THE CHURCH
Ideally, a church is a community of the faithful who gather
in mutual worship and support of one another. The people of
a church support one another in each one’s growth in faith
and in their individual and collective needs as humans.
This definition should suffice for the entire
Judeo-Christian world. But it is only the ideal.
A church leader, whether a priest, pastor, minister, elder,
brother, or “first among equals,” is presumed to know and
demonstrate the tenets of the faith.
A new faction of the “Christian” church, in particular, has
sprung up from time to time over the centuries as a
different leader has rallied his immediate congregation in
support of his own personal hang-up. The Patriarch of
Constantinople (Orthodox) finally shut out the Bishop of
Rome (Pope) when the Roman bishop declared himself
infallible. (The split had been developing for centuries,
though.) The Archbishop of Canterbury was ordered by the
king of England to, in effect, excommunicate the Pope when
the Pope declined to annul yet another of the King’s
marriages. Thus was born the Church of England (Anglican)
and its later offshoot in America, the Episcopal. But the
“Pilgrims” who came to America to escape the politics of
the newly-formed Anglican church set about creating their
own factions based upon rituals about how people are
baptized, whether women wear pants, and what calendar day
is the Sabbath. In Russia, thousands of people went to
their deaths in the middle ages over the disagreement
whether the Spirit proceeds from God the father and God the
son, or whether the Spirit and the son both proceed from
God the father. The people demonstrated which side of the
argument they were on by crossing themselves with three
fingers extended or two, and that’s how the defenders of
the other faction knew whom to kill. The American churches
waste enormous energy each condemning all other
denominations that don’t adhere to their one overriding
precept – baptism by immersion, speaking in tongues,
“resting in the spirit,” being born again, and so on.
It is ample demonstration of God’s intervention, to me,
that today, with some diligence, a person in need of a
community of the faithful can still find such a group where
the two great commandments are paramount and where
arguments are not fought over petty things. One must search
for such a community, but they can be found. No one
denomination has the corner on such decency and respect and
simplicity in faith, so there is variety. God is not
concerned with how people order their societies but with
how we relate with him, with his creation, and with one
another as individuals.
What I offer here as “Things to Think About” under various
headings are elements taken from many of the denominations.
These are largely the elements, though, that remain
conspicuously uniform among all groups. They are often
obscured by a group’s social or political agenda. But,
insofar as the same Bible is used, the things that
matter can be pulled from the scrap pile of discarded
principles and propped back up where they can be seen once
again.
In the mid- or late-1980s I spent a weekend at a retreat
being held for postulants for the Episcopal priesthood. The
retreat was held in a Roman Catholic convent at Biddeford
Pool, a conducive setting. The retreat included some silent
time, group discussions, interviews, and I don’t recall
what else. To one interview question, asking why I wanted
to become a priest (and not, I suppose, remain a lay leader
or try the deaconate), I replied that I believed I had the
combination of attributes a priest should have. What was
the priesthood? I was asked. I said it was a brotherhood
with a very ancient succession.
Error number one: calling the priesthood a brotherhood. The
panel of five clerics interviewing me at that moment
included two female priests. I gave them more credit for
understanding me than I should have. I didn’t mean it as a
sexist term, any more than “the brotherhood of all mankind”
has ever been a sexist term.
In another interview I was asked something about
conflicting influences on my life, or at least that was
what I addressed in my answer. I said there were at least
six, and they weren’t so much conflicting as they were
competing for my time and attention. There was my family,
my job, my civic responsibility, my God, my church, and
myself.
Error number two: being honest about the mundane,
meat-grinder elements of running a church. I was grilled on
what I meant by saying that God and my church were in
competition. I said that I understand with utmost clarity
what God wants of me, and I endeavor to put my time and
energy to the task. But my church often wants much more
than that. It wants me to audit the books, lead meetings,
cook hot dogs (which I consider an almost-evil form of
meat), travel to distant towns for workshops; stuff like
that. God asks something much simpler of me, but much
harder to do because of the cacophony of demands for my
time and attention. A church, especially, will consume
capable, willing people. Any local church is eager to lasso
fresh young talent. There are too many positions in the
organization and too few members who aren’t already burned
out from running it. The church consumes its members’ time,
talent, and treasure almost solely for the business of the
church organization. This is wrong.
