Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb: In Quest of Equity - Interview with Bradley Jersak

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb (www.rabbilynngottlieb.com)
is a Jewish Rabbi (of 50 years!), master story teller, folk artist and seasoned peace pilgrim.

See full bio below. 

Lynn Gottlieb, one of the first women to become a rabbi in Jewish history, is a pioneer Jewish feminist, human rights activist, writer, visual artist, ceremonialist, community educator and master storyteller.

Lynn has been a congregational rabbi since the fall of 1973, and founded the Congregation Nahalat Shalom in Albuquerque, NM, in 1980. Lynn engages in multifaith, intergenerational and multicultural organizing in solidarity with racial, indigenous, gender justice and Palestinian liberation struggles.

Currently, Lynn sits on the Rabbinic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace and is board chair of Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity. Rabbi Lynn is the author of several books, including Peace Primer II, She Who Dwells Within: A Feminist Vision of Renewed Judaism, World Beyond Borders Passover Haggadah and Trail Guide to the Torah of Nonviolence.

Rabbi Lynn is a Shomeret Shalom, a practitioner of the Torah of nonviolence.
To get in touch, click here.

 

"Jesus Christ is going to touch you today" - Abp. Lazar Puhalo

"Jesus Christ is going to touch you today"
A Pre-Communion Exhortation by Abp. Lazar Puhalo
All Saints of North America Monastery - October 23, 2022

Transcript below video

Luke 7:11-16

At that time, Jesus went to a city called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. As he drew near to the gate of the city, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and a large crowd from the city was with her.

And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, "Do not weep." And he came and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, arise." And the dead man sat up, and began to speak. And he gave him to his mother.

Fear seized them all; and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has arisen among us!" and "God has visited his people!"

Preparation for Communion

Brothers and sisters, today, as we approach communion, it is well that you believe in Jesus Christ. But do you believe Jesus Christ? Do you understand what the Law was about? Today, Jesus Christ gave us a revelation about what the Law was truly about. In the Old Testament, a dead body was unclean. If you would touch that body, you couldn't even enter the Temple because you were rendered unclean.

But how did God define the Law? If you were the High Priest and you were heading for the Temple to serve the liturgy—even to enter the Holy of Holies—according to the Law of Moses, you were unclean if you touched a dead body and entered the Temple.

But according to the explanation of the Law that was given, if you were the High Priest, vested to go to the Temple to serve, and you came upon a dead body but there was no one to bury them, then you should take the body yourself, carry it, and bury it properly. because the law of Mercy is greater than the law of cleanliness [or purity].

But today as we approach Holy Communion, we come near to the body of Jesus Christ. And we understand that this time, it is a life-giving body—that this time, the touch of Jesus Christ raises our souls from spiritual deadness and fills us with life again. When we approach Holy Communion, the only thing that should be in our mind is that our Lord Jesus Christ is offering himself to us—that he is actually reaching out to touch what is considered unclean. To touch our dead souls—to touch the deadness in our hearts and give us life—to quicken our spirits and raise us up from the dead works of the world around us

The Law came from Moses but grace and peace through Jesus Christ, who manifested God in his true nature to us. He is the very Image of the Creator, the very image and likeness of the Godhead, bodily. And he reveals the true nature of God to us, whereas before, we had only an idolatrous idea about God.

So today, as you approach for Holy Communion, bear it in your mind that Jesus Christ is reaching out and touching us, who might be, according to the Law, unclean—and raising us to life—to new life—to spiritual life—to everlasting life. Today, we receive that grace and peace of Jesus Christ in the Holy Mysteries of the communion of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ.

And why did he establish this ritual to give us his body and blood at every liturgy, except to call us back out of the deadness of the world into the life of the kingdom of God. When we receive Holy Communion, we manifest the fact that we're citizens of the kingdom of God, that we a royal priesthood, that we are a kingdom of priests.

So today, as you approach Holy Communion, contemplate in your mind as you prepare what it actually means—what it means that Jesus Christ is going to touch you today and enter into your being today and raise you from the deadness of the world around you, and the dead works of the world around you, and the vanities of the world around us.  And for this moment, to raise you, as it were, from spiritual death and bestow upon you that life that comes only from God and only from union with God. For God is life, and to be separated from God is death. To be United with God Is life.

Today, Jesus Christ will unite us with God through his own precious body and blood, and remind us again that what the world might consider unclean in its own folly, Jesus Christ considers clean and makes clean through his touch.

The only thing that can render you unclean, according to Saint John Chrysostom, is an evil disposition or a heart turned against God and turned against neighbour. Today, Jesus Christ invites us to turn toward God and toward neighbour—to receive him, to receive his touch, to receive the touch of life that makes us worthy, no matter how unclean, to enter into the Temple and receive the things of the altar—to receive the things from the Holy of Holies, because the Law of Mercy is greater than the Law of purity.

