Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

The (Un) Powerful Jesus, The Humanity of Christ - Jessica Williams

Did Jesus bleed untarnished gold?
No, the cleansing "precious flow" was his real human blood!  

        photo credit: Daniel Curran @storginar                     

Last Sunday I found myself thinking about the flip-side of a worship song. As our church belted out “What a powerful name it is, the name of Jesus,” I thought about how the name Jesus was completely common at the time. There was nothing special or unique about it.

Jesus was ordinary.

The early church fathers wrestled with how this could be true and decided that it must be: Jesus was completely human and Jesus was God.

These days, it is contemplating the humanity of Jesus that heals me. When I take the time to imaginatively look into the eyes of Christ, and there, to allow the compassion and love and solidarity of God being human to touch me, I find comfort.

Everything about my humanness becomes holy when I look at Jesus and remember that God embraced every part of it too.

It’s like a baptism of all things.

Are you weak, dependent, selfish, ashamed, jealous, forgotten, ordinary, bored, tempted, doubting, angry, mocked, lonely, anxious, desperate, tortured, suffering and dying?

God, too.

And I think that is powerful.

 

The (Un) Powerful Jesus - spoken word:

Click here to listen: Download The (Un) Powerful Jesus

 

The (Un) Powerful Jesus - text

Please,

Tell me about the human Jesus,

the nursing newborn,

weak and dependent

on his birth parents.

 

Tell me about the selfish Jesus,

the misbehaved boy, the unruly child, the storyteller,

scolded and scoffed at and scorned.

 

Please,

Tell me about the jealous Jesus,

the coming-of-age Jesus

who waited and ached

for his time to speak

in the temple to come.

 

Tell me about the forgotten Jesus,

all

those

years

of which nothing was written.

Tell me about the ordinary Jesus,

stuck in monotony,

heavy-eyed and bored of it all.

 

Please,

Tell me about the tempted Jesus,

the doubter of Love, of belonging, of place.

Speak of the man who felt his own hunger

and faced the seduction of power.

 

Tell me about the angry Jesus,

ranting again, causing a scene,

flipping tables and mocked

for such a display.

 

Please,

Tell me about the lonely Jesus,

whose friends didn’t get it,

no matter how many ways

he found to say it again.

 

Tell me about the desperate Jesus,

weeping in the garden and pleading

with God to spare him

-to find another way.

 

Tell me about the anxious Jesus,

the frantic son making post-death provisions for his mother

to go on living in the world without him.

 

Please,

tell me about the despairing Jesus,

the tortured one,

the innocent sufferer of the world’s injustice,

dying in darkness.

Fr. Seraphim of Mull, the Publican & Pharisee, and Evangelical Confessions - Brad Jersak

Fr. Seraphim is establishing the Orthodox Monastery of All Celtic Saints on the Isle of Mull (near Iona) of the west coast of Scotland. He shared the homily at Holy Apostles Orthodox Mission in Chilliwack, BC on Sunday, Jan 28, 2018. Midway through the homily, I felt the deep regret of not having recorded his homily and resorted to thumbing these few notes on my smartphone: his reflections on Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and Publican praying in the temple (Luke 18:9-14).I believe what follows is nearly word for word, but any paraphrasing resulting in an error is solely my responsibility. 

Luke 18:9-14 (NKJV)

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

⁹ Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: ¹⁰ “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men-extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ ¹³ And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ ¹⁴ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

 

Fr. Seraphim's Homily (excerpts)

... In the Orthodox baptismal rite of exorcism, the first demon we ask Christ to drive away is idolatry, and this is deliberate. For Israel's first idolatry was not the worship of foreign gods, but of the Law. And Christians too may create an idol of our own faith. Orthodoxy itself is idolatry when it defines itself by separating itself from the other or turning from love of neighbour.  

When we define ourselves by what we have done--our fasting, our praying our giving--such that we are "not like them," indeed, better than them, we can know that something has gone horribly wrong in our faith. We've left the straight path of Jesus and swerved off course to the right or the left. 

