By Greg Jones

Episcopalians are people of a common book. Whether we worship in the Churches of England, South Africa, Sudan or the Episcopal Church – all Anglicans share a common book of prayer, worship and wisdom. It predates the American Revolution, the Enlightenment, and, yes, even the Bard himself. Our common text of life in Christ was finished before Henry VIII got married the first time – and before Thomas Cranmer said the Eucharist in English. Yes, our truly common book is the Bible. Quite by itself, the Bible is the inspired text of our Church. The Bible constitutes the sacred vocabulary of the Body of Christ, through which the living and active Word of God continues to breathe its transformational power. The Bible describes our common life in Christ, the incarnate Word of God, and it informs our every song, story, and prayer.

The Book of Common Prayer and Hymnal which form our twin expressions of Episcopal doctrine are themselves as good as they are because they are the fruit of deep engagement with Scripture. As the Prayer Book says, "Lord Jesus ... kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture." Indeed, our liturgical life is a lived engagement with the Word of God in the Bible – and not much more. Thus, in our spiritual and worshipful encounter with the Word of God in the Bible, Christ is made manifest in us, to us, and through us – who by baptism have become members of Christ's body. The way I see it, the Bible is the utterance of the Body of Christ to the Body of Christ.

In her prophetic work The Dream of God, the late Verna Dozier offers a reflection on the following collect from the Book of Common Prayer:

"Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life; which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ."
Dozier says that it is "exciting beyond telling" that God caused the Scriptures to be written, not just to inspire us, or comfort us, but to teach us.

She writes:

"[The Scriptures] are written for our learning (sic). There is something we need to learn, and the only place we can find the subject matter for that learning is in the Bible. We need to know the story, the story the Bible – and only the Bible – tells. The climax of the story is Jesus Christ...[and] you will never understand the answer to the question of who Jesus is unless you know the story the Bible tells."

In a nutshell, we believe that the Word of God in the Bible was uttered, edited and published in and by the Body of Christ at the instigation of the Holy Spirit – for the purpose of delivering to hope, assurance and learning. And not just a general hope, assurance or learning – but the kind which only comes from life in Christ Jesus.

Just as Christ has caused the Church to be His body, the Church believes God has caused the Bible to be, and that in our engagement with it, God will grant us the gift of hearing his Word – not only with our ears but with our minds and hearts. And the aim of all this is transformation into Christ. The purpose of all this is that we might 'put on Christ,' and live into fuller, deeper, truer lives.

We believe that in our reading of the Word of God in the Bible, the Holy Spirit will write this Word in our hearts, that in our active "marking and learning," in our searching the Scriptures, we will incorporate this Word into the very makeup of our selves, souls and bodies – just as food disintegrates and then becomes the body which consumes it. We believe that Christ wants this for us.

Dr. Ellen T. Charry is professor of systematic and historical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, and an active Episcopal laywoman. Charry believes the first priority of Christians is to seek a living and active relationship with the God who transforms lives. She says this enterprise of inquiring after God, listening to God, and heeding God's call to transformation, is what the Bible is all about – and is how the Bible came to be in the first place. The Bible is the story about a people's journey into God which has itself become a journey into God. Charry writes, "The biblical documents were written to disclose to readers the God they discuss." She says, "the purpose of reading [the Bible] is to be enlarged, not simply informed."

The Rev. Greg Jones, rector of St. Michael's Church in Raliegh, North Carolina, blogs at fatherjones.com

By Derek Olsen

It’s the Easter season and we bask in the newly recaptured glow of the resurrection. Our services reflect the glow with mystical musings from the Gospel of John, dramatic stories of the earliest church from the Acts of the Apostles and—the Book of Revelation.

Wait a minute, how’d that get in there?!

Quite naturally, actually… Remember that we didn’t always have books with the really thin paper in today’s Bibles. Furthermore, getting a big stack of paper in the ancient world wasn’t quite as easy as it is today. Costs were literally calculated in the cows or sheep whose skins provided the pages. One complete Bible would require an entire flock! To keep the page counts and costs down, the biblical books were split up over a number of volumes: the four gospels were bound together, as were the epistles of Paul, and—according to some of the most common reckonings—Acts and Revelation were bound in a volume. In the monastic Night Office lectionary dating back to the eight century, Acts and Revelation were read together during the Easter season. The great lectionary revisions following Vatican II that resulted in the Revised Common Lectionary honored this ancient tradition by selecting the first reading during Easter from Acts and the second from Revelation.

And that couldn’t make me happier; Revelation is one of my favorite books. Yes, it can be strange and difficult; yes, it has provided fodder for some of the worst impulses of religion and yet—I find its poetry and cadences compelling. One image from the book that I find myself returning to again and again this Easter shines from its closing pages: Revelation 21:9–22:5, the vision of the New Jerusalem.

I love the detail and the dazzling description, the whirl of odd images joined together. I love that—but what draws me back is the glitter of light through stone. It’s the image of the city, the New Jerusalem, built of gemstones one to another, cleaving in a clash of light, colored and reflected as it plays through crystal. Truly, St. John has given us an image of rare beauty—but to what end?

Scholars of Classical Greek tend to turn up their noses at the prose of the New Testament—it’s a low-brow dialect, removed from the diction and rhythm of Golden Age Athens—but when they come to the Greek of Revelation, they throw up their hands in horror. The Greek of John’s Gospel, simple as the vocabulary might be, at least conforms to the basic rules of grammar and can contribute an interesting turn of phrase—but this? This is down right barbaric… It reads like a rude translation by someone for whom Greek was a second language. It reads like a work written by someone not steeped in the proper exempla of fine Greek prose. Or, perhaps, it reads like a work written by someone steeped in a rude translation…and so it is. For the language of Revelation, the terms, the turns of phrase, the images are not new—just newly recombinated. The language echoes, nay, inhabits the tongue of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, produced in the last few centuries before Christ, the translation that was the first Bible of the early church. This is not Classical Greek, nor is it trying to be; rather it is Bible Language, a dialect we recognize deep in our bones when a preacher suddenly lapses from words of cell phones and cell structures to thees, thous, forthwiths, and forsooths. The language of the book is our chief lead. Its meaning is indistinguishable, inextricable from, incomprehensible without the Old Testament.

The chief artform of jewel and light is the mosaic, where thousands of tiny bits of glass and gold and jewel called tesserae combine to form glittering vistas, haunting visages of emperors, kings, clergy, or Christ. This bejeweled city is nothing less than a myriad of scintillating fragments of Old Testament prophecy and praise forming a portrait writ in three dimensions of one indistinguishable, inextricable from and incomprehensible without the breath of the Spirit speaking through the prophets. The tesserae glisten and play: the liturgical garment of the Aaronic high priest, the city of hope for an exile people, the vision of a temple rising from desolation, the garden of God, the peerless bride of the great king, even the slain beloved of the Lord. And together they form an image where these fragments are bound and transformed, set one with another until their individual hues blend and blind and form a new image wrought of the old. It is truly a paradise, truly a city, truly a temple, truly a people. Composed of a myriad jewels, the city rests upon its twelve great foundations: jasper and emerald, diamond and chysolite, topaz and amethyst and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

Lean close and I will tell you a mystery. This is the mystery of the gleaming city, the New Jerusalem. The twelve great foundation stones, they do not represent the apostles. They do not stand for the apostles. Rather, they are the apostles. And the soaring pinnacles of rubies, the windows of agates, the pavers of gold, who are these, you ask, who are these—but you and me? Lain with fair colors, living stones, builded one with another, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. The company of all the faithful people—do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? For God's temple is holy, and you—all of you—are that temple.

At the center of the city, at the heart of the New Jerusalem, lies the Bridegroom’s bower, the throne of God and of the Lamb and the city has no need of light for the glory of God is its light and its lamp is the Lamb. The light shines forth in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. And our calling, our spiritual worship, is nothing less than to reflect and to refract. Our role is to allow the light to splash and play, to illumine and be illumined, to catch fire and be cast by our facets into the darkness. The light of the resurrected Lord blazes in and through us. We—we—are to spread that light into a dark world as it filters and shines and is hued by who and what we are and what we do. We are the people; we are the city. We are the beacons to spread the light of the dayspring who has visited us to shine upon them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

If you conquer, I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God; you will never go out of it. I will write on you the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem that comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name. (Rev 3:12). Amen; Come, Lord Jesus.

Derek Olsen is completing a Ph.D. in New Testament (with a healthy side of Homiletics) at Emory University. He keeps the blog Haligweorc.

By Greg Jones

The Bible is not a magical instrument, but it has the ability to put the reader or reading community “in touch with the living God who can give you spiritual life just as he has given you natural life,” writes the English evangelist Michael Green. “The written word can put you in touch with Jesus the living word (or self-disclosure) of God.” In other words, by reading the Bible with an open heart, Christians believe that a revelation of Jesus Christ may be had, and a personal relationship formed and fostered.

