Beyonce at Half-Time
OK, I will admit that, in spite of living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was pretty uninvested in the Super Bowl. Just really not a sports fan. I did, however, find it entertaining to track my friends’ Facebook comments throughout the trouncing, the power outage, the rally and the 49ers eventual defeat. But what interested me the most were the comments on Beyoncé’s half-time show. Some people thought it was one of the most incredible performances they had ever seen. Some people hated it. Some people thought that she was the embodiment of feminine power. Some people thought she was an emblem of sexual exploitation. Some people were offended by the booty shaking and some posted articles which declared that seeing Beyoncé as sexualized was in the prurient mind of the beholder.
Here’s what I know: when I picked up my 14-year-old daughter from a Super Bowl party that evening, it was Beyoncé’s performance, not the game, that had her aglow. She dragged me to the computer so that I could see the performance for myself on YouTube. Here’s what I saw. There the singer was onstage at the biggest homage to testosterone in the nation. She was up there with her all-female band and women dancers and the gal with flames shooting out of her guitar, having, as far as anyone could tell, the time of her life. Yes, she was powerful, receiving the homage of all those roaring fans, all those hands reaching out to her. And yes, she couldn’t have been more obviously, writhingly sexual. Which was, at moments, a bit jaw-dropping as something to watch with my teenage daughter. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder what exactly there is to object to about her hip-swinging, hair-flinging sexiness.
As I have engaged in discussion around the issues surrounding abortion, I’ve heard from a number of people who disapprovingly regard abortion as a way for a woman to shirk responsibility for her sexual choices, to have sex without having to live with the consequences. I have heard from people who are quick to remind those who will listen that sex is for procreation, and that having sex without being willing to take on procreation is a misuse of sexuality, a sexual sin. If that’s your opinion, then Beyoncé’s rampantly sexy performance would be repugnant.
But my religious tradition doesn’t say that. My religious tradition says that sexuality, in its variety of expression— bodies, in their variety of expression—are good and holy. Yes, sexuality can be abused, and sexual expression that causes physical or emotional damage to another person is wrong. But what is sinful is not the sexuality, but rather the abuse. And as far as I can tell, Beyoncé was hurting no one, being hurt by no one, having a grand old time being beautiful and talented and scantily clad in front of all those people.
But is that what I want my daughter to see? Is that the role model I want my African-American teenager to look toward? Wouldn’t I rather than she aspire to be like Michelle Obama when she grows up? Sure I would. The First Lady is brilliant and classy and refined. She is Athena, the goddess of reason. But my daughter isn’t. My daughter is a dancer, a performer, a little bit wild. She is athletic, embodied, more Artemis than Athena. When she sees Beyoncé she sees a massively talented Black woman surrounded by fans, surrounded by fire, putting her whole self out there in a glorious, ecstatic show. That’s what my daughter wants for herself—not the rigors of Harvard Law School, but the joy and the passion that she experiences when dancing. She’s a person who dwells more in her body than her head, and while school tells her all day every day that her way of being is a failing, Beyoncé put it all on magnificent display.
One day, far sooner than I will like, my daughter will make the connection between the pleasure and power of her body in dancing and the pleasure and power of her body as a sexual being. And it will be my job to make sure that she understands about protecting herself and others, about making decisions that are right for her and not just what someone else wants, about keeping her head when making choices for her body. But it will not be my job to squelch her fire or her passion or her pleasure in her big, strong, beautiful body. And if that’s what she takes away from Beyoncé at half-time, it’s OK by me.
Pro-Life/Pro-Choice
Let’s start the conversation here. Everybody is pro-life. OK, everybody who is not Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Honestly, do you know a single person who would describe themselves as pro-death? All of us are pro-life, and none of us is infinitely pro-life. All of us value some lives more than others. Is there a person living who feels the same way about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. as they do about the assassination of Osama bin Laden? Have we had the kind of public mourning for children killed in drone strikes in Afghanistan as for the children gunned down in Newtown? If you had to make a choice (and you do) between feeding your own kids and feeding kids in Libya, is there any question who gets fed? We all are pro-life, and we all put more weight on some lives than on others.
