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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Thomas Bushnell, BSG's LiveJournal:
| Sunday, July 13th, 2008 | |
| 10:47 am | nurturing? a flash of either insight or insanity hit me this morning: we are saddened to hear of someone who does not come to church anymore because they want a place without politics, where they can be nurtured, and we want to say, hey, this is what being with other people is about, sometimes it's hard work, church isn't all about warm fuzzies and feeling emotionally supported all the time. perhaps the reason people expect these things from church is that churches have spent the last twenty years acting as if their job is to build "community", by which they seem to have meant, warm fuzzy feelings and emotional support. |
| Sunday, June 29th, 2008 | |
| 2:36 pm | being/doing, becoming/accomplishing There's a gap between being and doing, which is, I think, at the root of much of our struggles as a church, and perhaps as individuals. Our being precedes our doing; who we are produces in large measure what we do. And we have heard those who try to change what they do, in the hopes that will change who they are, only to be frustrated. Indeed, they may succesfully change what they do, but this is not enough, in itself, to change who they are. So the standard advice is to get straight on who we are--and to work to change that, if change we should, which will ineluctably produce changes in what we do. This is the root of cognitive behavioral therapy and rational emotive therapy; it's at the root of a more Christian and theological approach to self improvement as well. Having realized that changing what we do does not change who we are, we concentrate on changing who we are so that we change what we do. Whether we change our emotional responses, cognitive understandings, or relationship with God, the basic picture is the same. And underlying this is something else. We want to accomplish. And accomplishing is connected to doing. We really want to change what we do. If we focus only on what we do, that doesn't work, because who we are still is there, producing our actions. So we change who we are, in order to produce different doings, in order to accomplish. So the entire dynamic of this struggle is a struggle to accomplish. We can try to change externals, which often as not doesn't work, and then we can change internals, which is more successful. So if I'm right, our struggles, whether as individuals or as communities, are struggles to accomplish. I've heard clergy describe their reasons for thinking it's time to move to another congregation, and say something like, "I've done what I can do here." That is, they are able to accomplish certain things, they've accomplished them, and now they can't accomplish anything else there. What would happen if we laid aside this focus on accomplishing? I think that a look at becoming would be a suitable replacement for accomplishing. Just as it was a good move to shift from a look at doing alone to a look at the being that produces the doing, I think that we have only partially completed the job if we still do in order to accomplish. Becoming is a present-tense thing. It's like looking at the first derivative of a function rather than it's value at x+5. Accomplishing is looking forward, becoming is about the change which is happening now, instantaneously now. It is about here. And notice how this shift alters some thinking. No longer is it possible to say, "I've accomplished what I came here to do." Instead, if we put that in "becoming" language, we get something different. "I've become what I came here to become"? No, for all existence is becoming; if I stop needing to continue to become, I am dead. Accomplishments can be finished, but becoming cannot be until being itself is gone. "This congregation has become all it can be"? No, for the same reasons. As long as we live, there is more becoming to become, even at a time when all accomplishments shall cease. Being and becoming, then, are so tied together that they cannot be separated. Now this might seem like more accomplishment advice. "If you want to accomplish more, focus on becoming." No. The reorientation here is about the relinquishment of accomplishment as a measure of life or happiness. The accomplishment of goals will not, and cannot, make us happy. There is no accomplishment we can achieve which will bring happiness. But there is such a thing as becoming happy. This we can do. |
| Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 | |
| 9:54 pm | my CPE site My CPE site is Loma Linda University Medical Center. For those who don't know, this is a flagship institution of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. It's quite interesting the ways that affects many aspects of the hospital's operation. One is that chaplains get a lot more respect than they do at many institutions, and the staff expect and rely on chaplains to be an essential part of the work of the hospital. Another difference is that the hospital is intentional about traditional Adventist dietary expectations. So the cafeteria serves only vegetarian meals, and no caffeine; no salt on the tables either. It's like Lent all the time, I thought. |
| Thursday, June 5th, 2008 | |