In this way, like Eucharist, the Bible is spiritual food, a means of grace, being itself a revelation to readers of Christ. Moreover, outside the Bible we have no other reliable source of witness about Jesus in common. But what we all share in the Bible is a common portrait of Christ, which counts every testament, book, chapter and verse as necessary brushstrokes. As Green writes in his little book, The Bible for Amateurs, “by our Bible reading we study the portrait as a whole, the miracle happens and the figure comes to life. Stepping down from the canvas of the written word, the everlasting Christ of the Emmaus story becomes himself our Bible teacher, to interpret to us in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.”

Green identifies seven necessary dispositions for transforming Christian engagement with Scripture. I have elucidated them here:

1. Humility

The first thing seekers and disciples of Christ must do in their approach to the Word of God in the Bible is assume a posture described by Jesus himself – we must approach humbly. St. Augustine of Hippo said that the Word of God in the Bible cannot be understood by those who come with pride. The Bible is a book for those who come to it humbly. An appropriate prayer before reading Scripture is this: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

2. Expectation

The desire to meet God in Christ through the written texts of Holy Scripture is another essential ingredient. Unless we come to the Bible deeply seeking after God, our engagement with Scripture can be quite a tedious affair.

3. Honesty

Reading the Word of God in the Bible is not really that easy. There is much in Scripture – whether in terms of content, language, style or story – that is intellectually and emotionally challenging. I liken the Bible to a box of nails – it really cannot be engaged with comfortably for long. When one delves into the box of nails, as with Scripture, one’s hands will be punctured or poked or scraped or contested in some painful way. Because there is much that challenges us in Scripture, we must be honest and accept that these challenges are real. We mustn’t deny those challenges, nor must we allow those challenges to keep us from continuing our active engagement with the Word of God in the Bible.

4. Imagination

As with all good stories, our truest enjoyment of them comes when we find ourselves in the midst of them. Unless we identify with the characters of a story, unless we find ourselves on stage and involved personally with them, unless we connect with the narrative in our imaginations – the stories really aren’t good to us. Green argues that the God-given imagination all human beings have is a gift we ought to use to help us engage with the Word of God in the Bible.

5. Attentiveness

Hurry may get us through the Bible faster, but it will not do anything to get the Bible through us. We must make time to read, reread, mark, learn and digest the Word of God in the Bible – as the Prayer Book teaches. The conviction here is that if we do—God will indeed show us something and make the text breathe into our hearts.

6. Obedience

My first parish church had a verse of Scripture written on the wall in big gold letters, “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only.” I always felt like that passage of Scripture spoke to me the essence of an incarnate Word of God. We must come before the Word of God in the Bible with an attitude of obedience for it to have any transforming power in our lives. As Jesus’ brother says in the Epistle of James:
“But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.” (James 1.22-25, NRSV)

7. Regularity

As the Prayer Book emphasizes, the Scriptures are best consumed daily. Again, Green likens reading the Word of God in the Bible to the eating of food: “I do not have a massive lunch on Sunday and starve for the rest of the week. I like my lunch every day! Very well, then, I should make a regular daily meal of my Bible reading. It can have an enormous impact on our lives if we come to it regularly, and allow it to affect the way we behave. It is life-transforming, no less.”

The Rev. Greg Jones is rector of St. Michael’s Church in Raleigh, North Carolina and a member of the board of directors of the General Theological Seminary. He keeps the blog fatherjones.com

By Derek Olsen

The center of the Daily Office is dwelling in the house of the Psalms. As the years turn, we wend our way through the pages of Holy Writ but our home, our abiding dwelling, is in the house of the Psalms. It has ever been so. Whether we recite them weekly with Benedict, monthly with Cranmer, or every seven weeks with the latest lectionary, it is their rhythm and rule that ultimately centers our spirituality.

Three truths confirm our choice of dwellings. The first truth is that the Psalter is a microcosm of Scripture. St. Athanasius once explained that if the various parts of Scripture—the Law, the Prophets, the Gospels—are like gardens that each bear a single fruit, the Psalter is a garden that not only bears its own but those of the others as well. There are those that tell of the wanderings of the children of Israel, those that lament the sack of Jerusalem, those that glory in the Law of the Lord, those that invoke the words of the wise. The creation of the world may be found here, the loosing of the waters, the firming of the land. Too—moving into mysteries—the Church has found the birth of our Lord, the Passion of our Lord, and—moving deeper yet—the very conquest of hell writ in figures deep. These are the rooms of the house—rooms of lament, rooms of praise, rooms of wisdom, history, and Law. Rooms through which we wander as we make our daily way through corridors and shadowed atriums, to smell its flowered metaphors, to partake of its edifying fruit.

And, the learning of the psalms is not just a journey through a microcosm of the Old Testament but the wellspring of the New. For how can the sacrifice of our Lord be grasped apart from Mark’s meditation upon the Psalter—“My God my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”—or Luke’s: “Into thine hand I commit my Spirit…”? Indeed what is the letter to the Hebrews but an extended commentary upon the Psalter bathed in resurrection light? How can the riddles of Revelation be read without recourse to a fountainhead of its meaning and language: the cup of wrath, utterances from the throne?

The second truth to be told is this: the Psalter is a mirror of your soul. Look deep within it and study the reflection; see what attracts—and what repels. And know: that from which you recoil dwells in your own depths too.

To learn the psalter is to be confronted: can these thoughts and feelings really be in the Bible? How tragic it seems to move from elevated words of praise and thanksgiving to graphic thoughts about the ends of enemies—dogs lapping up spilled blood, hating with perfect hatred, bones scattered at the mouths of graves. Why must these songs be marred by these…infelicitous and offensive thoughts?

Do you really ask—O child of earth? Is that really repugnant wonder in your voice—or recognition?

For the truth is that these thoughts appear not only in the Psalter; they live in our own hearts as well. The psalms puncture the pride of a superficial piety that presents a smiling mask of religious fervor. Gaze into its words long enough and you shall find the pathway into your own soul too—behind the mask, behind the facades, behind how you think a Christian should feel. Gaze into the mirror and recognize yourself.

But a mirror does more than simply reflect—and the same is true of the Psalter. On one hand, it reveals to us the baseness of our own soul—our petty desires for success or revenge, our self-aggrandizement, our self-loathing. On the other hand, a mirror shows us—without apology—our blemishes and imperfections, not to condemn or drive us to despair, but to offer us the opportunity for correction. The mirror reveals the hairs out of place, the collar askew, so that these may be mended and amended. So too, it is with the Psalter.

Even when it comes to what we feel, we must be taught. Here too the psalms teach. They form in us pathways of religious feeling—the affections of the Christian life—teaching us how to feel and respond. For to be Christian is to be human—to feel the depths of woe and desolation as well as the heights of joy. And any piety that proclaims otherwise promises lies—not truth. Wave your hands and proclaim your constant state of heavenly bliss if you will; in the time of darkness a shallow chorus will fade, but the psalms will give your despair voice—if only: How long, O Lord, how long? Rebuke me not in thine anger nor punish me in thy wrath; out of the depths I cry unto thee… The words that make us in our sheltered chapels and shaded studies recoil from their rawness do nothing but speak the reality of a world entrapped in sin and our rage against the darkness that encompasses—yea, and touches—us. What experience of horror lies behind these words: happy—happy are we who recoil and do not understand…

Prayer, praise, lamentation, exultation, the soul quiet as a child upon its mother’s breast, all of these inhabit the psalms and more, providing us the words when we have none, and revealing the patterns of the Christian life; this is our emotional grammar. It is a grammar where we step through conjugations of praise and pain, righteous indignation and naked fear, despair and confidence. As individuals, as peoples, as voices in the great congregation, it exercises us to pray alone or in throngs. And as exercise it is a form of training. For the longer we dwell in the house of the psalms, the longer they will become the thoughts of our hearts, the words on our lips before we summon them.

Further now, a third truth I tell. Within the Psalter lies the paradox of pronouncement. The psalms give breadth of learning; the psalms providing training in the affections, the cultivation of Christian ways of feeling and being. But these truths are not the source of its power. The source of its power lies in paradox. These words that we read—these words are human. They evoke the deepest depths of human despair, heights of joy, human curiosity at the boundaries in which the soul is enmeshed. Historically these words are bounded: in the fugitive words of a bandit chieftain destined to be king—but not by his own hand alone; in the lamentations of a temple defiled; in the hardships of a people in exile—and a people returned home. These words are the concrete words of a concrete people, and yet… They are words, they are prayers to God, preserved though and over the centuries. And yet… They are also the words of the Spirit, breathed into human hearts, human minds, human lips by the Spirit that spake by the prophets. Words of humans they are also Holy Writ, the words of God that contain all things necessary for salvation. This is the paradox: the words of the psalms are human words to God—yet also Scripture, human words inspired by the very God to whom they are prayed. When we dwell within the house of the Psalms, we dwell not simply in a structure built by human hands—rather one breathed by God. Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither… Come, eat of my bread, and drink the wine that I have mingled… These psalms, these prayers, are God’s words, returned again in prayer and praise.

