The Golden Ass

The Conception of God

Echo of eternity, this warming moment
Like the burning bush fire
For an unexplainably extended time

Penetration of the Silent Word speaking
Felt as soft wind on her skin
As the angel's unexpected light departs

Surprise imagining in Silence coming
Seed planting into my praying
Mary's joyous Annunciation

(poem by me, inspired by the the breath of God outside as I was praying today, on Chritmas Eve, 2020)

This week, in the context of Advent, of the stories of Mary, Joseph, and the Virgin Birth, and of Zechariah's silence, Elizabeth, and John the Baptist, I've been thinking of the connection between their stories and ours.

I've been meditating on how salvation isn't and can't be of ourselves and is and must therefore be found in our waiting on a growth and edification that, yes, we participate in and consent to but whose seed, no, we don't plant. I've been pondering in my heart that and how salvation does and must thus be in our waiting like in a pregnancy for it's climax and fulfillment, and that in it, we bear and carry Christ around our path along the world with us, in seed form, joyously and yet with some trepidation and fear that comes with any pregnancy, hoping, longing, and expecting a birth that will radically change our world to such a disorientingly just extent as to change who we are.

In other words, reflecting on my own death and life, I've been, like Mary, "pondering in my heart" what it means to say "yes" to the Holy Spirit who wasn't only present and at work in Creation, in the desert, in the Judges, in Solomon's Temple, or 2,000 years ago in the form of a messenger sent to His Mother but, in a grace we are now given to see, hear, know, and touch, we are called and invited ourselves, always and this very moment, to practice responding and submitting to with a Creative "Yes."

Then, some guy in some group I'm in gave voice this week to those things I've been, like Mary, "pondering in my heart", when he said the following:

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A spiritual reading of the doctrine is that the virgin birth is an analogy for Theosis [if interested, click here for more information on "theosis"].

"When I see the image of the Theotokos in the eastern apse of the church, either with the Child in her womb, which is what the medallion shape signifies, or holding the Child, I see an image of every Christian soul in whom Christ has been born, in whom Christ has taken His place. As far as I know the first ecclesiastical author to have said this is St. Gregory of Nyssa in On Virginity where he says what took place in the Virgin physically or materially must or will take place in every Christian soul spiritually. There is a one-to-one correspondence between the actualization of Christ in the womb of the Virgin and the actualization of Christ in the soul of the believer."

- Fr. Maximos Constas

Met Kallistos Ware says the following, when discussing Mariology:

"Orthodox honour Mary, not only because she is Theotokos, but because she is Panagia, All-Holy. Among all God's creatures, she is the supreme example of synergy or co-operation between the purpose of the deity and human freedom. God, who always respects our liberty of choice, did not wish to become incarnate without the willing consent of His Mother. He waited for her voluntary response: 'Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be as you have said' (Luke 1:38). Mary could have refused, she was not merely passive, but an active participant in the mystery."

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Pictured here: Icon of the Theotokos (meaning "birthgiver-of-God") from St John the Baptist Orthodox Church, Warren OH (pic stolen from here).

As Christians, we are taught that Jesus is love. We are also, of course, taught to follow Jesus. However, I have spent most of my life having a very impoverished imagination for what that even means. I am still learning. My training in love through Gravity Leadership has opened my eyes to some ways that Jesus practices love to which, previously, I was mostly blind.

We all live in a shared socio-communal context. Rival and antagonistic groups of people frame said context in terms of different problems and solutions that are linguistically or discursively irreconcilable to one other. Said context has a particular history that positions or situates different people and groups of people within it in very different ways, ways that lend themselves to the very linguistic antagonisms of competing problems and solutions in the first place.

Even our history of the shared context we inhabit is itself is a subject or object of antagonistic framing with our speech that we direct towards one another. And, since our history is at stake in the language and narrative framing we choose, so is our future. This antagonism is so deep that if I even begin to name the history and trajectory of our history and future, I am understood to be engaging these antagonisms. What happens in your body if I say the word “racism”? How about “freedom”?

