Seeking and finding, chicken and egg

Two people stand by the window on a winter afternoon, watching the birds coming to the feeders. Though the same birds are dining and negotiating and squabbling, each person sees something very different.
Observer #1 has in truth spent little time watching birds, though they are glad enough that birds are around; they are pro-bird, but bird-ignorant. Consequently, Observer #1 sees large and small, bright and dark, red and blue and grey and brown; and there is pleasure in seeing the lilvely activity.
Observer #2, by contrast, is a habitual observer of birds. This does not only mean that Obs#2 can recognize and name different species of birds (Oh, look! a Short-necked Wrassler! And a Lesser Spotted Throstle-twit!!). It means that Obs#2 has some idea of what might be out there, in this place, and at this time; knows that there will probably be both males and females each according to its kind, but that social relations are different in winter than in Nesting Time; that there are different individuals that may be discernible with enough attention and that over time, personalities will emerge.
These and other expectations will sharpen the eyes of Obs#2, and enable them to place this time spent watching these birds at this feeder into stories, providing meanings and delights not available to Obs#1.

This scenario came to mind as my morning reading brought an unexpected juxtaposition, which I wanted to share with you.

Since I am mostly retired, I have more time at my command; and since most mornings I can’t sleep past 4 a.m., I have some really free time.. So it’s my current practice to read a chapter in the Hebrew scriptures (“Old Testament,” currently in Numbers), a chapter in the  Greek scriptures (“New Testament,” currently Matthew) and then something else, which varies according to whim, leading, or design. Right now, the Something Else is Origen’s Contra Celsum (Against Celsus).

So I happened to read Matthew 23:39:

For I say to you, you won’t see me henceforth until you can say “Blessed is the one coming in the name of the Lord.”

Reading this, I stopped for a while, feeling that I had come to my morning’s meditatio; but I only got a little way along until I turned to my “something else.”   As it happened,  Origen (C.C. II §§65-67) is arguing with well-informed Pagan critic of Christianity, one Celsus.  Celsus has spoken scornfully about the stories of Jesus’ appearances post-resurrection, arguing that if he’d really wanted to gobsmack his enemies, he should have appeared to Pilate or Herod or Caiaphas, rather than to his lowly and credulous followers.

But Origen all along has been arguing that Celsus just has not understood the nature of Jesus’ messiahship.  He is not coming as a conquering hero, who exacts obedience by overwhelming force (even if only the force of personality or numinosity), and thus by a wave of the hand banishes sin and oppression at once and everywhere.  Christ comes as servant, as transformer of hearts — since otherwise, human freedom means nothing, and “allegiance” or even adoration is meaningless and will not endure the “burden and heat of the day.”  To erase sin in this way is to change what it is that humans are, rejecting the Creator’s design.

Origen then points out that in each of Jesus’ appearances after the resurrection, people do not at first recognize him.  This is even true of Mary Magdalene in the garden on Easter morning — but hearing his voice, she instantly recognizes her friend.  On the other hand, Kleopas and his companion do not recognize Jesus all the way along the road to Emmaus, and it is only until he sups with them and gives thanks for the bread that they recognize him, whom they had expected to stir up a revolution and overthrow the Establishment, but instead had been crucified, died, and was buried.  Still, they knew enough of their teacher that they, too, came to recognize his voice in thanksgiving.

But Origen goes further, and says that the risen Christ would not in any case be visible to the Powers that be, and those who see through their eyes, because all they were able to see was a wandering wonder-worker (or trouble-maker) – fascinating or contemptible or exciting, according to the hopes of your heart.  But they could not see the truth of him, even when he was healing the afflicted and teaching in the Temple  or along the roads.  So what they could see of him — the outward body — had died, and so he was invisible.   Only those who were looking for the truth, and had some inkling of what to look for, were able to see him, to accept his table fellowship, and receive the breath of his Spirit.

 For I say to you, you won’t see me henceforth until you can say “Blessed is the one coming in the name of the Lord.”

Erasmus birthday 2023: Antisemitism in Erasmus and Quakerism 3: final reflections

The Quaker piece (Part 2) of this blog project will take some more time, because I am doing  fresh research which I don’t want to rush. While that matures, I want write about how I have made sense, or made peace with, anti-semitism in my beloved mentors, Erasmus and the early Friends.
My response is as a participant in Christian community. Jesus issued a clear call to perfection (at least of a particular kind), and of continued growth in faithfulness. Calling God “Abba” puts us in the position of children, and again Jesus explicitly points to children as models for us in our pilgrimage. But it is also clear that Jesus knows that this not an all-at-once achievement (He knows the human heart!). The daily cross, made lighter by love, includes the recognition that we are in process, not a product: “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the onlygreat tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.” (Léon Bloy) Hence the guidance from Jesus about bearing with and resolving conflict, and the posture of mutual service among his friends. Consequently, (and here I paraphrase Erasmus) my community of faith has to put up with me as a work in progress — and vice versa.
But this sounds too much like resigned toleration. The experience is very different: Standing in the holy spirit, it is possible to see, and to cherish others as they are (whole, unfinished, growing and striving). Only thus can I accept the gifts that they are and that they are carrying from the Giver of Gifts. In the coupling of the clear sight that the Light makes possible with the Creator’s tenderness for all in creation, one is led into fresh understanding of what gospel love is — and requires of us along the way.
If you spend long enough in the company of any friend, you come to see (sooner or later) where they do not yet live up to their own best intent, much less the challenge of God’s universal love. There is no suprise here, and no betrayal (unless there is active deceit). Our calling is to understand and enact our role in Christ’s work of reconciliation. This means standing in the Light of Christ and accepting its judgment of my own condition, and that of any other that it presents to my understanding.
Love does not preclude judgment, and indeed may sharpen it, bring to the crisis of condemnation and a recognition of the limits of one’s own strength:

You must first deny the enmity, and give up that life that stands therein, through obedience to the light, which is God’s love to the world, that through the cross of Christ, and by the spirit of judgment and the baptism of fire, all the bonds of iniquity, which keep you in the world, maybe broken, and you brought out free…And so, through death of that life which holds you in the world, you may come to enjoy God, who is love, whom without holiness none can see to their comfort. (James Nayler)

As part of this work, I have sought to ascertain whether something I have been instructed by, or taken solace from, would depend in any way on my friend’s antisemitism. Anything that could not be said without it must be rejected. As I will unpack more in a future post on Quakers and antisemitism, mixed in with various antisemitic tropes or attitudes may also be unobjectionable comparisions between, say, events as recounted in the scriptures in comparision with parallel developments in one’s own day. So the task then becomes to be honest about the possibility that antisemitism may be present in a beloved text, to be alert for its appearance, and discerning in interpreting the text.

