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The Torah Beyond the Torah: God is not a Christian, God is not a Jew, God is God (Background notes on a series of
Sermons in the last Five Sundays in
“Ordinary Time the Season after Pentecost of Cycle ‘B’ in the Common
Lectionary)
“I don’t want to shock you but according to Scripture, Greek and Hebrew, God is neither a Christian nor a citizen of the United States of America. God is God.” Paraphrase of a lecture comment by Dr. James Sanders. |
One of the great mistakes in reading and understanding the Bible (Hebrew and Greek Scripture) is that of making the social and religious customs of the various moments in the life of the tradition, into an institution and a system of norms and moral axioms that govern religious life. It is the "error of misplaced concreteness," as Alfred North Whitehead called it, to think that the norms of a particular culture are the universal and immutable truths of God that should govern human society. If we truly believed that all the laws, cultural structures and views of the world expressed in the Bible were equivalent to God’s living word for us now, we would disbelieve that the world is round and circles the sun. We should also stone to death those who “give their children” to a non-Israelite religion, or who believe in ghosts, or who speak aloud the real name of God. It should be a commonplace understanding that no one actually believes that everything in Hebrew and Greek scripture is literally true, in the sense of needing no interpretation. Even those who make such claims are selective about their use of scripture, and in fact offer an interpretation as soon as they speak in any language save ancient Aramaic, Hebrew and First Century Greek. The second great mistake (there are others, but I will keep to two!) of misplaced concreteness is to read scripture as either an account of history, or a fortune-tellers handbook to the future. The many predictions of the end of the world throughout Christian history, and particularly in our times, have been falsehoods giving licence to horrendous acts of destruction both of self and of others. Equally destructive have been the various attempts to make the Holy One into a deity of a particular church, nation or race, and to make history a closed loop. God’s presence, if the witness of scripture is to be trusted, goes far beyond the closures of history or of doctrine. Scripture over and over again witnesses to God’s grace and the surprise of history. God is surprised by what Adam and Eve do in the garden, and is dismayed at the wrong direction his people take, but responds by offering surprising possibilities and ever new visions for the people. As Sanders says above, "God is God," and not the idol of our or my wants or desires. To put this another way, the tool or device used to bring us an awareness of God’s presence is too often confused with God’s presence. Often we worship our cultural patterns, our rituals, our tools, and the projections of our own desires, fears and religious constructs as ‘gods.’ This is not to say God may not be working through culture, rituals, tools or even those projections that are our dreams. Nor is it to say that consequences do not flow from human decisions. Rather, every tool or device, every human decision, and every religious doctrine or ritual, no matter how beneficial, has its limitations. In fact, if they exceed certain limits, tools and religion may become counter-productive and even destructive. A belief that doctrines, human acts or decisions are totally determinative of our fate and the fate of the cosmos is simply foolish. But belief that our tools and actions have no impact is equally foolish. Faith and spiritual wisdom rest on trusting in a reality that always exceeds our grasp, and is always bigger than reason or religious belief can contain. For example, the decision to mass-produce the automobile and to base human habitation around its use looked like a reasonable solution to human transportation needs. Most western societies trusted, had faith, in the automobile. However, studies of traffic flow in cities like Paris, or even one afternoon of being caught trying to cross into Downtown Vancouver from the Lions Gate or the Second Narrows demonstrates that beyond certain numbers the automobile creates more transportation problems than it solves (not to mention greenhouse gases and global warming). Ivan Illich, in his book Medical Nemesis, points out how “treatment-caused” or “iatrogenic disease” results from the “too much” of medical practice. The tools of medicine and of the internal combustion engine have had and can have benefits. But there are real limits. Our decisions have real effects in the world. Our decisions do not control the outcomes, and our tools have only limited uses; beyond this, they become more of a menace than a benefit. Faith, healthy faith, requires trust not in the trappings of religion, nor in the words of the bible, but in a living reality, the Creative Passion of God working beyond even the best of our understanding and religion. In religion, particularly Christianity, there is often a confusion between the tools, rituals, structures and devices that are used and the reality they wish to convey. A part of the confusion in Western religions rests on a cluster of words related to the Torah ( hrwt) and Paul’s “nomos" or "nomos”. The word Torah is itself misunderstood, and it is often translated by the single word “Law.” The problem with this translation, as James Sanders and other scholars point out, is that it mistakes a “tool” or “device” for the Divine relationship, and substitutes laws and religious regulations for a living relationship. The word Torah might better be translated “Way” or “Story”, indicating that it is the way God engaged and continues to be in relationship with the people. God is the Creative Love that is ever at work in reality, and is not reducible to any past expression or tool that has been used, no matter how good or religiously pure. The point to be made is that “Law” and religious practices are only “tools;” they are used when needed to bring us into an awareness of the Divine relationship and the living of life—an active and ever flowing process and relationship—in the Blessed community of God’s Creation. Those of the Orthodox faith say that even prayer is not an end in itself. It can become a block, mechanical and meaningless, if it does not bring one into union with God. The Orthodox priest