that his good consists of aligning himself as well as he can with that moral axis. And that is as close as he can come to allowing a God.
Most of what Wright reports I find makes profound sense to me. I probably should explore his authorities on the dating and unraveling of JEDP, just to satisfy myself that Wright’s reporting is accurate. He does fairly thoroughly rip the Scriptures to shreds, and leaves those shreds in a disorderly pile. I found that ripping apart process somewhat disconcerting for me, although it does not offend my sensibilities, but rather lends some grounds for my own wanderings away from the Scriptures and orthodoxy and toward the mystical.
I would guess that my own growing sense is one of assurance that our Scriptures (Hebrew and Christian) are inspired by mystical visions, and to that extent are validated. But they are no more (nor less) inspired than the holy writings of other major religions (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, et cetera). And I’d go farther to accept that the reporting and interpreting of those mystical experiences are certainly very shaped by the facts on the ground in their respective moments. And while I can empathize with Susan’s not giving a hang for the invisible God, still I yearn to touch God for myself, fully aware that whatever that experience might be, it cannot be communicated to others by any means, and that however I apprehend it will be violently shaped and filtered by the facts on the ground as well as my own ground-into-my-bones training and sensibilities. It cannot be otherwise.
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Pentecost XVII—September 27, 2009
A string of Marcan teachings, including “He who is not against us is for us.” Margo commented on my taking notes during the sermon. I was arrogantly self-assertive enough to disabuse her, “No, I’ve already preached that text many times.” I had been starting notes on prayer, a knotty topic that I need to address. But in overhearing Stephen’s preaching, I was reminded that I’ve not yet come to any useful (to me) conclusions about the function, the purpose of the sermon, just what is that monologue (or dialogue) about? Throughout my active ministry I considered the purpose of the sermon to be the explication of the gospel text for the day. I began my ministry with the understanding (however mistaken or misguided) that people knew very little about our holy Scriptures, and that one of my primary tasks, if not the paramount task, was to acquaint them with the texts, at least as I understood them. So my goal was to present them with a viable twentieth-century understanding of the scriptural text of the day. My imagined (coached by Herr Spielmann) concept was that in the early church, in the dark of the morning as the congregation straggled in (there being no alarm clocks and Sunday, the Lord’s Day, being a working day in the Roman Empire) the elder, presbyter, forerunner of the priest, interpreted the Scriptures to fill the time as the congregation amassed, following the synagogue’s precedent. So I saw my task in that light as interpreting the Scriptures to the gathered congregation. I told the story, offered the latest critical understanding and some thoughts, or at least a couple of questions about how it might be applied in our lives. A noble model (I mused to myself).
But with my present sense of my faith, of the faith of understanding the story, the Scriptures, the whole ball of wax to be not fact but metaphor, without a clear sense of exactly what stands behind that complex of metaphor, I’m very unclear what I have worthy of being preached. Perhaps, as Wright suggests, the closest I can get to God is as the moral axis of the universe; then the most I have to offer from a pulpit is my sense of how I think that moral axis is tending at this moment, in this circumscribed situation. And, Lord knows, my sense of that right at this moment is no better, no more guiding than anyone else’s (though perhaps a scuidgeon better than Dick Cheney’s but with nowhere near his self-confidence). So I’m not feeling I have any right to preach, nor any thing to preach these days.
So what is the sermon? A moment of moral guiding? But by whose authority?
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Pentecost XXIII—November 8, 2009
Musings: after William James’s, Jack Miles’s, Karen Armstrong’s, a couple of Jack Spong’s, and Robert Wright’s books I find myself left with a creator and a moral axis and all the rest is a metaphor which ill-defines the creator and the moral axis. Maybe the deists had it right: the creator made it, set it to running and walked off, leaving us a moral axis by which to run it. Good luck! And it’s up to us to sense the direction in which the moral axis is pointing and then make it happen.
So a sermon then, is a conversation in which I prompt the people to discover along with me the directions in which the moral axis prompts/points/compels us. But it’s my (the preacher’s) responsibility to first discern the moral axis and in which way it’s pointing, and then in conversation to direct their attention and thoughts in that direction. And all the while I feel no more apt (perhaps even less apt that many of the wiser of them) than the rest of the people to do that discerning and to point their attention and thoughts in the right direction.
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Advent 1—November 29, 2009
We talked about Luke’s Little Apocalypse (Luke 21) at coffee hour. My take, that we need to not bother asking historo-critical questions about it, but instead step back and ask what was the prophet’s mystical insight, and what is that saying to us today? In the words of behavioral psychology, that all behavior has consequences; in the prophet’s metaphor that there will be a payday, there will be a reckoning; in Robert Wright’s words that there is a moral axis to the universe, and that it will prevail! All the other speculation is adulterated manure, not even suitable for composting.
The sermon could not catch my attention (nor Nancy’s), so I wandered Are we the final product of all evolution (preposterous!) And then what do we need to be watching for? And what is our moral responsibility toward that? Will our preclusion be even perceivable to us (evolution happens so slowly). And if that is the case, then how is God active in the world? . . . and how active is God in the world? And then, my poor, nettlesome, demented cardinal, compulsively flying at my window (one male cardinal has concluded that its reflection in my office window glass is a territorial competitor and he has spent most hours of every day this whole summer throwing himself frustratedly against my window) a tiny bit of God’s magnificent beauty gone irritatingly awry!!
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Easter III—April 18, 2010
I have finished my interim ministry at Chillicothe (only Sunday Supply December 1, 2009 through Easter 2010) where I presumed not to preach any sermons, but rather to reflect upon their situation and condition. And now I am back to my chosen circle of standing stones, St.Luke’s in Granville. And I mused this morning during the sermon. I think my own faith has traveled a fair distance since last I wrote to this collection. I think Robert Wright (The Evolution of God) was the last nail in the coffin of my former faith/belief system. He is assuredly not a scholar, but a journalist, with a capacity to engorge a huge bodies of information, and after barely beginning to digest, disgorges, almost as projectile vomiting, so that you have to digest the mess yourself if you want it. But he did bring me to conclude, not so reluctantly, that the sacred writings we have received are indeed a hodge-podge collection of politically motivated scribblings by YHWHists. Perhaps they thought them the mutterings of the deity, but perhaps they were very self-consciously aware that they were creating out of whole cloth sacred writings which they could attribute to the deity for emphasis/authority’s sake (I know not which). But Wright pointed in the direction (though he could not himself authenticate the pointing of his finger) of understanding the pieces of Holy Scripture therein gathered as wholly politically motivated and shaped (e.g., J, E, D, and P were written at different times in different situations, and betray quite different viewpoints and messages, even though jammed together by the redactors as though they were one and the same). And on my own I make huge leaps of faithlessness to conclude they have little more, perhaps even slightly less spiritual utility than the sacred writing of some other