If Erasmus or some other of my teachers were alive today, it would be right to speak the truth about anti-semitic ideas and language in their writings and teachings. If I see or hear antisemitism even among my near and dear, I need to speak to the living ear, the living heart.
This kind of confrontation is often avoided, and for good reason, because the first impulse may rise as anger or resentment, pain or disgust, as well as from an authentic sight of a wrong or evil. Here, too, is a lesson of love: to learn to hold onto the truth of the evil you have identified, but to speak from the Spirit, and therewith towards the good of the other, so that they can cease to do evil, and learn to go good:

…take heed of watching over one another with an evil eye, to spy out one another’s weakness, and declare it to others, and discover [uncover] their nakedness … but watch over one another with a pure single eye, and if thou see the pure in Bondage in any one by the deceit, whisper thou not behind their back to others; but let the Witness in thee which sees the deceit, and suffers with the pure that is pressed down by it, let it declare and witness forth the mind of the living God against the deceit, and it will cut it down, and the pure holy seed will be set at liberty, and thy conscience will be kept clean unto the Lord in discharging thy duty. And so will thy captivated Brother or sister be restored again … and then thou wilt have union together in that which is pure forever in the Lord. (William Dewsbury)

The body of Christ cannot be healed unless these wounds or poisons are seen and removed, but in humility, and in the recognition that it is Doctor Logos (as Erasmus put it) that is the physician of souls, the Reconciliation in which we can and must take our part.  The challenge of the disciple is to learn to recognize Christ’s life wherever it can be found at work.
The insight, instruction, challenge and solace that I have received from Erasmus since youth, the wisdom and art, are not nullified by his antisemitism. His imperfections are there to see, and to be named regretted, but my concern is with the evils and inconsistencies in the living, beginning with myself, within my community of faith, and then in the world, as way opens: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” But his understanding of the “philosophy of Christ” seems to me both penetrating and life-giving to the spiritual pilgrim and I will continue to delight in his company in the rest of my journey.

Erasmus’s Birthday: On antisemitism in Erasmus and in Quakerism Part I.

I determined, more than a year ago, that I should write something about antisemitism in Erasmus and in Quakerism. The topic has long engaged my attention, and my sorrow. The attention will be evident; the sorrow led me to put off writing this for months, as I tried to figure out what I might say — which means, what I needed to say to myself.

Antisemitism is an evil deeply entwined in Western culture, and in our day widespread and corrosive. It is also not the only destructive myth woven into that culture, which subtlely or blatantly justify iniquitous economic practices and other abuses of power, and feed conflict, hatred, and untruth.

Because such prejudices are, as you might say, intrinsic in every community, we will always be confronted with the consequence that some in the community (often just some one) will become aware of one such attitude, and, wounded in conscience, speak of it, leading to trouble and contention in the community. How do we express solidarity when such differences arise? How do we wrestle with them for the blessing that can result after a long struggle in the dark?

I am not a scholar of antisemitism in any era, Renaissance or modern, and so I can bring here no information of interest to specialists. Instead, what I am seeking to do is to work through what I do know, as I think about the questions I’ve just posed. To make it even more personal, I will say say that a version of these questions might be, What do I do, when I see unacceptable things in someone or some community I love, someone not “out there” but someone close to home? So this blog post is definitely me thinking aloud. I have to start with why Erasmus, and later Quakerism, present this problem for me.
When James Caroll’s Constantine’s sword came out, I was struck by Carroll’s contention that Christianity was threatened by Jews’ non-acceptance of it and therefore prayed and hoped – and worked and killed and present and persecuted – to affect their current conversation their conversion.

This was and is very far from my own experience or beliefs. My Episcopalian teaching in childhood left me with the sense that that I, a non-Jew, was enabled in Christ to be joined to the great story whose history I read in the Bible. If a Jew wished to convert to Christianity, good; but if they did not, also good; my commitment does not depend on their choice. Jesus healed the sick and told them to give thanks as prescribed by the Law; he didn’t say, Take up your bed, sling it on your back, and follow me.

And I knew also that the Jews’ story had not ended with the arrival of Christianity, though my ignorance about the nature of that continued story was almost complete: there was a synagogue in the city near my home, with beautiful writing over the door in an alphabet whose shapes excited my curiosity; more directly, there were Jewish children in my classes at school.

Moreover, long before I had anything to do with Catholics, my first spiritual hero was JohnXXIII, who opposed hostility to the Jews, and honored their covenant with God. It was in this light that I read the passages in the gospels in which Jesus is opposed by “the Jews.” Being a child of the 1960s, moreover, it seemed clear to me that Jesus was in conflict with “the Establishment” of his time — as he is of ours.
I knew very well that Jesus was a Jew and often urged people who came to him for guidance to attend to the law and the prophets; he saw his mission as being in continuity with them.

“Good master, what must I do to gain eternal life?” “Why do you call me good? There is only one that is good. If you want to gain eternal life, keep the commandments.” (Matth. 19)

But there was the additional blessing that somehow the Gentiles were invited to the table, one of the “other flocks” to which Jesus served as shepherd. I could not have put it so at the time, but this was plausible, because ( it seemed to me) that the succeeding covenants were not mutually exclusive, but elaborations or further applications of the early ones – certainly, the covenant with Noah was not replaced by that with Abraham, nor were these cancelled by Sinai. The prophets, I thought, revealed levels of the will of God which might be the basis for the inclusion of gentiles in the sweep of history: Isaiah 1 and Amos 5 hinted at this “something deeper,” suggesting (as Jesus later taught) that the specifics of the Law were important, but the core of faithfulness was an active righteousness and reverence. This then made me think critically – at an adolescent level— about the ceremonies I loved and participated in and what the truth was behind them. The Episcopal liturgy every Sunday invited us to the General Confession with words I often recall in silent worship:

Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbory, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God and walking henceforth in his holy ways: Draw near with faith, and take this holy sacrament to your comfort.

I became aware, as I grew older, that signs of the “new life” were not evident around me among those who took the sacrament. And this was the time of Vietnam, another 1963 March on Washington and in the month in the mid ’60s I first read Gandhi’s Autobiography and the Lord of the Rings; the language of the prophets and the demands of love in action filled the air as the decade unfolded and I grew with it. When I got to high school I encountered Thomas Merton, Hermann Hesse, the Berrigans – and Erasmus.
Erasmus I met in Latin class, and I warmed to him quickly. His piety, his wit, his learning, and his opposition to war captivated me, at a time when I was trying to think for myself. Probably, too, his use of the resources of classical learning in the service of his understanding of Christianity — the “philosophy of Christ” — appealed to me, a (by now lapsed) Episcopalian learning classics in a Catholic high school. Once again, here was someone saying that the ceremonies of the Church (any Church) are in a sense pedagogical: they are to teach or form us, provide a discipline (practice) by which we can be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Ever since, a portrait of Erasmus has hung over my desk.

Erasmus was a major support for me when my turn came to deal with the draft. Though the common view was that the Sermon on the Mount was nice but should not be allowed to interfere with the war machine, it seemed evident to me that war (and the war economy, and all the various connected ideas and acts) was completely incompatible with the Gospel. Erasmus said the same thing, and by the time I confronted my draft board, I’d read The complaint of peace and similiar antiwar writings (mixed together with Thoreau and Gandhi); I submitted a tiny paperback of the gospel of John with my CO application. (However naive I seemed to my draft board, they could tell I was in earnest, at least).

Well, I have continued reading Erasmus since then, and learning from him with delight. I was not surprised to encounter in his writings many references to Jewish religion as “outward” and technical (the letter) as contrasted with the religion of the gospels (the spirit). Ceremony and legalism, as opposed to worship in spirit and in truth. The angry, jealous God as opposed to the God of love. I had imbibed all these tropes in youth — they are commonplaces across Christendom even today, and “pharisaical” as a pejorative term is used even by secular folks.