| 12:22 am | rest after a big fire an amazing gentle hush falls on the forest |
| Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 | |
| 10:10 am | unread books meme What we have below is a list of the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing users. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Anna Karenina The Brothers Karamazov Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies War and Peace Vanity Fair The Time Traveler's Wife The Iliad Emma The Blind Assassin The Kite Runner Mrs. Dalloway Great Expectations American Gods A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Atlas Shrugged Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books Memoirs of a Geisha Middlesex Quicksilver Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West The Canterbury Tales The Historian : a novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Love in the Time of Cholera Brave New World The Fountainhead Foucault's Pendulum Middlemarch Frankenstein The Count of Monte Cristo Dracula A Clockwork Orange Anansi Boys The Once and Future King The Grapes of Wrath The Poisonwood Bible : a novel 1984 Angels & Demons The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise) The Satanic Verses Sense and Sensibility The Picture of Dorian Gray Mansfield Park One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest To the Lighthouse Tess of the D'Urbervilles Oliver Twist Gulliver's Travels Les Miserables The Corrections The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Dune The Prince The Sound and the Fury Angela's Ashes : a memoir The God of Small Things A People's History of the United States : 1492-present Cryptonomicon Neverwhere A Confederacy of Dunces A Short History of Nearly Everything Dubliners The Unbearable Lightness of Being Beloved Slaughterhouse-five The Scarlet Letter Eats, Shoots & Leaves The Mists of Avalon Oryx and Crake : a novel Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed Cloud Atlas The Confusion Lolita Persuasion Northanger Abbey The Catcher in the Rye On the Road The Hunchback of Notre Dame Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values The Aeneid Watership Down Gravity's Rainbow The Hobbit In Cold Blood White Teeth Treasure Island David Copperfield The Three Musketeers |
| Monday, May 19th, 2008 | |
| 10:43 pm | Tennessee woods Friends send kind greetings, like trees climbing to heaven, stretching their branches. |
| Sunday, May 18th, 2008 | |
| 11:45 pm | trinity I remember vividly the first time the doctrine of the Trinity hit me. My mother and I were visiting other churches besides our own, on a sort of check-out-and-see-what's-up tour. And it was Trinity Sunday, I'm pretty sure, and the preacher said that God didn't choose to be a Trinity, that God just was a Trinity. Indeed, the point was right, more or less: there was no point at which God woke up and said, "Guess I'll be a Trinity today." Of course, it's also not like being a Trinity was some kind of burden to bear. Being in relation, in community, in family, in connection, is like that. On the one hand, it's something that happens. We do not choose our communities, in general, and the theologically astute know that even the ones we think we choose, are really chosen for us as a matter of divine vocation. And yet, when we are most united to the will of God, we recognize also that communities are not some kind of burden, which we bear. We are in the connections we are because we choose to be. Indeed, when we recognize that we are called to be with the people we are with--in all their difficulty and horridness and awkwardness and I-don't-know-how-to-live-with-him-ness--t |
| Thursday, May 15th, 2008 | |
| 1:05 pm | a parable One day, a fearsome tiger roared in the forest. The people of the village were quite upset. They knew there were tigers about; indeed, only a year earlier a tiger had attacked a neighboring village and killed thirty-two of their people. Tiger attacks had become more frequent in the country, or at least, it seemed like it. The old fences and guards which kept tigers at bay seemed not to be functioning anymore. Some annoying environmentalists liked to point out that the problem might have something to do with the expansion of the villages into forest land previously occupied by tigers, but the villagers knew the real problem: tigers were evil, and for the safety of everyone, we needed to be extremely vigilant about even the slightest rumor of a tiger. So that day when the tiger roared, the elders of the village went into action. The people who heard the tiger roaring thought they knew where it was, and they and the elders went to go look, having first donned their magical armor for protection. (It turns out that magical armor is no protection against real tigers.) The folks who heard the roaring thought it came from the area where the crazy hermit lived. He was a recent addition to the village. Some of the villagers thought that he was just an old crazy hermit, but over time, the villagers began to enjoy going out to meet him and chat. He turned out to be a hospitable sort, and while he would never want to live in the village square, the villagers generally thought of him as a good man, and a welcome addition to their village. But the elders of the village were suspicious of the hermit. He did not seem to have the proper respect for their