Where were you when I created him gay?

There has been a conversation here which like the dialogue in Job has multiple sides. There is little hope that people will stop misreading the creation narratives or the law. It is part of our growth to read and misread. Those who read wrong must learn to read right through the mercy or misery of others, and in the meanwhile they will dig themselves in as Eliphaz and his pals did to defend a view of God that is not how God works.

When Hashem responds, he is clear on two things. He is the creator even if creation is overbearing and brutal in its loveliness. And, secondly, he is the one who invites Leviathan and Behemoth to play. It is this that finally tips the balance for Job - who was right all along in his insistence that the Deuteronomic curses were applied to him in spite of his wholesome behaviour. Perhaps he had not known his own inner beast. Job learns from God as we also must - 'they shall all be taught by God'. And 'you have no need that any man should teach you'.

Part of the problem is whether we make ourselves judges and stop Jesus from saving people in the way he chooses to save them - and that includes our being saved as well. Why do we have this 'problem' of homosexual behaviour? Because we are to learn from it especially how to avoid some kinds of judgment about creation and redemption. Do I determine how God can act? How can I obey the faith in this situation? I can certainly get as overheated and allow myself to be as misread as anyone else.

There are those who say I have given up and that I should judge this 'sin' their way. It is not my research into the texts that stops me reading their way. Moreover, for me to succumb to argument would be to give in to wrong answers. I would be as those who search the scriptures like Eliphaz but fail to see the Beloved portrayed in them. Search the scriptures, by all means (literally, historically, philosophically, theologically) - but it is not in our laws and logic nor in our force that we find eternal life.

Carping on the Creativity of Morton Smith

I have just laughed my way through the latest issue or BAR on the Secret Gospel of Mark. Mark Goodacre has an original video which is a suitable watching experience in spite of the dumb label.

Now - for the serious matter at hand. I am not writing in my story teller's voice, that first century character Secundus, who has written so much about the mystery of the ages (stories here), but I will try in my own voice to say what this Secret Gospel obscures or reveals or runs the risk of obscuring.(Anything in double-quotes below may be the story teller emerging.)

If the subject is serious why was I laughing? The distortion of the good, the sin of the world is not a laughing matter. But one might almost say that love is impossible. I can hear the chorus of 'how can you trust a magazine like BAR?' Well I am as skeptical as anyone about truth claims.But I enjoy the occasional BAR article. Its 200th issue was worth it just for the personal essays by Herschel Shanks.

So his concluding article in this issue of BAR is that this find by Morton Smith is not a hoax. I am laughing because the scholars and lawyers are so intent on proving something and the magazine editor gets the last word. If it is a hoax, it is brilliant and the deception is the work of an acting genius who would take such a play to his death.

If my perception of the facts on the ground is distorted, how can I come to a sound conclusion? (You may vary the pronouns in the prior sentence to suit your own situation.)

It doesn't matter to me whether it is a hoax or not. There is enough evidence for this true tradition in the canon whether your canon ends with Chronicles or with the Apocalypse. (The rest is unnecessary but may not be misleading.) If I read that God is love do I believe it? Or do I hedge it about with moral advice? "Yes, love - of course, obvious, but God is light too - and you aren't. So watch out!"

Why would I believe words when I can, like the Samaritan woman, find out for myself. "If you try and tell people what you think you know from you-know-whom, not only will they not believe you but they will tear you limb from limb and you-know-who will cut you off." "Nonsense! - There is another whose body was broken for me. You-know-who can't cut me off - we have a deal sealed with blood, his blood. I wouldn't have a clue if it weren't for this. If I had not managed to enter into this deal, I would be totally self-serving. Maybe I would have been smart enough to be a clever swindler and get rich quick or something."

If I am to prove God's good will, it is a consequence of having met my beloved at a well. It is not something anyone else can do for me. Running away naked in the garden is not an option. All things are open and naked before the one with whom I have to deal. Having died with Jesus, if God then raises me from the dust and makes me young again - is that not just what is recorded in Psalm 103? And what about in 1 Samuel 2 - Hannah's song? If God then gives me a linen garment for a covering, this does not relieve me of responsibility but it changes the way I read and look at everything - even the Scripture itself, (even tradition, even reason!).

Just about everywhere I look in Scripture, if I slow down long enough to listen, and I demolish, by the Anointing of that same Jesus, those patterns of thought in me that seek power, then it stops being a 'Bible' to be thumped or desperately studied and becomes the word of one who loves, and who then becomes one with the one who is loved. This is a growth pattern day by  day as I learn to pay attention to all the stimuli around me. There is no lack of confidence in the gift or the giver. It is hearing and doing that lead to understanding.

The Gospel (secret or otherwise) reveals that no area of life must be thought of as out of bounds for God. Such thought is just another human ordinance. But I may obscure the cost or fail to approach and enter - let it not be so. Salted sacrifice that I am, you-know-who will deliver me.