But as I learned more clearly to understand this language as a language of prejudice and (often) ignorance — in myself, as well as others — I learned to translate it, making it less troubling, seeing it rather as representing a criticism of legalism in general. Erasmus was after all a lilfelong campaigner against the Church’s minute regulation of diet, life, and concience, and insistence on rules and traditions that had lost any constructive meaning they might have, and that were often in conflict with the teachings of the gospels. So what Erasmus (and just about everybody else) was saying was to not allow the rules and laws of your community to substitute for (or suffice for) actual virtue. This general view is represented by such comments as this:

It is true that Erasmus’ scorn of Jews as a stubborn sect devoted to ritualism and legalism shows a blindness (partially at least) to Judaism’s potential for religiosity and inclusivity, but Erasmus also rejected ritualism, legalism and dogmatism in Christianity and was unique in fighting religions whilst tolerating their adherents. *

In the same way, I understood “supersessionist” language — asserting that Judaism was made obsolete by the advent of Christianity — as merely a misguided interpretation of the gospels. Gentiles like me, in following Christ, were receiving a gift of affiliation to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the inner meaning or imperishable core of the Law that we were required to follow is love — the love of God and of neighbor. To my mind, this did not abrogate the Jewish law or worship, but it meant that the Law was not promulgated for non-Jews. Supersessionist or “replacement” theology is and has been pernicious and it is pervasive in all branches of Christianity, but in my own thinking it has long been repellant and unacceptable.
So I was aware of these elements in Erasmus’s attitudes and rhetoric. But as I read further over the years, I came across other things that were more troubling. Many of these are well documented in research by various scholars, most recently Nathan Ron, and before him Guido Kisch, Cornelis Augustijn, and Shimon Markish.*

Though the scholars have varying opinions about specific instances cited in Erasmus’s published works and vast correspondence, they make clear that Erasmus was troubled by the presence of Jews in Christian Europe, and saw them as some kind of a threat to the integrity of Christendom even more serious (in principle) than Christian heresies. As Ron has argued, Erasmus’s commitment to concordia mostly does not apply to “the Other,” which in his time meant especially Jews and Muslims. The only saving grace here is the contrast with people like Luther, whose vitriol is notoriously murderous, while Erasmus did not approve of violent suppression of ideas or beliefs.

More painful to me are instances where Erasmus used accusations of Jewishness as a term of opprobrium in various cat-fights with such figures as Jerome Aleander and the convert Jan Pfefferkorn (whose bellicose personality and crass polemics could be attacked richly enough in other terms). While (as Augustijn and others argue) some of Erasmus’s antisemitic vituperations stem from strongly held convictions aimed primarily at in-house Christian abuses, some of the accusations of opponents cannot be explained in this way. As the Reformation was gathering steam, and the Roman church gathered its forces for combat, Erasmus often felt himself in danger of being labelled, and punished, as a heretic himself, and during these years his use of terms like “Jew” and “Jewish”as slurs are ugly and clearly rooted in a visceral prejudice.

Now, a few years ago I started reading his Paraphrases of the Christian scriptures. These were among the most influential of his writings (Edward the VI decreed that a copy of the translated Paraphrases should be in every parish church in England), and they were close to Erasmus’s heart. They thus reveal much about his attitudes about the nature of Christianity, and along with his Annotations are a singularly rich way to engage the texts. Of course biblical scholarship has not stood still since the 16th century, and Erasmus is not definitive, any more than any other great authority; but I have found him a continual help and mentor, whether I agree with him or not.

The Paraphrases are written in a lively, graceful style for the general public (that is, the international Latin-reading public); a very rough modern parallel might be Eugene Peterson’s The Message. The Paraphrases display Erasmus’s gifts of learning,and his historical and dramatic imagination, as he explains or brings to life the narratives and ideas of the texts.
Over the course of the year since I have been reading with this blog post in mind, I discovered that Hilmar Pabel had looked at the Paraphrases as a whole with this question in mind (and I am grateful to him for sending me a copy of his paper*). His study is comprehensive and reading it confirmed or amplified my own amateur conclusions, but it was Erasmus himself who punched me in the gut.

What happened was this: For a while,in my daily devotional time, I followed the practice of reading  one chapter of the Gospels, and then reading Erasmus’s paraphrase of that chapter. Moving slowly in this way (for I was reading in the original languages), the details and, as it were, the flavor of the Paraphrases were easier to experience. But as I made my way through the gospel of John, I found myself at one moment open and “tendered” by Erasmus’s eloquence and insight — and at the next moment hammered and wounded by the way he imagines the motivations and attitudes of those elements in society that opposed or even feared Jesus as crackpot or revolutionary.

Over and over, I found Erasmus making unnecessary rhetorical choices in representing these opponents to a Jesus who is (in his interpretation) unmistakably a divine presence, completely focused on the welfare of humankind, merciful and patient. His Jewish opponents (whom no doubt he lumped with the violent bombastics of some Catholic and Lutheran enemies of his own) are described as envious, savage, enraged, malicious, devious, petty, arrogant, covetous and avaricious, and blinded by the carnal, by which he means hungry for power, prestige, and position.

Over and over he characterizes them as irrationally devoted to Moses, whom Erasmus sees as a great prophet, but only a foreshadowing of the ultimate Law Giver.   For example, John 1:17 reads (in total), “For the Law was given through Moses, grace and truth through Jesus Christ.” Here is Erasmus’s paraphrase of that sentence:

Moses, whose authority is sacrosanct for you…was the one who brought the law down, but was not the author. And the Law that he brought was austere, rigid, and not efficacious [in freeing souls from sin]. It served as a prelude, in figures and shadows, to the gospel light that would follow later. It would serve rather to make sin evident than to take it away, and was more likely to prepare the way for healing than to bring it about. But now, in place of the harshness of the Law, Grace is made available through Jesus Christ (505E)

It is true that there are “good” Jews in Erasmus’s narratives who are praised or at least treated as neutral. These are mostly the poor, or those whom Jesus heals; or honorable figures from Jewish history and Scripture. Others are people like Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, or Zacchaeus, who are or become followers.

For example, Erasmus recounts gracefully and insightfully Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well (John 4).  He contrasts the skepticism of the Jewish leaders with the openness of the Samaritan woman, whose people are looked down upon by the Jewish mainstream, and whose personal life moreover has been scandalous. Jesus suggests that she fetch her husband; she replies that she has none. He replies,

That’s for sure: You’ve had 5 husbands, and the man you’ve got now is not your husband.” She says, “Sir, I see you are a prophet.”

Erasmus paraphrases this thus:

If Jesus had said something like that to the Pharisees, they would have secretly said that he was a sorcerer, or had a demon. But what did this Samaritan, a pious sinner, answer? “Lord, I see you are a prophet.” (528B)

By contrast, the crowds debating with Pilate about what to do with Jesus are (goaded by their leaders), wholeheartedly hostile, heedless of their own best interests:

The Jews, thirsting for nothing besides innocent blood, kept shouting “Take him away, take him away, crucify him!” The shameful death was pleasing to the Jews…”We have,” they said, ” no king but Caesar.” Such was their lust for revenge that they would commit themselves to endless servitude [to the powers of the world], by extinguishing Jesus, the author of freedom.” (638C)

(For Quaker readers: The distinction between the good Jews and the bad ones is reminiscent of 17th century Quaker language about the priests and professors of their day, as opposed to the “tender people.” More anon!)
Erasmus was sophisticated in his search for and valuing of historical context when reading ancient texts. Indeed, it is one the great gifts in his writing that he brings to bear a wide range of information about the geography, history, and life-ways of those he writes about. He was also subtle and unafraid of the ambiguities in human motivation and action.  Though he often wrote at speed, necessitating many revisions in later editions, he took care with the Paraphrases, and wrote with his heart’s eloquence. So the consistency with which he inserts anti-Jewish opprobrium is revealing of his authentic attitudes, and it must be said that the gospel of John is a text whose portrayal of conflict between Jesus and “the Jews” needs no intensification. The combination of John and Erasmus feels like an onslaught.
I have been enriched by Erasmus’s insight and focus on the heart of the gospel message, and his understanding of what Sylvia Fitzpatrick calls “the process of human perfection.” His teaching and personality played an important role in opening me towards Quakerism, and as I have said above, he has been a companion and object of study since my youth.
As a result, my fuller understanding of his anti-semitism has brought true sorrow, and made me question all those years of engagement, learning, and delight. This re-examination echoed questions I had to explore when I read early Quaker writings with an eye to their attitudes towards Jews (roughly a century after Erasmus), but in many ways cut deeper. I will forbear more quotation and analysis here, and leave this post with my dilemma. In the next post, I will review the Quaker version of this topic, and in a final post I will try to unpack how I am making sense of all this.

