Of Creation and Purpose

Last week in this space I reflected on Bishop Spong's new book on Eternal Life and a new religious consciousness beyond traditional theism. I appreciate Spong's bold iconoclastic approach to matters of faith, and, as I said, Spong has given us fresh and mature language with which we are more able in a post-modern context to speak of the life of faith unfettered by literalism and superstition; he has given us language by which we are able to speak intelligently about Christianity with an integrity that does not cease to be passionate and spiritual. That is not to say that I agree with everything Spong says. He still struggles with his own ego-centrism and with his lifelong battle to escape his literalist roots; all the while acknowledging both.

Spong makes the bold claim early on in Eternal Life... that the purpose of the universe is not life. He hasn't yet referred to some other, or some grander or transcendent purpose, but the implication is that perhaps in the randomness of the origins of the universe, there is no purpose whatsoever...that the universe just is....no telos (no ultimate direction)...no meaning....just random iterations and reiterations of gas and metal and carbon chains and water....of unimaginable heat and unfathomable cold...and loneliness and fear.

The fact of the matter is...there is purpose everywhere....where there is illness, the purpose is healing...where there is despair, the purpose is hope...where there is hunger, the purpose is to nurture...where there is injustice and indignity, the purpose is to set things right, to restore what we know is meant to be...What is right? What is meant to be?...Oh, don't bother to ask, for we know don't we...this knowledge, this genius contained in the DNA of the stars...this mysterious helix of truth and goodness and sacrifice, spiraling towards a mysterious perfection amid a randomness... a randomness that we dare trust and praise as divine.

Could it be that as the universe becomes still.... that purpose becomes still...the chief symbols of this becoming: change and adaptation and transformation and evolution...the cosmic musical refrain....Perhaps at each intersection point of this transformative process, this assaying of the universe.... new purpose is engendered, fiery birth of implicit necessity...the new vocation of the midwife bringing into life that which inevitably becomes...for example, it would have been unthinkable three hundred years ago to say that global warming threatens our existence...but now it is a pressing reality...Certainly we must be purposeful towards restoring the sustainability of our planet...a new purpose heretofore unknown...but known now...Who knows what purpose will become amid the Creation's becoming, who knows for what purpose to which we will be called, that which will evolve three hundred years from now, and again and again. The cosmos rife with purpose...purpose engendered by change and empowered by love, yes love a rudiment as well.

The imperative for us people of faith is that as community we must pay attention, we must think critically and imaginatively; we must seek and work toward being enlightened so that we may artfully and skillfully apprehend the purpose to which we are called....purpose that comes as we speak, ever changing, ever becoming, and we dare not miss its coming...this the Creation in its very becoming, imagining in transcendent proportions the purpose at hand....The clue for me in this process, is that wherever there is sacrifice for the greater good; wherever there is the work towards restoration...there we will apprehend a purpose, truth itself, that we can't deny to be true...and therefore we name it as divine....and celebrate.

Of Eternal Life

The Beth Murray Sunday School Class at All Saints is beginning study of Bishop Jack Spong's latest and perhaps last book entitled Eternal Life: A New Vision: Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell. I'm really excited about the book, so I'm sitting in on the class. In some religious circles Spong is considered a heretic. I beg to differ. Spong's legacy is that he has given thinking Christians (no, that's not an oxymoron) fresh and intelligent insight into ways of thinking and speaking about the true nature and practice of the Christian life. His is a sane voice amid the cacophony of literalism and superstition in what passes for Christianity in a culture that eschews the art of critical thinking. Spong's work not only makes Christianity believable, but he also makes it livable. He has given us new and helpful ways of thinking ( scripturally based) about the so-called miracles, virgin birth, Jesus as human and divine, resurrection, ascension, and in this his new book he explores the illusive concept of eternal life and the speculation of life after death.

