Sarx

I’m back from Church where we had the last class in Living the Questions tonight. This makes me sad: because for the last 6 weeks I’ve felt rather connected to those folks. Apart from the two classes with Sare, I think I was the youngest one in the room - it’s not often I can say that anymore! And, for the time that I’ve been trying to connect in Buffalo, these folks provided the connexion. NEway…

The first thing that struck me was on the DVD: the absence of the usual “liberal” approach to which I’ve been exposed is the “Jesus-Good/Paul-Bad”. It’s the tossing-out-of-scripture problem, refusing to wrestle with something that is a valid, if disagreeable part of the Christian tradition. It’s important. Of course, I realise that for some conservatives anything other than literalist humility is as much a tossing out as simply throwing the Bible across the room. But the DVD offered two different scholarly possibilities: the idea that some of Paul’s writings is not really Paul - but rather simply attributed to him (more on this in a minute). This idea is currently en vogue. The DVD also raised the possibility of some of the more-conservative Pauline texts being Authentically Paul - but being earlier in his theological development. This was the way it was first explained to me on a retreat in the spring of 1983, when I first met Minka Sprague, then a fellow at General Seminary. She it was who drew the first chronology of the Pauline Epistles on the board and explained the evolution of Paul’s theology.

This, to me, makes more sense than the current model of some things just being “not Paul”. But, as Cam pointed out, “We just don’t know.” Chronology is hard to construct and I can tell your biases by which way you construct it…

The second thing that hit me was how comfortable everyone in the room was with the idea of the Jewish Jesus and our own, modern disconnect with that man. The DVD pointed out that Paul was taking the God of Israel to the Gentiles, offering them a connexion to this great antiquity in a way they could accept: no circumcision, no dietary laws, etc. Cam added that the thought Jesus was a Pharisee (one of my own favourite tropes).

We had a discussion of the break between the Social Gospel of the 19th and early 20th Centuries - when the Church was a progressive, socialvoice - and the era post-1955 when the church became a staid pillar of middle-class society. It’s the current generations’ experience of Church as Pillar of Society that causes both distrust of Church (on the part of liberals) and a fear of change in church (on the part of conservatives). Since 1955, most of us (and our clergy) have experienced a socially conservative church as normal. Where do we go now?

I was struck with the idea (voiced my Marcus Borg) that Paul’s “Christ Crucified” was sort of Christian Koan. It’s an impossibility we still hear - Jews react to the story by saying “That’s not what Messiah is supposed to do…” To say, “Christ Crucified” is to created a mental short circuit - it snaps us out of our preconceived notions of who God is and how God acts.

All of this seemed to sort of jive with Fr Paul Tarazi. I was struck, again, with the idea that one can start at the same place: modern, deconstructive Biblical scholarship. From that one place, one can arrive at the the radical liberalism (a la Spong or the Jesus Seminar) or one can arrive at Eastern Orthodoxy (a la Fr Tarazi). regardless of what one might think of Fr Paul and his Orthodoxy or lack of it, *he* feels no call to leave “The Church” for a more-liberal place that might welcome his teaching. Because, in fact, his teaching is rather conservative.

The last question Cam offered the class was asking where we were going to take it. What has this six week-long conversation brought me that might open up another part of my life? I was honest. Although I’ve decided to stay at Trinity, I’ve felt no opening up of other areas. I’m still just as lost and confused as ever. Increasingly I’m ok with that. I begin to see the issue is my own - not God’s or the Church’s. I need to trust my own inner prompting and worry about the details later. I’ve met several people who are more afraid than I of change. I usually feel like a stick in the mud. But then I’m also often the oldest one in the room any more any more.