Wednesday, January 23, 2008

A Share in a Priestly Office

I'm not going to bother to get this post all refined, because if I do it will probably never get posted. So, take it for what it is....a few thoughts that I think are meaningful & relevant, but that are not well edited for the level of precision and balance that my perfectionism (or some equally difficult quality) tends to compel me toward.

I'm reading "The Gnostic Gospels" by Elaine Pagels. In the chapter "God the Father/God the Mother" she writes (pg 60):

"Worst of all, from Irenaeus' viewpoint, Marcus invited women to act as priests in celebrating the eucharist with him: he 'hands the cups to women' to offer up the eucharistic prayer, and to pronounce the words of consecration."

And she quotes Tertullian as saying:

"These heretical women - how audacious they are! They have no modesty, they are bold enough to teach , to engage in argument, to enact exorcisms, to undertake cures, and, it may be, even to baptize!"

Wow - I wonder what the experiences of these women were like! Its exciting to have the threads of equality and liberation for women go back this far, while discouraging to find such appalling views related to women as the mainstream of our heritage. (And it still shows of course.) It's remarkable in the face of the fact that the issue seems to have been at hand back in the early days of Christianity, that ordination of women has been very much an issue within my lifetime. (I'm well aware as I say this, that there are those who have a very different perspective on this and who would see me as very misled from God's will for my life and role in saying this. I'm tempted to go on about my experiences in such settings...but that would be a digression.)

But yet another quote brings me to an even more widely reaching issue. The quote from Tertullian, referring to the 'precepts of ecclesiastical discipline concerning women' says:
"It is not permitted for a woman to speak in the church, nor is it permitted for her to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer [the eucharist], nor to claim for herself a share in any masculine function - not to mention any priestly office."

This makes me wonder, who are we now excluding from a share in priestly office?

Obviously the controversy in so many churches regarding ordination (to various offices) of people who are gay or lesbian comes to mind.
But think further.
  • What if the person offering the eucharist next Sunday was a homeless person?
  • What if it was a lay person?
  • What if it was a child?
  • What if it was the person next to you in the pew?
  • What if it was you?
  • What if it was a Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Catholic, Baptist...?

Who bears the image of Christ in our midst that we are failing to see, failing to let serve us, or failing to honor and bless?



Tuesday, January 15, 2008

The City - Being Killers or Keepers

Okay, I can't seem to get these published in the right order. So if you would, please go DOWN to the post "The City - Able, Cain & Enoch - The Text" and read up from there. (The City - Being Killers or Keepers last).

So is the city a place of creativity, opportunity and positive things or a place of evil and ills?

My family of origin has some interesting stories related to members of the family who have gone to a town or city for employment, recreation, or other opportunities. One of the family's elders had concerns. The city was seen by this elder as a place where exposure to others with different beliefs and values might influence family members to immorality and other err.

Has it been? Of course I can't claim that all responses to situations in the city have been sinless. Furthermore, I don't think all family members would agree about which responses to count as a demonstration of downfall and which to count as demonstration of growth. But I see a lot of spiritual growth and good that has come through first hand exposure, and in some cases the good fortune of friendship, with the "other" that the streets of the city have connected me with.

The city's concrete moves me away from nature, but it connects me with people of diverse experience, belief and perspective. This too is a spiritual issue that connects us with deep and basic things. Too often such differences lead members of the human family to be their brother's competitor or even killer as Cain was. The city affords us many opportunities to make choices that perpetuate our separation from those who differ from us, or that help us be each other's keepers.

In the middle of this city, in our Garden of Gethsemane, how do we do that? How else can we do that?

The City - From Eden to a New Place

I'm starting to wonder if this might be another story of departure from Eden. Maybe the land Cain was cut off from was the land of Eden. He went to live in a place wandering east of Eden. He was cut off from the land of the garden, where nature and humanity had lived in sync for a time, where God and people had walked together and where people were to be their brother's keeper. Cain had not been his brother's keeper. He was his brother's competitor and killer. As a result Able's blood cries out to God from the ground, Cain is under a curse and driven from the ground. It seems an interesting parallel to Adam and Eve being driven from the garden.