Yes, a fetus is a human life, and if you have been trying for that pregnancy, then nothing could be more precious. And yes, the human body routinely self-aborts fertilized eggs, and unless we are trying to get pregnant no one really thinks of that as even sad, let alone tragic. When we say we treasure life, we mean that we treasure the lives that we choose to cherish.
We make religious assertions: “Life is sacred.” “We affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” And those assertions matter. But we are fooling ourselves if we think that those affirmations have easy and obvious applications in the real world. Some people are pro-life, but in favor of the death penalty. Some people are pro-life, but support sending troops into combat. Some people are pro-life, but believe that people need access to guns so that they can defend themselves with lethal force. Some people are pro-life, but favor the right of terminally ill people to choose the means and timing of their death. Some people are pro-life, but favor access to safe and legal abortions. In the real world absolutes fall apart pretty quickly.
So what then are we to do? Choose life. Knowing that the way you choose life might be different than the choice someone else makes. Because, really, all of us are pro-choice. We all want to be free to follow the dictates of our conscience. Everyone wants the autonomy to examine the world in which we live and our place in it, to make the best of what we find, to create love and prosperity and justice. Everyone wants to find their way to life more abundant—for themselves, their family, their friends.
For one woman choosing life might mean choosing to carry a pregnancy to term even though she knows that she can’t raise that child, choosing instead to place the baby for adoption. For another woman choosing life might mean having an abortion so that she can finish her education and build a decent life for herself—and potentially for children she might choose to have in the future. Both are choices. Both are life-affirming.
The job of religion is not to set out false absolutes, declaring that the church has the capacity to decide which lives matter the most. The job of religion is to call us to continually examine what it means to choose abundant life, and to make life-affirming choices. And then the job of religion is to remind us that we must continually expand our vision of which lives matter, of who deserves to have life abundant.
Guns: Relationship Status: “It’s complicated.”
I first held a gun when I was eight years old. One of my uncles let me fire his new pistol. I still remember the strain of trying to hold the heavy gun steady so he wouldn’t think I was too weak to try it. All these years later, I vividly remember the incredible rush of power that washed over me as I fired that pistol.
I was eight years old and I held in my hand a tool that could spit fire and knock a beer can off a fence several yards away. I was eight years old and I held in my hand a tool that could have ended the life of the uncle who handed it to me. It is difficult to articulate how much power surged through my little being. I swear I heard the Scots heritage in my mutt-blood swim screaming to the surface with a mighty roar…
Nine years later, the older brother of the uncle who first handed me a gun died after being shot by another family member. Not long after that, the father of my classmate was killed while responding to a domestic violence call. The man who killed him was devastated to realize, once he descended from his pain-killer induced high, that he had killed not only a police officer, but a friend.
Four years ago, my partner called me at the hospital where I was working as a chaplain to let me know that he was not one of the two white men shot to death a block away from my house (where a heroin deal apparently turned deadly). Shortly before that, I had watched an ambulance come claim the body of a sixteen year old boy, victim of a drive by shooting at the other end of my street.
I have lived in the rural life and the urban life and what each had in common was:
- a sense of powerlessness about how the world is run and
- deaths by firearms.
Our country (and colonial powers around the world) has a history of taking away a population’s weapons and property (i.e. indigenous peoples, Japanese-American relocation camps, mass incarceration through a government-created drug war…) when people in power decide to do so. How then, to trust that you really will be safer by giving up your guns?
Christian social justice activist and writer Jim Wallis proclaims:
Former assumptions and shared notions about fairness, agreements, reciprocity, mutual benefits, social values, and expected futures have all but disappeared. The collapse of financial systems and the resulting economic crisis not only have caused instability, insecurity, and human pain; they have also generated a growing disbelief and fundamental distrust in the way things operate and how decisions are made.
I confess that I am grateful to finally live in a gun-free home, I freak out just a bit when even toy guns are pointed at me or anyone I love, and I would love to trust that I could walk through my neighborhood at night without hearing gunfire. But I was also here in New Orleans when the National Guard rolled through with their Humvees and their guns and I know what it feels like to be occupied by a military force – first denied access to my home and property, then patrolled and subject to interrogation once home again.