*  All citations provided at the end of this series of blog posts. All translations my own.

Annual report to my meeting

As a recorded minister, I have felt it important to report at least annually to my meeting.  Here is the latest sample.

10/13/23
Dear Friends,
I am late in making my report to the meeting for 2022; and soon it will be time for a 2023 report. Perhaps you will accept this letter as bridging both. I will be grateful for any guidance or questions you may have for me, either to probe the past, or consider the future of my faithfulness in my calling.
At an October meeting forty years ago, Salem Quarterly Meeting entered a minute in their records, recording their sense that I had evidenced a sustained gift in the ministry.
This brief declaration was not an award, nor an accolade, but the affirmation of something like a covenant: the meeting and I acknowledged that we were joint stewards of a concern, mutually responsible for my faithfulness to the gift. The concern might be enacted in different ways over its lifetime; my attention or faithfulness might fluctuate with changing life conditions; the gift and responsibility might someday be withdrawn. The recording was therefore not a mandate to perform a particular set of duties, only a commitment that I would be watchful, day by day, for guidance and for opportunities to use the gift; that I would be diligent in following such openings; and that I would undertake to continue my spiritual formation and learning, so that I could become a more useful instrument in the work, and align myself more and more to it.
Thomas Kelly spoke eloquently about the importance of focusing on a few concerns, and I came to see that the calling to ministry was one of mine, an organizing and constraining fact of life which was a necessary path for me, if I was going to learn how to live, as best I could, as a disciple of Christ. This, naturally, is laid alongside other gifts in my life — marriage and parenthood, livelihood, citizenship, and a few other such abiding concerns. The meeting’s acknowledgment that this concern was a true one has helped me not forget my responsibility to the gift, not for a day in the past 40 years — even if in the remembering, I feel convicted because I have fallen short.
Knowing very well that my work is one little thread in the great fabric of service and faithfulness by which the divine life is incarnated in our world, I have sought to understand as well as I can how my bit fits with others, and to learn about my learning in case it may be of any use to others in their pilgrimage. The impulse of the teacher is a deep element in my personality, and so I have also felt impelled to transform my own experience — including my experience of limitations and failures — by reflection, and by setting it alongside others’ experience and reflections, joining in, as it were, in the long conversations of our faith tradition, a community that extends backward in time, and around the world. Teachers must be diligent learners, and the experiments in faithfulness of my friends and mentors in this timeless community have been indispensible blessings.
Now, I understand my calling to be “gospel ministry,” and I want to say a little thing about what that means, as I have come to see it. A minister is a servant, who acts under orders, but often must figure out how best to understand and implement those orders, and this (sometimes scary) freedom may grow as the minister’s experience grows. A minister of the gospel is one who serves the life of the gospel, which is Immanuel — God with us — in ourselves and others; and calling it “gospel” indicates that this living God is inextricably linked with the character and person of Christ, before, during, and after the revelation in and through Jesus.
While the implications of this commitment are not always obvious or easy to identify, still it does constrain us, because thereby we know that we are seeking to know and live by a spirit whose commandment is love of God and of neighbor, who calls us to a perfection as articulated in, for example, the sermon on the mount, and whose being embraces life and death, joy and suffering, human and non-human, now, in the past, and in the future. The minister’s “job” is in support of this search.
Traditionally among Friends, the ministry of the gospel was in prayer and speech, under the immediate guidance of the spirit of Christ. But the work of the ministry as Friends understand it is not in preparation of ideas or messages, nor in “leadership,” but in listening and inward travail (travel). From this inward work, ministers may find themselves led into a wide variety of modes of working — in meeting, or in homes, or other settings, drawing near to the witnessing Light of Christ in companionship with others, and acting, speaking, or keeping silent as led. When I open a new travel journal, I copy in these famous words of John Woolman, as a reminder of what the work consists in:

Love was the first motion, and then a concern arose to spend some time with the Indians, that I might feel and understand their life, and the spirit they live in, if haply I might receive some instruction from them, or they might be in any degree helped forward by my following the leadings of truth among them.

Well, this has been my intent, my understanding of the work I am called to. Sometimes I have been adequate to it, often not. Every year I ask myself in prayer, “Does this concern continue, is there life in it?” I believe that this year the answer again is “Yes.” You, to whom I hold myself accountable, may sometime or other disagree, of course, and as I have said, I welcome your guidance.

___________________

As to what specifically I have been up to in the line of ministry since my last report, that is fairly easily told.
First, I continue to feel, as I have written to you for the past couple of years, that I need to be writing. This has taken two main forms.
I have continued writing in my blog, Amor Vincat (amorvincat.wordpress.com). This is partly a place for proclamation and teaching for those who find it; it is also a way of letting people into my workshop, as I try to digest, shape, and otherwise grapple with things that I read or hear, in the light of my concern.
I have also been working for the past two years on a book I’ve entitled The gospel in the Anthropocene: Letters from a Quaker naturalist. This has now been fully drafted, and with guidance from a small group of gifted, honest, and enduring Friends I am revising and starting to seek a publisher. This project, which for all its slowness has felt most urgent, represents the convergence of most of my “few concerns,” as a science educator, ecologist, minister of the gospel, and critter, dwelling gratefully and inquisitively on this astonishing, little-known planet.
I have not been traveling much at all, but during the past year I have, together with Noah Merrill, convened gatherings for ministering Friends. These seem to be happening roughly quarterly, and we have tried to host them in different places around the yearly meeting, to enable as many as possible to attend. This is the sort of thing that is necessary if our meetings are going to have a ministry of depth, variety, and power. For this to emerge, the Friends who are rightly called must grow in their gift, and exercise loving interest and care for each other, as ministers always have in the times of Friends’ vitality. Meetings also must grow in their discerning love for the service of those carrying this gift, so that the gospel ministry takes its place as a vital ingredient in the life of meetings, one among many manifestations of the work of the Minister, in whom we can be a unity. I feel called to help.
Finally, I have continued this year with my “midweek meditations,” which appear have been been of some use and refreshment for those who attend.

As to what the coming year holds, I am very open. No doubt the book will be a continued task, at least for a while. Other writing projects may emerge: the work on Willliam Dewsbury, which I set aside to work on The Gospel in the Anthropocene, will probably become a main focus again. I am also starting to suspect that it will be right to begin traveling more in the ministry, but what form that will take I am not sure. If I am asked to do some teaching, I will accept as seems in right ordering. The “ministry to ministers,” which has been a persistent, not to say chronic, part of my concern over the past forty years, is likely also to continue.

