Congregational Life Centre
Our mission is to encourage possibilities
The Dynamic Duo -- Borg & Crossan
Speaking Christian: Redeeming Christian Language
Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan have to be two of the most creative and influential spiritual teachers of our time. The word "spiritual" is intentional, because they go far beyond both of their birth religious denominations - Crossan's strict Irish Roman Catholicism and Borg's American Lutheranism.
They always surprise us with their creativity and new insights, and their latest presentation was no different. They were the speakers at a conference in Edmonton organized by Paul Nahirney and hosted by the Anglican Diocese of Alberta, St. Albert United and Christ Church Anglican.
Marcus Borg's
opening words set the tone for his presentation. "Religions are like
languages. To be part of a religion is to be hearing, speaking and understanding
that religion's language - the big words, the big stories and the rituals.
Being Christian means speaking Christian."
There is an analogy between being Christian and being French for example. It means speaking the language, being a citizen of the country, and internalizing the ethos of the culture. The idea is not new. Saint Augustine's famous book City of God talks about Christians being part of a "city" or community, citizens who participate in a borough without boundaries.
Borg found great fault with the evangelicals and fundamentalists who literalize the Christian language. In his country, he said, "48% of U.S. Christians believe the earth and universe are less than 10,000 years old - are against evolution and take the Genesis story literally." To be a Republican candidate, he assured us, you cannot support the teaching of evolution in schools. The Red Sea really parted, Elijah was taken up into heaven, and Jesus who was born of a virgin and walked on water.
At the age of 12, Borg's beliefs were not that different. In response to the question, "Say in one sentence what Christianity is about," his answer was the classic perspective: "Jesus died for our sins so we can be forgiven and go to heaven if we believe in him." Borg calls this "heaven and hell" Christianity, "belief centred" Christianity.
That is when he had us look again at the meaning a number of key words have in the Hebrew scriptures: salvation, redeemer, repentance, peace and belief.
In the Bible Salvation is about deliverance and transformation this side of death, never after death. For Heaven-and-Hell-Christianity Jesus is our redeemer - the one who pays the price in order to save us from the punishment God has for sinners. In the Bible, words like redeemer, redeemed and redemption refer to liberation from slavery and bondage. The Exodus story of release from bondage in Egypt is key to understanding what is meant by salvation.
For Heaven-and-Hell-Christianity Repentance means feeling badly about our sins. In the Bible repentance involves embarking on a journey that leads to reconnection. The New Testament adds to that meaning the spirit of going beyond what it takes to reconcile with another. Going the second mile and turning the other cheek are two illustrations Jesus gives, for example.
Peace in Heaven and Hell Christianity refers to an internal state. The Bible is clear that peace means the end of war between people.
When it comes to Belief, for Heaven-and-Hell-Christianity it means believing in "Jesus as my personal saviour." The Bible, rather, talks about believing in one another and believing in God, an approach that calls for loyalty, faithfulness, commitment and trust.
Marcus Borg made no bones about it. The Heaven and Hell Christianity of the evangelicals and fundamentalists is WRONG! Absolutely WRONG!
Underlying all this was the implicit understanding that Jesus was steeped in the Hebrew scriptures. His understanding of the key words that are common to Judaism and Christianity is in line with their Hebrew meaning. Jesus was never a Christian, but rather he was always a Jew.
One word Borg dealt with in a particularly helpful way was Righteousness. The Bible calls on people to be righteous, to live lives of righteousness. Today that word has a high level of negative connotations. A key to the Biblical meaning is the parallelism of Hebrew poetry. Take the Psalm:
Let justice flow down like water,
and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.
If these lines are two ways of saying the same thing, then it is justice to which the word righteousness points. In the Bible, justice for the most part means "distributive justice" - the fair distribution of God's earth and the material basis of existence. Take the Sermon on the Mount Beatitude, "Blesses are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled." A better translations, according to Borg: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice ..."
"Christians need to be bilingual," Borg said in closing, "able to say in ordinary language what Christianity is all about."
Crossan - It's All About the Matrix
John Dominic
Crossan's new book is an exploration of the Lord's Prayer. Crossan talks
about it as a prayer addressed to God as abba, a word used inside the family
for father. Jesus calls God 'dad'. You have to be talking to members of
your family or close friends to use the term dad, even today.
The one word that lay behind everything Crossan said was matrix. In earlier books he made the point that you had to know the context in which something was said in order to understand what it meant to those who heard it first and also what was intended by the speaker. Matrix goes beyond context. It includes what Crossan referred to as the "foreground" as well as the "background" when interpreting a particular text.
Take the titles that Paul gives to Jesus: Lord, Saviour of the World, Son of God. "Paul did not create these. This was the ordinary language of the Roman imperial world. They were titles given to Caesar."
It seems strange that Jesus' father is missing, while his mother is evident at various points during his ministry. Research has found that the average life expectancy in the ancient Mediterranean world was approximately twenty to thirty year. The tendency of non-elite males to marry comparatively late in life, at twenty-five to thirty years of age, meant men became fathers for the first time relatively late in life. The combination of high mortality and late marriage meant that as many as one-third of all children would have lost their fathers before they reached the age of fifteen, while another third lost their father before they reached the age of twenty-five.
A clue to understanding the Lord's Prayer is the same understanding of Hebrew poetry that is used by Marcus Borg. Hebrew poetry expresses the same message in two different ways. Take the lines from the Great Prayer:
Be hallowed your name,
Be here your kingdom.
To hold God's name in honour is the same as establishing God's new society of justice right here. The Hebrew form of poetry is part of the matrix through which we need to look in order to understand the real message Jesus has left us.
Crossan summed it all up with the words, "If we do not change the theology of Christianity, it is in the way, not on the way." That is the challenge both these primary thinkers left with those of us who were fortunate enough to be part of the conference.
Those who missed Marcus Borg in Edmonton will get an opportunity to hear him at the Epiphany Explorations event in Victoria next January.
"Leadership Ventures" Congregational Life Newsletter. October 2011. Volume 18 No. 2.