Greetings Friends and
Peers[i],
I
have been called to write this to you as a way to convey how I, in community
with you, can trust in the message of the Christian Scriptures. Indeed, I feel a call to walk alongside you
as a companion, a participant, and a gentle guide on your various and blessed
spiritual journeys. The reason and
validity I feel for this call is rooted in my Christian faith and
traditions. However, this faith does not
come from me alone, nor do my traditions simply get passed down through the
institution of the church, but I am called by the Love of G-d through the
Christian scriptures to be who and where I am.
I hope to share with you in this letter how that can be, and what I
believe the core of the Christian scriptures is for me, and potentially for
you. There are large religious
communities surrounding us that spend a significant amount of time proof
texting scripture to say what they want it to.
But I believe that, when one is aware of the context of the message, the
community being specifically addressed, and can adequately separate culture
from gospel, there is an underlying message of loving relationships that can be
gleaned from the entirety of the text.
The true core of the Bible is identity – the whole book is full of
cultural stories of who we are in relationship to the Divine, and how we are
able to relate to and claim what it means to love and be truly loved!
A valuable and interesting thing to note when reading the
Christian canonical Gospels is that the chronology of them changes the image or
portrayal of Jesus as time goes on without Christ’s return. Additionally, important to note is that these
Gospels are not the literal truths of Jesus’ living, rather they are the
stories of Jesus retold by people with a specific audience and agenda (similar
to how I am writing you this letter!).
Mark, the oldest of the four Gospels, paints a picture of a very human
Jesus, who felt pity, anger, wonder, love, compassion, and a limit to knowledge [ii]. This detailed emotional expression of Jesus
is Mark’s way of portraying that the Divine uses the ordinary for extraordinary
things. The human Jesus is baptized into
his ministry to do miracles and challenge the status quo of the church. And these miracles are all ways in which
humanity is brought back into relationship with one another. Matthew’s gospel portrays Jesus as
fulfillment of Hebraic prophesy[iii]. Jesus becomes less human, and more a vessel
for God’s validation of Jewish tradition, as well as a chance to reform
it. To Matthew, there was a very
definitive split between the ways of God and the ways of the Pharisees. Jesus was sent to be a mediator and a
liberator of the Jewish traditions and faith.
Luke wrote a more historically directed account of Jesus’
life and ministry, as well as directly relating Christ to validating the
oppressed and marginalized of his society.
Tax collectors[iv],
Samaritans[v],
and the relationships between rich and poor[vi]
were vital to what Luke states as the Jesus’ mission: “The Spirit of our God is
upon me; because the Most High has
anointed me to bring Good News to those who are poor. God has sent me to proclaim liberty to those
held captive, recovery of sight to those who are blind, and release to those in
prison – to proclaim the year of our God’s favor[vii].” John portrays Jesus’ as the Christ – filled
with the Divine, and teaching God’s Love and truth. His Christ is the image of God made flesh and
continually present to us in the give of the Spirit[viii]. John is an important gospel because he relays
the importance of the gift of the Holy Spirit, and that the nature of John’s
message is that we are being called into relationship with one another, guided
by the teaching of Jesus, and maintained by the gift of the Spirit, who relates
truth to us even now[ix].
Chronologically,
Paul wrote 7-8 letters before any of the Biblical Gospels were penned. Paul had an urgency in what he felt was the
core of Christianity in his time. His
truth was that Christ died, Christ was resurrected, and Christ was coming back
soon[x]. To this core were Pauls instructions to the
early Christians directed. Because Jesus
would be returning so quickly, it was important for people to be ready[xi],
and for the message of Christ to be shared as widely as possible before that
happened[xii]. Not much else mattered at first to Paul, other
than relating this message to as many Gentiles as he possibly could. He also greatly emphasized to his various
communities the need to live lives that were uplifting to others, to live in
peace with non-believers[xiii],
to treat others with respect[xiv]
bestowing kindness on one another[xv],
and to be united in both conviction, love, and purpose as a community[xvi].
His messages became more theological over
time, since Christ did not, in fact, come back within the weeks or months Paul
assumed at first. Paul’s messages became
more directed at how these communities were to relate to one another, to their
contextual cultures, and still live in unity with the message of the gospel of
Jesus. He began developing a lived
theology for the early Christians. He
addressed some of the realities associated with marriage[xvii],
early body theology[xviii],
and the humanity/divinity of Jesus[xix].
