. "Every time I feel the Spirit" is better ...]
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Exalting the ordinary
When we look for motifs in the Bible and in church from which to make inferences about God's nature, one that does not get much notice is the way that God -- and his people -- make a big deal out of ordinary things.
I noticed this first in the little apocalypse (Mark 13), which Evangelicals are constantly citing to prove that these are The End Times:
7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains. (NIV)
Well, that certainly sounds like today. But, of course, it sounds like every day since the beginning of human history. Jesus has taken the (perhaps little noted) everyday state of the world and raised to a special status -- the beginning of The End. The point is probably that no one knows when The End will come, so live every day as though you were about to stand before The Judgment. But perhaps also that everyday really is the Judgment Day for someone. By bringing it into The Story, Jesus sanctifies or sacramentalizes each day to make them special.
Another, rather extreme case, occurred to me when someone was complaining about all the impossibilities in the Birth Narratives and the Creed, "conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit" as though some spook could provide a complete male DNA strand. But then, in the magick world of Christianity, every conception is by the power of the Holy Spirit -- as is everything else, for that matter. Here again, the quotidian, even universal, is made special in one instance and thus raised in our consciousness to a sacrament. If, as Nietzsche says, the Immaculate Conception maculates all conceptions, Jesus' conception, by emphasizing the role of the Holy Spirit, sanctifies conception again and points to God at the beginning of life as well as at the end and throughout. And yet -- certainly for my skeptical friend -- it was an ordinary event.
Which, by some trick of mind, brings me to The Real Presence. In this case, an ordinary event -- setting out the wine and crackers for a party -- has already been sacramentalized and, indeed, dramatized. Mid clouds of smoke, ringing bells and flowing, glowing robes, someone breaks some bread and pours out some wine, once, at least, perfectly ordinary acts, now given added significance. Or not. The whole show has become the ordinary stuff of Sunday morning. So the church needs to resacramentalize it. And this they do by insisting that this bread and this wine really are The Body and The Blood of Christ, that Christ is really in there somehow. But of course he is. And without priestly hocus pocus, but simply because he is in everything in creation. The ordinary highlighted to seems special, but calling attention -- when properly done -- to the extraordinary nature of everything.
Last week's Gospel (Lent 4A) is yet another case. The man was born blind not because of sin but so that God might be glorified. But God is always and everywhere glorified, whether we notice or not. Jesus now calls our attention to this fact by a very visible act. an overt glorification. And on the Sabbath! A day set aside for glorifying God is seen to be not different from other days, but another time for actually showing God's glory.
And finally we get an explanation for ordained clergy. they too are just ordinary folks, without special powers to do something special. Except that their presence makes what goes on special, it exalts the ordinary acts of feeding and events of God's presence, in the hope that, seeing them so magnified, we will come to notice them in their ordinary guise as feeding and God's presence in everything.
I noticed this first in the little apocalypse (Mark 13), which Evangelicals are constantly citing to prove that these are The End Times:
7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains. (NIV)
Well, that certainly sounds like today. But, of course, it sounds like every day since the beginning of human history. Jesus has taken the (perhaps little noted) everyday state of the world and raised to a special status -- the beginning of The End. The point is probably that no one knows when The End will come, so live every day as though you were about to stand before The Judgment. But perhaps also that everyday really is the Judgment Day for someone. By bringing it into The Story, Jesus sanctifies or sacramentalizes each day to make them special.
Another, rather extreme case, occurred to me when someone was complaining about all the impossibilities in the Birth Narratives and the Creed, "conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit" as though some spook could provide a complete male DNA strand. But then, in the magick world of Christianity, every conception is by the power of the Holy Spirit -- as is everything else, for that matter. Here again, the quotidian, even universal, is made special in one instance and thus raised in our consciousness to a sacrament. If, as Nietzsche says, the Immaculate Conception maculates all conceptions, Jesus' conception, by emphasizing the role of the Holy Spirit, sanctifies conception again and points to God at the beginning of life as well as at the end and throughout. And yet -- certainly for my skeptical friend -- it was an ordinary event.
Which, by some trick of mind, brings me to The Real Presence. In this case, an ordinary event -- setting out the wine and crackers for a party -- has already been sacramentalized and, indeed, dramatized. Mid clouds of smoke, ringing bells and flowing, glowing robes, someone breaks some bread and pours out some wine, once, at least, perfectly ordinary acts, now given added significance. Or not. The whole show has become the ordinary stuff of Sunday morning. So the church needs to resacramentalize it. And this they do by insisting that this bread and this wine really are The Body and The Blood of Christ, that Christ is really in there somehow. But of course he is. And without priestly hocus pocus, but simply because he is in everything in creation. The ordinary highlighted to seems special, but calling attention -- when properly done -- to the extraordinary nature of everything.
Last week's Gospel (Lent 4A) is yet another case. The man was born blind not because of sin but so that God might be glorified. But God is always and everywhere glorified, whether we notice or not. Jesus now calls our attention to this fact by a very visible act. an overt glorification. And on the Sabbath! A day set aside for glorifying God is seen to be not different from other days, but another time for actually showing God's glory.