True Orthodoxy is defined by complete openness and love for everyone. This is always how we see Christ responding to others in the Gospels. He never turns from the publican or prostitute or sinner, but opens his heart to them in love. And so we are called to become like him, as little christs to the world, marked by open hearts and love towards all.

Jarrod McKenna - Jarrod's story, the Great Commission & the Sermon on the Mount

The Wine of Grief - Kenneth Tanner

The soldiers in dress blues didn’t make it to the door.

My mother’s teenaged sister saw them approaching through the curtains. “Betty, I think those soldiers are coming here.”

Mom broke apart before “here” and she never got put back together again. There was no kintsugi for this. Grief flowed out of her and filled the room and it’s taken me 50 years to understand that everyone near her took part of her pain into themselves, a strange absorption as if a sponge could take in a stream (or was it an ocean?) and still somehow feel the same as if it were dry.

Maybe that’s the miracle of being four. No matter how much you take in you’re light and airy. But lately, like a long-dormant liquid that’s gone solid, my body feels the weight of that grief. It’s not like water that becomes less dense as it turns to ice. Like most things that flow, as it hardens it weighs more.

I used to listen to the radio a lot as a child, mostly what my teenaged aunts and uncles had on. One of the songs on the radio in the winter that followed the summer my dad’s body was ripped apart in Vietnam, the winter of 1971, came on last night, “Help Me Make It Through the Night.”

Kris Kristofferson wrote it on the deck of an oil rig out in the Gulf of Mexico, near the helicopter he flew. Its singular melody contains a sadness that connects my heart to that time, to gospel times and rural times and Southern ground. I heard a cover that Bryan Adams recorded a few years ago, one that takes the transitory, dime-store novel feeling of the lyric and gives it a bit more permanence, like a song someone might sing to a ghost spouse.

What does one do with the wine of female grief? It’s in me and binds me to her in ways that I did not feel when she was alive. I did not cry at her funeral until I saw my sisters crying.

I cry more now. Surprising things make we cry. Not many tears. But enough. Little things. Sudden things. Did the grief need to get heavier before I felt it, before it could—this of course makes no immediate sense—move within me, before it could leave? How long does it take to wring a river or an ocean from a small sponge in the hand? How have I held it all these years?

Review of Jim Forest’s "At Play in the Lions’ Den" - by Ron Dart

Jim Forest, At Play in the Lions’ Den: A Biography and Memoir of Daniel Berrigan (Orbis Books, 2017).

The publication of At Play in the Lions’ Den brings to a fine and fit close a trilogy of biographies by Jim Forest, the previous biographical page-turners about Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. There can be little doubt that Jim is perfectly poised and positioned to reflect and expand on the lives of Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton and Daniel Berrigan----he knew each of them well, worked closely with them in his emerging adult years and writes about such a phase of his journey (with each of them) in a thoughtful and compelling journalistic way. Jim’s uncanny ability to thread the needle between a paper thin journalism and dry as bones academic style is his unique gift and genius.

At Play in the Lion’s Den, true to earlier biographies, blends, in an exquisite way, compact and succinct chapters that track and trace Daniel Berrigan’s life (from beginning to end) with fine photos that speak their own compelling and evocative tale. The title of the tome should alert the reader to the journey about to be told. The Daniel of Biblical legend weathered many a trial in the lion’s den in imperial Babylon. The obvious affinities (although more layered and nuanced) between the Biblical Daniel and Daniel Berrigan cannot be missed. The rapacious nature of the Babylonian empire has many an overlap with the imperial nature of the United States. Both men saw through the ominous nature and structure of their distinct empires, dared to be Daniels and, in different ways, endured the consequences of insisting the empire was without clothes.