I will conclude by quoting from something I wrote a while ago, which still expresses my experience:

Jesus teaches us to expect joy in following him, and in our unity through his Spirit with our brothers and sisters. Take time to experience joy in the call to service, and in times when you have served faithfully. The Gospel ministry is costly; yet if it is a concern you are carrying rightly, it is path of rejoicing, and growing peace. The increase of joy, and of confidence in God’s reliable presence, has always been accepted as evidence that the minister has been faithful.
This is not to be mistaken for self-congratulation or a sense of superiority, which are antithetical to the joy of which Jesus spoke. In the inward training that we go through, we come more and more to know how to anchor our life and service in divine love, and find our fears diminished and defeated. We become more sensitive to evil in ourselves, our society, and those we meet. We become more compassionate, knowing the many ways that we are likely to be mistaken, deluded, or limited by our personalities, our understandings, our experience, our culture. We feel it more keenly when we come to recognize the Seed’s oppression, and we come to understand Nayler’s words, when he said that the spirit he felt “is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it, nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression…with the world’s joy it is murthered. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places in the earth.”
Yet even so, we are given along with this a heightened sense of gratitude. We become great in thanksgiving, and feel how gratitude is a taproot of prayer and upwelling life. With Fox we “rejoice to see the springs of life break forth in any,” and are free to take delight in the multitudinous evidences of the Life and Light, in other people, in the natural world, even in ourselves. As Lewis Benson wrote, “It is a wonderful thing to be called to the ministry of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

In Christian love your friend,
Brian Drayton

From action to service Part 4:Conclusion

My reflections on four stories about Jesus’ way of teaching were meant to emphasize the complex relationship between well-doing on the one hand, and taking a further step towards perfection, a state that Jesus describes in terms of the covenant with Noah: God sends sun and rain to the unjust as to the just. Nourishment, the means of living, are to be available to all. In sign of this, God hung his bow on the sky, to be an arc of wonder, rather than an instrument of punishment.
So this is the perfection that Jesus calls us to (Mt. 5:48). Situated in the Sermon on the Mount, which preaches clarity, compassion, and courage, the exhortation suggests that the follower of Jesus’ path is must carry with them at all times a sense of their own spiritual poverty, in charity/love for others* even if the love is not requited, and thus a reverence for others, whether friend or foe, which is a reverence for all who bear God’s image and likeness — however hard the seeing of it may be to me. And thus, in God’s abounding love, we can know that abundance is for all: God can see where God’s image and likeness, can be found, even when we cannot.
That abounding and impartial tenderness should serve to wean us from a view of our compassion as the instrument of our own intentions. Sure, by returning good for evil, we may be heaping coals of fire upon our enemy’s head, but they so often seem to be wearning an asbestos hat! The melting into malleability so often does not happen at a pace we find satisfactory.
It is then so natural for us to feel our way into the role of a judging or even avenging godlet. The commanding, destroying, prideful mood is easy to identify with for most people (the outrage of the thwarted will). It is thus the more expected response than is the face of God as suffering servant, who makes us re-examine the Adjudicating or Vengeful One of our desires.
A Christian witness, even if seen as an action in the Lamb’s War, must rather be characterized by a knowledge that God’s intention is towards reconciliation for all, and our recognition of the endless complexity of human motivation, upon which God works to extend the invitation— and open a path to accepting that invitation — to table-fellowship with the Lord, our friend and elder sibling. The price of admission is our longing for transformation, and our first steps (tentative but joyful) towards it.
Origen in commenting on Psalm 15** presents us with a striking and tender image. He talks about how Jesues ascended to heaven, and imagines that

The Powers indeed marvel at the new narrative [that Christ’s arrival presents them with], because they are looking upon flesh that has risen to heaven, and they say, “Who is this who emerges from Edom [that is, from earthly regions] wearing garments tinged with red?” For they can see the evidence [tracks] of the blood and the wounds

Jesus’ body after the resurrection still bore the wounds incurred during his torture and death. With the story of the Ascension, we see that woundedness incorporated into the divine nature: God’s image and likeness includes also our image and likeness as created beings who suffer, doubt, are tempted, and in the end yield to death. You could say that God’s being thus incorporates the experience of human suffering and mortality.   So the folly of the Cross also is seen as part of God’s wisdom, deepening the springs of compassion.

Now we can see better how for Jesus the healing of the body is also a time to pray towards reconciliation. Consequently, every act of service in the spirit of Christ can be seen as both a physical and a spiritual one, and a Christian’s witness must be offered in that spirit even if no word of it is said. Jesus often healed without exhoration or demand, and so should we, unless the Witness in truth and compassion opens an invitation for us to give some account of the hope in which we act.

If we acknowledge to ourselves that we seek to act in love, that intent enriches our ability to see where love is living in the other, and thus, even if we descry it with difficulty, we can see the Presence wherever we look — and in that presence we are always reminded of our own need for healing and transformation, reminded that both the helper and the helped are in present and continued need of God’s grace and work in us. Thus, our intent makes the action different than it would be without that intent: it has more possibilities, is more open to surprise.   This consciousness itself is then a foundation for an understanding that our action,  however concrete and nonverbal, is a confession of God’s love, actively creating and sustaining, and thus we are covenanted.   We only have to be alert to the invitation, living in watchfulness, a lifelong discipline both challenging and delightful.

* I recall Leguin’s character in The Farthest Shore, the wizard Ged, looking “with impartial tenderness” on the child in his care, and the dolphins swimming alongside their boat).
** I discovered this passage in M.E. Therrien’s excellent study Cross and Creation, pg 191, but this translation is mine.

From action to service Part 3: Four stories

I am suggesting in this series of posts that there is a difference between action and service. This difference has to do with the availability of the one taking the action to the condition and humanity of the one receiving the action. Remember the scripture quotations with which I began:

Whoever receives a prophet because they are a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever receives a righteous person because they are righteous will receive a righteous person’s reward. (Matthew 10:41-42)
Whoever happens to give you a cup of water because you are Christ’s, I tell you truly they will not fail of their reward. (Mark 9:41)

As I have been thinking about the relationship between “actor” and “receiver,” which I have called “covenantal,” I have been drawn to reflect on examples from the gospel narratives in which Jesus shows just this sort of relationship to the person before him, and reacts in quite different ways to each. The four stories I will consider are those in which a woman comes to anoint Jesus’ feet; Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus; the conversation wtih Nicodemus; and the story of the “rich young ruler.”

1. A woman anoints Jesus’ feet at Bethany. (Mark 14:3-9; John 12:1-7; Luke 7:37-8; Matthew 26:6-13). The two versions differ on many points, but I wish to focus here on this core narrative.
Jesus is at a friend’s house for supper, with the Twelve. A woman comes into the dining room, bringing with her an alabaster jar containing an expensive and fragrant oil. Wordlessly she kneels beside the dining-couch upon which Jesus reclines, and weeping, anoints his feet with the oil, and wipes his feet with her hair (note: this is the story in John and Luke; Matthew and Mark have her anointing his head; ). Some of the onlookers object that she (or someone) should have given the price of the unguent to the poor. Jesus, however, accepts the gift as a kind act, and a foreshadowing of his anointing for burial.
The woman speaks no word; and though Jesus (in some accounts) offers some teaching to the dinner party, he says to her only that her sins are forgiven. There is an exchange here: Both Jesus and the woman are giving something, but the meaning of the gifts (anointing, foregiveness) is goes beyond the observable. The woman “loves much” and is showing reverence to a teacher who opens for her a door to a changed life. She seems to me to be expressing gratitude for this new possibility. Jesus makes no demand or challenge to her, but allows her to give her gift: “She has done what she could.” The inward work has begun in her, and this outward demonstration is an offering of first fruits. . There are parallels between this story and that called “the woman taken in adultery,” but in that episode, Jesus gently enjoins the woman to sin no more. In the anointing at Bethany, as with the “woman at the well,,” however, there is no such admonishment. (As a side note, in John’s account, the story takes place in the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and it is interesting to wonder how this story relates both to Lazarus’s death & revival, and to the “Mary and Martha” story.)