My faith and my lived experience teaches that life is rarely an either/or proposition. In this interdependent web of all existence, we are all connected, tangled together in a tapestry of history and mystery. It’s complicated.
It is hazardous to talk glibly about gun control unless we talk about creating a nation that is welcoming, safe, and empowering for all people. This conversation is complex and deserves real discernment, not sound bites and bullet points.
Guns do not provide actual safety. They provide a sense of power. [Bear witness: our government is not at all ready to give up its guns, its sense of power.]
I suspect that if we are going to end gun violence, we will have to address the collective needs of all – urban and rural, white and people of color, individuals and institutions – who feel powerless without their guns.
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
As we approach the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, I am grateful to have been born and raised in a religious tradition, Unitarian Universalism, that has stood strong through the history of the struggle for reproductive justice. Today, I lift my voice to thank some of those Unitarians, Universalists, and Unitarian Universalists who have gone before, and who labor currently, for women’s equality, health and moral agency.
It’s always risky to call out folks simply because we share an identity, especially a religious identity. It can seem as if we are separating ourselves, or declaring ourselves to be part of a club. For me, this is an act taken to ground myself. As my own congregation prepares to hold an online service honoring the complexity and dignity of all families engaged in making moral choices around reproductive issues, I have been asked, “How dare you speak out about this, as if we all agree?”
I would never believe that a few thousand Unitarian Universalists would agree about anything whatsoever! All the studies show that people of other religions don’t begin to agree either, however, and yet their leaders have no trouble declaring that they speak the absolute truth, God’s truth. They claim that God is pro-life, anti-abortion, against women’s equality. So I, who have spent my life laboring in interfaith coalitions lifting up this other point of view, feel it is incumbent upon me to speak clearly as well.
Here come my thanks, to those who have gone before me and labor still, who ground me in this work, who dared before me and handed their daring to me.
I thank Margaret Sanger, who opened the first clinic in Brooklyn in 1916, violating obscenity laws for telling women how to prevent unwanted pregnancies. While we certainly challenge her beliefs on eugenics, she had nothing if not bold courage!
I thank all of those who labored for women’s suffrage, women and men, Universalists and Unitarians, allowing politicians to be elected who would support women’s equality. Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Rev. Olympia Brown, Julia Ward Howe, Rev. Lydia Jenkins, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and so many others. I lift up your names with gratitude. Amendment 19, 1919. 19 is our lucky number.
I thank all of the Unitarian and Universalist women who worked to make birth control legal and available in the US. I think of the church women, whose names I do not know, who looked through birth notices in Connecticut papers and mailed information to new mothers, illegally offering them birth control access. They weren’t just being kind; they were spoiling for a fight. Eventually they got one, and in 1965, in Griswald v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court ruled that criminalization of birth control violated the right to marital privacy.
I thank all of the Unitarian, Universalist, and Unitarian Universalists who worked to make abortion safe and legal. The women, and leadership, of First Dallas UU congregation moved this case forward. UUs passed statements at our General Assemblies beginning in 1963. Clergy, especially men, were part of founding and leading the Clergy Consultation service. Hundreds of people were involved with this; many of whose names I don’t know. Please share your own knowledge in the comments section!
I thank the religious educators who, in 1967, agreed that comprehensive sexuality education is part of religious education, and began the groundbreaking sexuality education programs that have been part of religious education programs ever since. There are thousands to name here—deryk Calderwood, Rev. Eugene Navias, Judith Frediani, Rev. Sarah Gibb Millspaugh, and dozens of other writers and curriculum editors. Hundreds of teachers and youth advisors who have led young people through it.
I thank those who continue to focus their ministries on reproductive justice and sexual morality. I think of Rev. Deborah Haffner, Rev. Robert Keithan, Rev. Kelli Clement, to name only a few. I thank the congregations who are actively engaged with supporting reproductive justice. There are so many folks to thank here! Please add their names in the comments section.
Finally, I thank the Unitarians, Universalists, and Unitarian Univeralists who have laid your bodies on the line supporting women as they struggle through these difficult choices. People in medical clinics, providing escort services, literally standing by women. I think especially of my late friend, June Barrett, who was shot in Pensacola Florida, while providing escort service to women as part of her service to the Pensacola UU congregation. June’s husband, Colonel James Barrett, and the doctor they were escorting, Dr. John Britton, were killed. As she lay still in the truck, wounded, but not dead, with these bodies beside her, she told herself that she survived for one reason: To continue to help women have access to legal and safe reproductive choice. This she did until her death.