The life of the Berrigan family is aptly recorded in the initial chapters of this finely textured book, Daniel’s earlier seminary years as a Jesuit clarified and his leadership role, as a Roman Catholic (quite different, indeed, from Republican and democratic Roman Catholics) is poignantly unfolded as Berrigan goes in and out of the prison houses of the American den of lions. The life of Daniel Berrigan (insightfully and artistically written about in various ways by himself) is brought together in this biography in a way that illuminates and probes yet deeper and fuller dimensions of Berrigan’s life and multiple published writings (excellent prose and poetry). Jim weaves well together Daniel Berrigan’s life with that of Phil Berrigan (who I had a lengthy correspondence within the late 1980s-early 1990s), Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton and many others of his generation that protested against the domestic and foreign policy issues (and there were many) of the USA from the Post WW II period to the end of Berrigan’s life.

The final few chapters of At Play in the Lions’ Den are tender and told in a winning manner. The further Daniel Berrigan traveled into his late autumn years, the more his body weakened and waned. The photographs near the end of this comprehensive biography do not shy away from walking into this phase and season of Berrigan’s life. Needless to say, the life of the Biblical Daniel was never recorded or told with such in-depth honesty, transparency and fragility. This makes, in a sense, the drama of Daniel Berrigan much more interesting and attractive, more worth the read than the much shorter and more victorious and, at times, hagiographical, tale of the Biblical Daniel.

There can be no doubt that Jim’s biography of Daniel will become the definitive portal book for those who wish to know both more about the literary, prolific and substantive life of Daniel Berrigan but also about the ethos of post WWII America (and those who cheered on the empire, those who moderately and safely questioned it and those who prophetically spoke into Molech’s dark places). I think, by way of conclusion, I cannot help but paraphrase a quote from Charles Dickens’ Bob Cratchit, “A triumph, another biographical triumph!”.

Ron Dart

Read the Bible from its measure, the Word made flesh - Kenneth Tanner

When we read the Bible with the church we learn that not every line of Scripture has equal weight in answering the question, “Who is God and what is God like?”

We would have a very odd schizophrenic God if we took every line in the Bible as a literal revelation of the character and nature of God.

Athanasius wrote a work denouncing the projections and false images of God that ancient pagans worshipped. We need a new Athanasius to denounce the many idols of God that Christians worship when our God is divorced from God’s self-revelation in the flesh of Jesus.

There are descriptions of God in the Bible that are clearly false, as are many of the words of the friends of Job, yet that has not stopped some Christians from writing songs and casting ideas about God from those lines in Job as if God were like those false witnesses.

It’s refreshing to learn that the first Christians did not read the Bible in this way. They read the Bible as Jesus taught them to read it, in light of himself.

Following them, we do not read the Bible apart from its measure, apart from the Word made flesh.

When the fathers exhort us to meditate on the Word they mean the person of Jesus Christ. And this is what I mean when as a pastor I encourage those under my care to meditate on the Word.

There is, of course, a deep scriptural wellspring that resources this pondering but Christ is the Word they have in mind. Christ is everything. Christ is all.

“You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life.” —John 5:39-40

Review of "A Century of Antics, Epics, & Escapades: The Varsity Outdoor Club 1917-2017" by Ron Dart

A Century of Antics, Epics, & Escapades: The Varsity Outdoor Club 1917-2017

Those who have studied at University of British Columbia (at undergraduate or graduate levels) and who have had some interest in mountaineering (at whatever level) will have joined and done a variety of trips and treks (of various levels of challenge and competence) with the Varsity Outdoor Club, the Club being one of the oldest mountaineering clubs on the west coast (the Alpine Club of Canada and British Columbia Mountaineering Clubs yet older). The 100^th anniversary tale of the Varsity Outdoor Club from 1917-2017 is aptly, graphically and generously told and recounted in the finely packaged and printed A Century of Antics, Epics, & Escapades: The Varsity Outdoor Club 1917-2017.

