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22 Pentecost 2019: A Data-Driven Theology

November 11, 2019 by Cam Miller

“I know that my redeemer lives.”
That line in Job seems pretty clear
and it forms the heart of the anthem
that begins the Episcopal burial liturgy.
Clearly the Lectionary Committee
that fastidiously pairs these readings
as if entrées with wine,
wants us focused like a laser on resurrection.

But that is not what Job is about,
and it is not what even this line from Job is about.
And even the translation of the lines before
and after “I know that my redeemer lives,”
is totally uncertain.

I am not a Hebrew or Greek scholar
and so all I can tell you is that those who are
have a lively debate
and serious disagreements
about this very passage from Job.

I don’t have a dog in that fight
so that is not where I want to spin our tires.
But here is what I think is amazing
about this section of Job.

Listen to an abbreviation of some lines
that come immediately before the part we heard today.
“(God) has put my family far from me,
and my acquaintances are wholly estranged…
my serving girls count me as a stranger…
My breath is repulsive to my wife;
I am loathsome to my own family.
Even young children despise me…
All my intimate friends abhor me
and those whom I loved have turned against me…”

THEN, Job turns around and says,
but still “I know that my Redeemer lives.”

Much of what we may have learned
about the Book of Job
is written, preached, or taught
through the filter of Christian beliefs.
That filter misreads Job
in favor of using it as proof of Christian ideas,
like resurrection.
That is not what Job is about.
What Job is doing here
is standing up to God,
and standing up to his own friends
who he accuses of siding with God
instead of performing their obligation –
which is to be HIS “Goel.”

Goel is a Hebrew word and core concept
in the ancient Hebrew religion.
It was and is a big word –
like resurrection is a big word.

Goel represented a worldview,
and at the same time,
a detailed prescription for living life.
Goel could refer to a human being or God.
A Goel, or to be a goel,
was to be a vindicator,
an avenger,
a protector of the family line,
a redeemer of lost lands or fortunes.
A goel looked after the vulnerable,
like widows and orphans
who had no natural protector or redeemer.

Every family had a goel,
someone whose task it was
to continue the family line
or avenge the blood of someone in the family
whose life or limb was taken from them.

If an individual within the family,
or the family itself,
lacked the power to redeem losses
or avenge injustice
or protect the family line,
then another family
or another person
or another God for that matter,
was recruited to be a new or additional goel.

A goel required power
and power sufficient to protect the family.
It comes from the Book of Leviticus
and is deeply rooted in the DNA of Israel.

When the prophet Isaiah comes along,
he makes the bold imaginative leap
to claim that the God of the cosmos
is Israel’s go’el – literally, “Go’el Yisrael”.

So when Christians talk about Jesus as “Redeemer”
and sing Handel’s “Messiah,” it springs from Goel.

Job is declaring then,
that he will get another god
to stand up for him as his avenger
against the god who has wronged him
because he is an innocent man.
Job is standing toe-to-toe with God
and with maximum confidence and hubris,
declaring his innocence
while prosecuting God as a wrongdoer.
Now prosecuting God
may not seem like a wise thing to do
for a human being,
but that is what Job was doing.

Nowadays we have a difficult time
allowing the text to speak for itself
because we want to harmonize it
with our preconceived notions.
How could there be more than one god
we ask from our 21stcentury perch.
How could a Biblical text
suggest more than one God?

So, we harmonize it by declaring
it means something else even though it does not.
And because early Christians
were always on the lookout for Hebrew texts
to reinforce their ideas
about redeemers and resurrection,
Job was a low hanging fruit to pick
and pretend it was about Jesus and resurrection.

But that is not what the Book of Job is about.
Rather, it is about God put on trial
by an innocent man
standing up to the god, family, and friends
who done him wrong.
It would make a great Country Western song.

Don’t worry, no spoiler alert here.
If you haven’t read it yet,
I am not going to tell you how it ends.
But I do want to hunker down
on that idea of goel, redeemer,
in a very specific and very 21stcentury kind of way.

I think the data is pretty convincing
that God is not going to save us from ourselves.
The notion that God is our goel
who will protect us from environmental disasters
provoked and enflamed by human behavior,
seems a foolish theology
based in nothing we have ever seen.