How dare I speak out about reproductive justice? I can honestly say that I have been given this daring by thousands of others upon whose shoulders I stand. Please join us on Tuesday, January 22, at 3 PM and 7 PM Eastern time, for our online service at www.livestream.com/questformeaning. We’ll be gathering as part of a long tradition.
Worship as Emotive Experience
This past Sunday, I became emotional in the pulpit… again. Ok, truth to be told,
I’m always emotional in the pulpit. It’s part of why I never schedule anything for Sunday afternoon, because preaching a good UU sermon will wipe me out, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. I usually maintain enough reserves to make it through the coffee hour, but afterwards I have to go home and sleep for a few hours before I will be able to be worth much at all… and then it’s usually best for me to sit in front of the television and watch a movie.
It’s also why I tell anyone who has anything to talk to me about after the service that they should email me about it. I will listen during coffee hour, I will nod my head and I will even respond somewhat intelligently… and the chances of my having anything I would call “good recall and follow through” are slim. I’m simply operating in what I call my “coffee hour fugue”, a kind of emotional afterglow from the experience of worship, of preaching.
One thing I have noticed is that it was less emotional, less exhausting, and less “coffee hour fugue” inducing when I was mostly travel preaching as when I am regularly presenting worship in a congregation I know, and that knows me. The five years I spent travel preaching, the emotional content I was aware of was mostly just my own. While that was draining, I usually maintained enough energy to make it through the coffee hour and the multiple-hour drive home.
Yet in serving churches in Evanston IL, Midland MI, and now Ventura CA… that is not true. In each case, I believe I am becoming “in-tune” enough with the congregation that I am feeling more of what they feel. When, from the pulpit, I see a congregant with tears in their eyes, I know them well enough to have a fuller appreciation for what all those tears might mean. When I see a congregant laugh, I know them well enough to know some of the parts of their lives that might make laughing difficult. When a congregant comes up to me passionate and energized after the sermon, I now know them well enough to sense where that passion may be coming from (‘cause it is never actually my “wonderful sermon”).
I have said before that I believe we human beings are far more emotional creatures than we are rational creatures. Our ancestors on the evolutionary chain felt emotions far, far longer than we have had anything remotely resembling conceptualized rational thought. Our emotions have had many times many the centuries of development and opportunities to embed themselves into our nature, character and psyche than our capability for rational, symbolic thought has had. I believe that the primary purpose of reason is not to suppress or replace emotions, but rather to allow us to make some order and meaning out of our emotional lives. This understanding of reason accepts that our emotional lives remain the primary influence over who and what we are, and that reason just operates upon that primary influence.
Yet human emotion is often perceived by that reason, and by the outward society that reason reflects, as dangerous. As such, our society has created ways in which emotions can be “safely released”… Think of a football game, where emotions such as aggression, excitement, and anger can be safely released in a controlled manner about a topic that does not truly threaten our survival. Horror movies do the same for fear. Roller coasters do the same for both fear and excitement. Daytime talk shows such as Jerry Springer provide a safe experience of and release of some of our more shadow-filled emotions… jealousy, greed, superiority, etc.
At its least, congregational worship fills a similar role. I know, a shocking thing for a minister to say, to compare what we do on Sunday morning to Jerry Springer. There are some key differences… the first, and most obvious is the emotions that are brought forward in the congregational worship experience. Now, different traditions and different denominations of religious faith work with different emotions on a regular basis. I know that I experienced worship during my childhood in a different faith tradition as a regular emotional flow between superiority and shame. Superiority over all of the “sinners” who would be sent to hell when the judgment day came… and shame over my inability to save them all, and for the ways in which I too was one of those sinners. I know that when I have attended the Pentecostal churches of my mother’s tradition, there was some of that… but there was also the ecstatic emotions of joy, excitement, and connection.