Each of the chapters in this must read beauty cannot but hold the curious reader. “A History Older than Ours” (First Nations history) introduces this bounty of a book, the meticulous “Timeline” offers an aerial overview of the history and the chapters that follow delve deeper into the unfolding drama: 1) 1917-1939: Maps: VOC Areas & Traverses Over Time, 2) 1940s: Decades of Garibaldi Park, 3) 1950s: Decades of Loganeering, 4) 1960s: Buildering and Socializing, 5) 1970s: Conservation and Advocacy in the VOC, 6) 1980s: Women in the VOC, 7) 1990s: Huts and Selection of Traverses since the 2000s & Climbing Pilgrimages, 8) 2000s: VOC Portrait and Marriage Proposals, 9) 2010s and 11) Beyond 2017. Each of the chapters are told in an evocative and compelling manner, and for those even minimally interested in the west coast and west coast mountaineering many a detail is told in a most readable and accessible manner. The multiple photographs in this timely hardbound classic of a telling are more than worth many a lingering and meditative gaze. The roll call of those who have provided wise leadership over the decades, challenging trips and tragic endings are all packed into this compact text.

The fact the Varsity Outdoor Club has played such a pivotal role in pioneering 1^st ascents, building new trails and huts, founding Mountain Equipment Co-Op (MEC) and continued with their creative antics, epics and escapades (updated for each decade) does need to be duly noted. The black and white photos (reflecting an earlier era) and many coloured photos complement the text in a balanced and well-crafted manner. The diverse yet short biographies of many VOC  myths, legends and leaders over the decades are succinctly summed up on various pages with companion photographs.

There can be no doubt that Antics, Epics, & Escapades is a purchase imperative for those interested in west coast history, UBC mountaineering exploits (more daring and demanding the further afield), the mountaineering support structure (MEC, huts, trails maintenance and political advocacy for wilderness and wildness). Varsity Outdoor Club has been front and centre both in UBC and beyond in initiating, maturing and sustaining mountain culture and the way VOC has done this is superbly told in A Century of Antics, Epics, & Escapades: The Varsity Outdoor Club 1917-2017. Elliott Skierszkan deserves an A++ grade for guiding the mountain tale from beginning to end and keeping the team well roped on the lengthy journey.

Ron Dart          

DID GOD SEEK TO KILL MOSES FOR FAILING TO CIRCUMCISE HIS SON? - Richard Murray

Did God seek to kill Moses in the following passage?

"Now on the way, at a place where they stopped for the night, the LORD met Moses and sought to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off the foreskin of her son and touched it to Moses’ feet, and said, 'Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me.' So the LORD let him alone. (At that time she said, 'A bridegroom of blood,' referring to the circumcision.)." Exodus 4:24-26.

God sought to kill Moses, simply because Moses failed to timely circumcise his son? Does this make any sense? Could we ever picture Jesus ever doing anything remotely like this?

Of course not. Let's take a closer look.

First, this passage says God sought to kill Moses, apparently for failing to circumcise his son on the 8th day after his birth. The Jewish mindset often would say "the Lord" did "this deadly thing" or "the Lord" did "that deadly thing," but then later assign the actual destructive action to an angel. They interpreted all "angelic activity" as "the Lord"." They considered Satan "the angel of death" of the Exodus plagues who just followed the Lord's killing orders. This Exodus 4 passage is no different.

Judaism and Calvinism both make the same basic theological mistake -- they both believe Satan ONLY does what God expressly commands him to do. Calvinism says Satan is a rabid dog on the Lord's taut chain, BUT that he ONLY does what the Lord specifically "yanks his chain" to do when He "sics" Satan on those He wrathfully wishes to destroy. Judaism differs only slightly in saying that while Satan is not be a rabid dog, he is certainly an obedient servant angel who ONLY does what the Lord expressly orders him to do. Either way, Satan is seen as the executor of God's destructive judgments.