These discursive linguistic antagonisms that serve as rival stories of the truth of our shared social context in question (and its history and future) tend toward totalizing theories / schemas by which people find themselves and their place in said context. In other words, I am tempted to want my story to be THE story, to be everyone’s story. Hence the above noted irreconcilability.

So, if we are Christian, we are called and invited to grope towards practices of truth telling and caring in this social context where our language is predominantly tempted to irreconcilable temptation to essentially win a war. How do we train ourselves to practice love in such an impossible situation!? Well, one of the lessons in Gravity Leadership’s Workbook that we train through is called, “Seeing Jesus Practice Grace and Truth.” The idea here is that, when we try to embody and enact the love of Jesus, we are immediately confronted with a tension between, on the one hand, being truthful and honest and, on the other, being “nice.” We have a very difficult time imagining a love that embodies both truth and grace bound up together in the person and work of Jesus, who shares his life with us as we participate with him in the coming of his kingdom OF said love.

The Authority of Love

The lectionary reading last Saturday was Mark 11: 27-33, when the chief priests come and ask Jesus "by what authority do you do these things?" (Temple cleansing, etc). Jesus is like, "By what authority did John baptize, the power of men or of heaven?"

Similar as for us, there's here a shared context (political exile under the thumb of Rome) with rival sets of linguistically framed problems and solutions. And, there is an entire shared tradition of discourse (rabbis / teachers) by which people vie for authoritative telling of the history and future of the people who are subject to this context. People find themselves and their place in this context by clothing themselves in these authoritative stories.

All along, Jesus has been not only hinting that the story is ABOUT HIM, but also practicing truth telling and care IN THE GATHERING A PEOPLE TOGETHER AROUND HIIMSELF. By showing them what it means to live the story with himself as the central actor in and of it. The religious leaders, predictably - in either their context or ours - are like, "Hey YOU'RE not the center! The institution we run is! Don't you know - that's where God is present and at work? What's your deal?" “By what authority do you do these things?”

Notice that this episode in Mark 11: 27-33, in the wake of the Temple Cleansing, didn't start with Jesus "calling them out." The religious leaders were the ones calling Jesus out. They were coming to him with a harsh truth at the cost of relational connection and belonging. They were seeking to dominate and over-power him. They were in a war they wanted to win. He had just been busy showing his disciples what it means for the story of our shared context to be about himself (including in the Temple cleansing). Then others come along and are like, "umm...wowah dude."

Note how one of our possible temptations in response to people calling us out is always to justify ourselves, to, in my friend Gino’s words, “spit facts” and win the argument or the war established in the antagonism. As Gino noted in a recent sermon, they even ASK him for SPECIFIC "facts." They ASK him for an "argument." He doesn't engage in that antagonism. He doesn't engage that temptation to prove himself and his place (in the story / world).

He also doesn't call them out in return. He doesn't shame them, over-power them by telling them why and how wrong they are. In the predominance of our antagonisms, we tend to imagine that Jesus’ asking them, “by what authority does Jon baptize” WAS his “calling out” the religious leaders. But, he doesn’t. He also doesn't shame them in another way. He doesn't disempower them by taking and stealing their responsibility and agency away from them.

He instead puts them in a position - EMPOWERS THEM - to name and own their real desire. They find themselves unable to do this. If there is any condemnation or death dealing, he lets them step foot into it themselves (just as in, for example, Matt 12: 22-32 and Mark 3: 20-35, "the binding of the strong man" / "the unpardonable sin", which is about my being bound to foreign powers of nation (and family)). Where they come to overpower Jesus, he does not return the favor.

Parables of Love

Then, in both Matthew's and Mark's versions of this episode in Mark 11: 27-33, Jesus follows this up with parables - of the two sons, of the wicked tenants - that do a number of things that are relevant to what we're talking about:

1. They give responsibility and agency to those in his audience. They empower them. We tend to miss this, because, in functioning in our discursive or linguistic antagonisms, we again focus on or imagine that these are stories of Jesus "calling out" the religious leaders. We imagine that the he’s giving the harsh truth that’s much needed.