One more dimension completes this truth. Throughout its history the Church has ever reminded and been reminded that the body does not—cannot—speak but through its head. The preeminent speaker of the Psalter is none other than Christ. The one who calls upon God to go out with his armies is the conquering Lion of the tribe of Judah, the innocent one silent before his accusers is the Lamb standing as if it had been slain. Who of us may speak of our righteousness before God? He alone… And as we take these words upon our lips—words of humans centuries old, words spoken by the Spirit—we speak them with the awareness that it is not only we who speak but that Christ in us speaks in them and through them, directing their way both in us and before the throne of God.

We who live by the Daily Office dwell in the house of the Psalms. Daily we make our ways through its corridors and rooms, building our lives therein. As we dwell, its character imprints itself on our character. As we open our hearts and minds to its gentle pressures, it works its ways within us. As we fit ourselves to its niches and courts, it too fits us for courts above.

Derek Olsen is completing a Ph.D. in New Testament (with a healthy side of Homiletics) at Emory University. His reflections on life, liturgical spirituality, and being a Gen-X dad appear at Haligweorc.

(This is a companion to a previous posting.)

On View: The Paraclete, a photograph by Chuck Kirchner, as seen Illustrated Word at Episcopal Church & Visual Arts.

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By Greg Jones

It should go without saying, but bears repeating anyway, that Jesus and his disciples were all Jews. The Church emerged from Judaism, and was literally born with a Bible in its cradle. The New Testament itself may be seen as a first-century Jewish collection, and it behooves us today to really explore how Jesus and the first Christians beheld and engaged with the Word of God in the Bible.

In Judaism, the first five books of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – are called “the Law” or, in Hebrew, Torah. These books represent the story God told to Moses on Mt. Sinai as he was leading that disgruntled mob of slaves out of Egypt and toward the land of promise. Judaism holds that God revealed the definitive saga to Moses, and Moses brought this sacred story back from the mountain top in both written and oral form. The written form is called Torah, which tradition says was penned by Moses himself, and the oral form would be handed on vocally but never in writing for over a thousand years. Amazingly, the oral transmission would not be committed to written form until late antiquity – roughly between 200 and 500 AD – long after the time of Christ. The “oral Torah,” as it was sometimes called, is the basis for the Mishna and Talmud, and for numerous books of rabbinical commentary, generally called midrash.

While the oral tradition would become immense and varied over time, and quite difficult to fathom even in its later written form, the written Law is remarkably concise and exact. Indeed, Torah was an established sacred text – a scripture – many centuries before Jesus’ time. As a concise, established and fixed text, Torah most certainly was the master version of the story told to Moses by God, the ‘control copy’ so to speak. And as such, for thirty centuries now, Torah has been revered by klal Yisrael [the whole community of observant Jews] as the God-breathed and perfect version of God’s special message.

As the story uttered to Moses by God, Torah reveals who Israel is as a people, where Israel comes from, and what Israel is called by God to do. What’s more, as Jacob Neusner writes in Judaism: An Introduction, through Torah God utters the divine word not only to and about the people of Israel, but to and about all people, and the whole of creation. In Torah, Judaism asserts that we may encounter a “story about eternity,” and anybody living anywhere at any time in human history can engage this story and find herself in it.

For practicing Jews, Torah utters the Word of God which must always be uttered in every age, in every place, by everyone. Torah is not just a story to be remembered. It is a story to be taken personally, it is a story not only to live with, but to live inside. To find oneself on stage inside the unfolding drama told therein is the spiritual calling of the person who engages with Torah. In Torah, observant Jews find themselves as a people and as individuals both literally and literarily inside the master sacred story of God and all things.

The Torah says the story of God and his mighty acts of deliverance for his people must be told, retold, and not only that, but lived out in the lives of those people who even today live inside that master story.

The Rabbis

In the first century when Jesus and his followers lived, Judaism had several major divisions. The priestly and aristocratic caste centered its life around the precincts of the Temple in Jerusalem. The revolutionary radicals engaged in violent resistance against Roman rule were called ‘zealots,’ and they moved around as terrorists and guerilla warriors are wont to do. The isolationist holy men, who sought refuge from the corruptions of Jerusalem, fled to the hills and deserts – like the community which produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. And the Jews dedicated to the copying and interpretation of the Bible, and who taught that Jewish life ought to be righteous, in accordance with the Scriptures, were the scribes and the rabbis. Among scribes and rabbis in general was a community of bible teachers specifically referred to as the Pharisees. The Pharisees were righteous interpreters of Scripture, and it was this group which seemed to overlap the most with Jesus and his followers.

Jesus himself is called ‘rabbi’ in the Gospels, and we know that the apostle Paul was trained in the rabbinical school of Hillel, by the famous Pharisee, Rabbi Gamaliel.

Rabbinical Methods

In other words, in the heart of the New Testament we have not only stories about Jesus and his followers. We also have a body of teaching and commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures as well, by Jesus and his followers, done in the classical rabbinical style. So what is the rabbinical method of engaging with Scripture?

Classical rabbinical interpretation of Scripture is generally thought to begin around the time of Jesus, with the great Rabbi Hillel. Rabbi Hillel formulated a set of seven rules for the interpretation of Scripture. His rules applied to biblical interpretation in areas of Jewish legal questions. The rabbis were primarily concerned that Jewish people live righteous lives in accordance with the Scripture. They sought to answer the question, “How should observant Jews obey the commandments of Torah?” In the Gospels we encounter the essence of this pursuit as the Pharisees are frequently seen to be asking Jesus what sorts of behaviors are ‘lawful.’ Bible scholars have quite easily discovered how all seven of Hillel’s rules may be seen at work in the teachings of Jesus and his followers. Of course, and again, this is not surprising since Jesus was called ‘rabbi’ and the apostle Paul was a student of Hillel’s greatest disciple Rabbi Gamaliel.

First, the primary stance of classical rabbinical interpretation of the Bible is that the Word of God in the Bible is “omnisignificant”—there is no detail in the text, no matter how small it might seem, which is meaningless. As one third century rabbi said, Simeon ben Lakhish, in Torah “there are verses which are worthy of being burnt,” yet even they are the perfect and meaning-filled word of Torah. As such, though parts seem obsolete, or empty of currency, this is an illusion – the meaning is simply obscured from the reader’s eyes.

Second, this disposition that the Bible is omnisignificant, the rabbis believed that the Bible always bears meaning for each person who searches it. Rabbi Akiva, who died around 135 CE, taught that the “Law is no empty thing.” His point was that if a verse seemed empty of meaning, it was the reader himself who was empty.

Rabbi Akiva’s teaching was that if a reader searching the Scriptures could not connect with it, the deficiency was with the reader, not the Bible. The job of the seeker after God in reading the Bible, according to the values of classical rabbinical teaching, is to make the biblical word connect to you.

Third, the rabbis believed the Bible was a cryptic document whose true meaning is not easily discerned from a surface reading of the text. One has to go deep into the text with special skills and wisdom. Fourth, while difficult to understand and interpret, at the same time the Bible is a perfect document, without contradiction, inconsistency or superfluity. In other words, the text is as it should be. The assumption which arises from this second point is that those parts of the text which seem erroneous, or contradictory, or inconsistent, or superfluous are blessed opportunities for interpretation. And fifth, the rabbis believed that the Scriptures are of divine origin. While this is not precisely articulated, it is entirely believed.

Given these assumptions about Scripture, that it is literally filled with meaning, for all readers in every time and place, and that it requires a lot of hard work to struggle and engage with the text in order to connect to those meanings, and that the text itself is also to be honored as it is, and not dismissed, changed, or ignored, the work of the rabbis was ongoing and extensive. The rabbinical work of wrestling with the Word of God in the Bible is reminiscent of the biblical story of Jacob, who spent all night wrestling with a messenger from God, before becoming blessed and having God change his name to, “Israel,” or “he who struggles with God.”

In general terms, the hard work of wrestling with Scripture is called midrash. Midrash is helpful for Christians as they seek to engage with the Bible, and not only as a long ago text, but as a means through which a living and active Word of God may connect to them, today.

The Rev. Samuel Gregory (greg) Jones serves on the board of his alma mater, the General Theological Seminary. He is rector of St. Michael's Raleigh, and author of Beyond Da Vinci (Seabury Books, 2004). He blogs at fatherjones.com.