The second key difference between our experience of many other societally sanctioned expressions of human emotion and congregational worship is that, at least in my understanding of the Unitarian Universalist tradition, those emotional experiences are to be shared communally. Experiencing and expressing these emotions is not a solo act. Worship should be a time where we allow the barriers that society creates around our emotional experiences to come down, just a bit… so that we can see one another as emotional creatures. And in seeing that, learn to accept our own emotional selves as normal, and beautiful.
I remember a time after a particular service where I became emotional in the pulpit, and the congregation became emotional with me. After the service, a fairly new member who was a social worker came up to me, quite disturbed. She was concerned that such an expression of emotion in a public way was unhealthy, and that it might even be unethical. Remember, this was after a sermon, so I was in my “coffee hour” fugue… but I think I responded along the lines of that congregations had been experiencing emotions together for thousands of years, and we just needed to be careful of and supportive of one another as we learned to be our emotional selves with one another. Later, that interaction helped me to develop a lens of being more aware of the emotional space of the congregation during the sermon, and to realize that some of the most important pastoral care work a congregation does happens in the Sunday Morning worship service.
Yet, I dream of something more for our time of Worship together than just an expression, even a collective expression, of our emotional selves. I dream of something more than creating a space in the lives of our congregants where it is okay to cry if you are called to cry, or laugh if you are called to laugh. I dream of something more than creating a space in the lives of congregants where it is okay to laugh with someone else, or cry with them. I dream of a space in the lives of congregants and in the life of a congregation where we can come together and not only express our emotional selves, but use the gift of our rational faculty to explore what those emotions mean for our understanding of and connection with life, the universe, and everything.
I want worship that is not only inspirational, but gets at why and how we feel inspired. I want worship that is not only deepening, but gets at why and how we feel deepened. I want worship that is not only challenging, but gets at why and how we feel challenged. I want worship that not only brings us to tears, but gets at why and how we are brought to tears. Not alone… not in a way that diagnoses what is wrong with us or makes us feel inadequate… but in a way that is simply about our learning to trust and care for our emotional souls… together.
I can dream…
Yours in faith,
Rev. David
Dancing with Scripture
One of the aspects that I believe defines the religious liberal is the acknowledgement that we
encounter the world and everything in it through our own lenses. These lenses are shaped by years of experience… by the people we meet, what we have read, and the journeys (literal and metaphorical) that we have taken. Religious Liberalism is often spoken of as a “Faith of Meaning Making”. At its best, Religious Liberalism is guided by principles, developed together and shared in covenant. At its worst, Religious Liberalism becomes a formless relativism. In either case, it is a faith practice that requires comfort with uncertainty. As I said in an article a few years ago, Religious Liberalism is the faith practice of living on the shifting sands, because such sands are all there are.
This aspect of Religious Liberalism has distinct implications for our encounters with anything in the world, but perhaps the difference is seen most clearly in how Religious Liberals encounter anything recognized as “scripture”. Such scripture may include the Hebrew or Christian Scriptures, the Buddhist Sutras, the Koran, the Baghavad Gita, the Popul Vuh, or even some of our own “scriptures”, such as the writings of some of our theological forebears (Francis David, Emerson, Parker, Channing, and so many more). The experiences of our lives can be understood as living scripture. It might be poetry or fiction, it might be science or art. What counts as scripture for those of Liberal faith is, unsurprisingly, liberal… and often very individualized. For myself, scripture consists of writings and experiences that have had a profound impact upon my life, or have had a profound impact on the lives of countless others. The philosophical writings of Mark Twain have had a profound impact upon my life, and so I include “What is Man?” and “The War Prayer” in my personal canon. Though I am not much moved by the Gospel of John from the New Testament, I recognize that millions have been so moved, so I also recognize its scriptural authority and seek to dance with it.
As I have encountered it in myself and others, the metaphor of a dance is the best I can find for how I and many other Religious Liberals (though perhaps not all) encounter scripture. In taking classes with non-religious liberals studying scripture of varying kinds (from transcendentalism to Christianity to Buddhism and more) I found the questions they most often asked were: “What meaning can be authentically derived from this scripture (exegesis)?”, “What is the context of this scripture?” and “What does this scripture require of me?”.