Again, the Jews attributed ANY and ALL angelic activity to God. When Jacob wrestled God, the Bible describes it in one place as God wrestling Jacob, while in another place Scripture says it was an angel who Jacob wrestled. When God appears to say He Himself will strike the firstborn of Egypt, it is actually the death angel who thereafter does the dirty work, a death angel Judaism has always recognized as Satan.

As THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF JEWISH CONCEPTS by Philip Birnbaum says, "Satan...is...identified with the angel of death. He leads astray, then he brings accusations against man, whom he slays eventually. His chief functions are those of temptation, accusation and punishment. Under the control of God, he acts solely with the divine permission to carry out his plots." (Sanhedrin Press, page 594). Rabbi Benjamin Blech similarly writes, "Judaism sees Satan as a servant of God whose function is to set up choices between good and evil so that we can exercise our free will.... [His] apparent harshness is merely camouflage for divine concern and love." IF GOD IS SO GOOD, WHY IS THE WORLD SO BAD? Simcha Press, pages 7-9

In fact, in this Exodus 4:24 passage, the Jews believed it was an ANGEL in the form of a SERPENT to be doing the harm to Moses. As Christians, we know who the "serpent-angel" is-- Satan. Below is one of the most famous Jewish commentaries concerning this passage. It is called Rashi's Commentary. Rashi was the outstanding Jewish Biblical commentator of the Middle Ages.

"Exodus 4:24. Now he was on the way, in an inn, that the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. כד. וַיְהִי בַדֶּרֶךְ בַּמָּלוֹן וַיִּפְגְּשֵׁהוּ יְהֹוָה וַיְבַקֵּשׁ הֲמִיתוֹ:
Now he was: [I.e.,] Moses.

ויהי: משה בדרך במלון:
on the way, in an inn and sought to put him to death: [I.e., He sought] Moses, because he had neglected to circumcise his son Eliezer. Because he neglected it, he was [to be] punished with death. It was taught in a Braitha: Rabbi Jose said: God forbid! Moses did not neglect it, but he reasoned: Shall I circumcise [him] and go forth on the road? It will be dangerous for the child for three days. Shall I circumcise [him] and wait three days? The Holy One, blessed be He, commanded me, “Go, return to Egypt.” [Moses hurried to Egypt intending to circumcise Eliezer upon his return.] Why [then] was he to be punished with death? Because first he busied himself with [the details of] his lodging. [This appears] in tractate Nedarim (31b). ******The angel turned into a sort of serpent and swallowed him [Moses] from his head to his thighs, and then [spit him out and] swallowed him from his feet to his private parts. Zipporah therefore understood that it was because of [the failure to perform] the circumcision [that this occurred]. — [from Ned. 32a, Exodus Rabbah 5:5]."

The Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament) likewise attributes the attack on Moses to an angel of the Lord rather than to Yahweh directly. Note how the Old Testament saints confused Satan and the Lord in the following passages: 1 Chronicles 21:1 and 2 Samuel 24:1. These passages both describe the exact same Biblical event of David's sin in numbering Satan, but in the first passage "Satan" caused David's sin and the resultant killing of 70,000 Isrealites, whereas in the second passage "the anger of the Lord" caused David to sin. So, if the Old Testament "wrath of God" is in reality "the ministry of Satan," then "Houston we have a problem" in rightly understanding the difference between God's nature and Satan's nature in the Old Testament.

The point is that Old Testament saints believed Satan was the left hand of God, His angry voice, His official minister of wrath. SO THAT when THEY described "the angel of the Lord" as committing destructive acts, they were referring to Satan.

If we don't allow for their misunderstanding on that point, we will believe in all sorts of horrible things about God. Jesus revealed a God who only gives and protects life and a Devil who only takes and destroys life. John 10:10; Hebrews 2:14. Jesus perfectly knew the difference between God's works and Satan's works. The Old Testament saints often didn't.