The Galilee Report

This may be old news to some, but I first saw it today. It is a major piece of theological work. The first 33 paragraphs alone are worth the read for their careful consideration of the frame of reference: scripture, tradition and reason. [Part way through - I might have arguments about some of the linguistic claims but I think there is promise and I expect some disagreement. Perhaps I will blog later on it.]

On the Body's Grace - final notes

Kai Euthus completed some time ago the notes on William's essay - see shared items for the links.

In a comment I have playfully remarked: ... thank you for the serious engagement with the essay. No knock-down Winnie-ther-Pooh type argument is req'd - but as Wol would ask by selection of bell-pull or knocker - a response is reqd.

The response is our response - that is - to the body we find ourselves in, and a part of, family, church, body of Christ (explain that word to me, shepherds, said the Angel).

I suggest our response, of whatever orientation we think we are, can be found in the Psalms and the Song - even Psalm 24 commended itself to me today - lift up your heads O ye gates and be lifted up - doors of any era - and the King of Glory (a five-fold haphax in this psalm) will come in.

The presence of the King will determine a new configuration of 'worries'. It is not primarily a 'moral' presence, because 'love' is primary and the Bridegroom has revealed at what cost he will secure his bride who is his 'one flesh'.

The 1000+ essays and stories I have written, siblings, all point to this response and its joy.

Law and Faith

Well, one has to be foolhardy to take this subject on - don't you think?

This is a short essay on the 'therefore' of Romans 8:1. David has asked the usual difficult question. What if someone 'came out' to you...

If David weren't who he seems to be, I would not bother responding. Wait a minute! Is any of us who we seem to be? Why do we judge each other so - whether for good or not? Hear again that verse, Romans 8:1, with which we have ended for the moment a long conversation on the preposition 'in'.

1: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

That there is no condemnation does not mean there is no work to do. But the work is done in a different context from the assumption that we know what is right before we start. The different context is in the 7 chapters that precede the 'therefore' of this verse.

Notice that I have not put law and grace in my title - but law and faith. Note the pattern of 'condemn' throughout the first 8 chapters - with only a brief reminder in the paranetic sections (12-15). [update: this pattern is dubious since I don't do much Greek - but I notice a serious concentration of judge (part of the same word condemn) in chapters 3 and 14.]

Romans 2:1 you condemn yourself
Romans 2:27 they will condemn you
Romans 3:7 why am I still being condemned
Romans 3:8 Their condemnation is just
Romans 5:16 judgment following one trespass brought condemnation
Romans 5:18 one human's trespass led to condemnation
Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation...
Romans 8:3 he condemned sin in the flesh
Romans 8:33 It is God who justifies; who is to condemn?
Romans 14:23 But the one who has doubts is condemned, if he eats, because one does not act from faith; for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

I have been reading the work of C.H. Dodd on Greek and Hebrew words. I won't cite his chapter and verse, because scholarly authority is not what I am looking for here. I am looking for that authority that I have reflected on before. Do we hear the voice of the Shepherd in our understanding of law? Torah, teaching in Hebrew is a much richer word than the Greek for law implies. The Greek for law, I understand is much richer than the notion of legal and can include custom in its view. Whether these are true statements or not, Paul has set up the fear of law in the first 7 chapters of Romans, because that's how we meet law, teaching, and custom as children and as adults anxious to be acceptable to others. Not because that sort of fear is a wholesome response to reality. Then in chapter 8, Paul uses law in a completely different sense:

2: For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.

No one in Christ should consider themselves alive on their own terms. All of us and each of us has died to the flesh - if we are in Christ. This includes homosexual and heterosexual alike. I doubt we have done this well. But if it is done, there will be less doubt about God's ability to deal with our whole selves, whoever we are. And for anyone, the fact of the matter (to read and hear the Shepherd's voice) is that it is done (John 19:30). Whether we did it well or not or even not at all, he did it well and completely, and we are 'in him'.

3: For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as a sin offering, he condemned sin in the flesh,

It is finished. And we are invited into its completion and the new creation that is at the place where we meet God, where we know God's presence to us in the Spirit, that is, in the Holy Place where Jesus died. We are all invited and encouraged to enter. There are no conditions. In that place, do you think God does not know how to deal with sex? This is after all the Bridegroom we are talking about.

4: in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

The just requirement of the law is fulfilled in us who belong to Christ, who have put on Christ, who are in Christ. Do we judge who belongs or who has put on Christ by their dishonesty? Do we not accept those who tell us the truth about themselves? In David's words - who 'come out of the closet'.

5: For those according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

We do judge within limits. What hurts or destroys others is not of the Spirit. We don't do things that way. Not by might nor by power. But we do not judge by what we do not know. Suspend your judgment in case you are judging in the flesh rather than in the Spirit. Suspend your judgment by the power of the cross for you. Say, I cannot judge, for I have died - I cannot do anything. Then you will begin to know because the Spirit who raised our Lord Jesus from the dead will inform you. And he will similarly inform the one who has 'come out'. And that - as Jesus said in the case of the youngster who threw himself in the fire - is a matter for prayer, not for the judgment of condemnation.