The Law of love and mercy is greater than every kind of Law because love is greater than law. As you prepare yourself to approach for Holy Communion in these few minutes, try to contemplate what it means that you're about to do—to partake of the Holy Mysteries. So you can truly rejoice in heart, having been touched with the gift of life from our Lord and God.

When Jesus watched men self-destruct - Felicia Murrell

I’m thinking today about people, people we love that make harmful, self-destructive choices. Choices that aren’t life-giving or flourishing. And I’m thinking today about Jesus. Thinking about how it must have been for Jesus to watch men self-destruct. To watch them choose to berate him, women, those they’ve reduced through hierarchical power structures (after all, caste and class aren’t new).

I’m thinking about what must have been going on in his inner world as he watched Pilate’s wrestle, watched soldiers laugh, prepare to flog him, say dumb ish, cast lot for his clothing. How people spat and scorned, and how he watched.

But mostly I’m thinking about his silence. How he yielded. How even in their acts of hellish torment, he did not overstep his boundaries - no matter how painful it was to watch their actions. He didn’t rush in to fix or… dare I say, save. Nope, he did not attempt to save people from themselves (at least not in the way we do).

Jesus mostly sat with, talked, laughed, drank with, ate with. Something about his presence, I imagine, was an invitation to others. An invitation to life, to love, to freedom. And when people turned toward him in the way of recognition and participation, then Jesus would say: “Go and sin no more.”

Go. Walk the path of Love in such a way that the truth of who you are is in harmony with the way you live and move and have your being.

But for those for whom there was no recognition, no desire to participate with wholeness, for those… Jesus was mostly silent. Not absent, just silent.

Make no mistake about it, to watch someone you love self-destruct is one of the most horrifying experiences of our human existence. And fear of their ultimate demise can send you into control, co-dependency, manipulation, threats, force…whatever it takes to set them on the course we think will save them. And thus, my heart returns to Jesus.

All things considered, what is the most loving thing I can do right now? How do I recognize and participate with the way of Love? How do I order my words, my invitation…yes, even my silence so that I hold sacred another’s freedom and their right to choose?

Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung" - Paul Heise's response to Ron Dart

Paul Heise of www.wagnerheim.com responds to Ron Dart's five-part series on Richard Wagner's opera, "The Ring of the Nibelung."

Dear Ron:

Needless to say, it would take me forever to respond to every detail of your series of lectures on Wagner’s Ring, of the resemblances of aspects of Tolkien’s books to it, and of its massive implications for how we can understand what it is to be human. The primary thing I loved about your lectures is that they provide a window into the innumerable questions which Wagner asks about the human condition and man’s destiny. That’s my main takeaway from your lectures: you ask many of the questions that need to be asked.

So, since a comprehensive response would take me an eternity to complete, I’ll just respond briefly to a few of your observations which struck me as having the most resonance, not by way of critique but simply to complement what you said. Since you jump back and forth somewhat from one of the Ring’s four parts to the others in each of your lectures, in spite of each lecture being more or less dedicated to one of the Ring’s parts, I’ll just follow the chronological order of your online lectures rather than try to break them down by the numbered sequence of recordings.

You note the Ring asks us to make sense of our life as science or myth, reason or romanticism. The whole point of my Ring book has been to demonstrate that Wagner’s drama concerns precisely the relationship between these two aspects of man’s psyche in the course of history. Of course, he’s seeking to discover whether they can be reconciled. As Scruton put it, man as object vs. man as subject.

You note, as Deryck Cooke did, that Alberich seeks to compensate himself for the loss of love with the acquisition of power. My book presents this as a metaphor for man’s evolutionary transition from our pre-lingual animal ancestors into symbol- using man who, unlike his animal ancestors, is capable of increasing his power over himself and his environment over time cumulatively through the acquisition of knowledge.

CLICK HERE to continue reading: Paul Heise's full RESPONSE TO RON DART

To order a copy of Paul Heise's book, email [email protected] and ask for the “Author’s Discount” of $59.95.

The Grace Creed in the Prodigal Son - Eric H. Janzen

I have favorite Bible stories. They are passages I return to often because they moved me, spoke to me, fascinated me, or transformed me in some way. Recently, I made a connection between two such passages that never occurred to me before. While researching another writing project, I recalled something my friend Brad Jersak had taught me about what he calls the Grace Creed in the Old Testament. As I read an article he wrote about it¹, an idea whispered through my mind: “Is the parable of The Prodigal Son an expression of the Grace Creed?” One must never ignore such whispers, so I decided to ponder the question.