“One must have the courage to say that the goodness of Christ appeared greater and more divine and truly conformed to the image of the Father when ‘he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross’ (Phil 2:8) than would be the case if he did not will to become a slave for the salvation of the world.”

Origen, Spirit & Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings, ed. Hans Urs von Balthasar (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1984), p. 127.

This beautiful passage from Origen suggests something about the divine nature that we seldom give as much credit as we should. Often, we think of the humility of Christ as something accidental, added on at the right time, solely “for us and for our salvation.” It is true, no doubt, that the humility of our Lord in the Incarnation is part of God’s response to sin, suffering, and death. But, if Origen is right (and here, at least, he seems so to me), the humility of Jesus points to an eternal humility within the Godhead. Never is Christ more like the Father than in his humility and obedience unto death. From beginning to end, the story of Jesus Christ reveals the true character of God. In his person, the Son bears the very imprint of the divine nature (see Hebrews 1:1-4). And so, we ought to rethink our conception of God, from the ground up, in light of the humble, merciful, self-offering of Jesus Christ. Or, as the collect appointed for Proper 21 would suggest, God’s “almighty power” is declared chiefly in “showing mercy and pity.” (BCP, p. 234) In all that he does and suffers for us, Jesus reveals the Father’s love. Indeed, he and the Father are one.

The Rev. Bill Carroll serves as rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio. His parish blog is at here.

Psalm 69 “O God, you know my foolishness, and my faults are not hidden from you.”

One of the Native Youth with whom I work has just moved out of state for a job. He chats with me on line. “Everything is really good. I like it here and I have already saved money for a car. It is going so great.”

It was an upbeat conversation and we ended by saying the usual “later.” Before I could sign off, he sends another message.

“There is one thing I am worried about,” he writes. “I am praying that everything continues to go well. What I am afraid of is that some of the things I’ve done in the past are going to kick me in the face. I’m afraid that one day will be payback time from God and everything will come crashing down.”

Thankful that I had time to think before I respond, I finally write down, “God already knows all about it. He doesn’t do payback time. You are his beloved child. Even if you have some hidden stuff you think no one knows about, Grandfather God knows and cherishes you anyway. He doesn’t do revenge. The way it works is that when we face up to all our foolishness, God’s forgiveness is a done deal. Until then, we are totally loved as we are, regardless of how much we mess up or run away.”

After we disconnect, I look at the four basic faith issues that keep coming up in this youth ministry. This is the story out of which these at risk youth make decisions. “I can’t have value because I am basically a bad person who has been in trouble all my life. Life can’t be good because I can’t trust anything that happens to me to be without pitfalls. My past cannot be forgiven because guilt and shame weighs me down. My future is closed because I can’t trust that good change is possible.” This is the story for those who have been crushed by indifference, by curtailed promises, by reprisal, and by contempt.

Since they have been interacting with the Church, that destructive story has been eroding along with the behaviors that go with it.

Sometimes they have had a brief moment in which they realize that they are truly children of a forgiving God and start to make choices in reference to that moment. And when that happens, even if they, like all of us, start to slip back into old behaviors... When that happens, they and we are healed.

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, sir." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again." John 8:3-11 NRSV

Sometimes I feel like I am drowning in all the garbage of dysfunctional images of a quick fix god who spends his time floating in the air condemning everyone in sight. Where do these images come from? Yes, I know how the church has overcompensated with one image or another in specific historical crisis. And I remember my racist grandfather searching through the bible line by line searching for anything that can justify his ranting against those who are different. I listen today to those who are so scared that their world of exclusive saintliness has come to an end that they desperately proclaim that they and they alone have the truth that will protect us from “those people.”

After I read the above story of the woman not condemned, a teenager asks, “Why would he do that?”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

He continues, “She was guilty wasn’t she? If she is guilty she should be punished.”

I show them a rock I have where I have painted the words “First Stone.” “Why do I need this stone to remind me of something important?” We read the story again. We discuss the different parts.

One of the young adults says, “I remember the post you erased on FB where someone said that instead of all the things we do, including our homeless mission, we should concentrate only on the drinking problems we have. Who did he think he is to judge us? I get so tired of that. I think this is about who is qualified to judge.”

“We do it too,” says one of the young adults. “I criticize people all the time. My mother hit me on the side of the head when I walked in late from school one day. We got into a big fight yelling at each other and all I could think of is how much I would like to slam her. Later I found out she had lost her job and didn’t know how to tell us. I’m too quick to condemn someone.”

“We don’t know what is going on with a person. It’s up to God to judge.” Someone concluded.

“This is too easy,” I say. “It sounds like you are all giving me the ‘right’ answers. Go back to the first question. ‘Why would he do this?’”

One of the teens responded, “He made them think about their own problems instead of why someone else is wrong. And even though he knew she was wrong and he had the right to judge, he still said that he did not condemn her. That’s extreme. That’s really big.”

We left it at that. I know that we haven’t finished with that story. We are so used to censuring and being censured by those who do not have our standards. But to receive the message “Neither do I condemn you,” is so radical an act of majesty.

Somehow to say, “This is really big” may be the most comforting expression that can be said in our limited understanding.

Kaze Gadway has worked with the emerging leaders of the Episcopal Church within the Native American community of Northern Arizona as a volunteer for eleven years. They are youth of promise from ages twelve to twenty-four. The Spirit Journey Youth is an outreach program of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona with forty young people. She is on Facebook and blogs at infaith's posterous

So we come to the central declaration, more central for Christian faith than even "The Word became flesh;" for that depends for its inexhaustible wealth of meaning on the actual mode of the Incarnate Life. But here is the whole great truth. "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that everyone that believeth on him may not perish, but have eternal Life." This is the heart of the Gospel. Not "God is Love"--a precious truth but affirming no divine act for our redemption. "God so loved that he gave"; of course the words indicate cost to the Father's heart. "He gave"; it was an act, not only a continuing mood of generosity; it was an act at a particular time and place.

William Temple, Readings in St. John's Gospel, commenting on John 3:16.

There's a way of opposing theologies of the Incarnation, or the Word-made-flesh, to theologies of the Cross that has always struck me as rather wrong-headed. One should not assume that John and Paul are doing exactly the same thing with the Cross, but this lovely passage from William Temple shows what is wrong with an overly abstract version of the "religion of the Incarnation." Temple qualifies the Incarnational optimism, a caricature of liberal Catholic Anglicanism with an occasional grain of truth, and begins to develop a more thorough theology of the Cross in a distinctly Anglican key.

The Incarnation is not just the Word becoming flesh, but this particular flesh. And, at its heart it is about the First Person (aka the Father) sending and giving the Son. It is about a redemptive act of self-dispossession, in which "to redeem a slave, you [God] gave a Son."

As we hear this text preached on Sunday, preachers will struggle with how best to proclaim the "heart of the Gospel" in a way that refuses to domesticate this very familiar text.

The heart of the matter is that all is gift--abundant mercy poured out in the gift of this particular Son, given in a world where sin and violence abound.

It is helpful to reread the whole of John's Prologue in light of texts like John 3:16 and especially the story of the Lord's passion, wherein he is "lifted up" to draw all people to himself. For it is here especially that the Word takes on flesh and unites himself with all flesh.

The Rev. Bill Carroll serves as Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio. His parish blog is at here

Having now preached this Gospel again, I would note that it is precisely in the wilderness that Christ is lifted up. It is when we wander in places that seem barren and desolate that he is to be sought and found. Lenten disciplines do not make the desert; they unveil the one we are already in. They bring us to consciousness of our need for mercy so thar we may cry out for mercy from the One who has come to meet us where we are, often lost, wounded, and afraid.

The Rev. Bill Carroll serves as Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio. His parish blog is at here

Reflections on Mark 4:26-34

It wasn’t until I was given an IPod Nano that I began to notice how many other people have the regulation earpieces in their lugholes, trailing thin wires like bunting on Mt. Everest. I am a dinosaur and blind, it seems.

Many of us humans can’t even walk down the street without noise filling our headspace and my guess is that the more we are bombarded by this cacophony, the less we actually hear.

Because of this, I think that we don’t need to work at hearing; we need to work at not hearing. Case in point: airline travel. Next time you are flying somewhere by plane, watch the other travellers during the safety demonstration and see if we are intent on not hearing a spiel that is intended to save our lives.

For us, however, this may be a problem because we employ this tactic of not listening when we come to worship. Living in a world that spends much of its time working at not hearing, when we come to church we can easily allow the familiarity of the Liturgy to lull us into la-la land.

Rather than switching off when we come to the Kirk-house, we need to actively work at hearing. Unless we make a conscious effort to listen differently, to listen with attentiveness to the reading of Scripture and the preaching of the sermon, we may do to public worship what we do to the airline safety demonstration.