On the other hand,
the idea that God empowers us to be goel
for the planet earth and forone another –
the protectors and care-givers of our own garden –
seems much more plausible.

If we want a data-driven theology
it seems pretty clear: When we are good stewards
of the land and the resources that come from it,
and when we live in community
that takes it upon itself
to care for all its members,
and especially the most vulnerable within it,
then the garden grows pretty well
and so do we right along with it.

Conversely, the evidence is also clear
that when we simply use the earth
and do nothing but gluttonously consume it,
and when we create a steep hierarchy of privilege
with justice for those at the top
and injustice for everyone else,
then things go badly for us as a species.

It is not a big spiritual secret and there is no magic to it.

We may have a redeemer in heaven
that makes it all better in the afterlife,
but we will never really know until then.
On the other hand,
we are the redeemer
when it comes to doing what Jesus
asked us to do:
which is midwife the kingdom –
the one that is to spring forth
on earth
as it is in heaven.

We keep looking at Jesus as the redeemer
but Jesus commissioned us as goel.
Indeed, we are co-creators with God,
authorized and assigned
as stewards of the garden.

So, if we need to redeem the earth
and bring about the kingdom here –
instead of the miserable situation we have created –
then we better have each other’s backs,
and we better be “goel” for one another
in the here and now.

That brings us to what the heck we are doing here.
Whether we are a small group of people
working out of an old wine bar
in downtown Geneva,
or a small group huddled
in the holy darkness of a college chapel,
what is this thing we are doing
and why are we doing it?

It is essentially a stewardship question –
not necessarily a money question
but a question about who we are
and whosewe are,
and really,
underneath it all,
whywe are.
My theory of spiritual community is that
it nurtures and empowers us to be goel –
redeemers – in the places
and among the people
with whom we live and work and play.

Here are three ways spiritual community
nurtures and empowers redeemers.

First, it provides a thin-place for an encounter
with the holy.
Now there is not a lot to say about this part,
because God is quite mercurial
and will be who
and where
God will be,
and there is not much we can do
to force an encounter.

But we can soften ourselves
and become more open to being touched by the holy
in the places
and among the people
that foster it.
Because, truth be told,
all of us are like the haunting call of a loon at night
in that we live alone within ourselves
and deeply desire to be touched inside –
to touch and be touched
by a power greater than ourselves.
Within us is a dry thirsty voice
calling with a hope against hope
for a whispered response.

You may prove me wrong,
but I truly sense most of us come to a place like this
in search of an encounter
with a power greater than ourselves;
or a wisdom wiser than we are;
or a flame more passionate than our own;
or a hope more trustworthy than what we wish for;
or a vision so much clearer than ours.

We want it.
We need it.
We hope, often secretly, to find it
in a place like this.

So that is the first thing – an encounter.

Secondly, spiritual community
can provide another kind of connection.
I am thinking of the human connection,
touching and being touched by ‘the other.’

Just as we wander the universe
in our solitary bodies,
and we hanker for a deeper spiritual connection
with that power greater than ourselves,
we also wander about in human society
among our small,
fragmented bands of family and friends.

We often feel dislocated,
fragmented,
strangers in our own land.

Even those of us with strong, healthy families
can feel the vulnerability of the few.
Even the sweetest of small tribes
is but a molecule
in the ocean of humankind.

The painful irony of our sorrowful fragmentation
is that every single one of us
has been taught to believe
we should be self-sufficient.
We were nursed on a mother’s milk of individualism
that brainwashed us into believing
we are not quite mature enough,
not quite healthy enough,
not quite together enough
if we can’t make it on our own.

It was an awful socialization
that makes our desire for community –
for connection with people we may otherwise
have never known or cared about –
all the more confusing and complicated.
We are not supposed to need other people,
especially other people outside of our own tribe.

We were taught,
and it is likely still nagging at us,
that there is something wrong with needing it –
something not quite right.
And yet once we get a little taste
for that connection, it is really good.

Maybe we stumble into a friendship
with someone whose politics or lifestyle or background
are very different from our own.

Maybe we find ourselves in an unintended
conversation with somebody we don’t know well,
making self-disclosures we don’t normally make
to people outside our own family.