In encountering some of these same classes and scriptures with my fellow religious liberals, I found a different set of questions being asked… and I think this difference contrasts how religious liberals and others practice faith. Instead of asking “What meaning can be authentically derived from this scripture?”, I found Religious Liberals far more likely to ask “What meaning is there for me in this scripture, in this moment and in my context?” In other words, I found myself and many of my fellow Religious Liberals called to an eisegetical approach to scripture (reading meaning into the scripture) and not purely an exegetical approach (reading meaning from the scripture).
Now, there is a broad divide between how exegesis and eisegesis are viewed in the academic approach to scriptural reading and interpretation. That divide can be stated clearly… exegesis good… eisegesis bad, bad, BAD! Every class studying scripture I have ever encountered (save the one on Buddhist scriptures) understood the purpose of the class in part as purifying eisegesis out of the student’s engagement with the scripture. Students are required to write exegetical papers, and are chided by professors when they make what are interpreted as eisegetical statements. Papers are graded in part for the amount of eisegetical content that might be found in them.
There are two main problems I wish to highlight with this approach. The first is to ask the post-modernist question… Can we ever achieve objective exegesis? Is it possible to encounter a scripture (or anything for that matter) and leave all of the other experiences of our lives out of the encounter? Does not a poor black woman and a rich white man encounter a certain metaphor about camels and eyes of needles in different ways? How do you decide which of these ways is more valid or objective?
One of the answers to this problem of the variability of exegetical work that has gained traction, not in the academy, but in the encounters with scripture by many Conservative Christians, is the “Common Sense” approach. It is the belief that the biblical scriptures of the Christian tradition can be understood with “common sense”, and that you do not need any particular training or skill at interpretation… because there is no interpretation to be done. The meaning is plain and the same to everyone… and that if you do not agree on a scripture’s meaning that is because either you are being deceived by Satan or you are over-thinking it (or both).
Both the academic search for an exegetical objectivity and the “common sense” answer of many of my Conservative Christian friends share the same problem… they often seek to define the scripture as having one meaning, one interpretation, and one purpose. At least in the Academy they invite dialogue and conversation between different interpretations, however the purpose of that dialogue is often (in my opinion) is to convince others of your position. There is similar variability of interpretation among those who follow the “common sense” approach, with much less dialogue. I do find my “Common Sense” Christian friends to be a bit more strident on what will happen to you if you do not agree with them than my friends in the Academy. Failing a class seems so much less scary after listening to descriptions of hell and damnation.
I highlight these two different approaches to interpreting and finding meaning in scripture not to put them down, but to highlight the difference that I see between these approaches and the one I believe we are called to practice as Religious Liberals. Both the academic exegetical approach and the “common sense” approach have value in that they provide a basis for meaning for those who practice them, and each provides a larger base of thought on the scripture for the Religious Liberal to encounter and dance with. My concern with the academic exegetical approach comes when it does not make room for the validity of any other way of encountering and understanding scripture. My concern with the “common sense” approach comes when it seeks to enforce such an individualized interpretation of scripture upon others (for I believe that the common sense approach is actually a mask for doing eisegesis while pretending it is exegesis).
As Religious Liberals, I believe that we are called, as a spiritual practice, to “dance” with the scriptures that we find move us and have power for us in our lives. I believe we are called to “dance” with the scriptures that others find moving and powerful, and that we have yet to find the same within. I believe we are called to “dance” even (and perhaps most importantly) with those scriptures that we find disturbing, that challenge our basic assumptions, but that others see as authoritative. Our encounters with scripture (of all types) should be fluid and dynamic, an interplay between that which makes up who we are and the scripture.
Let me use a section of Christian scripture as an example of one part of my own personal dance. As a teenager in a Southern Baptist Church, I remember a day when a scripture reading seemed to contrast strongly with the practice of my church. I had long begun to believe that for many of my fellow Church members, they came to church mainly to be seen coming to church. There was always a show of how much each tithed to the church. Some people seemed to want to be noticed in prayer during the service. Some seemed to compete for who could say “AMEN!” first. I had accepted that trying to show your piety publicly was a part of what it meant to be a Christian. We had regularly been told that we should “wear our crosses on our sleeves”, so that we could better witness to others. Everyone we met should know that Jesus had saved us, and that he could save them too.