This process has a particular and immediate application because, for the next wee while, as the New Zealanders say, we’ll be walking through Jesus’ “Kingdom of God Parables” in Mark’s Gospel.

One thing’s for sure: these parables can’t be understood by a switching off the listening hole or by a folding of the arms in feigned objectivity or even by a ho-humming ourselves down the ‘heard-it-before’ track, although some will try.

The only way to understand Mark in this is to allow the stories to lay their own claim on us. How? By hearing, by letting the parables have their intended effect on us by hearing them.

Like the first three Chapters of this high-powered Gospel, Marks Chapter 4 is alive with action and determination as Mark allows the narrative to carry the message he wants to deliver. In Mark, the essential convictions and teachings are shown rather than told.

We stand a better chance of understanding if we first see it demonstrated. Mark’s vigorous narrative is designed to prepare us to hear what Jesus has to say to us.

Hearing is difficult, as we have discovered, so Mark postpones the teachings of Jesus until our familiarity with him helps us understand him, so he starts with the Parables.

Parables can be deceptive. Many of us grew up on the “Parables-are-earthly-stories-with-heavenly-meanings” theory and, for the most part, that’s fine, except that this shows a misunderstanding of the purpose of parables.

These Parables can’t be understood by standing outside and peering into them, like looking at goldfish in a fish tank. They can only be understood by getting out of our seats and becoming part of the action.

Each of the three Parables in Chapter 4 has two things in common: first, they’re each about seeds and second they’re each surrounded by Jesus’ own encouragement for us, his hearers, to actually hear.

By themselves, seeds don’t grab me greatly but I do know they have tremendous potential. I know, for example, that this or that little seed can become a carrot or a carob tree, buffel grass or banksia, given the right circumstances.

The clue for the Gospel hearer lies in what happens next: just as the seeds have to be planted and watered and waited for expectantly, so the Gospel has within itself the power to become something other than what it appears to be. The stories also require some additional activity.

The Parable of The Mustard Seed, proverbially the smallest of seeds, makes a point. Though almost invisible, the mustard seed grows into a shrub large enough for birds to nest in. That something so large could come from something so small is unfathomable. What we have here is an analogy.

When we first hear the gospel, when the gospel is first declared to our world, it seems small and insignificant. Many other things seem more important: there are plans to be made; careers to be considered; proposals and marriages and children to reckon with; houses to build; relationships to pursue, and so on.

Yet the Parable is about the power inherent in the gospel to supersede the eye evidence and to produce something else that is wholly unexpected. In comparison to such things, the gospel seems like a dark speck in the palm, something to be looked over for a moment, and then overlooked for ever.

However, the gospel will not be relegated to an insignificant place. If this was just about human stuff then, perhaps, we might ditch it. But it is something more than that; it’s God’s work, His creative, redeeming and restorative presence.

Maybe the beginnings are small and inauspicious but slowly, even imperceptibly, it creeps into our spirits and begins to intrude into our lives to the point that we can’t ignore it, despite the many competing sounds of a world that, at first, seem more important.

The transformative power of the gospel produces the qualities of life that we most long for, but that most elude us, by encouraging us to hear the story to the point of heeding. The Parable of the Sower in each of its complexities promises that those who hear the gospel in this way receive it, and “it bears fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold” (Mark 4:20).

The Rev. Ian McAlister is the Ministry Development Officer in the Diocese of Queensland and blogs at Reflections from the HIll

Just occasionally, with the emphasis on just, reading one of the Biblical stories is a bit like living in reality TV-land but more uncomfortable.

Reading Bible stories can be fun and exciting. Hey, who wants TV fiction then? Just get out a copy of the Gospels and get stuck into reading that.

Let’s take today’s Gospel Reading as a case in point. Reading about Herod the Tetrarch, for example, makes me think straightaway of that one-time President of the US of A, Richard Nixon.

Tricky Dicky was a master of manipulation and political intrigue, yes? So blinded was he to the vortex of ambition that he was prepared to sacrifice his principles to give himself an advantage over others, just like Herod.

On the goodies side, there are remarkable similarities between John the Baptist and Martin Luther King, Jr, Oscar Romero, Mary MacKillop, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer; real life leaders who were willing to tell the truth about corruption and the misuse of power, whatever the cost.

Let me not let the ladies off the hook, either. Herodias is just like those female characters who, black widow-like, exterminate their lovers or friends on grounds of self-protection and build themselves a platform of power. Remember Roberta Williams?

Even if it is true that Herodias was intent on protecting her own children, which I doubt if what she allowed her daughter to do is any indication, we might be challenged ourselves to contemplate the lengths we would go to protect our own offspring.

One thing’s for sure about this Reading and that is that Mark has a very specific purpose in telling the story. It’s the only scene in the Gospel, I think, where Jesus does not play any part. So, it’s important. Why?

The first thing to note is this: the proclamation of the Kingdom has significant implications, and I just don’t mean political ones. The status quo is always under threat when we live out our life as Christians.

As David Lose says, ‘our all too easy acquiescence with the cultural presumption that might … is right’ is severely compromised here. The proclamation of God’s kingdom principles is a costly business.

Even more challenging is the possibility that, when we stand up against George St or Canberra or whatever your Parliament’s address is, there will be some collateral damage and we might find ourselves on the wrong end of a baton, or worse.

Mark is telling us this, partly, because he’s describing the world in which he lives but, by extension, he is warning those of us in future generations about the implications of doing and saying the right thing.

Is that it, you ask? Is this all there is or are we yet to squeeze the Gospel orange a little more, at least enough to extract the Good News from this passage?

Maybe that’s the point, that John’s beheading by Herod and family isn’t the end of the story, it isn’t the whole enchilada, that there is more?

Truth is that there is something more than the intrigue, the heartache, the tragedies; of Herod, of Nixon, and of our penchant for the status quo.

Isn’t the heart of the Gospel the belief and teaching that Jesus came to make it possible for us to have something more than mere survival, more than simply success?

Didn’t he come to help us imagine – and enter into – something more than just living, that there is something called ‘the abundant life’ which can be ours? Isn’t that a better ending than many of us seem to expect?

When our Temple has been destroyed, or our marriage is on its last legs, or we’ve just been made redundant, or we’ve just found out that our best friend has cheated on us, then the possibility of another, good, ending has immense appeal.

That’s not just good news. It’s got to be better news any day than anything we can imagine or construct ourselves.

The Rev. Ian McAlister is the Ministry Development Officer in the Diocese of Queensland and blogs at Reflections from the HIll

It ain’t easy being green, or a vicar, or a dad; they each come with their own special challenges, although being a frog would be hard. But what must it be like to have been an apostle?

The spiritual ones among us would rejoice, like Fr Mulcahy of M*A*S*H, because they were nearer the cross and, by implication, nearer to that form of spiritual power that is measured in centimetres and is based on the Theory of Proximity.

Then there’s us others who are separated by centuries from the original events yet still manage to get caught up with every wind and breeze that comes along.

It never ceases to amaze me that, one minute, we can be face to face with some miracle or other and the next be dragging our bottom-lip around as if we’d lost a quid and picked up sixpence.

Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah – and lots of others – were masters at that game. They have their hi-lo moments, as did the apostles in Mark’s Gospel. In the Feeding Story, Jesus tells his Boys to feed the large number of followers. The Boys know there’s no Brumbies or Maccas close by, so they get all aerated and sarcastically ask Him where He thinks the nearest food outlet might be.

I can hear the exasperation in his answer: “How many loaves have you?” It’s like “When are you going to get it?” So he takes the few loaves and fish and multiplies them right before their eyes. That’s the Jesus way.

The sadness is that the Boys miss out again on grasping the reality that the Kingdom of God is there in front of them and that they’ve just muffed an invitation to participate in it.

This Big Feed contrasts with many Church meals I’ve attended: you know the sort – tables groaning with chicken wings and quiche, piles of salads, sandwiches (egg mostly), devilled kidneys (maybe), bread rolls, slices, coleslaw, apple crumble and Peter’s Ice Cream to top it off.

The Big Feed had none of this. Rather, the resources were meagre by comparison to a pot-luck supper. It was more like “Whatcha got in the pocket of ya cloak?” than “Would you like to bring a slice or a meat dish?” It was more like “Sit in groups of fifty” rather than “Table 12 goes first.”

Relying on, participating in, the miracle nearly always means that there are often more resources available than we first realise. That’s the Jesus way.

However, if storms are your thing, and not food, then the next part of the story is for you, even if it’s more difficult. To start with, the disciples are described as ‘terrified’ and ‘astounded’ as they face the water but they’re still not getting it. Then, perhaps the most poignant verse in the whole of the Gospel: “they did not understand about the loaves for their hearts were hardened.”

