Jesus

This is the first of two week three discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Making Sense of Theology through Pathways Theological Education.

What do you believe about Jesus and how does this affect your life?

The most important thing I believe about Jesus is that trying to follow his example, the words and deeds that we know about, makes me a better human being. This would be true regardless of anything else about him: He could be no more (less) the child of God than I am. He could be only mortal and not divine. He could be just a prophet, (as one of my dearest high school friends, a devout Muslim believes.) He could have stayed dead. I would still be better at the essential task of being human for following him. That doesn't mean that I don't believe in the parts that "transcend materialistic views of reality", to quote the CUA statement of beliefs, it's just that they aren't necessary for a lot of what I think is important about Jesus and how Jesus affects my day to day life. Jesus modeled a way of living and preached a society where we treat each other justly and was so committed to it that he was willing to die rather than break his principles. All of that is compelling in an of itself. But then, beyond that, we have the supernatural parts that add emphasis in ways I know I haven't fully explored yet. In a recent week's commentary in Wil Gafney's Year W lectionary, she says "Each of Jesus's miracles is an epiphany."(p. 63) She's talking about how his miracles link him back to prior miraculous events and the prophets involved. I'm thinking that they are also epiphanies as to how we should be in the world. Jesus can create something from nothing, he uses it to feed hungry people. A lot of the resurrections and healings that we see Jesus committing (and several of the ones they remind us of) are about propping up the community. In my Bible study this week we were looking at the story of Tabitha using Gafney's Year W and the Women's Bible Commentary (2nd and 3rd editions). This isn't a Jesus miracle, it's Peter following in Jesus's footsteps. At first glance, Tabitha is important because she's a disciple and she's bankrolling things. It's easy to say, well, she's important because she's the financial support. But then you look in more detail and Tabitha is supporting the widows of the community who are the mourners and supporters of those who are grieving, which is time is everyone. There are whole layers of community support where Tabitha is central. That's who gets restored to the community.

Unlike a lot of my friends, I wasn't raised with an embedded theology of hell and damnation, although as an American, I was certainly raised in a society where theologically suspect images that owe more to Dante than the Bible are everywhere and places queer kids are likely to hang out are going to be targeted by people preaching that they will go to that hell. And I've seen that death can be a friend or a comforter as much as something to be feared. My personal thoughts about the end of this life are not fear, with or without a promise of a better life ahead. So, to me, Jesus's resurrection to give his community hope and pointers to continue is more compelling than the fact that he has defeated death. That's not to say those things aren't important to my / our / the community, I think they really are. It's that that is not where I ever needed to be restored to community. 

What I do find more personally compelling (and more difficult) than the idea that through Jesus death has been overcome, is the promise of radical forgiveness. I take seriously Jesus's words that we should forgive as we have been forgiven and his actions in doing the same. (One can argue that this is Jesus defying sin for and with us, I don't generally find that a useful label, even if I generally think it's true.) I strive (and fail) to forgive for more than trivial things, but Jesus's example shines through as how to do that.

A bit of an aside, I think that one of the reasons we don't bring people into community - and I would include things like the fact that there are people sleeping on the streets of my town and we, as a community, seem to think that's not worth changing our ways in order to change, has to do with forgiveness (and also sin as Brown talks about it, thinking too much or little of ourselves). On a group level, when we don't take care of people in our community, it means either we think too much of ourselves and think we deserve to have more than they do or it means that we can't forgive them if they are given something that we have to work for. (It gets a little more complicated on an individual level as we interact with the constraints of the group.)

Seriously But Not Literally

 This is the first of two week 1 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education

Describe what it means that Progressive Christians “take the Bible seriously but not literally.” 

I've started, stopped and erased several partial paragraphs by now about what it means to "take the Bible seriously but not literally", because almost everything that I come up with is something that the literalists I know would also agree with, in some cases immediately and others in response to questioning. (Roger Wolsey partially addresses this in the introduction to his article 16 Ways Progressive Christians Interpret The Bible.) However, the more I think about it, the more I see the differences as almost anthropomorphizing the Bible. We don't just see the Bible as, as the CUA Statement of Faith puts it, "the authoritative textual basis of our faith"; we treat it as we would a beloved friend. I don't mean this in the sense of keeping it dear to our hearts and welcoming it into our homes (which my literalist friends do as well), but rather how we  listen and interact with it. We recognize that the same words in different contexts of time, place and content have different meaning. When my friend says "I just can't", context tells me whether they have reached the end of their physical or emotional rope and are asking for help or they are are excited about something and are using hyperbole or they are simply busy / setting a boundary and don't plan to discuss it further. As progressive Christians, we pay attention to nuance and style to determine the meaning of phrases in different contexts in the Bible, just like we do with our friends. If we are walking up to one of our friends and they are saying something that doesn't sound like the good person they usually are, or someone quotes them as having said something that doesn't line up with their usual personality and beliefs, we step back and make sure that they weren't quoting someone else, giving an example of something to avoid doing or saying, or otherwise not attempting to speak for themselves at that moment, and we apply the same to Bible verses. We recognize that story telling, sarcasm, poetry, and venting (imprecatory psalms anyone?) are all viable methods of communicating important information without expecting every word of them to also carry the exact literal truth in the Bible, just as we do in our friends. We recognize that what is appropriate in one time and place is not appropriate in another, and just as we behave differently when we show up to support our friends at something hard like a funeral than when we watch a movie together for relaxation, we don't expect every statement, requirement or prohibition in the Bible to apply in every situation. Just as we accept our friends when they are not perfect, as progressives, we don't and don't have to expect the Bible to be perfect in every way to value it or for it (in conjunction with the Holy Spirit) to illuminate our lives and strengthen our relationship with God.