authority. Oh, he certainly didn't transgress on the norms of the village, and he seemed to be careful to show respect to all, but still, he was free with his criticism of the elders' leadership, and many of the villagers enjoyed hearing his views on the way the village was being run. Some of the elders also enjoyed the old hermit, others considered him an annoyance, and still others worried that he might be a destructive force. Off went to the old hermit a committee of the elders to investigate. Clad in their magical armor, they went to him, and said that there were reports that he had been harboring tigers in his hut. Tigers are extremely dangerous, and we can't permit them to be here. He should immediately send the tigers away. But the hermit said he didn't have any tigers in his hut, and the elders were suspicious. The villagers who heard the tiger roar were surely not imagining it, there had certainly been a roar. An impasse seemed to be at bay. There was no real evidence of any tiger to be seen--no tiger droppings, no bags of tiger chow--but there was the memory of that roar, and the fear of another tiger attack. The hermit couldn't be sent away, but the danger of the tiger couldn't be ignored. The chief of the village needed to make a decision, and the elders were conflicted about what to do. Finally it was agreed. The hermit should be sent to the wizard in the next village over. The wizard could cast his magical spells to determine whether the hermit was keeping tigers or not. The hermit agreed. And so off the hermit went to see the wizard. The experience was like nothing the hermit had ever experienced. He had seen other wizards before, but this wizard was different. His spells were extremely painful; they involved peeling off skin to look beneath, inspecting the roots of hair by pulling it out, and a curious ritual that involved a housecat and a tube of toothpaste. The scratches that one caused went very deep, and the hermit never stopped scratching at the itch the rest of his days. Finally the wizard waved his hands in the air grandly, and said that there didn't seem to be any evidence of tigers. But what could that roar have been? The hermit said he had been practicing a new piece of music, and perhaps the odd sounds involved--sounds the villagers had perhaps never heard before--were confused for the roar of a tiger. He had once been practicing his trombone late at night, and it probably was wrong of him to wake the villagers with the unusual noise at 2am. Back the hermit went to his hut, nursing his wounds. The elders met, the elders conferred, the elders talked. The report from wizard had not helped to clear the impasse. There was still no evidence of tigers. But why did the hermit not simply explain about the musical practice right away? Perhaps there had been a tiger, which the hermit had carefully sent away and cleaned up. Perhaps this story about musical practice was simply concocted. His hut, after all, was a shambles inside, just the sort of hut you would expect if someone had a tiger living there, and there were rumors that he had some cat chow about. Eventually the chief came to his decision. The hermit was told that the wizard had determined there was no evidence of tigers, but the hermit was to be sent away for two reasons anyway. He had not spoken up about the musical practice right away, and, more importantly, the villagers who were sure he had been harboring tigers would continue to be afraid. Those villagers were sure it could not be the trombone; after all, they had *heard* the tiger, and they had no doubt he had been harboring tigers. And the wizard had also explained to the chief that hermits are weird, and don't fit in to villages. If the hermit was to live in a village, he would need to change into the kind of person who wanted to live in the village square, rather than the kind who enjoyed his hut on the edge of the forest. Only if the hermit left would the villagers who were worried be able to sleep in peace. Sadly, the hermit packed his bags and left the village. The villagers clutched their magical armor tighter than before while the elders slept uneasily. The chief wept as he saw the hermit quietly walk away. The hermit realized that a tiger had attacked the village after all, but fortunately this time it took only one victim. |
| 11:11 am | a haiku without a whisper sliding off into the night the flower closes |
| Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 | |
| 4:18 am | history does not record... history does not record what Anytus, Meletus, and Lycon thought or felt after they did what they pleased to Socrates. |
| Saturday, May 10th, 2008 | |