Then one day the Pastor read to us Matthew, Chapter 6. At first, I thought I had heard him wrong, as he said “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them”. I was flabbergasted when the scripture told us not to pray in the temples and synagogues or on street corners, but rather to “go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.”
‘God is in secret?’ I thought. ‘Since when?’
I had been trained in the “Common Sense” school of understanding the Bible, and the common sense meaning of this scripture told me that I should get away from this church as fast as possible… something I eventually did. At that moment in my life, this scripture became part of why I asked my parents to quit making me go to church (there were other reasons, many of them not so religious). It was then that I really began developing the idea of an individual understanding of my relationship to God, and seeking a private understanding of prayer. By twenty, I was a Christian Deist.
Years later, as I was studying with a Zen Buddhist Roshi and practicing Zen meditation, I encountered this scripture again. I remembered how important that verse had been to me in my teens, but now my dance with it had new steps. I had found a way to “pray” behind closed doors, if not always alone in a room then in silence, seated on the floor and facing a wall. I realized that part of my practicing Zen was a public form of piety… I was given credit by many of my fellow Unitarian Universalists for being “pious and spiritual” because I spent some time every day sitting and facing a wall, even though a spiritual piety was not necessarily my internal reality. I used my connection to Zen to foster that image however, because it was useful to be seen that way in seminary. And when I prayed as a minister in public, I found myself at times “heaping up empty phrases”, and realized there was a disconnect between my private prayer life and the public prayers that were a part of my understanding of the role of “minister”.
Encountering Matthew 6 was a part of my re-evaluation of the places that Zen, Unitarian Universalism, and prayer were playing in my life. That evaluation eventually led to my stepping away from Zen (among other reasons), and focusing again on my own personal practices of prayer and meditation. Eventually I will seek a re-encounter with Zen, but at a time when I am not seeking it for reasons of public piety and ministerial formation.
Two very different encounters with the same scripture… what was different? The scripture was the same, but the meanings I found at each time were very different, and in each case they were transformative for me. What was different was me. The scripture spoke to me differently because I had changed. I had different lenses, different needs, and different experiences. The ability for something, anything, to speak in different ways to different people at different times in their lives may be the unifying definition of what is scripture for me.
The dance with scripture is an interplay, across experience and time, between an individual human being and a fixed point of wisdom, story, experience or thought. I do not have to agree with the wisdom for it to be scripture… I do not agree with John 14:6, (I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the father except through me). Yet each time I encounter that scripture it teaches me something new about myself and what I do believe.
The exegesis, the context of the scripture, the criticism of the scripture and other interpretations, and the meanings the scripture has held for others… these all form the dance floor. To truly be dancing with a scripture, you need to be aware of these… what others have claimed the scripture objectively means, how it relates to other scriptures and to the whole of the religious system, what meanings have been regularly found within the scripture. This is the setting for the dance, and you cannot dance without it. But they are not the dance…
The Dance is the interplay between your sense of self and the life you have lived with this fixed point of wisdom we call scripture. The interplay and interconnection between myself and scripture is one of the places where I see the Holy Spirit within my life. The transformations and inspirations from that dance are primarily for the individual who experiences them. My purpose as a Religious Liberal Minister is not to teach others my dance, but to help others discover their own. Perhaps then I might also be inspired and transformed by how they dance with scripture.
I invite you to dance.
Yours in faith,
Rev. David
“The” Indefinite Article
Do you remember the Schoolhouse Rock cartoons and songs from the 1970s? Even my kids watch them today on DVD and reruns. There was a series about math, about politics, and about grammar. My favorites were “Conjunction junction, what’s your function,” “Interjection,” and “I’m just a bill, sitting here on Capitol Hill.” I think they remain one of the most brilliant television-learning tools ever created. But there was a serious gap in Schoolhouse Rock, for which I think America’s youth have suffered for too long. They never created an episode about the most important part of speech. The article. If Schoolhouse Rock had taught us the difference between the definite and indefinite article, English speakers would be a more enlightened crowd.
Okay, I know you are trying to remember what an article is. “The” is a definite article. “A” and “an” are indefinite articles. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” has a very different meaning than “I am a way, a truth, and a life,” or even “I am way, truth, and life.” Sometimes there is elegance in the indefinite, or even in the absence of an article.