I still attend services regularly and have a leadership
post in my local church. But I’m firmly in charge of my own
involvement now. Nevertheless I have grown to question the
value of most of that organizational structure. Basically,
it’s business. The lawyers have insisted that there be
rules (canons); the accountants have insisted that there be
record-keeping to the infinitesimal detail. The national
organization requires reports and trainings and
certifications. The poor sucker who cautiously enters the
fold in search of a community of worshippers and support of
his faith finds himself fending off “duties” within the
organization. Fend them off long enough, and he risks
becoming persona non grata because he won’t
shoulder his load. And that’s where the church damages
itself. The people in the given local church are largely
unwilling to accede that perhaps he is shouldering a load,
and one they can’t see. Perhaps he’s answering the call to
duty from God, not from his church organization. Perhaps
his work is done in privacy, secrecy, or within the space
of his own mind.
In addition to their dogma, the churches should jettison
their accountants and lawyers and all the regulations those
“professions” have imposed. People should go to church,
study, worship, and commune with one another. Someone
should see that the collection is sufficient to support the
ordained leader in humble dignity and to keep the lights
turned on and the furnace fueled. If the cash is short,
they should pass the plates two times when they next get
together. If it’s a little extra, someone should go out
after the service and drop a bag of cash on some needful
doorstep. These few jobs are easy and therefore don’t
require that the youngest, most energetic new members burn
themselves out on them.
And the congregation should attend to perfecting themselves
on the two great commandments.
JESUS
The best I’ve been able to determine, after studying the
question deliberately, is that the Aramaic pronunciation of
the name Jesus is “Yeshua,” possibly with an equal stress
on the U as on the E. This is close to the name Joshua,
which is reputedly derived from it. “Christ” is not his
surname, although I suspect many American fundamentalists
assume it is. He is Christos in Greek, (the Christ), the
Messiah in Hebrew. Every language renders the name a little
differently. It’s Jesu (“YAY-zoo”) in German. It’s Jesus
(HAY-soos”) in Spanish. It’s “EE-soos” in Russian. It’s a
significant phenomenon to me that, even though you can hear
the name of anyone else for the first time and forget it,
(a historical figure or the person right in front of you),
I’ve never heard of anyone forgetting this name after
hearing it once.
Notice, if you will, that where most translations of the
Bible use the word “LORD,” it’s usually in
capitals. This is done to indicate that the word “LORD” was
substituted in the translation where the original text
contained the initials that stand for Yahweh, or the name
of God. American preachers are mesmerized when they hear
themselves say “the LORD,” but Americans are uniquely
ignorant of what a lord is. We’ve never been culturally
dominated by lords of any sort – powerful people with
feudal rights to own and command us. It’s an odd
fascination we have with a term that has no basis in our
lives. So Americans narrowly construe the word lord to mean
only God.
Notice, too, that I avoid capitalizing he and him and all
that other stuff when referring to Yeshua. It’s an American
invention to capitalize all those words, and a nice gesture
of respect, but a capitalized word in English is reserved
for proper names and the start of a sentence. It detracts
from the message when the text is sprinkled with so many
speed bumps for the reader. (The Germans capitalize all
nouns. It’s terrible.)
Privately, for myself, I’ve resorted to using the name
Yeshua in place of the anglicized form, Jesus. I recoil at
the way the English have so ignorantly refused to accept
the original pronunciation of non-English names. Thus
Firenze in Italia (Italy) is Florence to us, Roma is Rome,
München is Munich, Lisboa is Lisbon. It becomes insidious
when Livorno, apparently unpronounceable to a Brit, is
written Leghorn on a map. Just my personal intolerance for
legendary British arrogance. In order not to confuse
things, I will sometimes relent and use the anglicized
Jesus, but at the risk of appearing inconsistent.
Incidentally, too, I don’t care whether you refer to God as
he or she, for I’m comfortable in the supposition that he
is neither. God’s following in the world would almost
certainly have been negligible had he insisted upon being
female, when the scribes, rabbis, and masters of households
were all male. Either he is neither, and told them so from
the beginning and they ignored it, or he didn’t tell them
so because it wouldn’t have done any good anyway.