We’ll hear this ‘hardened hearts’ thing again in the next Big Feed Story and I’m beginning to think that this is a bit like a mantra, a chorus, a cycle that keeps getting repeated. How easily we lapse into being ignorant and fearful followers, much more like hangers-on than co-workers.

There may well be a case to argue that this was Mark’s argument with The Boys all along. They were call to follow and they were to participate – but they certainly weren’t picking up any clues about participation. Maybe doing it is just too hard.

And isn’t that true also as we look over our life and the ministry to which we’ve been called? That while a vocation might be clear, the doing of it is often clouded by other stuff like sloth or disobedience.

While we might want to try and balance a call with an activity (or series of activities), Mark is actually challenging us to look further into the area of the miraculous as a significant aspect of our work because, above all else, that’s His domain and that’s where He wants us to be.

The Rev. Ian McAlister is the Ministry Development Officer in the Diocese of Queensland and blogs at Reflections from the HIll

John 6.1-21

Like much of the world in this Olympic year, I’m gearing up for a couple of weeks of broken sleep, when too much sport is never enough. Winners are grinners, but I wonder why every commentary I’ve read makes the point that the Miracle of the Feeding of the 5000 is the only miracle recorded in all Four Gospels.

It’s as if the more times a miracle is recorded across the Gospels, the more we need to take notice. Why? Isn’t just one recorded miracle enough any more?

Have I missed something? Sure, I can see the point that a miracle is emphasised by repetition but why? Are we now at a point where we are grading miracles as if they’re in an Olympic pre-selection trial? That the Gold Medal goes to the one that appears in all 4 Gospels?

I would have thought that any miracle is worth a look, whether or not it appears in multiple places, wouldn’t you?

On the other hand, instead of observing the number of repetitions – as if we are in some theological sporting contest – maybe I should concentrate on the content of the Miracle.

Let’s first be mindful of this, though: the Gospel Readings for the next five weeks are from John 6. What this means is that, over that time-frame, there will be lots of references to bread and how it comes from above and stuff like that. A test of ingenuity approaches, methinks.

There is one significant difference between the version of the Miracle that we’re reading today and the ones found in the other Gospels: John calls his version a sign (it’s a sign, it’s a sign) and therefore not simply about satisfying people’s empty tummies.

Here, the reader is going to discover something about Jesus and something about God at the same time, Two-for-One style. What that is, of course, is that Jesus can and does satisfy every one of our needs.

Jesus is way more than a heavenly baker or Brumby’s owner. He’s way more than a Baker’s Delight franchisee and he’s certainly not just trying to drum up business for the local welfare food outlet.

The punters don’t seem to get on board with this idea at all – and haven’t done since Jesus did the water-into-wine thing back in Chapter 2. They want more tucker, more grappa, more healings, more whatever.

Some time ago, My Beloved and I were at an Investment Seminar and someone asked the presenter this question: How much money do I need to be happy? The man answered with tongue in cheek: about 10% more than you get already.

We are so convinced that material possessions will make us happy – and just a bit more will make us even more happy – that we miss the point of this miracle yet again. More may be what we want, but is it needed?

Have a look in my bathroom if you still don’t believe me. Although My Beloved banned me long ago from doing the weekly shopping with her, I do go to the supermarket by myself sometimes.

Do I take a list? No. Do I know what I’m going to buy? No. Do I end up with a drawer full of traveller’s-sized toothpaste and facial wipes? You bet. Have I got enough? I fear that I will run out.

The real miracle is surely not about whether my Superannuation account will be sufficient to retire on, or whether I will run out of facial wipes.

The real miracle for the lilies and the birds and the crowds and the people like us is this: today, Jesus addresses and satisfies both our deficiencies and our poverty. He is all we need.

The Rev. Ian McAlister is the Ministry Development Officer in the Diocese of Queensland and blogs at Reflections from the HIll

John 6.24-35
(thanks to Ps Luke Bouman for some of these thoughts)

There’s something about a freebie that’s attractive. If it’s big enough and plentiful enough, that’s even better. Whether it’s a BBQ with free champers and OJ in King George Square or a ride on a bus, I have a hard time keeping away.

Sometimes the freebie is genuinely gracious and fulfilling but mostly it’s not. “Something for nothing” ain’t all what it’s cracked up to be. I wonder why my avarice takes over and accepts so easily?

The crowds on that Galilean seaside were prepared to cross the water just to get whatever was on offer, for there was something about Jesus that kept drawing people to him.

It wasn’t just that the offer of free bread was attracting them, like we might get from the Day-Old counter at Brumbies. The bread he was giving out wasn’t simply free. This bread actually came out of nowhere and it came right in the middle of nowhere.

The people had been in the wilderness, they had been the people of God on the move again and, like once before, they received this bread.

Now they wanted more: “Give us this bread always.” Like sceptics all over the world, they’re not any different from us: they wanted a repeat performance because they just couldn’t grasp what they saw the first time. Miracles don’t always lead people to faith. People just say ‘do it again, only slower this time.’

This scenario, captured in today’s Gospel reading, is exactly that and, yes, it’s slower. What’s disconcerting is something I’ve already alluded to: that we’re not much better than those seaside wanderers. We’re still on the search for more – more bread, more something that will satisfy us. And we’re in a wilderness too, most of us, a wilderness more of our own making than not.

The world in which we live is made up of two whacking great bits. One part contains people who eat as much as they like and still bring leftovers for lunch. Yet these are curiously unfilled, unsatisfied.

The other part contains those who are desperate for any morsel that falls, any crust that remains. Here they wait, with protruding ribs and painful stomachs.

The one says to the others: “How can you still be like this? There’s more than enough to go around.” The others say “How can you be hungry? You have so much already.”

There’s something about this Gospel that has a challenge for us. It’s found in the middle of the Reading, in a part that often slips us by: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.“

Even in the midst of global financial anxieties and failures, we in the west have a hard time with those words because they fly in the face of the things we most treasure. My financial advisor would agree: shouldn’t we be building wealth?

However, the lessons from the wilderness about food were as important for the people of Israel as they are for us. They learned that Yahweh would give them the things they needed. They also learned not to hoard their bread but to share it with those who could not get it for themselves, otherwise it went bad.

In his helping them to understand, Jesus identifies himself with Yahweh, The Big Fellah. “I AM the bread of Life …” he says. Here is the One who satisfies; here is the Bread of Life – and this in stark contrast to the kind of bread that feeds but doesn’t fill.

This kind of Life-bread opens up a Pandora’s Box of other needs, of other hungers that Jesus satisfies; peace or justice or loving kindness or simply a humble walk. These hungers will never leave us no matter how many times we come for sustenance at his Table.

We become the bread we eat, reshaped into His Body, not by putting up our hand and letting avarice take over but by giving as he gave. We come hungry for life and leave hungry to give it. That’s the Jesus way.

The Rev. Ian McAlister is the Ministry Development Officer in the Diocese of Queensland and blogs at Reflections from the HIll

Mark 9.38-50

Each of us has one (or the other). We share having it and it connects us, past, present and future with the whole of humanity. It crosses racial, ethnic, cultural, physical, age and gender boundaries.

I’m not talking about navels, although I could. I’m actually addressing the issue of another thing that has the same ubiquitous power to connect us, and that’s our ability to draw boundaries.

No matter who we are or where we live or what school we went to or what our job is or what colour our hair, eyes or skin happens to be, we humans have this in common: we have an extraordinary ability to create two groups of people, usually labelled Us (or me) and Them.

We see the results of this ability whenever Grand Final footy is played, or a boat load of refugees appears near Java, or a person makes a video belittling someone else’s faith, or a host of other circumstances.

As I say, it doesn’t take much for us to draw boundaries. The results of boundary-drawing are neither particularly pleasing to the eye or to the emotions, except if the Bulldogs beat the Storm this weekend.

What’s worse is the accompanying desire we have to let someone else sort out the difficulties: for some bureaucracy to come in and enforce conformity to manage our anxieties.

In the Gospel for this week, Jesus gets confronted with this line drawing, Innie v Outtie, battle. His disciples were getting twitchy; they want him to stop another bloke from casting out demons in his name because (horror of horrors) he wasn’t one of them.

I am not surprised that Jesus didn’t buy into this. It doesn’t surprise me that He goes on to point out that anyone who does a good work in his name will have a hard job doing anything against his name in the future.

It’s almost as if we are hard-wired to make lines, whether they’re racial, ethnic, linguistic, political, sexual, physical or religious. Truth is, religious lines are particularly well drawn and so simple.

As I contemplate this Gospel passage, I wonder whether it could shape or re-shape how we might think about those who see God differently from us, if they see him at all.

While we know that the unnamed exorcist was acting in Jesus’ name, what we don’t know is whether that makes him/her a follower of Jesus, a wanna-be disciple or just someone on the make.