2. Zacchaeus of Jericho climbs up a tree, and then down (Luke 19:1-27). Jesus is making his way along a streed in Jericho, Zacchaeus is eager to see this exciting personality, and being short climbs a tree to get a better view. Jesus calls him down, and invites himself to supper. This causes some comment, as Zacchaeus is the chief tax-collector in town, and has grown wealthy through his collaboration with the occupying Roman government. He is thus considered an unsavory character, despite his generosity to the poor, and the guests he invites to his dinner reception for Jesus reflect his outcast status — sinners like himself.
It seems to me that Jesus sees his longing for righteousness, and knows that a good work has begun. In the face of some grumbling by the good people, Jesus offers the parable of the talents. Is not the punchline meant to apply to Zacchaeus? “To everyone who has something, more will be given.”

3. Nicodemus is surprised while seeking on the QT (John 3:1-21), Nicodemus seeks to understand Jesus’ teaching more fully; being a prominent figure in the community, and protective of his reputation, he comes secretly. Now, Nicodemus is a learned man, as well as an experienced and powerful one. Jesus knows this very well, and as in other cases, he points out to the enquirer that the Law has made it perfectly clear what the path to the abundant life is: “You are a teacher in Israel, and you don’t know these things!?” Nicodemus knows how to live according to the Law; moreover, he knows very well the challenges of the prophets to seek the reverence, justice, truth, and charity that are the spirit of the Law (Amos 5; Isaiah 1:10-18). Jesus therefore hits him with a distillation of this: To be fully freed into faithfulness, Nicodemus must be born from above. Nicodemus goggles at this, perhaps misunderstanding at first (the word for “from above,” anōthen, can also mean “again” — think of the phrase, “OK, let’s take it from the top.”). Jesus then presents him with another metaphor, both exciting and disturbing: those who are born from the Holy Spirit are as free and unpredictable as the wind (though the wind follows laws appropriate to its nature). The outward acts of righteousness are good in themselves, but they are also preparation for a further following, a change of relationship between the inward and the outward, based on a changed relationship with God. Being born from the Spirit suggests relationship, a convenant that is as much kinship as discipleship. As the prophets saw, when we come to the place where we can read the will of the Lord inscribed on our hearts, there will be outward results in our daily walk. The fruits of righteousness will taste of the convenant in which we act in, and from,
steadfast love to God and and our neighbors, who are our brothers and sisters.

4. The Rich Young Man (Mt. 19:16-22, Luke 18:18-23, Mark 10:17-31). A person (in some stories, a rich young man, or a rich ruler) comes to Jesus and asks what he must to do inherit eternal life. Jesus asks him about his practice, saying “What do the commandments say about this?” The man has (by his own report) fulfilled these guidelines, and apparently with a good will (“I’ve done all this from my youth”). Jesus does not challenge the claim, and indeed (in one account) loves the young man for his faithfulness. And yet the man wants to do more. Jesus looks at him attentively, and then says that he lacks just one thing more: to leave behind all that he has achived, giving the proceeds to the poor, and follow Jesus.
The verb translated “lack” often means “something remaining at the end of a series”; or it can simply mean “be in need of.” In either case, Jesus’ diagnosis is in a sense a confirmation of the man’s own declaration that he needs something more.  Perhaps Jesus surmised that the young man’s need included a mixture of motives — perhaps part of him wanted to add a further accomplishment to his moral resumé. Yet Jesus also perceived a real desire for goodness there (and remember, to one who has something, more will be given). So he offers the man a “crisis,” a critical test, which would reveal where the man’s heart is really tending — and open a path to him if he should choose to enter upon it. Thus presented with a way to travel further towards the Law written on the heart, the young man discovers that he cannot take that next step. He departs, “very sorrowful.”
I can suppose that his choice arose because of a failure of imagination, an inability to see how he could tlay down the many strands in his life that come with being a “man of affairs.” Let us not discount his will to spiritual growth, by linking his choice to the simple love of his wealth and comfort. The way of life by which someone builds a position of advantage means also obligations, activities, relationships, and the identity by which they make meaning of their lives. In this story I can see the man as an amalgam of Mary and of Martha — one part engaged in doing, preparing, accomplishing, the other listening, learning contemplating— “following” the master’s way.
Léon Bloy said, “The only tragedy is not to be a saint.”  The seeker in this story is saddened by the recognition of his condition. Jesus’ comments afterwards to his disciples are not harsh or derisive. One can read compassion there, though the narratives are so terse: “How hard it is for a person in that situation to enter the kingdom of God… harder than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.”

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These reflections are meant to emphasize the complex relationship between well-doing on the one hand, and taking a further step towards perfection, a state that Jesus describes in terms of the covenant with Noah: God sends sun and rain to the unjust as to the just. Nourishment, the means of living, are to be available to all. In sign of this, God hung his bow on the sky, to be an arc of wonder, rather than an instrument of punishment. In my next post I will start from this point to conclude these reflections, linking the call to perfection with my comparison of action to service. .

From action to service Part 2: A theological detour (?)