6: To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

This verse applies to all in Christ. To set the mind on the condemning view of the law is death. There is no condemnation - that means those of us who think we know better do not condemn and do not judge, and those of use who are weak are not condemned or judged by those who think they are strong.

7: For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot; 8: and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Does it come as a surprise that these verses must also apply to the one who judges? It is not the righteous who need salvation. If we already knew the answers then why did Christ die?

So what am I to do for the one who says to me - "I believe what God has done for me in Christ. I am in Christ. I stake my claim. I have been truthful with you. I have revealed the depths of my heart and I am going to live my life according to what I know of myself in Christ."

If I have heard these words - can I still condemn this person? (I admit I have added to David's statement, but those who are not in Christ are not who I am considering here.)

If I want to please God, then I will listen to this verse and I will not condemn this person. I will in the words that follow 'put to death the deeds' of my own body so that I too can live. I will crucify my desire to tell this person that they can't possibly be right and think the way they do.

What have I done to the law? Have I denied the reality of God's condemnation of sin? Not at all! I have established God's teaching in a way I could not imagine outside the work of the Spirit in me. How do I know it is God's Spirit working in me? Because I have done this through the death of Jesus. I have crucified more than this imaginary example. Once I see the work to be done in Christ more clearly, then in my joy, I will know that my earlier understandings were incorrect and incomplete and I can trust that my friend and brother or sister who came out to me will similarly find completeness in him.

So David, do I judge you for your judgment against me or against your friend? No. But I invite you to take the harder path and to restrain your condemnation in case God has more in mind than you think.

(I see I am not alone in responding to David. I may be alone in basing my response on Paul!)

The body's grace (11)

Please note the shared item to the left on this blog from Mike Highton. I left a comment, but such is the difficulty of signing in etc I have saved it here in case it got lost in the ether.

Are comments important? This one is. The debate over same-sex relationships seldom gets to the need for all - gay or straight - to conform themselves to the death of Christ. That means, folks, that you cannot desire anything or act or talk or walk - cause you have died. (In your baptism of course). So whatever is good or bad in you has died - the whole thing. Not just the parts you don't like.

Then - after your death - this is your first death - Then, I say, when the voice of your creator rings in your ears - Well-done, good and faithful servant, you have overcome through my blood - Then I say, - Then you will begin to learn. The kingdom does not come about by our strength or by our morality or by our will. And your 'then' will work backwards and forwards in your time, redeeming it, showing you how your God was leading you before you even knew, discovering grace where you saw only disorientation, finding you awake instead of asleep.

Now - after my short ranting sermon, this was my comment on Mike's very well reasoned essays.

Hi again - no I don't disagree. I don't actually think either you or Rowan go far enough. I agree that our sexuality is far more central than not. Also I agree that 'natural' is a weak argument against same sex relations. I think you have done very well in this whole series of essays. I have shred [sic - I meant shared] them all on one of my blogs. You achieve the highest score when you write in the person of your interlocutor:

>>I want to live in obedience to God; I truly, prayerfully and conscientiously do not recognise Romans 1 as describing what I am or what I want. I am not rejecting something I know in the depths of my being.<<

What then must also be said - is "and I have come to this knowledge of my person through the death of Jesus. It is by him in the Spirit and the unexpected glory of his resurrection that I now begin to know myself. And that knowledge matures and embraces my being - it does not deny it as those who reject my desire out of hand would deny it."

Need it be said that the same consecration of desire must be known by the heterosexual also. If it is so known then I doubt that the heterosexual will apply Romans 1 out of its rhetorical context. This is not a simple slam-dunk argument that Paul is making, but the beginning of a 55 step sequence in 10 parts that does not get to its end till chapter 12. (Some do not like the end of chapter 12 - see my recent translation of psalm 34 for a real life comment from another elder and friend.)

Shared items

You may have noticed that I have been sharing some items on Rowan Williams by Mike Highton. I think he may be on to an explanation that differs from the usual fearful notes on sexuality and morality that we hear about. I particularly like the suggestive beginnings of interpretation of 1 Corinthians 6 and 7. Christians are afraid of conforming to the world. But equally well they fail to see what they have taught the world and what the world can teach them about their God.

See the left panel for the links.

The Body's Grace

Do note this and the posts it points to - not too long a read.

When I was a child, I spake as a child

How many stages of growth have I gone through? It's not as if you need to be told - "it's only a stage". I found that a real put-down especially from people who had not wrestled with the issues I felt I was wrestling with. But there were stages - and can we see them? There were stages of fear, of anger, of denial, of hope, - maybe it was not wrestling with issues so much as with the Creator of Issues. I suspect we all can identify with the ford of Jabbok to some extent.