What we do know is that he’s scaring the disciples witless and they want to shut him down but can’t.

It’s right here that Jesus does one of his Let-me-turn-the-tables-on-you tricks. He gives his boys a little warning about stumbling blocks and the dangers they pose for people on the move.

Now I really am in a dilemma. I’m now asking myself: Is it my zeal for God or is it my xenophobia that is putting a stumbling block in front of people, drawing a line between me and those who have another faith, or none? Which one is it that makes it harder for them to see and know the great love of God-in-Christ, my faith or my fear?

A few years ago, people wore rubber bangles on their wrists with WWJD? written on them (we still see a few here in NQ, such is our penchant for things of antiquity). The question posed on them (What Would Jesus Do) was built on the assumption that there was something that Jesus did that is always useful to know.

What he did, of course, was to say that his followers were not to prevent doing good stuff for people, even if they weren’t an Innie. There are no boundary lines when it comes to caring.

He told us very forcibly that we were to help others even if we didn’t know what they believed. We’re not to put a stumbling block in front of anyone who is needy or vulnerable or both, and for us to be at peace.

“Here’s the thing”, said one commentator “every time we draw a line between who's in and who's out, we'll find Jesus on the other side."

As we get more and more pluralistic, multi-cultural, complicated and diverse, the chances of us actually meeting people from other faith families, or none, is increasing exponentially.

The Gospel this week shakes our foundations. Jesus calls us to be at peace with everyone, even those who name God differently or those who aren’t able to name Him at all. It’s a direct result of a No-Innie or Outtie stance.

The Rev. Ian McAlister is the Ministry Development Officer in the Diocese of Queensland and blogs at Reflections from the HIll

Psalm 25: 6 “Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; remember me according to your love and for the sake of your goodness, O Lord.”

Almost ten years ago, a young man asks this question in our Native youth group,

“When God forgives us our sins, does he also forget them?”

Kaze Gadway has worked with the emerging leaders of the Episcopal Church within the Native American community of Northern Arizona as a volunteer for eleven years. They are youth of promise from ages twelve to twenty-four. The Spirit Journey Youth is an outreach program of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona with forty young people. She is on Facebook and blogs at infaith's posterous
As we grapple with how to understand depth forgiveness that should be unconditional, the youth share the human examples that confuse them.

“When we turn eighteen the court seals our juvenile records so they can’t hold it against us,” contributes a young girl who had been in juvenile detention for shoplifting.

“Yeah,” says another youth. “But they don’t erase our records, they just seal them.”

Someone else comments, “My girl and I had a fight once and we exchanged some heavy shoves until she burst into tears. She kept crying that her father used to do that with her mother until he hit her in the eye. We forgave each other but she brings it up every time. She says she will never forget it.”

“I remember when I was little before my dad left us for good. He would get trashed and smack everyone around. When he got sober, he would line us up and say how sorry he was and he would never do it again. He never stopped drinking or apologizing.”

As these and many more stories unfolded of their experiences of conditional forgiveness, I began to despair of how to expose them to a God who remembers them in mercy, not in hidden grudges. They just don’t have the human experiences to grasp even a watered down version of forgiveness.

Abstract words about a God of forgiveness only drive the youth to skepticism. They scoff at words with no specific substance like “God loves you.” They grow bitter when someone gives them a list of beliefs they must swallow to be worthy.

A Native young adult says with some bitterness, “When one of those Anglo missionaries comes towards me I turn and go the other way. I hate being kicked in the teeth with the word ‘love’ which always means ‘you are no good as you are and you should change before you go to hell.’”

What is the turn around? How do those who are on the fringes of the traditional Church and the dominant society accept their goodness and the profound goodness of our God?

I go back to the discussion of their original question “How will my messing up be remembered by God? Will my past always follow me? Will I always be judged by what I did when I was stupid? Does God forget what I did or does he just say I am forgiven but throws it back in my face later?”

These are questions spoken in anguish. I ask in some trepidation if they can remember any experience of being remembered as wonderful even when that person knew their mistakes and messing up.

One of the youth admits, “My grandmother knew all about me but she always greeted me like I was the best member of our entire family. Her face would light up and she would always want to know what I was doing. I never felt like she dismissed me because of the stupid things I did.”

Others nod and add their recollections of grandparents.

This experience is being augmented by select congregations who show them respect and encourage their journey. When the youth participate in authentic conversations that do not judge but that build relationships, they get a glimmer into how to put their own lives in perspective.

Only over time can the youth trust that God's mercy is forever and the past will not be thrown in their face with animosity.

Once, when a youth made a mistake in his acolyte role, he was very quiet until we got into the car. “Are they going to always remember me as the one who messed up in the service?”

As he said that I realized that I also have that question, “How will I be remembered?” The psalmist got it right. “Remember me according to your love and for the sake of your goodness, O Lord.” I also want to be remembered according to God’s love and his goodness and not for my stupidities. I too want to be covered in the indescribable good news that God does not remember the sins of my youth.

How do you want to be remembered?

Kaze Gadway has worked with the emerging leaders of the Episcopal Church within the Native American community of Northern Arizona as a volunteer for eleven years. They are youth of promise from ages twelve to twenty-four. The Spirit Journey Youth is an outreach program of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona with forty young people. She is on Facebook and blogs at infaith's posterous

The church kitchen was busy, bright and warm, with three cheerful ladies putting together platters of crustless sandwich quarters — the inimitable, the unutterably delicious Church Lady Sandwiches — for the weekend ACW bazaar. They said hello in passing as I moved through, iPad in hand, to the quiet church beyond the parish hall.

There all was still except for the overhead fans. I didn’t turn on any lights. I settled down in a forward pew, opened the iPad and summoned up the day’s appointed scriptures — the Propers for All Saints’ Day — and opened up the playlist for the music I had, with some difficulty, managed to sync just an hour ago.

I listened to the lovely anthem “O Taste and See” while I read the commendation from Wisdom about the souls of the faithful: they have been tried and purified, and their going from us is no longer a tragedy but a triumph. The spark of their faith runs through us like fire through long dry grass. That passage was one I first encountered through grace conveyed by one of the saints on my own personal list, a much-beloved wise and diffident man who now rests with God and who would be horrified to be called anyone’s saint. I called him Mudge, because he claimed to be (and sometimes was) a curmudgeon.

As I listened, reading Wisdom and thinking of Mudge, I almost felt as though I’d been struggling for a long, long time, an unendurably long time, in cold lake water, all mucky on the bottom, with long, strong, half-rotten vines trailing through it, clinging to my aching legs. Periodically one of the galleys of the Fundamentalists, religious or anti, would scull past, banging tin pots and screaming righteously into the fog, and usually giving me a quick clip upside the head without noticing. They never watch where they’re going. But mostly I just tried to keep my head above water, all on my self-isolating lonesome. Because isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be done?

Another soul struggling alongside me had, the day before, slipped a marvellous neologism into a moment of conversational confusion: the phrase “defaults of character” (a cross between “character faults” and “defects of character”). “Defaults of character” — those were the vines against which I’d struggled so long: the long-problematic settings with which I’d been programmed during a scrambled early life and that I’d since taken completely for granted. Old ways of coping, old and crippling memes.

Back to the cool dusty quiet and my iPad. Psalm 24 and “Ye watchers and ye holy ones.” Both about being God’s own — not in the possessive sense, but in the sense of recognition and renewal: not an owner’s “you’re *mine* but a suitor’s “it would please my heart to call you mine, if you wish to be.” I am God’s critter, if I will have it so. On to Revelations, a new heaven and a new earth in which all tears are wiped away and memes are sorted through, most discarded, the good ones refurbished. If I so desire — and I do so desire — God will clear away the strangling vines in which I am entangled.

These words of All Saints propers told me of God’s power to reset the defaults, if I’d turn them over to God. It’s my decision to trust, or not to trust, in the power of love to make all things new. That choice is about staying in the water or choosing to get into the boat.

In my spirit’s eye, as I struggled in the murk, Mudge was out in his skiff, inarticulate in love but ever competent with a boat, and now — in this reading and this music — it was as though he had reached a hand overboard to pull me up to safety. And I took his hand and the two of us heaved me roughly over the gunwales and into the skiff’s bottom among balers and ropes and bait buckets and his old rubber boots, and we laughed in joy and sheer relief. Or so it seemed in the quiet church.

I read of Lazarus called forth from death, even after he’d begun to reek of decay, and I listened to the Miserable Offenders singing of the wide kindness of God’s mercy, and I felt something in me shift and settle in a slightly altered way.