In his commentary on the gospel of John, Origen (185-254), one of the greatest of early Christian theologians, suggests that there is a “sensible (physical)”  and a “spiritual” way to live the gospel. You will not be surprised to hear that in general this means that we start with observable acts, conforming to the precepts of Christian virtue, but as we grow in grace and spiritual understanding, we come to understand the gospel more fully, so that it shapes our self-understanding, our relations with other people and with God, and our relationship with Creation and the gifts and constraints of our material existence.
Now, Origen was thinking in terms of types and antitypes, or true things and things that are reflections or shadows of the truth. At its best, this can be a way to try to see unity between apparently contradictory things, and to relate outward and inward aspects of reality as experienced. This way of thinking, dear to Christian commentators through the centuries (including George Fox and many other Quaker preachers), is one strategy for making sense of the course of revelation. What does Jesus mean, in a world already rich in accounts of the truth of the world? If God is one, how do we explain (what are we being taught by the Inward Teacher) the succession of covenants and of formulations of God’s intent to us-ward — the changing formulations of command and covenant from Eden and Noah through Abraham and Moses, to Jesus as a Jew, and Christ preached to the Gentiles? And the Gentiles had their own evidences of revelation, however tainted by their paganisms — the insights and the virtues of the Platonists and Stoics, for example.
In many cases, the type/antiype strategy resolved an apparent contradiction by seeing the two parts as successive revelations, that is, as a foreshadowing and then something closer to the truth. Think of Paul saying that some of the new Christians were still “infants” in the faith, and so needed to be fed “milk, “until they reached such maturity that they could digest the “meat” of the gospel message; or “Now we see as in a mirror, by way of an obscure image; then we will see face-to-face.” The (not-by-Paul) Epistle to the Hebrews compares the Holy of Holies in the Temple (the “antitype”), made by human hands, with the actual presence of God in the heavenly realm (the “type”). The high priest (antitype) entered the Temple’s heart on behalf of the people; so Christ (type), priest forever according to the order of Melchiszdek, entered the actual Presence on our behalf once and for all. So also, the writer says, the formulation of the Law as Moses delivered it was a shadow (antitype) of the good things to come, as foretold in Jeremiah 31:31-4. (type) Thus, faithfulness to the outward Law is good in itself, but it prepares the way for the fuller realization of God’s intent. It is perhaps in this way we could understand Jesus’ insistence that his teaching was not in contradition to the Law (one iota of which was not ever to “pass away,” to become obsolete), but rather a way to inhabit it more completely.
The desire to somehow find coherence, indeed consistency, between apparently conflicting revelations in terms of foreshadowings or historical developments or growth and maturity, etc., very quickly developed into the narrative of supersessionism, a key thread in anti-semitism through the centuries (and one rife in all variations of Christianity including Quakerism, until Vatican II formally rejected it for the Catholic church). Now, Jesus clearly taught that he had no idea of replacing the Law as promulgated through Moses. As gentiles began to join the Jesus movement, however, the question arose whether a gentile had to convert to Judaism, and after some wrangling (the Council of Jerusalem as reported in the Acts of the Apostles was not the end of the matter!) the decision was made that those who felt that in conscience they must conform to the Law were free to do so (and indeed encouraged to); but gentiles were not required to do this. (The New Testamant letters make clear that the early church had troubles that came with welcoming this diversity of narratives and practices, which also had associations with ethnic identities and geographical/cultural differences. In any age, we are not easily led, even by the Holy Spirit, into unity, unless we see unity as a process, like the metabolism of our bodies, not an  accomplishment.)
But gentiles quickly came to outnumber the original Jewish core of the movement — especially after the Roman destruction of the Temple and associated devastation of Jerusalem, which largely dispersed the Jerusalem church. The “follow your conscience” stance fairly quickly morphed into the attitude that Judaism was based on a now obsolete revelation, replaced (superceded) by the Christian revelation as the majority of the Church came to understand it. The repellent and evil consequences of this shift are evident in the centuries since.
However, this shameful history does not obviate the existence of a dynamic relationship between practice and understanding (which is related in complicated ways to the relationship between faith and practice). To go back to the gospel narratives, we also can point to several examples in which Jesus makes clear that those who had most closely accompanied him should have an understanding of his teachings that is not easily accessible to others, even other committed disciples: your understanding, grows, and so also your responsibility:  “Much will be demanded of someone who has received much; and much will be expected from someone who has been entrusted with much” (Lk12:48).
But Jesus’ practice, and his view of the relationship of practice and understanding, suggests that he knew that the direction was not all one-way. He never forgot for a moment that he was sent to bring people to reconciliation with God, but he saw that in actual human lives, there is no simplistic, one-way path between outward performance of virtuous acts and inward conformation to the law and power of love. I think this understanding of the human heart and its progress towards God is seen in several rich stories in the gospels. In the next section, I will explore four of these stories, and then come back to my original question about the relationship or the contrast between action and service.

From action to service: Witness in the Anthropocene 1.

Whoever receives a prophet because they are a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever receives a righteous person because they are righteous will receive a righteous person’s reward. And whoever gives even just a drink of cold water to one fhese little ones because they are a disciple shall not fail of their reward.  (Matthew 10:41-42)

Whoever happens to give you a cup of water because you are Christ’s, I tell you truly they will not fail of their reward. (Mark 9:41)

Part 1.  First reflections*

I have been thinking about the difference between performing an action and rendering a service.   The distinction is a useful, even an important one, when we consider the nature of witness and of ministry, and what distinctive contribution Quakers and Christians can make as humanity encounters the challenges and disruptions of the Anthropocene.  I have found myself coming back to the passages quoted above from the gospel narratives as a starting place.

These sayings of Jesus seem to teach that when you give someone something, do an act of mercy or of service for an explicit reason (even if only explicit to yourself), that reason is part of the act, part of the meaning of the act.  It is fair to ask,however,  If I see a person in thirst, and I give them a cup of water, what more can this mean? What layer or layers of meaning might be added to an act because of the agent’s understanding of the event?

If I receive a prophet because they are a prophet, I am acknowledging that there are prophets, that is, people who are commissioned to speak some part of the truth of God to others.  This in turn implies that God’s regard includes both the messenger and the receiver of the message, and that the receiver acknowledges the messenger to be authentic and worthy of respect.   It stands to reason, moreover, that the message is consonant with (or redolant of) God’s will. for humans, and therefore in alighnment with the Great Commandments: to love God and love one’s neighbor.   The action word here in both cases is love.

 Now, this promise of a prophet’s rewared is not an unmixed blessing.  Jesus was aware of the cases (in Scripture or in tradition) in which the prophets were done to death because they offended the powerful or the sensibilities of the people.  He was personally aware of the coldness and even hostility that might be expected when one accepted — and openly wore — the prophet’s mantle (see Mt  13:53-8; John 4:44); remember, he was nearly thrown off a cliff at his hometown (Lk 4:38-9), when he claimed the prophet’s calling. And the Psalms are only one place where the suffering of the righteous at the hands of the unrighteous (or hypocritical) is bitterly lamented.

But the Psalms and prophets speak also of the beauty of holiness, and the joy or even delight that the faithful receive as a a result of their faithfulness, first and foremost the sense of fulfillment that comes from whole-heartedness, the sense of integration of values, will, and action.  One may feel compelled by a longing for that unification to undertake an act that one might otherwise avoid or overlook.  How often we find that we do a task as a consequence of love or commitment, even though we would prefer not to!  And were it not for love or commitment — some binding like that — we might not even notice that a need or opportunity for action exists!

Moreover, if an act is performed out of love — and explicitly so — we come, at least to that extent, under some obligation which might be called covenantal.  If undertaken with truthful intent, the aim is to act for the other’s benefit, their flourishing being linked to our own.  The choice then even arises to set aside your own advantage to make way for that of the other.  “Covenant” implies a living relationship, and therefore imagination and empathy are extended to embrace dimensions of engagement beyond the merely transactional. This is another way to describe prayer work, which may move freely (in either direction) along a contimuum from contemplative engagement or participation to physical service.

It is often said that what matters in such situations is the act itself.**  If the cup of water is given, the intent is irrelevant.  What does it matter why you quenched the thirst?  At the level of the thirst and its quenching,  perhaps there is nothing else to say — the organic deficit has been addressed.  In this case, the water provider is a delivery system; a municipal water fountain would be just as virtuous.

But there may be other things at work, which introduce additional meanings (associations and implications). As with any earnest prayer, an exchange like this may result in some learning or heightened awareness. The water-bearer is not in fact merely a tool to operate a tap otherwise inaccessible to the thirsty one; they are a person, as the asker is.  The donor, if conscious of the personhood of the asker may find themselves involved in an inquiry about the history that has brought them to this point. How does it happen that this person needs help to get water?  Merely by asking such a question, the donor becomes aware of more than need+water; as surely the asker is aware.