It is not perhaps the stages that are important - but whether we can trust the people who give us advice during our lives. If they are people in power, will they destroy us if we disagree with them? It is a strange question - but not if you come from Zimbabwe today. If the Creator of Issues (you know who I mean) destroys me, it is to teach me his will - which is always good even if it is painful. One could say that the most fundamental creed is this - concerning goodness.

What this Lord who is good has taught me is of himself - that my deepest self is not condemned. Why then do I hear so much condemnation and fear in the writings of others - especially of those opposed to certain issues? Is it because they cannot read the metaphor of leaven? Are their hearts hard? Or must I hear a law that my Lord has not taught me?

We must all come before the judgment seat of Christ. Whether or not we 'die'. Did we seek and hold earthly power? Did we seek and hold Godly pleasure? Was our power or pleasure in Christ? If there is no Christ, then might and possession of power and pleasure are everything and we might as well be as the Mugabe's of this world. Even if we are to be judged at death only by the next generation, then we return to the problem of being able to trust those in power in the current generation.

Why do I distrust the traditional readings of the clobber texts of Scripture? Simply because I once read Scripture this way, and my Lord taught me otherwise. If I have seen God's love then how can I use the texts this way - they cannot possibly bear the baggage I would put on them even if I were to argue that they bore that baggage when they were written in their original context (and I don't believe this either - the historical baggage and our baggage are of completely different scopes - we have wheels now).

So that struggle for earthly power, even the power of interpretation (not needed some say), is not the real struggle. Rather the struggle is against the One who loves us and gave himself for us.

As Hans Küng writes (p 160)

The Church is founded on Jesus Christ himself as he encounters us in the Christian message which has its original record in the New Testament and to which the dogmas of the church are accountable.

Küng laments that his colleague Walter Kasper was not able to hold his position on infallibility which Kasper writes (12 December 1969 in the Catholic Weekly Publik)

[Infallibility] means the trust and faith that the church is fundamentally maintained in the truth of the Gospel by the Spirit of God despite some errors in detail... through the church the eschatalogical conflict with the powers of untruth, error, and lies constantly takes place in the belief that here the truth will time and again prevail.

If this is so - without pronouncement by human leaders, and of course it is hardly understood this way, then what is the problem about trusting the Spirit of the risen Saviour, the Creator of Issues, to lead, correct, and delight those who are different from the norms of the dominant culture - if they have so claimed Christ.

Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved - right? So what's going on with the rejection of those who differ? What's going on is a failure to distinguish things that are different. The request for a covenant with teeth is failure of faith. It becomes trust in words rather than trust in the Lord.

Purity and righteousness beyond the normal

In my last post, I left this title phrase hanging - without conclusion: The Gate is open – it is narrow, requiring purity and righteousness beyond the normal.

Is it clear to you what I mean?

Some time ago, I asked for a sermon on the sermon. Poor old Secundus is pondering so deeply that he hasn't yet made it to the sermon on the mount.

I think people really get hung up on the righteousness beyond the normal -

Here are a few extracts from Matthew and Luke's rendition of the sermon: Luke is first, then Matthew's parallel. Matthew's colour is pink, Luke's is green-blue. It's tricky to read. If reading in Luke, Matthew's colour shows you what is shared with Luke. If you are reading in Matthew, Luke's colour shows you what is shared with Matthew. (It only gets worse with Mark.)

And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? As you go with your accuser before the magistrate, make an effort to settle with him on the way, lest he drag you to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer put you in prison. I tell you, you will never get out till you have paid the very last copper.

You have heard that it was said to the men of old, 'You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, 'You fool!' shall be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Make friends quickly with your accuser, while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison; truly, I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny.

I checked the Greek. Copper is not the same word as penny, a point respected by this translation (RSV) - but it really doesn't matter if you check the Greek. There is nothing magical about original tongues or autographs if you can't read anyway. As Jesus says - Judge for yourself what is right.

I know that is too frightening - we want rules because we don't even trust ourselves. What if my accuser is God? How will I make friends?

Now about the superior righteousness, it's in the bit just prior to the above:

Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

The Luke colour is not wrong exactly but it is a bit arbitrary how we might connect parallel passages (This connection is from Kurt-Aland in Synopsis of the Four Gospels, Greek-English Edition of the Synopsis Quattuor Evangelium). This one is perhaps unnecessary. I often repeat myself - as is shown by my wordle profiles. Why wouldn't Jesus repeat himself?

What are the commandments that must not be relaxed? I don't want to make this too easy - but let's talk about heaven and earth.

When do heaven and earth pass away? When God dies. That for a worm, a God should die ( a sixteenth century paraphrase of Psalm 8 - set by Henry Purcell, sung by Janet Baker). Behold I make new heavens and a new earth. It is done (Revelation). I could go on. If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). And while we're at it, I would like to paraphrase Galatians 6:15 - for in Christ Jesus, neither is heterosexuality anything nor homosexuality, but a new creation.