I have read just the first few chapters of Spong's new book, but that's got me thinking ahead. So here are some of my reflections on eternal life, before we read Spong's take on it: The Eternal is found in truth and beauty...that's my starting point. And Eternal life is not just about the future; it finds its way into the present as well as the past. Through the imaginative memory, individual and collective, eternal life can be found and named in past events, some of which we barely noticed when they actually occurred, but in memory we see the truth of the matter to which this often mundane event points....And we see it in the present, the truth of the matter...in the dynamic of life and death in the delta...the flashing trout...the wheeling gulls...the fading sedge...the taste of salt in the wind...the northeastern squall...all outward and visible sign of the profound divine that pervades the universe....In art: Picasso's Guernica, Shakespeare's Tempest....Dickinson's images of death,....it goes on forever, these ways into the eternal.... and eternal life pervasive among the human community...in every act of mercy....in every gesture of kindness...in each locale of bestowing justice and dignity...where there is hope...where love is imaginatively engendered, Eternal life is surely self-evident....a quality, an aesthetic of the divine that is seen, heard, felt and tasted by the imagination, the essential midwife of the eternal.

And of the future? Science tells us that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed. We humans now sojourn for a season in earth as self conscious beings; perhaps there is a consciousness far beyond that which we know: a transcendent consciousness of matter and energy, things animate and inanimate, dancing within the song of the universe...We know in string theory that the ultimate rudiment of the universe is tonality, sound waves, music. The song will forever be, and we forever in it and of it...forever a part of the creation's becoming, forever alive in the creation turning towards its perfection always apprehended in the sacramental common things of creation....starfish and star dust.... forever singing in high celebration of a high consciousness beyond all reckoning that perhaps waits in hopeful joy for us all...Imagine that.

Of Good and Evil

Theologians have pondered forever the problem of evil in our world. The great problem is of course, "Why would a God whom we say is loving allow bad things to happen in the world God loves?" It's a good question to which there are no easy answers. The escape route is to say that it is the presence of free will thus shifting the blame to humankind's proclivity towards wrong choices. That's a weak answer and egocentric to say the least, because there's plenty of mayhem and violence in the natural order itself. No, there is more mystery to this reality.

Some of us just watched at All Saints the movie, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, a visually stunning but emotionally disturbing depiction of a cruel and hard world along the Mexican American border filled with betrayal and lies and pain and violence. The characters include a Texas cattle rancher, the vaquero (cowboy) Melquiades, a young overly zealous border guard and his wife, Mexican families along the border trying to migrate into the U.S., the promiscuous waitress at the diner who insists that she loves her husband, the crooked sheriff, the border patrol; the abuse of power, a character unto itself. One of the group commented during the discussion time after the movie that none of the characters were redeemable; that they all were at some level or another depraved.

And yet redemption comes in a very powerful way at the end of the movie; it came with tears, and it comes in the midst of all this depravity. How could this be so, we asked? After all, this is just a movie. What about the real world? Is there truly any hope for us? The evil that surrounds us is so very real and undeniable. Are things really any better than they ever have been? Perhaps things are getting worse. Where do we look for answers? Where do we look for hope?I would suggest that we would do well to pay attention to our artists...art forever the window onto the truth of the matter....we would do well to trust the imaginative word.

In spite of all the characters being participants in the world's evil in the movie, goodness and redemption comes inevitably. It comes through friendship. It comes through sacrifice for each other. It comes through simple acts of hospitality. It comes through compassion and mercy. It comes through welcome and bestowing dignity, and it comes through justice in the midst of injustice. Perhaps the evil in our world is that essential component of creation against which the good struggles and finds its life and thrives...evil a foil, a contrast against which we may apprehend the profound and transforming good that takes gentle root around us. Perhaps Goethe is right in Faust in which the protagonist even after selling his soul to the devil is redeemed; that the redemptive good will ultimately have its way in the end...the unscrupulous good using even evil for its purposes.

Indeed such alchemy is held up in the gospels, more imaginative word...Mercy and justice and compassion and goodness and welcome and hospitality and inclusion transforming a world that feels hard and unjust. All these the means of opening God's commonweal to all of earth, so that forever God and we the people of God, and the created order entire, can look upon all the world in the birth pangs of its becoming and dare to call it very good.