And finally we get an explanation for ordained clergy. they too are just ordinary folks, without special powers to do something special. Except that their presence makes what goes on special, it exalts the ordinary acts of feeding and events of God's presence, in the hope that, seeing them so magnified, we will come to notice them in their ordinary guise as feeding and God's presence in everything.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Christian Cosmology
To a large extent, the magical cosmology of late Neo-Platonism persists in Christian thinking, though with a different mythology and different practical applications (perhaps). For the physical world, Christians are content to leave the details of its operations to the scientists (of their choice, of course). But they assume that, under the physical world, lies God -- and perhaps a more varied spiritual realm.
God relates to the physical world in a variety of ways. First, God is its creator, whether by vocal fiat from nothing or by upsetting the equilibrium in a force feel or by yet some other means. Secondly, God sustains the universe; it continues to exist and operate because of something God does or is. A part of this sustenance is a complete record of all that has occurred and is occurring. But God is also present. fragmented yet not separated, in each thing in the world, a spark of the divine. And from these facts (tenets), we derive what we believe to know about God.
About creation, which was before our time, we can say little with certainty, though we can tell a variety of stories, But we claim to derive from the nature of the created (as we perceive it) some knowledge of what God is like, insofar as we can make comparisons. The universe is immense (encompassing a billion galaxies, each with a billion stars, spread over several billion light-years of space), so God must be more immense, say infinite. The universe is diverse, stars and galaxies of many sorts, constantly changing, with new forms emerging and old ones passing into something different. So God favors diversity and change (though being of a single nature and unchanging -- thanks to the Neo-Platonists again). There is life and intelligence in the universe, so God must like these features. To be sure, the evidence for this is one planet circling one of E18 stars, but (the reasoning go circularly) there must be others with life and intelligence as well (the problems with this are passed on to later folk, with real evidence to deal with), From these observations, then, it is possible to begin to see the sort of life God expects of his people, though not in crucial detail.
About the sustaining function of God, a bit more can be said, though not much with strong conviction beyond the fact of the sustenance. Some that claim to understand quantum physics a bit would hold God is the constant observer that brings all the mere probabilities to reality (usually without bows to Bishop Berkeley and the God "always about in the Quad"). Other, noting that quantum physics doesn't exactly say that, tend to even more metaphysical explanations: God's essence is existence, so only by God's participation can anything exist, for example. But few can resist the temptation to explain the continuing link among subatomic particle once in contact (any everything was once in contact) to the instantaneous connection within the single, undifferentiated God. But even without this (and chaos and complexity theory -- butterflies in Mexico causing floods in China), Christians are committed to the belief that everything is connected in some way, whether that be causally significant or not (more on this later).
The belief that God records all that occurs, sees and remembers it, turns up in various places. The primary source is the doctrine of resurrection. Christians have a variety of notions -- all Biblically based -- on what happens after death, but one that gets special prominence throughout is that, at the end of time, the dead shall come back to life in their bodies (usually upgraded from their best state) with all their personality (again somewhat cleaned up) and memories, etc. intact. Which means that these memories have to be stored somewhere and God seems the only candidate. That this recording goes beyond humans, their bodies and minds, is a leap, of course, but probably less so than the notion that the recordings started suddenly with the first being that was actually human (though presumably God could make this distinction though we cannot).
The bit about the sparks of the divine is also an extention from the human case, where it is a matter of introspective observation (conscience, say) and theology (the immortal soul, another part of the after-death complex). Here it has at least three stages: the divine spark is what makes the difference between a chemical reaction and life, which might otherwise be reduced to just those reaction. Later in the development of the world, it is the divine spark that makes the difference between brain states (or perhaps even less complex body states) and consciousness and, eventually, self-consciousness. And finally, in humans, it appears as moral consciousness, conscience and moral reasoning, shame and contrition.
Well, almost finally, for Christians believe that once (at least once, for the cautious or more open) there was an (apparent) human in whom and through whom the full fire (or as much as a human body could possibly stand) of God, blazed, not just a mere spark. And it is from this person that we derive the rest of what we believe about God. From Jesus, we learn first of all that, though God is unimaginably immense, God loves us each individually and is ever present with each of us, to share and help bear our experience in life. more specifically, we learn that not only does God favor diversity, but that God considers all varieties to be of equal value and deserving of equal treatment. Accordingly, God favors not just change, but specifically the sort of change that leads to those who have been treated unfairly getting their fair share -- and maybe a bit more in compensation. God favors intelligence, but primarily when it is put to use bringing about those changes.