John 14:6 is used often by Christian fundamentalists as irrefutable truth that Jesus and Christianity are the only path to salvation. I agree that the author of John, who most scholars do not believe would have been the disciple himself, had as his primary objective, making Jesus the Christ. Chapter 20 verses 30 and 31 even say, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing you may have life in his name.”
And so, it is likely that the author meant exactly what he wrote. In the Greek original, the definite article “ho”, which is in the nominative singular feminine form (in case you were wondering), is clearly present. “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” However, there is no other way to say this in Greek. The indefinite article is seldom used and specifically means “one.” No clarification needed here.
Of course, we have no way of knowing whether or not Jesus actually said these words, especially to that specificity. The best guess of modern day biblical scholars is that he did not. The Jesus Seminar, which is a group of scholars who systematically analyze the Christian scriptures toward the goal of determining the authenticity of Jesus’ words, have come to the conclusion that almost none of the words attributed to Jesus in John, were actually uttered. John is a persuasive story toward a specific goal.
For arguments sake, let’s say that Jesus did say something about being way, truth, and life. Jesus may have understood and spoken the Greek that John was written in, the common language of the occupied land. However, his native tongue was almost certainly Aramaic, which is a Semitic language closer to Hebrew, and very different from Greek. There is also the 50-80 year gap of oral tradition between Jesus’ death and the time that John was likely written. But even if Jesus spoke the words, definite articles in Aramaic are even more troublesome. The definite article doesn’t really exist in Aramaic, but is embedded and expressed in the noun itself, which has three forms. A definite article is expressed via the emphatic form of the noun, but is not really so definite as in English. If that isn’t enough, ancient Aramaic and modern Aramaic (like English and most living languages) are different. Noun forms have changed over time. For example, emphatic (definite) nouns are more used in modern Aramaic than they were in biblical Aramaic. Regardless of what, if anything was said, it seems impossible to know definitively how definite Jesus was being here.
It is also interesting to look at languages that have no articles at all, like Latin and Russian. In Russian (which I speak) this passage reads, “Ya yest’ put, i istina, i zhizn’.” Literally “I am way, and truth, and life.” Another interesting aspect of this is that, in Russian, the noun “to be” is usually not voiced in the present tense. If you and I were speaking to each other, I would simply say, “Ya put, i istina, i zhizn”…or “I way, and truth, and life.” The verb form “yest'” (I am) is likely included in the Russian Bible because it is also emphasized in the various Hebrew forms of the Hebrew Scriptures, and expresses more of an existential quality. One might say, “I exist as way, and truth, and life,” but even that wouldn’t be exactly correct.
The point is that, without any articles at all, languages like Russian are actually more robust because meaning cannot be so clearly defined, or misinterpreted, with a single qualifier. Meaning must be derived in other ways like nuance, word order, emphasis, and more in-depth conversation. The meaning of “Ya yest’ put, i istina, i zhizn’,” requires more information to be fully understood.
Liberal expressions of faith are more like the indefinite article. We are not the way, the truth, and the life. We are more of a way, a truth and a life. But even the singular indefinite article is limiting. Liberal faith can also be lived as faith with no articles at all. And in that absence, I find even more strength. The Bible loses so much of its power if we limit it to a singular and definite meaning. When we say that there is only “the way, and the truth, and the life,” we seal revelation, and there is nothing new to learn. When there is nothing new to learn, put me in my grave. I’m done.
The Unitarian Universalist principles, for example, don’t say that we are have the truth or even a truth. They say, “free and responsible search for truth and meaning—no articles—just truth and meaning. How we define truth and meaning then requires more discussion and explanation and interpretation and even debate. Unitarian Universalism requires nuance, emphasis and more in-depth conversation. I actually believe all religions require this, because I don’t believe any sacred text can be taken at literal face value. Doing so might make it easier on our brains, but would sell the authors short. And Jesus said,
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.
To be a person of faith who does not take the path of the definite article, one must have some comfort with ambiguity. One must be willing to work out truth and meaning with nuance, emphasis, and more in-depth conversation. Grammar matters.