 If the donor acts from (or is drawn into)  a stance of charity (agapē), the exchange has potential meanings rooted in a state of engagement or relationship. All this is even more likely to the extent that the persons involved note characteristics of the other:  state of health, location, age, gender, accent, and so on. We snap up evidence of such things at a glance, almost without thinking, in every encounter we have, and they trigger incredible numbers of meanings, some of them barely accessible to thought without determined attention.

Furthermore, and very important for our question about action versus service, the act of responding to the request says something to the asker as well as the asked: it speaks of the presence, the awakeness or accessibility to compassion that may (or may not be) active in the donor.

This sense of connection and relationship may or may not turn out to be a large event in the lives of either giver or receiver, but just as the cup of water gives the parched body some relief at that moment, so the qualities of the exchange will have some effect, whether large or very small, according to circumstance, on the awareness of the participants, on their understanding of what just happened between them. Such effects can themselves become causes of future developments

* This is the first of four parts. The translations are my fault.

** After all, intent is a slippery thing.  A good thing can be done to injure a third party ,for example, with no actual interest in the one benefitted;  or a brutality may be excused because the perpetrator believes it’s for the good of the victim.

Reflecting on Yearly Meeting #1: Fox epistle 180

This year at last we were able to return to New England’s yearly meeting in person. It was a joyfyl time, but (as anyone knows who attends) a strenuous one as well. I have been slowly trying to digest the more difficult exercises of the meeting, hoping to understand and (I hope) learn from them.
In this connection, two of Geoge Fox’s letters to his friends have been helpful. So I am going to post them one at a time, inviting you to read them, and maybe discuss them. I will bring up the rear with my own comments in the third post in this series.
So here is Epistle 180 (taken complete from the 1831 edition). I have broken up the paragraphs, and done a few other small typographical things which make it a little easier to read. As always with 17th century Quaker materials, I encourage you to read it aloud, to feel the rhythm, and take off some of the strangeness. After all, George probably dictated this to a more lettered Friend to write down.

My dear friends,
In the love,and life, and power of the Lord God dwell, in the power, life, and seed which hath no end ; in which ye all may have unity. And be faithful and diligent in the things that are good,and keep your meetings,and meet together in the power of the Lord which cannot be broken; in which is an everlasting unity.
And live in peace and unity one with another,and all keep in the power of the Lord God, and take heed of getting into a form without the power (any of you), for that will bring deadness , and coldness , and weariness , and faintings; and what will it not bring in that nature?
Therefore keep in the power of the Lord,which will keep all the contrary down and out, and preserve you in peace and life, love, and unity, fresh and fruitful, and diligent in the wisdom of the Lord God, with which and in which ye may be kept and preserved to his glory,and be a good savour to him , and in the hearts of all people,
that to the Lord ye may be a blessing in your generation, and a peculiar people in tenderness,and full of that faith which overcomes the world and all things in it; through which ye may come all up into the unity of the spirit which is the bond of peace.
And all Friends, live in the power of the Lord God and keep down the wise part, which will judge truth to be simple and come to despise it, and cry up their own words of wisdom in its place.
GF 1659

Case Study #8 Nurturing Ministers: Preparation and advice

The book I have been working on has reached a point that I need guidance from my committee on a first full draft, and also need to seek a publisher (suggestions welcome!).  I find that I am now feeling more free to write in this space, and this series of “case studies” seems a good place to start.

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Not all ministers’ journals (spiritual autobiographies) provide much detail about their preparation and learning. John Conran (1730-1827) was an Irish Friend whose journal is full of interest. Raised in the Church of Ireland, he came to Friends as an adult. In his early forties, “it used to spread upon my mind that the Lord had a service for me, to make use of me in His church and family.” His reaction to this was anxiety, “fear…lest Satan…should put on the appearance of an angel of light, and so I should become a vessel marred upon the wheel.”
There followed a couple of years in the “school of religious experience,” after which he had some sense that he was nearing a time of usefulness.
During this time (and, I think, afterwards), he began to find that material for discourse began to come to his mind, and one might say he was imagining that he was standing to offer a message. This happened both in meeting and in the course of the day.

In meetings I used at times to feel the Word of Life dwelling in my heart, and a flow of language living there, as if addressed to sundry states present, but dared not venture to utter it in words…In managing my outward business, in the garden and fields by myself, I sometimes have felt a living language in my heart as if I were addressing an assembly of people.

It is not that he was planning sermons out, and rehearsing them.  It seems to me that his concern to invite and encourage people to “try for themselves to see how good the Lord is to those that love and fear Him” was growing on him, so that words of invitation and exhortation arose without intent:

It used to begin so imperceptibly to me, that it would be moving some minutes before I would turn my attention to it, and when I did, it increased so much as to bubble up like a spring, and break me into tears, and left a sweet savour of peace and comfort behind.   These were, I believe, only the first-fruits of the Spirit, and the ministration of preparation for the important work of the ministry, and which I fear some have mistaken for the work itself, and so have been born before the time, and have not been of that use and service to the church they were otherwise designed for.

In such interior work, Conran was exploring the material from which preaching might come — relationships among ideas, images and stories.  More than that, he was also realizing that he needed to become alert to how a message might have application to different conditions, or different groups of people — a key task of ministry which our modern convention of brief messages in meeting make almost impossible.

But Conran also draws an important distinction between preparation for the work, and the work itself.  Like other ministers, he writes of his anxiety that these preparatory reflections not be shaped into preformed discourses, rather than adding to the minister’s substance and capacity, not to be used without growth in other kinds of capacity for listening and obedience.  He writes that, between 1773, when he was received into membership, until 1775, “My mind was under deep exercise, and various probations, learning the law written on my heart”  — not only head-learning, but also heart-learning.

During this period, Esther Tuke, of York, was traveling in the ministry in Ireland, and Conran accompanied her.  It is noteworthy  that, in a letter sent after she returned home, she speaks to his concern not to make unsanctified use of his prior insights and preparation:

Great is the work, and many have known it right begun, have entered into the way, and run well for a time, but one thing or another has hindered.  Some have been like the young man who came to inquire what further good thing he should do, and turned away sorrowful at the information, “Sell all” — here indeed is the trial, all that treasure we have got, be it our own wisdom, righteousness, or whatever else, it must be parted with, and the innocent, sweet, child-like state experienced…May thy growth be this way, from a child’s estate to a man’s… then will the great end of the Lord in so signally calling thee be answered, to His glory and thine own everlasting peace, for then thou will be formed for Himself

Not long after, he travelled on his own concern, and found that being exposed to nonFriends in the course of his leadings, “I felt a temptation in myself almost to deny my profession [as a Friend], and was quite ashamed of the company, plainness, and simplicity of myself and friends.  But

We went forward in our jiourney, and were at times favoured with a sweet and open conversation, and permitted that freedom in it as to relate many things that were advantageous to each other.

Conran continues,

I thought I found my dear friend, B. Drewry, often had a polishing effect upn me, and her remarks on and corrections of my weakness and faults, were wonderfully refreshing and comforting, which made me not repine at my journey, which was a truly satisfactory one to me.

I have experienced such times, when in traveling in the ministry barriers between companions are lowered, and real work can be done in honest exchange.  There is something about being active in a right leading that ibrings freedom:  You are so exposed, have to confront your limitations and weaknesses so frankly, that the times of travel and rest can be opportunities for important learning and sometimes healing and encouragement.  You and your companion(s) are under the same irradiation by the Light, Who can melt away (or sear away) pretenses or defenses and with the removal of fear allow you to open up to your companion, and you are made of some service to each other.  It is very sweet, and very strengthening.