The Good Shepherd abandons their flock for any sheep...

Eric Gill: The Good Shepherd

It was the first real supervision with one of my field placement supervisors in seminary. To be clear we had met before but this was the first time when we had built up enough trust that he could start being honest and I would listen.  The conversation was about preaching in specific, but ministry in general. My supervisor explained how week after week the gospel presented a reality that struck home to their reality as a parent in a mixed-race household. That it was more often than not that it was in this place the pertinent questions and movements of the Spirit would first be recognized.  My supervisor then looked at me and noted that it was very easy to confuse the movement of the Gospel with what it initial stirs up in oneself. The challenge then, to me, was to learn to differentiate between what the Gospel stirs up in me, in my context as a gay male struggling for an end to the oppression of the LGBTQ+ community, and the actual primal universal movement of the Gospel. This is, in the end, the difference between being a hired hand and a good shepherd.

The Gospel sets the prisoner free. Any one caught up in the process that frees an individual or group from the prison of oppression and abuse is caught up in the Gospel Work. The trap, however, is that it is too easy for all of us to not see beyond the walls of our own prisons. We mistake the work of the Gospel to be the freeing of ourselves and those like us from the prison in which we find ourselves… and not recognize that our own liberation, and those like us, is only the small place where we encounter the Gospel Work that is so much greater than any one specific struggle, no matter how pertinent and requisite it is for our time.  

Any struggle we are taking up, be it our own or that of another, is an icon into the reality of the Gospel Work towards the full harmony of creation with the creator. The difference between an icon and an idol at any point is a tenuous one at best. Too readily we can make a specific struggle the begin all and end all of our considerations of the Gospel and forgo the actual alpha and omega, Jesus Christ. Too readily we can be interested in saving our own skins and letting the wolf take the sheep.  Too readily we can fail to see how our flight to safety leaves other shepherds and other flocks ready prey for the wolves. Too readily we can seek to trip up other shepherds and close the gate on other flocks to ensure the safety of our own. Too readily we can mistake another shepherd or flock as a pack of wolves.

The hired hand abandons the flock for personal safety… the Good Shepherd abandons the flock to stand between sheep, regardless of flock, and wolves. Too readily we become hired hands, seeking to save our own skin, or shepherds seeking only to save our own flock. Too rarely do we model the Good Shepherd and place aside our own skin, stand for more than our own flock, and are truly prepared to place ourselves on the line for any sheep caught in the sight of any wolf.

Why does Jesus eat Fish and not Brains?

zombie jesus by jack c gregory

So Jesus after the resurrection is weird. People do not recognize him, and then they do. He can walk through walls and apparate. He can also be touched and he eats... and he eats fish not brains.

So brain eating zombies are a somewhat new phenomena, the concept of conjuring dead spirits or even reanimating dead corpses is not. My guess is that there are more people somewhat fearing a zombie apocalypse now in New York then there were active fears of undead in ancient Jerusalem. The reality being that one can find many today who readily assess their surroundings for the best place to go in case zombies arise... effort and contingency plans which would assuredly have the same level of efficacy as ancient talismans against evil... and are about equally productive as a pass time.

I bring this up only to point out that hysteria and concern about corpses animated to some level of life are an old fear about which we continue to invest much time and interest. The vast majority of these stories create some form of demi-human... one that is exceptional in some respects but any amazing strengths they may have are balanced by horrendous weakness. Even in the rare cases of stories of undead that have marginally few negative traits, very old vampires in the Anne Rice mythos, the vampires created by Stephanie Meyer, the hybrids in underworld, they maintain flaw that cannot be forgotten. They are still cut off from the rest of humanity, if they are capable of intimate physical relations at all these relations are sterile, and, most importantly, they are incapable of sharing a meal with other humans for the sake of mutual nourishment and enjoyment.

This ability to eat is the real human factor that divides us from the demi-human undead. It is the mark of being human, not demi-human, of being alive not undead. It is also the mark of being incarnate and not just spirit. The gods housed in idols of wood and metal do not eat, assuredly much food is offered to them, but this food is only spiritually consumed with the physical aspect of it then eaten by priests, the choice bits, or the populace at large, the not so choice bits.

So what does it mean that Jesus eats fish, like a human, and does not drink human blood or relentlessly hunger for braaaaains? It means two things. First it means that he is not demi-human, that he can be in our midst after his death and still relate to us on the basic levels of being human. It also means that he is not above humans and solely a creature of spirit, like the idols fashioned of metal and wood, his incarnate nature remains intact. The resurrected Jesus is uber-human. He is capable of everything he was capable of before his death, fully human, but now is also fully transcendent.