You see - heaven and earth have already passed away in Jesus Christ - and they were recreated in his resurrection. He died and I died in him. My re-creation is not for anyone else to judge.

Let me tell you - when God matures a homosexual creature in Jesus Christ by his death, God does not make such a one 'straight' in the common sense of the word - but he makes such a one gifted in Christ without reservation as belonging to him. Reject such gifts at your peril.

For those who have ears, the exceeding righteousness - beyond the normal - is not to be feared. Though I or anyone else be 'least in the kingdom of heaven', we are in it. Our righteousness, vindicated by the Spirit, is greater than any human legal or moral attempt for it is accomplished by the work of God in us through his only Son in whom we have died and been made a new creature in a new heaven and a new earth.

Abraham, friend of God invites our friendship by faith - nothing more. It is a light burden. Jesus confirms his friendship with us. We have walked with our accuser and made friends. There is now no court case against us. The charges have been dropped. The narrow gate has been entered. We find ourselves in the Holy place.

Anglican Voices

Someone named Bob MacDonald - looks a lot like me - is featured here on Anglican Voices in the Times Online. Conversation snippets are difficult to hear in isolation. The cross section of comments shows how people read and how they make inferences from their readings.

Why is the Gospel Good?

I am not at all sure what I begin has an easy ending. This is a long and rambling post in contrast to Doug Chaplin's careful reasoning. Again he has approached the issue of same-sex behaviour with sensitivity. He writes:

I think we’re standing at a point where, in the light of all our knowledge, it seems reasonable to ask whether this is one of those occasions for the church to engage in the kind of drastic re-reading of texts we thought we knew. This is the relevance of, for example, the admission of Gentiles, or the banning of slavery.

I have recommended before the treatment of Leviticus in Wrestling with God and Men by Rabbi Steven Greenberg. Rabbi Greenberg reads into the object marker (as many Rabbis have done in other texts) that no-one should treat men or women with the violence implied in some male-female relations.

Steven deals with his early personal response in the first part of the book - I am sure many have heard and wondered how to avoid the apparent 'plain' meaning. Here is a quick summary of his re-reading: (see here for a longer review from 3 years ago before I knew any Hebrew.)

Leviticus 18:22 literal: וְאֶת-זָכָר--לֹא תִשְׁכַּב, מִשְׁכְּבֵי אִשָּׁה: תּוֹעֵבָה, הִוא.
and with a male you shall not lie the lyings of a woman: it is a toevah.

1. given the traditional dominance of male over female he then translates the verse as

And a male
you shall not sexually penetrate
to humiliate
it is abhorrent

2. Then at the end he asks what to do with the אֶת in the verse - a word normally not translated.

ve'et zakhar
lo tishkav
mishkeve ishah
toevah hi

Two other places where the אֶת is interpreted by rabbinic tradition are

• in Deuteronomy 10:20 - you shall revere (אֶת) the Lord your God (fill in the blank) (Nehemia Haimsoni says it should be the students of the sages)
• and the fifth of the 10 commandments (kaved 'et avikha v'et imekha) where the (אֶת) is interpreted as including step mother/step father or (I add) adoptive mother/father
• and I add - in Genesis 1:1 include the new heavens and new earth
  

3. Our author then suggests the אֶת in Leviticus should be translated as including the woman:

And (אֶת either a female or) a male
you shall not sexually penetrate
to humiliate
it is abhorrent

As a Christian, I am grateful for this re-reading but I do not need it for I am not under law but under grace. I want of course to be under 'law' understood as the teaching of the Lord for I know the loveliness of such teaching even in my infancy as a student but I know also that I am covered already from a negative view of Torah (law, teaching, instruction) by a host of instruction through the Anointing including and not least, the sermon on the mount. The Spirit teaches - things which are not abhorent to Scripture - but things nonetheless that differ from the uninterpreted so called plain meanings of the text. Such teaching and interpretation enlarges the boundaries of our hearts.

What scope does this give me? And am I bound in any way once I am covered by the blood of the Lamb and have entered into the Holy Place through his flesh?

This is not a question to be put in a few words: Apophatically: not by violence, not by exploitation, not unequally. Most of these resolve into 'not by the exercise of power'. One could also say 'not for oneself, but for the other'. This though has dangerous self-delusional potential.

Sexual expression, from an evolutionary point of view, represents Freud's pleasure principle. From Dawkin's point of view, it is the selfish gene saying without words - get the seed to grow and be fruitful - populate the world, make a copy of me! At the social level, we have arranged marriages and family connections, caste and racial segregation, religious conformity required in a mixed marriage and so on. These too seem more like power politics than the love of the All-Merciful.