If we can't see Jesus killing Moses over his son not being circumcised, then we can't see God the Father doing it either. Now, if Moses had an obedience issue with God, a faith-flaw in this important area of sanctifying his family, then this could grant Satan legal access to afflict and try to destroy him. This is why the New Testament warns us to "not give space to the devil" (Ephesians 4:24). That is what I believe is going on here. But, that Satanic access was cured here by Zipporah's repentant actions.

Paul says in Galatians physical circumcision is "nothing," but that heart circumcision is everything. To imagine Jesus ever killing anybody over the absence of a physical ceremony which the New Testament says is "nothing" is just inconceivable. We have to start in the New Testament and work backward.

From this angle, we can now read this passage as a Christo-allegory of Paul's New Testament directive that a believing wife can sanctify an unbelieving or misbelieving husband. This sanctification is an inside job regarding the need for a sanctified heart motive in his role as a father which Moses, as a type, was lacking. His dear Zipporah stood in the breach for him and saw him healed. Good message of female empowerment here.

God becomes silent for us and for our salvation - Kenneth Tanner

When the divine community we call God created the visible (and invisible) universe they spoke words like "let there be light" and things that were not in one moment began to exist in the next. Stars. Planets. Oceans. Mountains. Trees. Animals. Flower

All these things and more were breathed into existence by God. When the Father began to make all things, our wisdom tells us that it was the Son by whom the Father spoke all things into being; Christ spoke the things that were not as though they were and they were so. Orchid. Zebra. Maple. Everest. Atlantic. Jupiter. Andromeda. And so on.

Instead of speaking humanity into existence, our wisdom tells us that God hand-crafted men and women from the clay, breathed into our motionless humanity the breath of life, invested flesh with his image, and gave us something the rest of creation does not have except metaphorically: the divine capacity of language.

Though all living things communicate, only humans have the gift of speech and this capacity is creative (like God) or destructive (like the dark powers), depending on our choice.

The mystery of the Incarnation is so great that every year—in this time of Advent and Christmas, six blessed weeks of waiting and celebration—I eventually see something I have never seen before, encounter a facet of the birth narrative I missed or neglected or did not see in all its beauty.

The season from Thanksgiving to Epiphany allows Christians to marinate in the story of the Word made bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh and we come away not as spectators but as *participants* in the mystery.

Ponder with me the humility of a God who speaks all things into existence making himself speechless, making himself incapable of sounding words.

The Sacred Three invite a teenager into their community and ask her to bear God—to bear the One who cannot be contained—in her tiny womb. She consents. And in her womb by the Spirit the Son who spoke the far-flung galaxies into motion aeons ago comes to complete silence, knit together in that holy space by a mystery that Jesus' forefather David knew was awe-inspiring and wondrous.

Christ emerges from her womb into this world of struggle and pain and vulnerability and beyond crying out as most babies do, he has no power to address his human brothers and sisters beyond the glory of his personal presence among us as God and man together.

Mary lays the Word made silent into the feed box. And the Word submits to silence until in the mystery of his genuine humanity God learns to speak as we all do by being spoken to—primarily by hearing the voice of the teenager who welcomed him to be born in her.

Words like "immah" (mother) or "abba" (father) Jesus learns from Mary. And as he learned to speak as we all do, his words in time begin to reveal the majesty of his unique person so that while still a boy all the men of wisdom in the Temple marvel at his speech, as does everyone who encounters in the gospels the mystery of divinity and humanity that is spoken in Jesus Christ.

"I am the door." "I am the bread of life." "I am the light of the world." "I am the resurrection and the life." "Do good to those who hate you." "I have called you friends." "Father forgive them." "Love your enemies."

Above all—here in the Word made flesh—all other words about God find the tongue that interprets them *in* Jesus Christ.

I am astonished, and in my heart I am on my knees, before this mystery that God becomes silent for us and for our salvation. So much—infinity, it seems, by this account—can be spoken without words. The divine community who spoke the worlds into existence as One God reveal their love in a profound wordless action.

The mystery is great. Good news of great joy. Glory in the highest!