There is little argument anywhere that Yeshua, the man who
preached in Israel, whose life divided time forever and
whose teaching was then and remains the most radical that
has ever been heard, actually existed. Jews acknowledge
him, Muslims do. What some doubt is his divinity. Some
ridicule the story of his birth, especially the virgin
conception. Personally, I don’t care whether the details
are in order. I have only to examine his words. I know that
there are Gnostic books and other descriptions of Yeshua’s
life that were omitted from the books that became the
Bible after the councils of Nicea in the fourth
century. I know that those books tell of a more secular
Yeshua. But the man who walked through Judea and preached
and healed and taught those two millennia ago was one with
God. See the quotes from the wise down through the ages
that follow under the heading FAITH.
PRAYER
Prayer is connectedness with God. I am not comfortable with
prayer that asks this or that – asking to heal someone or
keep an airplane from falling out of the sky or praying for
the winning ticket.
Prayer is opening oneself to the Spirit. (Proper name,
Spirit.) It is seeking the Spirit’s intertwining with my
life, and silently counting upon the Spirit’s intervention
in those instances when I unexpectedly find myself in the
right place at the right time to be acting as an agent for
God. It is my duty to be engaged in prayer most all the
time, but not in the manner of the preacher standing before
a congregation saying: “Lord, we just ask you to bless
blah-blah, etc…”
Somewhere within the Orthodox church originated the Jesus
prayer: “Lord, Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy upon
me, a sinner.” Where Saint Paul urges the believers in
Thessaloniki to “pray without ceasing,” some proponents of
the Jesus prayer advise that this is what he meant – repeat
that little prayer without ceasing. I can attest that it is
humbling to do so, but I’m not persuaded that it is enough.
I’m not saying mine is the right way, but it works for me
to begin with a thank you to God for letting his Spirit be
upon us, and take it from there. Incidentally, the word
“upon” inserted itself forcefully one day where I
previously used “with.” I accepted the change as a
divinely-imposed correction, although I can’t see what the
linguistic advantage is.
I am not comfortable with asking for certain results in
prayer. I try to remain connected, and mostly in silent
thanksgiving. When I’m aware of someone in mortal need, I
will pray for God’s intervention, to the extent that it is
his will to do so. I’ve learned of a couple of results from
this, which either were truly the result of my prayer or
amazing coincidence. And I’ve been witness to the gift of
healing through someone else’s prayer of petition, the
person instantly healed of a certain affliction being Sam.
A fantastic little book, and one that any American child of
God may find reassuring, is The Way of a Pilgrim.
The unattributed manuscript came out of Russia in the
early- or mid-1800s. It is an insight into the simplicity
and spirituality of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and
conveys how very simple faith can be. Orthodoxy is cloaked
in a lot of ritual, but it is not burdened with a lot of
dogma. As nearly as anyone can now determine, it preserves
the faith as it was originally understood, and as it was
understood by the simplest of people in the backwardness of
two millennia ago. I often hear that we have to bring “the
church,” meaning all of organized Christianity, forward
into modern times. The shallow example given is that it’s
okay to now incorporate guitars into the worship service
where for a couple of generations we’ve endured organ
music, (as if organs were present at Golgotha and it’s
somehow a sacrilege to displace them). Orthodoxy doesn’t
concern itself with the present and adapting the original
message to modern stuff. The original message was contained
in the two great commandments. How does electricity and the
gasoline engine alter that message? And who is ignorant
enough to think that the sexual revolution began in the
1960s? The 1960s had nothing on Sodom and Gomorrah.
Incidentally, as recently as maybe three years ago, perhaps
not even that long ago, I teased God with the impossible
wish that I might awake some morning and no longer need
those damnable eyeglasses. I just admitted that wish in
prayer a couple of times and thought no more about it. How
do I explain now that that wish, that not-even-serious
prayer, has been granted? I see it as a blessing, given in
grace. But it now prompts me to be very careful what I pray
for, what I simply wish for. Very careful.
On another way of looking at prayer, Corrie ten Boom wrote:
“Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too
small to be made into a burden.”
2002
©DamnYankee.com