Can there be any fulfilment here? Is there a non-social, non-negative view of sexuality in the Beloved?

There is room for a positive response. But the entry is costly. It requires the New Creation- the New Heavens and New Earth. And it is done. Who is it that through the death of Christ gives life to our mortal bodies? (Re-read Romans 8.) Is this only for enjoyment in some determined future after physical death (the second death) or is it something to be known and enjoyed after our first death which is sealed in our baptism. But we must approach and enter. The way is narrow and we are in the presence of a Holy God who is not to be trifled with.

You could read the Psalms too and ask if God has pleasure in his creation. You could read the longing and joy of the chosen in them. Try Psalm 16. You could ask if God's creation is good and wait for his answer.

Even here I must repeat the negatives - not with violence or humiliation, not with exploitation or idolatry of payment, not with inequality of relationship. These desires are destroyed in the death of Christ. We must therefore put them to death in ourselves by our baptism. Outside the central theodicy issue of Romans, the instruction to 'put to death the deeds of the body' is critical to his message. If we have died - then there is nothing we can do, for we have died. Our actions can only be in the Spirit through that death. As he writes: but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live. Or again you [plural] have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.

Now do you - any of you - want to marry when you are already married (collectively and severally) to the risen Christ? No one preaches on Paul's note that if you marry you will have trouble in this world. But each is given the unique gift that is for each - one person this way, another that (also from 1 Corinthians 7). And for some it is marriage. And today, marriage means mutual help and economic benefit both now and with inherited wealth. It's more than an issue of sex.

What does God do when one who is impure, different, sinner, approaches the altar which is Christ crucified? God tears down the barrier of his holiness, enters our condition, and creates a place of mercy and an open gate and gives us boldness to enter. And here by his own means he matures us.

So Lambeth is upon us in the midst of power struggles and holy disputes. The bishops, if they are in Christ, must have known mercy - such as I have described too briefly. If they have known mercy, they will show it by inviting the uninvited. They will know that they are not the judges of purity but that they have themselves been judged. Purity comes not by the effort of a human, rather it was decided by God when he raised Jesus from the dead who was himself a curse for us. If it is given to us to purify ourselves as he is pure, it is by means of his death that we accomplish it. No one who claims that means will be refused by God. How then can I refuse such a one?

This week I have been reading Hans Küng's Disputed Truth - Memoirs II. He notes on page 90 that "fasting and the use of artificial birth control are no longer considered mortal sins". The question occurred to me - who prepares the people for God, us (the church) or God?

If the moral law is absolute, then we do and the fascist policies and procedures of the curia are appropriate to church governance - as are power politics. If it is God through the death of Christ by the Spirit, then God's drawing us is everything in every sense - of sight, of taste, of smell, of touch, of hearing and obedience, of balance, and of our sex. Let our divisions be known so that those who are commended by God are revealed. Behold, I make all things new. It is done.

A Gospel of morality - do this or else - is not good news.

Exploring our Matrix

See this post from James McGrath - a film I was not aware of but I am glad it exists. As I noted there: This short film by Rabbi Stephen Greenberg is a word of God heard.

Gafcon and the love of Christ

I am Anglican. My Lord says to me to judge nothing before the time. If two people come to me saying they have given their lives to Christ, if they have the mind to live together in Christ, I will trust him to teach them his way.

I think he will pay them a penny who came at the 11th hour, just as he will pay the penny to me. But I will not complain as if I had borne the heat of the day, because I know his love and it undermines my desire to lay down the law for someone else.

Their love is not unequal or exploiting or violent. So I do not condemn them. They and I may yet have many things to learn together. Christ Jesus teaches such acceptance through his death - our death in him. The result of such a gift is known only to those who obey it. It is not revealed to those who exploit positions of power or live by fear or impose their rule on others whom they do not understand.

If those in such positions of power knew the love of Christ, they would reason differently. They would say perhaps - 'not yet - for some will be offended' or they would say perhaps - 'it is time, for we have failed some who are different from us who also must now be accepted'. Then they will learn to read the Scripture better also and the Lord will show them what he has done.

It hurts me to write that those in power - specifically the religious power of the cloth - have been the worst abusers in the matter of sexuality. Release from these historical errors comes neither through licentiousness nor through legalism, but only in a new creation by the Spirit through the death of Christ. If the religious had known this, they could have saved themselves.

Trailer of a Jihad for Love

This film has had success in New York.

We transformed the cinema into a town hall 20 out of the past 22 nights leading Q & A's and holding panels ... wonderful and intense.

Trailer here - insightful. ألاس.

... Someone else tell me how good my Firefox English to Arabic dictionary is. (I cannot cite the orphaned which).