It is an encounter with a kind of power
greater than ourselves.
An encounter with community
that locates us as a small part of something bigger.

The power of community
is accumulative over time
and deepens its resonance within us
like an aged wine.

The more we get the more we want,
and the more we have of it
the more powerful its influence
and healing can be.
Community is in fact, redemptive
for the redeemers.

Finally, spiritual community is healing.
And who doesn’t need some of that?

There are all kinds of wounds.
Some deep, some shallow;
some mortal, some festering.
There are routine wounds –
the kind of dings and scrapes and dents
that are going to happen to anyone.
There are extraordinary wounds
that should never be inflicted on anyone.
There are in-between wounds
that are injuries awaiting us all
but that all of us do not receive.

Every one of us here has multiple wounds.
I dare say that every one of us here
has at least one wound that has been debilitating,
and that can be counted upon
to be debilitating again.

It might be some kind of limitation
that has been painful over time,
and that held us back.

Or maybe we have just been a round peg
placed in a square hole,
and over time the wedging and pinching
has rubbed us raw.

It could also have been a deep loss
and the grief of it
sits in the pit of our stomach like a tumor.

Whatever the wound
or more likely wounds,
we pretty much want to get rid of it.
We get tired of the pain.
We get sick of its onerous presence.
We want to be cured of it – to be free.

But what spiritual community
can help us discover
is that healing
is not the same thing as curing.

We want our wounds magically cured –
taken away as if they never happened.
But that is not very likely.
If we are lucky
and if we are open,
we may discover that a healing wound
is more like a fountain than a cut.
It somehow restores and transforms
more than it bleeds.

In redemptive community,
recovery from whatever hurt we carry
can become a source of wisdom and strength
even as it continues to be a wound.

All woundedness is like that:
offering the possibility of wisdom and strength
when we allow them to heal
instead of demanding
they just go away.

Spiritual community
can offer a safe place for healing,
and that is redemptive because it allows us
to be fully engaged in midwifing the kingdom
among the people with whom
we live and work and play.

So, when it’s working,
spiritual community
nurtures and empowers us to be a goel –
a source of redeeming presence
for the kingdom
that is to come on earth
as it is in heaven.

We can be redeemers to one another,
and to those who find their way to us,
by providing access to the holy,
an experience of deep community,
and a place of healing.

 

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5 Lent C, 2019: Learning to Disagree with Judas

April 7, 2019 by Cam Miller

A hot stone massage

I spent my first fifteen to twenty years
of priesthood, making Judas’ case –
not so much against Jesus
as against those who came to church
to get a gentle massage for the mind and soul.

I have changed sides, sort of.
Actually, I haven’t just changed sides,
I now understand the argument much differently.

While Christian community
is not supposed to be a comfort station,
or any kind of association that doles out
complacency toward injustice,
unkindness,
or any kind of bigotry
and exclusion,
its core purpose and mission
is not social justice,
social work,
or social policy.

We have erred in The Episcopal Church.
Precisely because we are compassionate
and understand that the way of love
and the wisdom of Jesus
would have its consummation
in an equitable economic order,
we have long made Judas’ case
that our energy and mission
ought to be dedicated
to fixing housing problems,
feeding people who are hungry,
and taking on any
and every societal outrage.

That is not our primary mission or purpose.

That said, it would indeed be the outcome
if our communities of faith were successful
at fulfilling our purpose.
But still, it is not our mission.

Our mission
is formation and transformation
through community.
That’s it, although there are endless
incarnations of that mission.

The reason our mission and purpose
is formation and transformation
is because that is indeed how we
become agents of God’s love.

First and foremost,
we need to be thoughtful about
what and how
we make community
with one another.
In that community,
if we are doing it well,
we will discover healing
and growth,
and transformation.

Such a community will not be a mere comfort station
where we can get a gentle massage.
Oh no, it will work our muscles
with deep tissue pressure
and exertion on the heart and mind.
It will be a muscular, rugged,
sometimes even
fierce love
that rubs together people
who hold serious differences,
and says, “Find your reconciliation.”

It will call us out
of our introverted cocoons
and insist we get real
and get personal with one another.