| 1:05 pm | four kinds of people Type One: Wackos who think the Pastoral Epistles were written by Paul. Type Two: Non-wackos who have not seriously studied the Pastoral Epistles, and therefore think they were not written by Paul. Type Three: Non-wackos who have seriously studied the Pastoral Epistles, and therefore think they were written by Paul. Type Four: Non-wackos who have seriously studied the Pastoral Epistles, and don't think they were written by Paul. Now the odd thing is that Type-Two people think that Type-Three people are likely Type-One people in disguise. And, that the Type-Four people are very likely dead--because there is a diminishing list of living Type-Four people.And, that Type-Two people tend to write as if all non-wackos agree with them, while the Type-Three and Type-Four people know there is a lively controversy, even in 2008. What's really aggravating is the Type-Two people who fail to get what pseudepigraphy means. It means at least two things. First, the author was being deceptive, and deliberately so. (And the conclusive result is that there was no genre of pseudepigraphal letters, and everyone in antiquity regarded forgeries with horror.) You will look in vain for even a single clear example of a letter falsely attributed to a recent figure, which is accepted as valuable by a religious community despite their knowledge of its inaccurate attribution. And moreover, the modern folks agree. The very people who assure us in solemn (but unsourced) tones that this kind of stuff was perfectly ordinary, and acceptible, then use the results as an argument for ignoring or discarding what the letter says. If 1 Timothy doesn't tell us anything about Paul, so the thinking goes, it is no use for Christians. Second thing pseudepigraphy means. If you take the letter as canonical, and pseudepigraphal, you must deal with the fact that the author wants you to think of it as genuinely Pauline. Even if you drink the pseudepigraphy cool-aid, and believe that it's not really deceptive, you certainly still must grant that the author wants you to read it in a Pauline context, wants you to think of it as if it were Pauline. So when you read it, constantly reminding yourself, "not Pauline, not Pauline" as a kind of mantra, and insist on interpreting it as non-Pauline, you are, ipso facto, misinterpreting the letter. And if you doubt this, just go tote up the way Victor Paul Furnish treats "non-genuine" letters in The Moral Teaching of Paul; go look at what F. C. Baur wants to do: because the letter isn't Pauline, we can ignore the theology it seems to be teaching. And how is Baur so sure the letter isn't Pauline? Mostly it boils down to... you guessed it... the letter teaches a theology we deem to be "late" and we disgree with. Oh, there is Type Five, who find all this confusing, and have no opinions on the subject at all. |
| Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 | |
| 6:03 pm | A poem Meal What does a candle feel like as it burns on the dinner table, gently using its fuel, waiting, as a family quietly sits together, a roast is carved and prepared, and laughter erupts when a joke is told? The events of the day are retold and obligatory love gives way to like, memories for the future are prepared and customs established for another table. The noise of a family all together, each eagerly looking at dinner and waiting. Some want this promise and sit waiting, not quite finding what they've been told, searching for how to be together, with another, never being quite alike, transitory countertops serving as a table, always ready but never quite prepared. How has the candle been prepared, for this moment, on its shelf waiting, hoping someday to be on the table, and hear the stories get told? What are a candle's dreams like, and how does it keep itself together? Sitting in their box, aligned together, are the candles really prepared? Do they know what it will be like, this dream for which they are waiting, when the purpose long foretold, is done, and there they are, on the table? And some candles never find a table, and go to the trash heap, together. Nobody sings their song, nothing is told, for a waste it was they were prepared, an emptiness they were awaiting, do they know what that will be like? And on the table, like meets like, the meal prepared, the soul waiting, the story told, and the people together. |
| Sunday, April 27th, 2008 | |
| 4:58 pm | a thought about bigotry To the straight Christian--whether anti-gay or not--bigotry looks like an error in thinking. The bigot is incautious, controlled by emotion, etc. The bigot screams arrogantly, the bigot is impolite, the bigot is unscholarly. The straight Christian normally thinks it's possible in the twenty-first century in a country like England or America to be anti-gay from motives other than bigotry, because bigotry is being conceived of as an error in thinking: a matter of one's motives and the dynamic between emotion and reason. Someone who is anti-gay without those impolite motives and in calm and measured rational tones, can't possibly be a bigot, so goes the thinking. To the gay Christian, bigotry is an error in doing. It is not so much about what you think or the motives for what you think or do, it's about what you actually do. The gay Christian conceives of bigotry as a question "on the ground," so to speak. Bigotry is support for laws that discriminate and oppress gay people; bigotry is support for dehumanizing language about gay people, and so forth. In this view, it is not possible in the twenty-first century, in a country like England or America, to support such policies or engage in such activities without being a bigot, because bigotry simply is the engagement in such activities when one should know better. The distinction then trades on differing conceptions of what bigotry is. To those who feel the brunt of it, bigotry is something which one feels, one experiences, one bumps up against in the world. Straight Christians mostly