A Jihad for Love continuing

Sandi DuBowski continues the with the NY premiere of his new film

Tchaikovsky and

Last night I watched dance with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, my daughter-in-law on stage, my son in the pit. It was an all Balanchin program:

PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Serenade in C Major for String Orchestra
PAUL HINDEMITH Theme with Four Variations for String Orchestra and Piano
BACH Double Violin Concerto in D Minor

I suppose it is OK to have heard the Bach, but Tchaik! No way - he was another of those miserable folk whose life is unacceptable to some. They say they love sinners - but I say they do not know who or what they are talking about.

I am first an evangelist. I also happen to be a lot of other things. But so what. I am known by my Saviour who understands the Law of Requisite Variety - Only variety can absorb variety. My God knows how to save in all sorts of situations and is not dependent on either good or bad Law.

I expect there are many who might sympathize with the Evangelical Manifesto that some are looking at this week but who would consider that all that beautiful young flesh and its lithe and supple coordination on stage, whether male or female, should be more fully covered.

They too - bound by their own conceit and prejudice - do not know to what extent their God has gone to rejoice in his own - who delights not in the strength of any man's legs (look for me somewhere in the later psalms) - but who makes his people a joy in the dance, and knows the discipline needed to grow a company of dancers who praise with the best member that they have (look for me somewhere in the earlier psalms and the middle of Jeremiah).

How can you be an evangelist and reject the Evangelical Manifesto? Well -it is .... too many syllables. John Hobbins gives a few notes here. I have captured a few random thoughts below, each one following a sound bite in italics from the Manifesto. Words do not escape words.

live the way he taught, and believe as he believed.
I would say live the way he teaches and believe as he directs now. As he said himself by the pen of his Evangelist John, I have many things to teach you but you cannot bear them now. The Spirit ... will take what is mine and give it to you and will teach you all things. (Look for me in the farewell discourse John 16ish and don't rubbish me with your interpretation.)

Christian faithfulness and moral integrity
Morals had to get in there - didn't they. It is sufficient that faithfulness to the Spirit, in the Spirit, by the death of Christ determines action and thought. The Law and the so called Christian judgment of behaviour cannot take precedence or become an add-on to faithfulness. The letter kills and has no power to make alive. Of course moral integrity will follow commitment to Christ - but not your idea of it.

his attitude toward the total truthfulness and supreme authority of the Bible
Jesus attitude towards the supreme authority of the Bible - what!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Bible did not exist in the days of this child of the dust on the earth. You mean the Bible as I, my tradition, a failed Christendom used to preach (witness the treatment of the Jews by the Church, the appalling attitude to and abuse of power with respect to sex - not to mention slavery and ownership of women) . This is the Bible and the preachers who knew nothing about the love of God as it expressed itself in someone different from themselves and their cultural tradition. This is the Bible of the abusing power mongers whose own desires they could not manage or comprehend and who preach Christ without knowing the power of his crucifixion for them.

yet our first allegiance is always to a higher loyalty and to standards that call all other standards into question

Here it is in their own electronic letters - standards we have that no one else has. When you live with these, I will start listening to you. The first is that you not reject those who come to the Church for blessing. Though they are believing in Christ, you reject them. He came unto his own and his own received him not. Fair enough if you refuse your blessing to those who have rejected you and your version of Christ or Church. But to those who say they are Christ's - don't you trust your own risen Saviour to correct them to agree with you? Or maybe you aren't so sure of your standards after all.

“good news” by definition, is overwhelmingly positive, and always positive before it is negative.

Now that takes the cake - I would be better off, eh, if I had never heard your good news. Some Evangelism that is. It is no wonder that my children have nothing to do with 'religion'. Let your Saviour do His job - get out of His Way - for surely He is coming to judge the earth - and it will be with righteousness - not of your making.

Friends

Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.

Yesterday at a studio concert in Cobble Hill, a small town in the southern end of Vancouver Island, we heard a performance of Britten's canticle setting the words of T.S. Eliot's Journey of the Magi.

Is anyone still with me? There is so much fracturing of communion going on these days, I wonder. I have not been abandoned by my Counselor, in spite of the fact that I can take both Britten and Eliot together.

If anyone has been appointed by the invocation of fellowship-breaking verses like 'Come ye out from among them' then let the same ones also ask whether 'the word of God originated with them'. Is it in the words of the hymn that God should take his power and reign, or that we should say to God, 'let me take your power and reign'?

But they would not listen for their hardness of heart.

Still here? Britten and Eliot are two of my 100 best - in the 20th century. Could I really be receiving the gift of Britten's music and maintain a position of not receiving him? Those who would be great among you should be righteous for more than one day.

It is regrettable perhaps that some have gone out from among us. It remains for me self-evident that the first sin of the flesh is the desire to be right on one's own terms. It is possible for groups of people to share such sin. Too bad.

Now this really is a personal opinion. Those who are leaving, do they recognize that their stance against this and that practice, whether it be acceptance of those who are different from them in desire or the acceptance of the place of people in the Church who have a differing anatomical structure, - do they recognize, I ask, if their very legal stance has not or has contributed to the failure of the Gospel in the very tradition they so long continued in?