But Cain's anticipation of hopeless vulnerable wandering doesn't appear to happen. Most obviously God gives him a mark of protection. But note also, Cain doesn't seem to keep wandering. He establishes a family and builds a city. From that comes all kinds of things that we might regard as a mixture of good and bad, potential realized, failure and grace.

Monday, January 14, 2008

The City - Cut Off From the Land

Cain laments that he will be cut off from the land and cut off from God.

I have to wonder again about what the text means. What is "the land"? A certain part of land? An area of land in which to root oneself? The land of the earth itself?

To my ears, being cut off from the land, and eventually ending up in a city, as Cain did, makes me think of the differences in my relationship with the land and nature associated with my rural farm upbringing and my current city life.

In the city I'm not sure where to go to see the sunset on the horizon. City light obscures the stars. I dare to go out in blizzards and drive around with tornadoes a few miles away. Rain determines whether or not a put on a jacket, not when I go to work in a field or whether or not there is a crop.

In the city my perception of location and how to get from point A to point B is not shaped by trees, rocks and animal paths as it might have been in older times or more remote places than I have lived. Neither is it framed by the gravel mile roads of the rural area that is still partly home to me. Rather it closes in, proscribed block by block by concrete that moves my feet & heart that much farther from the earth.

In spite of the strengths of the city that I value, I'm always torn. Maybe someday I'll return to the country. Why knows. I don't like being this removed from the land. It's not just an aesthetic or recreational issue. It's a spiritual issue. Earth, air and water are old and basic to our being, both physically and otherwise. Consider their role in our creation story. Our natural selves (in a good sense of the word) resonate with them. Connecting with them connects us to something old, deep, vast and basic. The freeways and sidewalks, 35W, 4th Ave S, new streets in the outer suburbs, are new and short lived. Their origins, in this part of the world, connect us back a few years to a century or so. That's more meaningful and worthwhile than we often realize. But it isn't the same. Could this be why Cain complained of being cut off from the land and being cut off from God almost in the same breath?

But there is the other side....evidence of hope in the text and experience of spiritual connections brought through the city. More on that in another post.

The City - Able, Cain & Enoch - The Text

This post & the 3 below (no, make that above...) go together are related to a post on The Vicar's Page about the City, especially as referenced in Gen 4.

The Cain & Able story doesn't make clear why God accepted Able's offering but not Cain's. As far as I can tell Cain made a good faith offering & God rejected it. That bothers me, and if I were Cain, I would be even more upset about it. But would I go kill my brother over it? I don't think so.

The more I think about it the more it seems that at some point thousands of years ago the tellers & hearers of this story must have had a context that gave them more, or at least different things, to go on to understand the story. Reading a few things I could quickly find raises some interesting ideas (the story might related back to a Sumerian mythology, it might be a priestly statement about what kinds of offerings are prefered, it might represent a conflict between hersmen & agrarian oriented people, there's midrash about Cain & Able's conflict having been over women, there are implications about the names & occupations of Cain's children, .....etc.) Interesting and worthwhile, but it hasn't left me with clarity about how to grasp on to this text.

The reference to a city in the text had not stuck in my memory before. What does it mean? Why was it included in the text? I'm not sure. But with that disclaimer, I'll forge boldly ahead to my next post about what I pick up on with my own 2008 perspective.

Friday, January 11, 2008

The City as a the place we work out our corporate life - intro to my reflections

I said in a comment on Aron's blog, The Vicar's Page that I would take a stab at writing about some of the contexts in which I've reflected about the meanings and implications of city. This was spurred by an idea that he says has been sticking with him & that he intends to write about and that I find interesting: that the city is the context in which we work out our corporate life.

I realized when I came here to do that writing that writing about all those contexts at once would end up being a long unengaging blah, blah, blah that no one would want to read.

So, I'll see if I can do any better by writing about one of those contexts at a time. Next post will be the first of them.

I'd though I'd go on to that next post now, but I'm losing energy for it at the moment. Aron only did an intro to the topic, so I'll consider it fair to leave my comments at that level too for now. (Aron, you can consider this as support to keep up your resolution....and as you do your weekly post, I'll comment and/or add a city oriented post here.)