This brings us to the meal we still share with Jesus, the Eucharistic meal. The meal where we are asked each week to eat human flesh and drink human blood, to eat Godly flesh and drink Godly blood, to eat Jesus flesh and drink Jesus blood. The concept of this being a demi-human cannibalistic act is not new, it is one of the oldest slanders against the Eucharistic meal. What it presents however is the reversal of the food provided to idols. Instead of humans offering meals to idols for the spiritual nourishment of the false god we instead have food being offered by God to the people for their spiritual nourishment. It is a means of noting, every time we gather, that God is one who breaks bread and sips wine with us, as one of us, and is not a demi-human being seeking to use us up nor a transcendent being with whom we can have no true connection, but a being uber-human, but still human none the less... still able to enjoy a morsel of boiled fish with friends.  

Nihilism, the new desert of asceticism...

If we go to the earliest moments in Christian history we have the Desert Mothers and Fathers, men and women who left all the comforts of life and went to live in the austerity of the desert. We see a similar group of Christian men and women arise several centuries later in Ireland, these monks and nuns lived on stark islands off the coast and took long voyages into the sea on small boats. The hope was to encounter the reality of human existence outside of worldly trappings. To stare into the vast loneliness of the desert from a remote cave or gaze upon the stark isolation of the changing sea from a far out promontory, and have it envelope you. To have this loneliness, this isolation, stare back into you and erode away what is there; to allow one to be purified by the revelation inherent to creation. Or as the Nietzsche quote goes "if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you".

What I want to suggest is that nihilism, deconstructionism, etc. are the new ascetic deserts of christianity. Those of us who find ourselves dwelling in them, by choice or chance, encounter a reality as stark and meaningful as the monks and nuns of old, and as perilous and deadly as the one who wanders unaware into the desert or is shipwrecked on a barely inhabitable island surrounded by the sea. It is possible for us to be swallowed up in the abyss that surrounds our perception of reality and be utterly lost or, even worse, to become a monster of deconstruction and devaluing ourselves.

We have highly romanticized ascetic life, light ascetic practice of mental prayer and eschewing material opulence percolates all about our society, but we have forgotten how dangerous it can be. The reality is that on the map of ascetic life, there be dragons. In the midst of spiritual curiosity, especially curiosity from the rigidity and stagnation inherent to organized religion, we have people wandering head long into the desert and thus wondering head long into the mental abyss waiting just outside of our perceptions of reality.

This is a good thing, this is a necessary thing, this is a thing that any one who truly wishes to enter into a dynamic and full relationship with Jesus Christ must do. If I were to say that there is one absolute requirement of every person who would dare seek a call to ordained ministry it would be engagement, fully, into this wandering wonder of the desert of perception. This is how one comes to live, to know, to exist, in the reality that individuals encounter when they enter into spaces of crisis. This is how one truly comes to differentiate themselves from the situation in which they are presented, and thus are able to find and be found by God in it. This is the kenosis that allows an individual to look beyond the conceptions of our fallen society and encounter the true being God created them to be. This is the process that brings about the chaos that allows that creation to more fully encounter God and become what God intends.

The problem is that desert life is hard. Heading out into the wide open sea in just a little coracle is a leap of faith that is simply staggering. It is an ask that is by its very nature harrowing. It is an ask to enter fully into Jesus' descent into hell, and in the midst of hell surety of the resurrection, knowledge that God has not abandoned us, belief that God exists at all, becomes increasingly difficult. That is why the true hermit in asceticism is the rarest of creatures, because ascetics know the danger of such isolation. They know that what is essential to life can also end life. That too much oxygen will fuel a fire that will destroy everything. That too much water will dilute the means of transporting essential nutrients throughout the body. They know that too much time in the desert, too much time staring into the endless waves, will utterly destroy the watcher.

That is why they do this only in community. That is why they come out of the desert and into the refectory, that is why they steer their coracles back to the land and shepherds, brewers, and cheese makers. That is why even the most austere of orders take time to celebrate and fully encounter joy. I am not sure if one can ever truly leave the desert once one has been there. A few days of complete loneliness on the high seas cannot be readily forgotten. I think trying to avoid that space and move beyond it is simply leaving a land mine in one's consciousness that will explode at an inopportune moment.


The only resolution I know is to find others who have encountered the desert and make times of joy together. Gathering coracles together, even far from land, to share stories and become community, even if it is to soon drift back out into the untamed seas, is the requisite reality that allows life in the midst of full inquiry possible. Once one has realized that the truly solid rocks on which one can build one's life lay outside the ability of our minds to conceptualize one cannot go back and take as foundational a premise our gut will doubt. We have to figure out how to dance along the routes that our mind cannot quite perceive and live our lives one dance step of faith after another.