Money is a cheap way of writing off the prods of conscience.

What does it matter that "I" am right when I have failed in the Gospel? What does it matter that "I" am right in all my doctrine when I have not known love or been known by love?

Hypocrite - this above all you should have understood. To think I even read any of your books when after all is said and done, you didn't know, and you couldn't bear all things. Don't you even know what God does by the Spirit in the death of Jesus Christ for the sake of those who are belonging to him? If you say you do know this - why can't you say it? Why do you reduce his Gospel to your Law?

Other

In response to a post by Chris Brady, at Targuman, I am bringing forward this letter I wrote over a year ago which was just published in the February edition of our local Diocesan Post. I expect many will disagree with what they perceive me to be saying. Please note that I have not seen any conservatives argue from the point of view of the tenderness of our God. I have seen arguments only from a legal point of view. I have responded because of the use of the word 'other'. Certainly it is difficult to respond to what is different in ourselves.

To the Editor, Diocesan Post, in response to a dialogue: that same-sex sexual relations are in God’s will for some people; or its opposite: that same-sex sexual relations are always not God’s will.

The word complement is spelt with an ‘e’, since the implication of the word is completeness. Completion is so germane to understanding what our Lord does for us. Can a person complete another person? Can the two become one in each other?

Bible readers will know that the fullness of completion goes beyond but includes the issue of sexual relations. Human sexual intimacy is a sign of completeness. Such knowledge is evident in the Old Testament and is celebrated in the tradition of the feast of Pentecost by the Jews. Pentecost celebrates the giving of Torah to which the faithful person is married. During this feast, the faithful are encouraged to read the Song of Solomon as a dialogue between self as bride and God as bridegroom.

For us who have believed in Christ, the fullness of our completion is in the death of Jesus. Here is our true bridegroom of blood, our new Moses, fulfilling the covenant of circumcision for the Gentiles. Every faithful one is now married to him who was raised from the dead, and by his death is freed from marriage to Torah. It is complete; as Jesus himself said. Or as Paul puts it, if we by the Spirit do put to death the deeds of the flesh, we will live.

It is not our task, therefore, to say what thing, heterosexual or homosexual or any other thing is right and complete in itself. It is our task, as members of Christ, of whatever orientation we think we are, to crucify our deeds, attitudes, and prejudices, so that we might live. Even our good must be put to death, so that the glory is from God and not an image of what a human thinks is right.

Will the Spirit raise only the heterosexual? Will God transform the so-called wrong into the so-thought right? God will transform but not as we anticipate. God transforms into a fullness that we cannot know in advance. Therefore whether heterosexual or homosexual, if we are patterned into the death of Jesus, then the result is God’s not ours.

Put it another way, will the same-sex person not be sanctified or redeemed if they call upon the Lord? They will and their resurrection will be ‘other’ to those who think them ‘other’, but will be one with those who think them one. If you consider that God is ‘other’ and woman is ‘other’ to man or man to woman, so also same sex is ‘other’ to the heterosexual. One who knows an ‘other’ will be pleased to accept ‘the same’ as not being ‘like’ but allowed to be, in glory, different.

In plain words, we may allow such commitments to be blessed, and we must not judge in advance how God will work in such commitments. It is for them to work them out in fear and trembling before God.

My conclusion does not leave us without issues to consider, not the least of which is the pattern in Colossians and Ephesians that quotes the household code of Aristotle: slaves in obedience to masters, children to parents, and wives to husbands. We no longer allow the negative interpretations along the lines of human ownership or male dominance to govern us in our reading of these passages, and we no longer allow the hierarchy of church governance to be confined to males. The simple conclusion is that the recognition of consecrated relationships of same gendered people is implicit in the abolition of slavery and the presence of women teachers and preachers in the church – as it was in the beginning, but was too radical a freedom to continue.

See also here which carries these thoughts into a liturgy.
See also here a review of a Jewish book on the subject. Here is a rereading of the text that deserves consideration.

Romans and Rhetoric again

Peter Kirk has posted an argument on the subject of same-sex relationships that I think is wrong. I tried to post a comment there but couldn't for some reason.

He wrote: Paul’s condemnation of homosexuality in Romans 1:26-27 should be understood as normative for Christians in all times and cultures.

My response: No - without question, this is a rhetorical error in the reading of Romans. The condemnation is meant to silence all judges who impose their normative prejudice on times and cultures. (see e.g. my brief comment here and related structural analysis.)

Such an argument cannot be put in a few words. It is contained in the lives of many over many years who are condemned out of hand by those who disallow a rereading of both Romans and Leviticus. In the case of Leviticus, a rereading is needed - as the Jews always reread and comment. In the case of Romans an accurate reading is required - one that does not confuse morality with salvation.

See also here - a note by PamBG who comments on Peter's post also.