Thomas Fitzgerald comments that the aim of prayer, and indeed of all Christian life is “Agapic Theosis.” Orthodoxy believes that each Christian is involved in a movement toward God, known as theosis (theosis or deification). Theosis describes the spiritual pilgrimage in which each person becomes ever more perfect, ever more holy, ever more united with God. It is not a static relationship, nor does it take place only after death. On the contrary, theosis is a movement of love toward God (Rev. Thomas Fitzgerald http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article7114.asp) Loving theosis, unity with God, is not forced on us, or arrived at legalistically. It is rather like bicycle riding. After the practice of learning to ride, one must forget all the tools used to get you there, and simply ride. Arriving at “unity with God” may be a life long discipline, but it does not involve clinging to practices, tools or even theological constructs; rather, one must become one beyond all such things. To quote theologian Henry Wieman “Never confuse the goods with the Good...” The point is that while we may use good practices to make room for God’s goodness, we must never confuse the tools with the active good of God. In each of the Hebrew Scriptures we have read throughout this season, we are pushed to consider both the possibilities of the “tools” of religion, and the transcendent, living reality of God. It must be insisted that the “Torah”—and the prophets and the writings—are intended as journeys into unity with God. The “Torah” is not a law code, but is a way of living in relationship, an ongoing and intimate walking with God. Reading the five books that Judaism calls the “Torah” reveals this rather quickly. The Narratives of Eve, Adam, Sarah, Abraham, Noah, Joseph, Miriam, Moses, Saul, David and so on, are not morality tales or didactic lessons with a primary focus on jurisprudence, legal or even religious structures. Law and religious structures iare neither ignored nor absent from these documents—Leviticus and Deuteronomy are filled with descriptions and details regarding such matters—but they emerge as secondary to, and sometimes as less than desirable substitutes for a living relationship. Kingship and the temple priesthood, for example, are not accepted as necessarily good things; they are subject to deep criticism if they do not express the justice/righteousness (hqydx, hqydx) of God. The laws and the structures of religion, custom and the nation are to be changed or abandoned if they do not express a right relationship with God, God’s love for Creation and its peoples. The stories told from the vantage point of the surrounding culture “demythologize” and deconstruct the mythic frame common to the times both within and outside Israel. To cite but the example of the book of Ruth, the conventions and religious boundaries of Israelite beliefs are transgressed as Ruth, a Moabitess, marries an Israeli and is the vessel of God’s blessing and compassion. Jesse and David come from her stock. Just when we have grown to expect that the history of God’s involvement will take a certain pattern, Hebrew scripture surprises us with a Ruth, a David (the youngest and smallest son of Jesse) and a Cyrus (a foreign King and heathen who Isaiah says is the anointed of God). Even God is surprised by the human responses in Hebrew Scriptures. From Eve and Adam, to Sarah and Joseph, the responses and relationships between God and the people change, develop and sometimes go wrong. The central characters in the narrative are above all flawed, imperfect, frail and fall outside the standard myths of the religious heroes and god-like figures of their time and place. In contrast to Egyptian or Babylonian myths, the Torah, even as it uses some aspects of these stories, presents the Divine way as one of engagement with human beings who are free to decide, to change and to ignore the lessons of the past. The Torah introduces the idea of evolution in human relationships and Creation, and it gives an open, relational and dynamic character to reality and God. This is not to say that God is fickle, or that reality does not have “cause and effect.” The covenantal ties that create the foundations of reality and expose the nature of God are not static legal patterns. The Covenant is fundamentally neither a legal form nor a natural law, but rather a relational reality with a compassionate Creator. The word “covenant” in Hebrew (tryb, “berit(h)” means the binding of a people in relationship, not a legal formulation. This distinction seems particularly difficult for the religious to make. Those who embrace a religious system seem impelled to bring everything under the control of a set of religious laws, sometimes claiming that these laws are the certain expression of God. Salvation is said to be the consequence of obedience to laws and commandments, rituals and practices. In Mark's gospel we have read how Jesus refutes the “Scribes and Relgious Officials” because they confuse their piety and laws with the love God, which calls forth and expresses itself in an ongoing relationship with humanity. He commends the outcast, the non-believer and the poor and powerless widow for their trust in God’s compassion, as compared with the powerful, rich, pious and religiously correct. In the sermons this season, I have been circling around these troubling and disturbing features of the Gospel. The God we encounter, both in the Gospel and in our lived experiences, is not a God of religion or ritual practice. This God is the Creative Passion, the Heart, and the Spirit embracing all peoples and all things. There is judgment, but it is of those acts that have no compassion and no heart. It is a judgment of violence and violation. It is not that our faith is vapid or lacks ethical or moral compass. Rather, if we seek unity with the relational God of the Torah and the Gospel we must be prepared to move beyond convention and habits, not matter how we might value these tools. Our trust is in Christ's way of creative love. Our faith is in a God whose final and greatest “commandment” is love , this God can eternally offer a love and reconciliation that meets the reality of and can overcome even the worst of human evil. In short, our faith is a journey into the deep heart of a Holy One who is with us unto and beyond death. Let us rest in the restless compassion of the Creative Passion that is the Mystery we may call God. |
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