Of Health and Wholeness

It's hard not to be thinking about health care in our country right now. It is dominating the airwaves and cyberspace. It has prompted me to get out my own policy and try to figure out what my coverage is; I'm still figuring. The debate has certainly heated up conversations around dinner tables and civic meetings; and it is all so very complicated: to what extent should the government play a part, if any; will costs really be controlled and who controls them; how much in fact will it cost over the long haul. I'm having trouble sorting out the pros and cons, the wisest path; but I feel strongly about a few things: everyone needs access to health care; there should be no uninsured in this the wealthiest country in the world; health care should be affordable for all; and everyone should have equal benefits. The other thing that seems clear to me is that this will not be solved in a partisan manner. Such major reform will require colleagues of both parties and interest groups working respectfully and imaginatively toward the good of the whole. I have to believe that's possible. Now is not the time for intransigent posturing of interests.

Jesus had a lot to say about health and healing. Healing stories dominate the four Gospels, and they are told in the context of salvation. In our modern western world we have come to believe that salvation is a personal thing, the disposition of our souls earning us a heavenly reward, but salvation in the early church had to do with community living in the now, and even more to do with those alienated from community, principally: the sick, the naked, the homeless stranger, the illegal alien, the shamed. The healing stories in the gospels largely take place among the marginalized of our world...those on the outside... the unincluded...salvation in the ancient world had everything to do with the dignity of the community and the dignity of those the community welcomes; salvation comes when all are made whole... wholeness with dignity, the face of salvation....and salvation is impaired until all experience it.

To experience healing one is restored not simply to good health, but restored to the community that loves and nurtures, restored to dignity. Think how alienating an illness can be. In fact, there used to be Rites in Judaism and in the Christian church which welcomed the one healed back into the community. My father died early on Sunday morning in the hospital in 1984; then there was no Hospice where we lived. We got to the hospital just after he died. A nurse told me that he died with dignity. I've thought about what that might mean over the years, and in the context of the present day it may mean that he died amid loving and skilled care...his pain minimized as best possible...and not alone....Salvation has everything to do with our dying in dignity and our living with dignity...that makes the issue of health and wholeness a gospel issue...Let's hope that whatever is decided on our behalf is something ALL of us can live with...and die with.

Of Life and Labor

As we approach this coming Labor Day we will remember in our prayers this Sunday all who labor. We will specifically pray for justice in the workplace, justice being an imperative both in Hebrew Scripture and in the Gospels. Worker justice in our country continues to be a serious issue. The issue was the reason for the forming of labor unions in the first place; but now labor unions lack the influence they once had. Some would argue that that is a good thing, others would disagree, but the presenting problem of justice in the workplace persists still, however we intend to deal with it.

Worker justice has not only to do with a fair wage, but it also has to do with a safe environment, affordable benefits, adequate leisure, reasonable hours and due respect. Labor is a gift when it is performed in a just environment. It is the means of artful sacrifice; an outward and visible sign of human creativity that makes and remakes our world for the better. Labor performed in the context of injustice is quite the opposite. It debases and injures and stifles the creativity of the human spirit. Unjust employment practices abound in our city, our state, our country and our world broadly unseen, and it is our solemn promise as the Baptized that we will "strive for justice, and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being." That is job one for us Christian people.

This Labor Day weekend when we take our leisure, thank sincerely someone who labors; thank them for what they do, and for doing it well, for it is our labor that transforms our world, labor a rudiment of the process of Creation, labor that clothes and houses and feeds and waters and heals our world. We are lifeless without our sacred labor, so we give thanks for our own privilege of labor ourselves.

Alfred North Whitehead wrote that the created order, an outward and visible reflection of the Creator Godself... is process, an ever becoming and evolving reality...the created order and God in it still becoming what might be...the universe blossoming into goodness...Our labor then a high metaphor for this becoming...work and rest, work and rest...and at the last, on the seventh day, the joy of jobs well done.