What one realizes, in the end, is that one is always getting back to that beginning point, the naught point, the chaos beginning point, the waiting for the breathe of God to create part. The reality is that at the beginning of Genesis God is not creating out of nothing, this is a modern extrapolation contrary to the text. God creates over a void, yes, but a void filled with the broken and meaningless chaos of a world ravaged innumerable times into nothingness. At the other end of the Bible, at revelation, we have a series of events that ravage the world again innumerable times into the same void... and it is only then that a new heaven and new earth become manifest.

This makes us fools for Christ's sake where others are prudent. It makes us weak where others are strong. While others can be distinguished in faith we find ourselves, again and again, without honor. we exist in the place of the fool, in that naught space that steps foolhardy into the new creation with a beast of destruction both our ever present companion but also forever nipping at our derriere. Our hope and solace is found by being able to not only look back, at the chaos behind us, not only ahead of us, at the looming precipice, but up at the guiding sun that we trust will make some sense of the entire ordeal.

amazing rendition of the fool tarot card from www.nydwyngreendragon.com

           

Wedding Cakes Iced in Transgender Oppression

The reality is that right now in the majority of America it is legal to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community. In most of the country one can readily fire or evict a member of the LGBTQ+ community for no other reason except that characteristic of their being. There are other characteristics, intrinsic ones such as race or sex, and chosen ones, such as religion, that are protected but not sexuality or gender expression. We talk about the issues around the new forms of Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, but what these really do is make the already legal discrimination easier, as the burden of proving that the discrimination should not be allowed is placed on the victim. They also make the fact that such discrimination is legal a known reality, they enfranchise those who otherwise would not realize that they could discriminate.

 

The fight for this has primarily been around providing goods and services to gay weddings, be it cakes, flowers, photography, or in the most recent case of note pizza. The reality is that gay couples are not actually finding it difficult to obtain bakers, florist, photographers, or caterers to provide services for their weddings. They might find set backs and inconveniences, which they should in no way face, and the reality is that any service provider who alleges to provide to the general public should provide to the general public, but the actual fall out from these acts of discrimination are minor. Again, this does not mean they should be ignored or discounted but that they need to be recognized for the small reality, both in scope and numbers, that they are.

The reality, however, is that the focus on bakers not providing cakes for weddings distracts us from a larger reality, both in scope and numbers, that is predominately ignored. The number of cases, at least where the issue has come to court, of wedding vendors denying services to a same gender couple is, as far as I can tell, under twenty five in the last decade. Each one gets a lot of publicity from both sides and is touted as the reason why we must have various protections, be they for religious groups or the LGBTQ+ community. Compare this, however, to the fact that since 2008 over one hundred transgender individuals have been violently murdered in the United States. Seven transgendered women have been violently murdered since the start of 2015, while there have been no cases filed about wedding vendors failing to provide services to same gender couples in that same time.

I honestly do not understand why the focus of these discussions continues to be around wedding vendors. These acts of discrimination are miniscule in relationship to the violent hate crimes committed against the transgender community. The majority of hate crimes that end in murder against the LGBTQ+ community in America are Transgender Women of Color. More transgender women were murdered in 2012 than reported cases of wedding vendors denying same gender couples services up to that point in American history, a total of about eleven by the end of 2013. The core reality is that hate crimes against our community, specifically targeting the most vulnerable of our members, has been occurring for decades but the non-discrimination ordinances and laws that would send a clear message about the status of LGBTQ+ individuals is for the most part breached in regards to wedding vendors providing services to, by and large, the least vulnerable of our community.

We are now facing a reality where we have marriage equality in states where there are no non-discrimination laws. The effect of this is that those members of the LGBTQ+ community who can readily navigate around discrimination have access to the privileges and responsibilities they need to normalize into the predominant norms of our culture, with the small chance of having to find another wedding vendor. In the midst of this the animosity to passing non-discrimination ordinances and legislation, which in the end always crumbles into nasty rants portraying transgender individuals as sexual predators, is greater than ever. This is the price of how we have engaged LGBTQ+ rights in this country, seeking first the more rarified protections allowed to some by marriage, while placing aside the need for basic protections for all of the community. The west coast and the north east have, for the most part, a functioning reality for the entire community, but those of us in the fly over zone are left in the lurch outside of isolated islands of municipal ordinances. 

