It seems that the only time I go home to Dothan is for funerals. Several weeks ago I went home for the funeral of a dear friend who died young-ish. It is always remarkable to me the paradox: how things change and how they stay the same. My mother is much older and I notice that when I go home; her peers are dying more frequently, but she still sings in the choir, feeds without fail the birds, and expresses unfiltered her opinions. All my Dothan friends are aging (glad that’s not happening to me!). Their children who were my children’s ages are now grown up, having children of their own. When I go home it is as if I am given a peculiar objectivity, a glimpse into the rhythm of time, the pace of the journey, the sweetness and grief of change, the poignancy of place.
At the reception after the funeral service I saw an old friend since childhood. He was our family doctor when we lived in Dothan married to a cousin of mine. He was one of the home folks that seemed to take more than just a passing interest in my going to seminary and becoming a priest. We exchanged greetings, and then he asked me an arresting question: “Do you in your priesthood get new insight?” I’ve been thinking about that question for a while now, a lot.
The church in its institutional insecurity would have us think otherwise of course…. that there is no new insight, no new revelation, that the catechism of the church is insight enough, that the truth of God was revealed once and for all some two thousand plus years ago, that our creeds and doctrine are sufficient enough for the life of faith. Certainly I disagree. Surely God is still about revealing Godself. Surely as the universe expands, as the created order evolves, there is new knowledge, new truth, as it were. We tend to believe in our culture that truth is unchanging, that God is unchanging; but the process of life teaches us otherwise, that, as Yeats puts it, “those images that yet fresh images beget.” In other words, truth begets truth. Truth is an organic, evolving process, never completed, always becoming, never in stone. And I would argue that, if we look at nature as a metaphor, God is still in the process of becoming as well. We have our institutional faith and its rich traditions, but they are in reality artifacts, artifacts that demand new and lively revelation and interpretation…. newly begotten images.
So what of new insight? Here are just a few for me: The life of faith is not first and foremost about me. It is about loving my neighbor. Salvation is not about me. It is about my neighbor. The days of a self-interested faith are over.
Christianity is not about Jesus as much as it is about the movement that he inspired. It is much easier to idolize a super human depiction of Jesus than it is to join a movement that requires selflessness and self-awareness and sacrifice and empathy and compassion and a commitment to the greater good…. a movement that asks everything of us.
The Greeks referred to God as the “Unmoved Mover,” an abstract intellectual principal projected onto the heavens. Under different nomenclature we have inherited this legacy in post-Enlightenment Christianity. All talk of God is of course metaphor. My metaphor for God for the time being, is ‘possibility’…. that God is the process of love being improvised into being. No plan, per se… but passionate commitment to the creative process of love… a process that to a fault is open to all possibility, both of light and of darkness… but a process faithful that love will have its way.
Not last, but last for today: The kingdom of God spoken of in scripture has nothing to do with life after death. It has everything to do with how we live together today. The virtues of justice and peace and empathy and compassion and mercy and sacrifice are not byproducts of the gospels. They are the gospel. The mystery of God and even the ecstasy we seek lie in the graceful well-being of the human community in our own day.
What would be the joy of a faith written in stone? Our faith becomes still, begotten of imaginative experience, told in the artifice of story. I hope we will always be open to the new, to possibility, to things changing and staying the same, to sweetness and grief, to the poignancy of place, to love and life, and to just being fine with not knowing what’s next.
Thanks Fr. Flowers for your interesting & thoughtful reflection here. I feel I have been challenged to probe a little deeper indeed. I am thankful for the invitation!
Jim, you are sooo thought provoking! I love your writing, and your inspiration.
Years ago, the adult Sunday School class at All Saint’s read a book by Marcus Borg called “Jesus,” in which Borg opined that God’s nature is compassion, and God’s passion is justice (as in social justice). When I read this, it was like a switch flipped and a light came on. All the usual theological gobble-de-gook and mumbo jumbo of centuries long passed seemed so insignificant and misguided compared to this beautiful description of God.
Regarding the ancient Greeks and God, I really think Plato came closest to understanding and explaining God’s nature, not as an anthropomorphic being, indeed, far from such a primitive creature, but as a collection of Platonic forms, including the forms of compassion, justice, beauty and truth.
Thank you JIm. A Commitment to the God revealed in Jesus is a personal commitment that immediately thrust you into a community that is involved in the mystery of love – the search for love and all that search involves. I say it is a mystery because it is the hardest thing to find and live out in our lives. What you have said reminds me that it is always working for peace but with justice.
“The virtues of justice and peace and empathy and compassion and mercy and sacrifice are not byproducts of the gospels. They are the gospel. The mystery of God and even the ecstasy we seek lie in the graceful well-being of the human community in our own day.”
Jim, I am overwhelmed by the never-ending wealth of insight you maintain in this blog! We who know you from childhood and Dothan are truly blessed! Keep the thoughts coming. If I don’ see you on this side, I shall seek you in Heaven to converse “to infinity and beyond.”