The Grace Creed is most famously found in Exodus 34:6-7—which is indeed one of my favorite stories. I remember even as a child being utterly fascinated by the setting of Moses up on the mountainside hiding his face as the immense and powerful presence of God passed by him. His courageous conversation with God beforehand left a deep impression on me that has lasted my entire life. It is a story that, in part, taught me how to pray, and how to fully express my heart before God without reservation. The words of God as he describes His character for Moses ring out and echo from the heights of the mountain:

“The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”

To my mind, these are beautiful words. From here on they form the core understanding of God’s character and nature in the hearts and minds of His people. Even when they don’t want God to be gracious and merciful, they know that this is who He is and what He is like. Consider Jonah’s complaint after God chooses not to mete out the punishment (3:10) Jonah has prophesied over the city of Nineveh:

So he prayed to the Lord, and said, “Ah, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!”

Jonah is angry that God has acted according to the Grace Creed revealed to Moses—but he is not surprised. He suspected all along that this was what God would do, which seems to hint that Jonah as a prophet knew well that God’s gracious compassion is what can be expected from Him. Jonah’s unmerciful and angry heart toward his enemies, the Ninevites, stands in stark contrast to the merciful love of God that leaves us in awe of such divine grace and mercy.²

The question I want to answer is can we read The Prodigal Son as an expression of the Grace Creed given to Moses in Exodus 34? I believe we can. This parable has long been one of my favorite stories. No matter who we are and what our journeys have been, everyone seems to find a reflection of themselves in this parable. To see how the parable expresses the Grace Creed we need to rearrange its order a little. Ready? Here we go:

And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’ So he divided to them his livelihood. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living. But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything. (Luke 15:12-16)

The prodigal demands his inheritance before it is due. The very action is one of rebellion. He is alienating himself from his dad and all of his family. The relationships that should be most important to him, he breaks. He leaves for a distant place where he wastes his inheritance on meaningless living until he finds himself with nothing left. Added to his foolishness, he has nothing at a time when he needs his inheritance just to survive. He is forced into the worst imaginable lowly labor. He must feed food, which he would gladly eat if only allowed, that is deemed fit only for the pigs. In the Grace Creed, we read that guilt is by no means cleared and that iniquity/sin’s consequences can carry on for three or four generations. Certainly, we see that the prodigal son has come to the very pit of the consequence of his sin. His guilt is made clear in where he has ended up and in how he has wasted his inheritance. According to the Creed, if he has children, they will endure the results of these consequences for a few generations. What can he do in this place of despair?

The prodigal son looks within himself. He realizes his only hope is to return to his father’s house. In Luke 15:17-19, we read how he understands that he cannot request the restoration of his status as his father’s son. He hopes, and believes, that his father will at least allow him to return as one of the hired hands. In his heart, he acknowledges his sin against his father and his family. From this place of true remorse, he heads for home.

Now a remarkable scene unfolds:

“And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ “But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry.” (Luke 15:20-24)

Ashamed, the prodigal nears home. His father, his Abba, sees him from afar and is overcome with compassion. His compassion moves him so much that he must run to his returning son and embrace him and kiss him. The image and message is clear: “Welcome home! I love you!” The prodigal delivers his practiced line asking for forgiveness but expecting the bare minimum. Instead, the father responds by restoring him as a full son in his family. He bestows on him everything that marks him as a son—not a prodigal—the robe, the ring, and the sandals, all speak the truth of who he actually is: the father’s son. The father now becomes the fulfillment and voice of the Grace Creed, greeting his son that was dead and lost in his rebellion and sin with love and actions that reflect God’s character: the father is merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.

As I reflect on this reading of the parable, there is something that stands out to me. The prodigal son suffers because of the choices that he makes and we would be right in understanding that those choices have led to his self-inflicted punishment. The consequences are said to endure for three or four generations. Yet, in the parable, as I have written it out here interacting with the Grace Creed, we have what seems like a significant change of order. The prodigal son’s journey begins with rebellion, which leads him into sin and its consequences. There is no hope for him or his children and their children. Then, he returns home and is restored and shown grace, compassion, and mercy. If we were to write the Grace Creed according to the unfolding order of the story of the prodigal, it would read this way:

“By no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.

“The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.”

I admit it is slightly awkward but it is intriguing. In the end, the parable told by Jesus leaves us with an altered and prophetic form of the Grace Creed from Exodus 34. Just as Jeremiah has prophesied:

In those days they shall say no more:

‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
And the children’s teeth are set on edge.’

But everyone shall die for his own iniquity; every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. (Jeremiah 31:29-30)

The prodigal son experiences the reality of the words of Jeremiah. He alone faces the potential consequences of his sin. Yet, he encounters the Gospel response in his father. He is forgiven, reconciled, and restored. The prodigal son is transformed by his father’s grace and compassion, his boundless mercy and goodness. He is now, in every way, the father’s son once more. The generational consequence of the prodigal’s sin and rebellion is no longer an unfolding curse that can visit his descendants. God has declared this will no longer happen. This is how it is meant to be (see also Ezekiel 18). The image, the likeness of the prodigal fades from view and vanishes. Only the forgiven and restored son remains with a new robe, a new ring, and comfortable, new sandals. Could there be a better reason to eat and be merry? I can’t imagine there is.