However, here is where I believe Paul’s writings will
become interesting to you (if they haven’t already!). Paul writes of inclusivity, community, a
largeness of salvation, the relationship of faith, hope, and love, and
grace. When we are able to recognize
that culture plays a large role in the whys and hows of Paul’s letters, we are
able to see that Paul’s Christianity is highly
inclusive. Now, everyone and anyone can
enter the kingdom of God, people groups and genders[xx]! Salvation was now communal[xxi]. And this inclusivity created a newly diverse
community that needed to learn how to be in relationship with one another. Paul taught about spiritual gifts and how
they help a community function as a whole[xxii]. He later wrote, “but be careful in how you
live out your freedom in Christ, serve one another in works of love, since the
whole of the Law is summarized in a single command : love your neighbor as
yourself[xxiii].”
Paul’s later letter to the Romans in brilliantly
inclusive, as well as formative for a living faith. His message is that God’s promises are
forever – God’s promises to the Jewish community do not die in Christ, but are
forever, and that they are marked on our hearts as a blessing. When we take the chance to follow the spirit
(our spirits), and not worry about the letter of the Law, we are freed to seek
the praises of God and not humankind[xxiv]. There is a freedom and flexibility in this
theology that appeals to all humanity.
For me, I see it as an opportunity to trust my God given/God inspired
gut intuition to be that which can call and motivate me to community and love
and relationship with God, self, and others.
This existed before, but was able to be received in a more tangible way
in the gift of Christ. We are reminded
by Paul that everyone falls short of that which we are capable of reaching, but
it is through the grace of God in the gift of Christ that we are able to do
anything valuable for our communities without our own desires clouding the
whole exchange[xxv]. He gives us an insightful list of values to
use in the midst of community living that remind us to love, be respectful,
bless others, be hospitable with your resources, meet people in their emotions,
be at peace, and overcome evil[xxvi]. And he calls us to allow the happiness of
others to make us happy, and the pain of others to bring us grief[xxvii].
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, I challenge you to
look at the Christian Scriptures in their context and take them and their
cultural significance with the grain of salt so many of our religious traditions
refuse to do. When so much of the
writings seem to be in conflict, now we might be able to recognize that it is not
the scripture that is paradoxical, it is the cultural context. Therefore, we may attempt to live into the
spirituality that comes from our God-imaged selves, and take heed of what the
Christian scriptures have to say to us now about relationships with one another
and with the Divine. One message I hear
loud and clearly from Paul’s letters is that our spirituality that we claim as
individual and personal is not necessarily something that comes from us, but is
truly something that comes from and grows out of the nature of community and
our relationships. For God is present to
us in and through all of our interactions with one another and the created
world, connecting us to one another.
This, to me, implies that there is a resonance to the stories our ancestors
share with us in the Scriptures, and we can bond to their experience without
owning the condemnation or cultural teachings explicit to that context.
I
believe that the core message of the Christian scriptures to us today is that
relationships are more than the people we know or the families we come from,
but are also the efforts we use to cultivate a connectivity to our greater
world, communities, and selves. If we
truly believe that our spirituality is that which binds us to the people around
us, then the experience of participation in a religious institution can give us
both the language to own that, and a place to challenge potential stagnation of
our corporate spirituality. The identity we are able to discover for ourselves
through these somewhat coded yet living pages of the scriptures is that we are
loved beyond belief, beyond imagination, beyond understanding, and beyond
boarders imaginary and drawn in the sand.
Whatever the Divine is for you, if you can believe that Jesus was a
model of love for neighbor, an example of a champion of equal liberation, and a
person who can tie you into the greater community of people striving for a more
just humanity, then the core message of the Christian scriptures is valid and
living for you. May you never stop
seeking, and trusting the intuition that draws you into loving relationships
and challenging questions.
Your sister in Spirit
and Truth,
Liz
[i] The demographic I have chosen to
address is the Pacific Northwest community that claims they are spiritual but
not religious. I feel a strong sense of
call to work in the long term with this community, and I am already quite
involved in specifically young adult dialogue around spirituality.
[ii] Mark 1:41; Mk
3:5; Mk 6:6; Mk 6:34; Mk 13:32(The Inclusive Bible: the First Egalitarian
Version – all references from this translation)
[iii]11 prophetic fulfillments are
mentioned throughout Matthew’s gospel: Mt 1:22-23; 2:5-6; 2:15; 2:17-18;
2:23;4:14-16; 8:17; 12:17-21; 13:14-15; 21:4-5; 27:9-10
[v] Lk. 10:29-37; 17:11-19
[x] 1 Thessalonians 4:13-16
[xiv] Colossians 3:18-4:1
[xxii] 1 Corinthians 12:4-7, 27-31
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