don't notice it. They don't bump up against it. At weddings (we had a joyous one among our seminary community a week ago) they mostly don't reflect on the utter unavailability of that party to many of their friends. They don't need to worry about which people they might invite who would refuse to come, or who would use the wedding as an occasion to think less of them. So bigotry A, the bigotry that people-mostly-not-affected think about, is about motives, and internal states. And then bigotry B, the one that people-affected think about, is about actions and what causes pain and difficulty and hardship. I remember the day I learned the difference between racial prejudice (a form of bigotry A) and racism (a form of bigotry B). I'm gesturing at something like that. This helps me to understand why straight Christians don't get why I can't stand certain famous NT theologians, why I don't want to go hear them speak about anything, even when I would agree with the topic of this or that speech. They look at them, and their bigotry is so kind and gentle, so quiet, so "reasoned", so sincere, that they aren't really a bigot at all--at least, not in the bigotry A sense. But I look at them, and I think, "ah, a leading theorist trying to explain why Christians like me should be run out of the church, and society be structured to continue oppressing us." I don't doubt their kindness, their gentleness, their quiet, their appearance of reason, or their sincerity. It is their doings that are harmful. And I want straight Christian friends of mine to get it. But most don't. |
| Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 | |
| 8:47 am | self-knowledge In a reflective mood, I consider that there are times when I have known myself and times where I have not. At times where I have known myself, I am confident, sure. I see a happy future clearly, and I see my own present actions as connected toward bringing that future into being. I know others, and others know me. At times where I have not known myself, the future is out of my control. My own actions are not connected to it in any obvious way, but rather it seems to come on its own, without my participation or consent. I feel as if others are a deep mystery to me. They are unpredictable, and thus sometimes dangerous, and they seem to act toward me without knowing me or any desire to understand me. It might seem like it would be good then to know myself, wouldn't it? And heck, that's Socrates in a nutshell, isn't it? Know Thyself. Except that Scito Te Ipsum was not really Socrates' motto, it was the motto of the Oracle at Delphi. The Oracle pretends to give knowledge, but instead is a manipulator of events on a large stage. There is no knowledge to be had at Delphi, and the motto, just as the oracular pronouncements, has a double meaning. One must truly know oneself in order to avoid being deceived by the Oracle, for it will use your desires and self-deceptions against you. But then again, the Oracle has no interest in warning you, and instead promises knowledge: "Come here, and you will know yourself." The times when I have known myself are times often of tremendous self-deception. Succeeding times of un-knowing are the exposure of the errors of self-deception into which I have fallen in a preceding time of knowing. But the times of un-knowing are no better. There is a correctness there: others are unpredictable, really, and the future really is out of my control. Yet these are not things which I know in my times of un-knowing, they are simply painful walls up against which I bump in ignorance. The Oracle's deceptive advice is self-serving, a way of promising and withholding, of seeming to be transparent while being opaque. The Oracle is a great deceiver. What it suggests is indeed good: self-knowledge is a good thing. But it is not achieved directly; it is only found indirectly. It can only be pursued by not pursuing it; it can only be caught by letting it go. One is only able to know oneself by being known; and perfect self-knowledge comes only in being known by the perfect knower. |
| Monday, April 21st, 2008 | |
| 9:48 pm | Anselm of Bec and Anselm of Canterbury Today is the feast of two remarkable saints, Anselm of Bec and Anselm of Canterbury. Anselm of Bec was the abbot of Bec, a Cistercian monastery in Normandy. There he was known as a kind leader and a good monastic reformer in the Cistercian vein. He was the inaugurator of Scholastic philosophy, and perhaps the first Christian philosopher in the modern sense, concerned with traditional philosophical topics in their own right as well as their relations to the convictions of the Christian faith. He made his contributions to the polemical issues of the day (writing on the Filioque, for example), as well as his famous exploration of soteriology in Cur Deus Homo. He explored philosophy of language and ethics, becoming one of the first to argue for a double-master-motivation theory of ethics, a view which was in opposition to the consensus of antiquity (whether Stoic, Epicurian, Socratic, Platonic, or Aristotelian), and which has successors in folks as diverse as Ockham, Kant, and even some modern virtue theorists. Around 1092, Anselm was essentially kidnapped by King William II in England, and drops from history. By a curious coincidence of dating, the second