It will push our extroverted flamboyance
inward, demanding
more and better reflection
and the ability to sit in stillness.
Our mission,
should we accept it,
is formation and transformation in community,
and if we are not making that happen
then we are not what we need to be
even if we are feeding
and clothing hundreds
or thousands.

Judas makes a good case
and one that all of us would prosecute
on one level or another.

But while we may be advocates
for a more just society
and a better, more equitable distribution of resources,
that is not the primary mission and purpose
of a spiritual community.

I just came back from Portland, Oregon and Seattle.

Each of those cities have thousands
and thousands
of homeless people.
The climate is more friendly
year round than here in upstate New York.
I heard estimates of tens of thousands of homeless
and you see them everywhere –
camped in tents on the sidewalk,
under bridges,
sleeping in front of stores and in every park.
Rich neighborhoods and the mission district,
they are scattered everywhere.
I was reminded of three weeks I once spent
in Guatemala,
in which my daily walk from place to place
brought me face to face
with men, women, and children
begging within an inch of their lives.
And on a couple of occasions,
having to navigate around motionless bodies.
No matter where I went
or what I did,
numerous, desperately impoverished people
would beg me for coins, food, drink –
anything I had to give.

Two things became clear to me.

The first was that I did not have enough
money or influence to change even a single
person begging me for help.
But if I was a little bit thoughtful
and organized
I could do something.
I got a bag
and filled it with coins.
I made sure I always had at least one coin to give
whenever I was asked.
It was no big deal,
but it was something I could do,
and I felt less powerless if nothing else.
But the second thing I could do,
changed me and perhaps had an impact
beyond the small coin I could offer.

I could look the person in the eyes,
and speak to him or her.
If they seemed open to it,
I could even try my pathetically poor Spanish
and whatever else I could think of
to meet and embrace
his or her humanity
while exposing my own.

It changed my behavior toward street people
in Buffalo when I returned to my home.
I often forgot to keep change
or a dollar bill in my pocket
but I was able to greet their humanity
and expose my humanity to them.

I did not, and never have
practiced it to perfection, but I still practice.
All of that is to say,
that as a spiritual community
we cannot let the tail wag the dog –
whether the tail is social ministry
or a massive stone building
or fundraising.

Our mission and purpose
is formation and transformation –
to become different people
as a result of being in relationship to one another
in community.

Forgive me for repeating it:
Our mission and purpose
is formation and transformation –
to become different people
as a result of being in relationship to one another
in community

We are to experience the opening of our wounds
and their healing;
we are to experience the vulnerability of love
and its sharing;
we are to struggle with and confront
the disjunction
between the values we spend our money on
and the values espoused by the Gospel of Jesus.

It is clearly not a relaxing massage of the soul,
but rather, the deep tissue kind
that stretches and hurts
and adjusts our feeble
and stiff old joints
so that we are formed and transformed
as agents of God’s love.

As a result of all that,
we will likely be more socially active
because we will be driven by our compassion.
But we may find that our charism –
our special gift,
has more to do with healing and growth
than feeding and clothing and advocating.
But whatever our gift
it will undoubtedly move us beyond ourselves
in a way that exposes our humanity to others
even as we embrace theirs.

It is through our work with formation
and transformation
in community
that God does a new thing with us –
whether we are ninety-three, seventy-nine,
fifty-one, or twenty.

If we do not believe – no,
if we have not experienced
that God can do a new thing
even with us – then we need a bigger, badder,
tougher,
massage therapist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Trinity Place

 Trinity Place, An Open Space for Growth, Wellness, Healing, & the Arts

“Open Space” means open and inclusive, welcoming the Geneva and FLX community to use our space, and to partner with us in building an inclusive community for spiritual inquiry and wellness. 

“Growth, Wellness, Healing, & the Arts” means we are pointed toward a particular dimension of life, specifically that which strengthens the relationship of body, mind, and spirit. 

Trinity is a Christian community of worship and spiritual practice welcoming all, and an Episcopal Church in particular. However, we welcome all spiritual traditions and those who have no particular spiritual background but are engaged in a mission consistent with ours. We are looking for partners in mission not members (although we love to welcome new members too).

 

 

 

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