Nationally, and in the vast majority of states, our laws tell our citizens that it is perfectly acceptable to discriminate against members of the LGBTQ+ community, even if they can legally marry. This adds to a general milieu that enfranchises hate crimes against the most vulnerable in the community. The horror is that we are struggling to bring about non-discrimination legislation in a way that does not confront the very real harm, and murder, of our members. We are allowing the discussion perpetuate itself in the petty realm of wedding cakes and not confronting the true horror of our society and the tide of transgender blood.

It might be argued that the realm of wedding cakes, no matter how petty, is a palatable realm in which we can get said legislation passed. The reality, however, is that the point of struggles for equality before the law is to confront society with the actual horrors they are perpetuating and to make those abuses of individuals society considers palatable no longer palatable. The goal is to lift up those individuals we now leave destitute to a place of basic recognition; to not only change the law but alter the cultural and societal fabric in which our laws are grounded. If we do not consistently require ourselves, our neighbors, and our legislators to fully confront the horrors they are allowing to perpetuate then we are, in fact, aiding in their perpetuation.

Paying off Student Debt, specifically Seminary Debt, as a Mode of Tithing

Yesterday I was talking to a fellow new priest recently out of seminary about our student loan debt. This is a conversation that comes up a lot. Somehow all of the recently ordained clergy had to find around $100,000 of funding for our education. Very few of us get out without some level of debt, all of us will be crippled financially for years as we pay them off, many of us for decades.

In every conceivable way $100,000 is what is considered a life gift to a religious institution except for the exceptionally wealthy. If I simply gave $100,000 to a seminary I would be a major donor. The issue, which is noteworthy, is that I am a student, I am furthering my own career, I am simply getting the required degree to do the job I want to do, etc.… except that is not what I am doing as a seminarian.

Imagine if student loans = tithe...

If I were to talk to the church about how I am just a student, say that my time in seminary is about furthering my personal career goals and getting the required degree for the job I want to do… then I would not have a Bishop’s permission to attend seminary. I am receiving requisite formation, to further God’s work in the world, in order to fulfill the vocation to which the Church has called me. It just happens that to do that I also have to manage the equivalent of a life gift to the church in the meantime in order that the church can then provide me the requisite tools and skills to fulfill the vocation.

The vast majority of those called to ordained ministry simply do not have a $100,000 life gift sitting in our coffers. So we must coordinate, where possible, the gifts of others but in the majority of cases cover the short fall with student loans. Suddenly, for some reason, these loans are to be considered secular, in the world of Mammon’s worship, and not a key part of what we take on for the sake of God’s work in the world. For some reason we are not to look upon them as part of our work and labor to the Lord. The reality is that since the church is unable to forwardly give to support seminarians being formed for ministry in the church we have to backwardly give to support the formation done. In the meantime allowing the banking industry to take huge amounts of the money we would otherwise have to do ministry. The truth is that it is seminarians taking on student loans that are keeping our Seminaries funded and functional.

Now my hope is that we can find some overall transformation so that we will be paying forward when it comes to the formation of laity and clergy. Until that happens, however, the fact that the majority of our new clergy are paying it backward does not make it any less the means by which we have currently chosen to fund the church’s formation process. The intrinsic reality of a gift to the church is not defined by how it relates to linear time but in its affect upon the church. That we have a horrible system of backward giving with huge cuts taken by the banking industry in order to facilitate our gifts towards formation in the church is the fault of the church, not the seminarians bearing the burden of the church’s process.

The above is the core of my thoughts on this point. There are two side conversations that are also important to note. The first is that this applies to all vocations discerned by the church. Many individuals have calls to ministry that are as deep and equally discerned as those to ordained ministry. The church simply does not provide such discernment regularly to those not seeking ordination, may we amend this issue with all haste. The rules above apply equally to any student debt accrued in fulfilling the formation requisite for any called vocation in the Church’s ministry, lay or ordained.

The second is that this is not an attempt to stop other forms of giving by ministers heavily burdened by student debt. The vast majority of ministers I know have more of a problem of giving too much of themselves, financially and otherwise, to the church and not practicing safe and healthy boundaries. We all should be giving to our ministry placements and our seminaries, but when everything mounts up and we are looking at our budgets and trying to figure out if we can find enough in there to cover the cost of a truly needed vacation, or a simple splurge that will give us back a bit of balance, and that voice comes in our head about “are we tithing fully?”. This is the time to look over at that student loan payment, ask ourselves “what would my giving percent be if that was included?” and realize that the overall moneys we are giving to ensure that our formation centers remain funded tips us way over the scales of 10%.