With this set-up, it is inevitable to consider the magical consequences. And on this Christians are all over the map, from positivist to miraculist. On the far left hand (I suppose) is the view that God does not interfere with the workings of natural laws and those laws are pretty much as science has them now, with only physical forces mattering. On the far right is the view that everyone has direct access to God and the ability to get God to alter the course of real world events. This ability needs something special to use, but all are capable of it. Most fall somewhere between, of course: allowing that some real natural laws (which science hasn't and perhaps can't discover) allow for non-physical force to play a role in what appear to be merely physical events, on the one hand, or insisting that the manipulation of God is a skill limited to a few either by nature or by special intense training, on the other, with still more sliding scales, centering on an agnostic position.
God relates to the physical world in a variety of ways. First, God is its creator, whether by vocal fiat from nothing or by upsetting the equilibrium in a force feel or by yet some other means. Secondly, God sustains the universe; it continues to exist and operate because of something God does or is. A part of this sustenance is a complete record of all that has occurred and is occurring. But God is also present. fragmented yet not separated, in each thing in the world, a spark of the divine. And from these facts (tenets), we derive what we believe to know about God.
About creation, which was before our time, we can say little with certainty, though we can tell a variety of stories, But we claim to derive from the nature of the created (as we perceive it) some knowledge of what God is like, insofar as we can make comparisons. The universe is immense (encompassing a billion galaxies, each with a billion stars, spread over several billion light-years of space), so God must be more immense, say infinite. The universe is diverse, stars and galaxies of many sorts, constantly changing, with new forms emerging and old ones passing into something different. So God favors diversity and change (though being of a single nature and unchanging -- thanks to the Neo-Platonists again). There is life and intelligence in the universe, so God must like these features. To be sure, the evidence for this is one planet circling one of E18 stars, but (the reasoning go circularly) there must be others with life and intelligence as well (the problems with this are passed on to later folk, with real evidence to deal with), From these observations, then, it is possible to begin to see the sort of life God expects of his people, though not in crucial detail.
About the sustaining function of God, a bit more can be said, though not much with strong conviction beyond the fact of the sustenance. Some that claim to understand quantum physics a bit would hold God is the constant observer that brings all the mere probabilities to reality (usually without bows to Bishop Berkeley and the God "always about in the Quad"). Other, noting that quantum physics doesn't exactly say that, tend to even more metaphysical explanations: God's essence is existence, so only by God's participation can anything exist, for example. But few can resist the temptation to explain the continuing link among subatomic particle once in contact (any everything was once in contact) to the instantaneous connection within the single, undifferentiated God. But even without this (and chaos and complexity theory -- butterflies in Mexico causing floods in China), Christians are committed to the belief that everything is connected in some way, whether that be causally significant or not (more on this later).
The belief that God records all that occurs, sees and remembers it, turns up in various places. The primary source is the doctrine of resurrection. Christians have a variety of notions -- all Biblically based -- on what happens after death, but one that gets special prominence throughout is that, at the end of time, the dead shall come back to life in their bodies (usually upgraded from their best state) with all their personality (again somewhat cleaned up) and memories, etc. intact. Which means that these memories have to be stored somewhere and God seems the only candidate. That this recording goes beyond humans, their bodies and minds, is a leap, of course, but probably less so than the notion that the recordings started suddenly with the first being that was actually human (though presumably God could make this distinction though we cannot).
The bit about the sparks of the divine is also an extention from the human case, where it is a matter of introspective observation (conscience, say) and theology (the immortal soul, another part of the after-death complex). Here it has at least three stages: the divine spark is what makes the difference between a chemical reaction and life, which might otherwise be reduced to just those reaction. Later in the development of the world, it is the divine spark that makes the difference between brain states (or perhaps even less complex body states) and consciousness and, eventually, self-consciousness. And finally, in humans, it appears as moral consciousness, conscience and moral reasoning, shame and contrition.
Well, almost finally, for Christians believe that once (at least once, for the cautious or more open) there was an (apparent) human in whom and through whom the full fire (or as much as a human body could possibly stand) of God, blazed, not just a mere spark. And it is from this person that we derive the rest of what we believe about God. From Jesus, we learn first of all that, though God is unimaginably immense, God loves us each individually and is ever present with each of us, to share and help bear our experience in life. more specifically, we learn that not only does God favor diversity, but that God considers all varieties to be of equal value and deserving of equal treatment. Accordingly, God favors not just change, but specifically the sort of change that leads to those who have been treated unfairly getting their fair share -- and maybe a bit more in compensation. God favors intelligence, but primarily when it is put to use bringing about those changes.
With this set-up, it is inevitable to consider the magical consequences. And on this Christians are all over the map, from positivist to miraculist. On the far left hand (I suppose) is the view that God does not interfere with the workings of natural laws and those laws are pretty much as science has them now, with only physical forces mattering. On the far right is the view that everyone has direct access to God and the ability to get God to alter the course of real world events. This ability needs something special to use, but all are capable of it. Most fall somewhere between, of course: allowing that some real natural laws (which science hasn't and perhaps can't discover) allow for non-physical force to play a role in what appear to be merely physical events, on the one hand, or insisting that the manipulation of God is a skill limited to a few either by nature or by special intense training, on the other, with still more sliding scales, centering on an agnostic position.
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