saint celebrated today enters a year later. Anselm of Canterbury was consecrated bishop and took his seat as Primate of All England. Anselm engaged in the usual tussles with the Norman kings, over typical issues. Eventually these conflicts would reach a head in the conflict between Thomas Becket and King Henry II, but those days were still a century to come. This Anselm engaged in typical struggles over investiture, travel rights, choice of bishops, clerical rights and privileges, taxation and so forth. He was a competent administrator, who did not leave any particular distinctive mark among the various Norman Archbishops of Canterbury. Things came to a real head in conflict with King Henry I, but no serious disaster happened, a political compromise was reached, and he died in 1109. When "Anselm" was canonized in 1494 it is unclear which is meant, the abbot of Bec or the bishop in Canterbury. Now the above is a little tongue in cheek, of course, for these two people shared the same body, the same mother, and the same soul. But there is a serious point in the last paragraph. It truly is unclear why Anselm was canonized by Alexander VI, himself one of the most controversial secular popes in history. The old Roman breviary does not give any details for his canonization (as it often does), but concludes with the following: He attained fame not only because of his miracles and holiness (especially his marked devotion toward the passion of our Lord, and the blessed Virgin Mary), but also because of his teaching, which it is plain to all was drawn up according to a heavenly standard, for the defense of the Christian religion, the good of souls, and all theology, which the holy writings pass on by the scholastic method.So what was it? His miracles and devotion, not really much remarked on, even by the very hagiography which mentions them, or his writings? And even if it's the miracles and devotion, might they not be just as strongly attached to the Abbot of Bec as to the Archbishop of Canterbury? I think the answer is clear: his fame, and as a result, his canonization four hundred years later owes to his work as a monk, not his leadership as an Archbishop. Yet the fact is that his sanctity, if not his fame, owe to his commitment to following where God led him. He was not happy about becoming Archbishop, and accepted the post only under great duress and after extracting many concessions from King William. But accept it he did. His fame may owe to his scholarly duties, but his sanctity comes from his willingness to leave them behind for a new task, a task which entailed no small suffering and difficulty for him. Perhaps this is the way all that was dross was burned away and he shone as he was intended to. |
| Sunday, April 20th, 2008 | |
| 11:56 am | God save us... ...from baby boomer liturgy. |
| Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 | |
| 11:01 pm | understanding one's experiences There are certain experiences one has which are only comprehensible in the light of Rene Girard. |
| Sunday, March 30th, 2008 | |
| 1:45 pm | why things are the way they are institutions are the way they are because the people in power want them that way. this simple truth is perhaps most important to understand when people in power lament the way the institution is. |
| Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 | |
| 11:45 am | new thoughts about hospitality: an application An application of my thoughts about hospitality from yesterday. A common fretful issue for folks in our churches arises around same-sex blessings. Many clergy and congregations who are generally supportive of gay and lesbian people, at least in a passive way, are fearful of what will happen if a couple requests a same-sex blessing of their relationship. In many places, it seems as if this presents a lose-lose situation: either the couple and their supporters will be alienated (if the answer is no), or other people will be angry and leave, or perhaps denominational structures will obstruct (if the answer is yes). Some clergy indeed try to fend this off at the gate, by proclaiming before any couple presents themselves that there will be no same-sex blessings. Sometimes this is a somewhat cowardly sop to those in the congregation who are made nervous by talk of inclusion, a sort of, "don't worry, we won't do anything really radical" assurance. Sometimes it's not cowardly. But regardless, it is almost always an attempt to avoid the hard situation even coming up at all. Nobody will bother to ask for a blessing if the word is out ahead of time that none would be forthcoming. So much of the dynamic works like that. The church is there, and people come--suppliants--asking for some hospitable arrangement. And the question then arises, "do we show this form of hospitality?" And--you knew it was coming, didn't you?!--then the alleged example of Jesus is trotted out: Jesus would show hospitality, after all, he ate and drank with tax collectors and sinners. Imagine however if our understanding were informed by the more correct exegesis I outlined yesterday of these episodes from the Gospels. The question is not, "will you invite us? will you include us?" Rather, the couple should have their wedding, wherever it will be had, and invite the church to participate. "We are having our wedding; we'd like to include you and the church in that process." It is arrogant for the church to think it is inviting others; Jesus himself didn't do that. The stories from the Gospels of his willingness to eat and drink with outcasts are not stories of him inviting them in: they are stories of him accepting their invitations. And, we find, that he pretty much always accepts the invitation. The question is not, "should we invite so-and-so in?" The question is, "when so-and-so invites us, will we attend? will we show up? or do we send signals that no, we will not attend?" And here's the risk: if folks invite us, and invite Jesus too, we know that Jesus will attend. If we do not join him and attend also, then it is we who have rejected him. |