Notes

[1] Brad Jersak, “Grace Creed & The So-Called ‘Old Testament God,’” last modified February 20, 2022, https://www.ptm.org/grace-creed-the-so-called-old-testament-god-brad-jersak

[2] For an extensive list of Scripture passages where the Grace Creed appears, see Brad’s article. It is eye-opening when you discover how often the refrain is found across the Old Testament.

Scrutinizing Scruton: the Scrutopian Tribe (1944-2020) - by Ron Dart

Ron Dart's critical analysis of the conservativism of Roger Scrutom

The Peace Prayers in Leipzig (1989) - Roger Newell

Photo: Martin Naumann

Reflections on the 33^rd Anniversary of the Peace Prayers in Leipzig, October 9, 1989

The cold war suddenly and nonviolently ended, and the end of history was proclaimed as the triumph of democracy and freedom. Yet today there is a hot war in Europe on a scale unknown since WWII. How did things go so wrong?  What are the signs of hope?

In 2007 I led a group of college students on a Church history tour of Europe, in which by God’s grace we had the opportunity to meet Pastor Christian Führer of Leipzig’s Nikolai church in former East Germany. None of the intelligence experts or journalists saw what was coming in 1989, when people like Christian Führer and churches like Nikolai church brought about the collapse of the Berlin Wall non-violently from within--without a shot being fired. The story he told us that day inspired me to want to better understand how it was possible that a marginalized church could play such a central role in bringing about the collapse of a totalitarian regime. This led me to write the book, Keine Gewalt! No Violence! How the Church Gave Birth to Germany’s Only Peaceful Revolution. What did the church in Germany do that made such a non-violent transformation possible, especially in a nation where violence against its own population as well as other nations, was a deeply ingrained habit?

Lessons from Leipzig

I would suggest that Pastors like Führer and congregations like the Nikolai church helped the people of Leipzig and Germany itself unlearn the most debilitating lessons handed down by their government officials and authority over many decades, concerning what Dom Helder Camara called the spiral of violence. The violent spark may erupt when a cruel misuse of power by the police leads to a protest by young people or students on the streets which soon includes acts of property damage or even retaliatory violence against those representing “the system.” One thinks of the needless killing of George Floyd and the less-than-peaceful protests which roiled many cities throughout America. In response, the authorities crack down hard to quell the protests. For a while, all is calm perhaps, but under the surface, the anger is seething, waiting for another incident to break out all over again, followed in turn by a new round of intimidating enforcement methods to secure “law and order.” This can go on for years as the governing class and the protestors consume their energies endlessly repeating the same dynamic while collaborative contributions to the common good are left attempted and social conditions erode. At Leipzig on October 9, the spiral was interrupted when the words of the Sermon on the Mount were taken onto the streets, as  70,000 people, armed only with candles and prayers, not stones or spray paint, disarmed the heavily armed police and military with Jesus’ spirit of peace, treating them as fellow members of a wounded family, seeking a common good and a better future based on mutual respect not the intimidation of the weaker by the stronger. A month later the Berlin Wall itself was breached and began to be dismantled by peaceful crowds without the breaking of a single window.

At the time of this event in 1989, I was pastor of a small church in the north of England and was completely unaware of the Church’s central role. The silence regarding the role of the church was not so much an intentional conspiracy by the media as simply that it didn’t fit the plausibility structures of our modern Western worldview, one long internalized by most journalists or by government intelligence agencies. How could prayers and candles, and the reading of the Sermon on the Mount have such an influence? (The exception to this assumption was Poland, due to its historically strong Roman Catholic identity).  But East Germany (the GDR) was historically Protestant, and after 40 years of being marginalized by the government, it was minimally attended.  It is very difficult to see what people are trained not to see, that is, the church is simply a marginal dinosaur, an echo of the past with little relevance to modern, public life.  

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"Where do you lie on the political spectrum" - Poem by Becky Jaster

“So where do you lie on the political spectrum?”

 

“I’m inclined to rest somewhere beyond it:

a birds eye view, in search of truth 

up a tree, I typically sit…

 

Ironically this feels much more like 

a place of common ground 

there’s plenty of room on this olive branch

for philosophical thought most profound!

 

A perspective that takes it’s pick

of roses red and violets blue 

to make a bouquet 

of varying hues

reflective of deeper values -

 

that make up our communality 

and move us forward in love 

to shared goals of meaning  

outside of the system 

where flies a little white dove.”

 

Becky Jaster