And now it seemed that we were rowing toward another shore, where folk were out in joy splashing in the water, having picnics, tossing peanuts to the squirrels and the ducks, while the lamb explored the lion’s ear with its tender inquisitive lips. Our beloved Matt the Muttster was holding forth on the true nature of barbeque to Richard Hooker and J.S. Bach. The Wolfmama listened intently to Niebuhr and Dr King talking beisboll and the Anglo-Catholics, led by Auden and two bishops of Maine, were swinging 360s, censing Mahalia she led the saints a-marchin in, and their singing shook the heavens.

Yes, I thought. This is for real.

And then, just to set the seal on things, there came rolling into my tiny earbuds that hymnodic dreadnought, the greatest of hymns by that irreligious Englishman Ralph Vaughan Williams, with its huge stompin’ bass line rolling up my doubt like a charge of heavy cavalry and behind it the clear, calm, utter certainty that all will indeed be well and all manner of things shall be well:

“From earth’s wide shores, from ocean’s farthest coast, Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: Alleluia.”

Alleluia, Mudge. And thanks for the hand up.

in memory of Andrew Auld, 1947-2008.

Reposted with permission from Scrambling Towards Zion

Molly Wolf plays hackysack with theology in Gananoque, Ontario, among the Thousand Islands. She lives with her resident offspring Ross and with Magnificat (aka Maggie), a sizable calico with tortitude, whose personality fits her name. She (Molly, not the cat) is the author of four collections of applied meditation and Scrambling towards Zion: A weekly essay on finding Godstuff in real life.

Reflection for 5th Sunday of Easter
John 13:31-35

Loving Jesus is the easy part. Loving each other: that’s the hard part. That’s because Jesus doesn’t cut us off on I-95 or beat us into the last parking space. Jesus doesn’t lose the remote or snore. He doesn’t borrow money and never pay it back. He doesn’t have bad breath and really, really need a bath. He’s not addicted. He’s not handicapped. He’s not an eyesore sleeping at the train station. He’s not drooling or incontinent. In short, Jesus doesn’t annoy us; he doesn’t repulse us. He doesn’t intrude on our sense of propriety.

No matter how hard we try to make Jesus a living presence in our lives, he still dwells largely in the realm of the spirit. No matter how firm our faith, he remains to some extent a tabula rasa… a blank, ephemeral canvas for our hopes and dreams. Those canvases that have been filled in by masters over the years all radiate glory. The Jesus we meet in song and scripture, in literature and liturgy is a paradigm of love and beauty. So what’s not to love? He doesn’t litter the landscape of our lives with habits we hate and sights and smells we despise. In contrast to the image of a loving, loveable Jesus, reality rears its ugly head in the form of people we struggle to tolerate, much less love.

But toleration is not an option. Jesus commands us this week: I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you…” With Jesus, “love” is always the operative word. He doesn’t specify that we love only the sweet smelling and considerate, the virtuous and attractive, the sound of mind and body. Neither is his commandment restricted to the disciples or just the Chosen People. Jesus commands us to love all of God’s children, just as he loves us.

There’s no wiggle room here. This is not a suggestion or a helpful hint. It is Christ’s commandment. And nobody said it was going to be easy. Some people are harder to love than others. Start with those labeled as life’s losers: the drunks, the addicts, the hookers and the crazies. Jesus knows and loves every one of them. He took their sins to the cross, right along with our pride and contempt for these, our discarded, de-humanized brothers and sisters. It is humbling to consider what pained Christ the most, their sins or ours?

Just as Jesus offers us no choice but to love, he clearly shows us the way to love. To follow his commandment, we have to practice loving the way that he loves. First, give any discomfort or reticence you have to the Father. Then, no matter how dim or obscure, respect the divine spark in everyone you meet. Try very hard to look past your prejudices and society’s degrading labels. Try understanding that pathology and pain produce obnoxious, off-putting behaviors. And don’t be put off by them. Keep searching til you recognize the image of God that resides in all of us. Work at it. Pray for it. And always be kind; be respectful; be helpful; be forgiving. Remember every one of us is a beloved child of God, here for one reason. And that reason is to preserve and project his love, so that: By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

Our charge is simple: Witness Christ’s love in the world, as if he had left only yesterday and will be returning tomorrow. Til then, his love is in our care. We must live it and share it. Seen through his eyes, the hard part of love gets a lot easier. Alleluia!

Committed to a vocation that focuses on encountering God in the midst of everyday life, the Rev. David Sellery serves as an Episcopal priest that seeks to proclaim the good news of God in Christ in worship, pastoral care, education, stewardship, and congregational growth.

Matthew 5: 1-12 “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”
Psalm 96 “O sing to the Lord a new song.”

“Where you 'at' with people asking you why you wear a cross?” I ask. This is an ongoing discussion as our Native Episcopalians encounter college students who are hostile to the Church, any Church.

“I really get tired of people asking me if I hate gays or if I am going to judge them,” says one of our nineteen year old young adults. “Some people stare at my cross and then sneer.”

Another youth says, “I get the same thing or they go out of their way to avoid me. At first I thought it was because I am Native but I think it is the cross.”

“So, what do you say?” I ask.

“I tell them that my faith is about helping people, especially the homeless and street kids,” says one of the youth. “That usually works. Some of them even say ‘cool.’ One asked me if I was earning brownie points to heaven by doing this. I just stared at him.”

“So why do you do it?” I ask.

We talked about it and he finally says, “I remember when we were acting up and instead of yelling at us, you bought us each a meal. We laugh and stuff and then see an old
homeless man on the curb outside. Someone suggest we buy him a meal. I was full and feeling good and felt funny about just eaten some real good food with someone who is hungry. We bought him food and somehow I felt peaceful inside.”

I have reflected on this over the years. It is a kind of cycle. We don’t show mercy to get something. We are shown mercy, like a time when we get something good instead of a punishment. Then we do something merciful in return. Our eyes are opened. Mercy happens to us again and again. And again we show mercy. This is what has happened to our youth group.

Being merciful gets into our blood. Part of it is conscious and part unconscious. We are shown mercy when we don’t deserve it. We recognize it as mercy. And almost like a compulsion, we show someone else mercy. And then mercy flows around us and we sing a new song.

Blessed are those who respond to mercy with mercy.

Kaze Gadway has worked with the emerging leaders of the Episcopal Church within the Native American community of Northern Arizona as a volunteer for eleven years. They are youth of promise from ages twelve to twenty-four. The Spirit Journey Youth is an outreach program of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona with forty young people. She is on Facebook and blogs at infaith's posterous

Luke 8:26-39
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

As miracles go, casting out demons is probably my least favorite. The blind seeing, the deaf hearing, the lame walking: they are all familiar, even conceptually comfortable, miracles. Raising the dead, while obviously a much higher order of miracle, is still relatively easy to visualize. Conceivably a faith healer could cure psychosomatically induced blindness or deafness. But death is a completely different matter. Only the author of life can command death. Jesus uses his power over life and death to proclaim his divinity and foretell his Resurrection and ours. But what’s all this exorcism business about?

For starters, it’s a more complex miracle. The other miracles are all two-party transactions: the miracle worker and the recipient. Exorcism involves a third party that is the wildest of wild cards. A literal reading of this gospel identifies the third party as Satan embodied in his legion of demonic underlings. A more clinical reading shows the demonic third party as a schizophrenic alter ego that controls and tortures its host; manifesting itself in increasingly obnoxious, alienating and dangerous behavior. In the past year hardly a month has gone by without these demons lashing out to gun down a dozen movie goers, three dozen children and their teachers, a tourist family at a train station or most commonly mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, wives and children who have struggled for years to confront and contain the demons that haunt their suffering loved-ones.

Christ is not afraid or repulsed by the man possessed. The same is true for so many families who still cherish memories of a loving child now hardly recognizable in the angry, unkempt young adult who stands before them. And yet their child is still their child; perhaps more helpless now than when their cute kid pictures were taken. How simple life would be if we had the power to drive their demons into swine, particularly before they lashed out to do themselves and others harm. While we don’t have that power, Christ gives us another. We have his love and we can share it in so many loving ways.

Let’s pray right now for those suffering with mental illness. Lord have mercy on them. Let’s pray for their loved ones. Lord give them strength. Let’s pray for their victims. Lord give them your peace. Let’s pray for our country and its leaders, that they make recognition and treatment of these tortured souls a national priority. Come Holy Spirit.

And finally let’s pray for ourselves. Christ asked the possessed man to name his demons. We should ask ourselves the same question. Are our demons obvious: drink, drugs, internet pornography? Or are our demons hidden but just as pernicious: pride, revenge, hypocrisy, greed or just a low-energy indifference to loving God and neighbor?

Committed to a vocation that focuses on encountering God in the midst of everyday life, the Rev. David Sellery serves as an Episcopal priest who seeks to proclaim the good news of God in Christ in worship, pastoral care, education, stewardship, and congregational growth.