| Monday, March 24th, 2008 | |
| 5:24 pm | a thought about hospitality Much Christian thinking about hospitality these days begins with a narrative in which Jesus welcomes us; in which Jesus shows us hospitality. And we are supposed to then extend that welcome further, etc. This is bolstered especially by Jesus' well-known unconcern with official social boundaries: he ate and drank with outcasts and sinners, as the Gospels have it, a friend of tax-collectors and prostitutes, at ease eating with Jews and Gentiles, social elites and the downtrodden, the good-hearted and the evil-hearted alike. This narrative is a key factor in, for example, the movement in the Episcopal Church to ignore the canons and abandon the expectation that baptism be received before communion. This narrative portrays Jesus as the Divine Host, welcoming all to a banquet. And this is supposedly bolstered by reflecting on Jesus supposed demonstrations of hospitality in the Gospels. And yet, this is monumentally incorrect, a giant misunderstanding of the entire context of hospitality in the Gospels. I submit that in the Gospels we never see Jesus as host: not once. We do not see Jesus hosting banquets, inviting people to dine with him, or anything of the kind. He does not invite outcasts and sinners to dinner, because in the Gospels, he doesn't invite anyone to dinner. What actually happens is that other people invite Jesus. Only three narratives in the Gospels--the feeding miracles, the last supper, and the disciples in Emmaus on Easter evening--have any different context at all. With those two excepted, every occasion in which Jesus is showing this "radical hospitality" is actually nothing of the kind: rather, each story is about Jesus accepting hospitality. And we never hear him telling his host to invite or not invite so-and-so. The most we get is that he cautions his hosts not to despise others. We do not ever hear of him writing invitation lists, whether limited or broad. It may be a theological truth that Jesus invites us, but the narratives of the Gospels do not portray him thus. Consider, for example, the wedding feast at Cana. Jesus is a guest. In Nikos Kazantzakis' Last Temptation of Christ, Jesus brings Mary Magdalene along, and demands that she be included in the party, even as the guy at the door tries to keep her out. But the actual Gospels never have such an event: we do not ever hear of Jesus demanding that so-and-so be invited. Instead, Jesus is a guest, and he accepts the hospitality, and increases the celebration of the feast by providing wine even when none seems to be available. The much touted fellowship with tax-collectors and sinners is not about Jesus inviting them in: it is about them inviting Jesus, and his willing acceptance. Even the story of Zaccheus in the tree, apparently one of Jesus including Zaccheus, begins with Zaccheus wanting to see Jesus, and not with Jesus issuing the invitation. The closest we get to anything resembling the Jesus-invites-everyone narrative is the episode with the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus tells her, "give me a drink." But notice: here we do not see Jesus inviting someone else; at most we see Jesus inviting himself, and instantly from then on, Jesus is the recipient of the others' hospitality, (presumably) taking the water, and then moving in with the Samaritans for a while. The feeding of the five thousand (or four thousand) seems to be a case where Jesus does act as host. But what does he do? Thrust into the role of host, he says, "You give them something to eat." Nor does Jesus go about inviting people--the crowd is portrayed as something of an inconvenience, and dealing with it, feeding the crowd, is the responsibility of the disciples, and further, the story features no invitations. The Last Supper of course does feature Jesus as host. But notice here, first, that the room is borrowed. It is not Jesus' room: something all three synoptics stress. He invites himself into someone else's house, who mysteriously allows this, and, notice this carefully, this one occasion where Jesus is clearly host, nobody else is invited. Finally, on the road to Emmaus, Jesus is walking with these two disciples who are trying to make sense of all that has happened, and their hearts strangely burning within them, they invite Jesus to dinner; and then in the breaking of the bread, they realize it is he who is with them. So let's assume that the "Jesus as radical host" people have collected the right stories, even as they have massively misinterpreted them. What does this tell us about hospitality? |