2. They are foolishly extravagant INVITATIONS into an ongoing practice in time of faithfully reciprocal RELATIONSHIP. I.e. - the CARE into which we are invited to train as disciples of Jesus. This is why it's a parable about SONS. It's why the tenants are given such an important responsibility in relation to and in representation of the Master. Such tasks imply a binding relationship of mutual caring. Again, we tend to miss this, because, in our habitus of functioning in a space of linguistic or discursive antagonistic theories, inside of totalizing stories over our context(s), in our modus operandi of fighting to win a war, we skip in our minds to the failures of the tenants and the religious leaders. But, the INVITATION is not only primary but remains implicit as a choice in the telling of the parables to their audience!

“And so it was with many others; some they beat, and others they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’” – Mark 12: 4-7.

In other words, these words from Mark 12 aren’t just about obtaining pie in the sky. They aren’t just about God declaring us “righteous” because of Christ’s dying “in our place” on the cross. They depict an extravagantly abundant, to the point of utter foolishness, desire of God for relational unity with us. This is “the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12: 2).

Again, we tend to imagine that Jesus was “calling out” the “tenants” and the “disobedient son.” Obviously, the parables are also the practicing of truth telling. But, per the above, we tend to miss the invitation to relationship of care - itself in the context of Jesus' gathering a people around himself in the first place (some now call this "organizing?") - that is the real and first thrust of the stories. In fact, "truth" in those parables is inconceivable as a category without the graceful imitating of the person who is the Truth. Truth is also inconceivable as a category here without the previously established empowerment, agency, authority, or responsibility GIVEN to and SHARED WITH those in his audience BY the telling of the parables!

Speaking of parables, the CBN story depicted above has this caption:

“The [Jericho] march was centered around Joshua 6 where God gives specific instructions on how the corrupt city of Jericho is to be conquered.

"But the Lord said to Joshua, 'See, I have handed Jericho over to you, with its king and the valiant warriors. And you shall march around the city, all the men of war circling the city once.'"

As another friend said in conversation about this, “it’s not as if Jesus shied away from pointing out people's guilt and/or shame when that was needed.” This is correct. “Peter do you love me?” “Is there anyone left to condemn you?” “May he who is without sin cast the first stone.” “The baptism of John - was it of man or of God?” “Zacchaeus, I'm staying at your house tonight.”

Coming to a place where truth and grace meet in the presence and work of the King means facing and naming our shame and guilt in the space of safety in the presence of the King who we come to trust not only desires us but cares for us. Jesus often purposefully facilitated his disciples facing and naming their shame and guilt BY connecting with them relationally. He does this with the intention of dignifying and edifying us RATHER THAN by exerting power over us (or Rome) in such a way as to cut off relationship with us and, well, "shaming" us (or Rome). In the love of Jesus, as my friend Matt Tebbe taught me: “The first truth we tell is about ourselves.” This is the Christian practice of confession.

Going Away Astounded

After the two parables of two sons and of the wicked tenants - in Matthew - the religious leaders continue to come and "call out" Jesus. They continue - in Matt. 22 - to come and “test” him. They continue to act on their desire to over-power him and put him in his place. He continues to point in the direction of their agency or empowerment and to an implicit invitation into relationship in the larger scheme of the history of Israel. They keep "going away astounded" (lol?). This continues until Jesus finally goes on the offensive with a recapitulation of the original thrust of the community he’s forming and shaping: that the story of our shared context centers on and is oriented around him. I’m speaking here of Matt 22: 41-46, on the "question of David's son.”

THEN, in Matt. 23, he goes into something that very easily LOOKS LIKE antagonistic "calling out" of the religious leaders. But, it says he's talking "to the crowds and to his disciples." He's not even talking to the religious leaders at this point. How could he be “giving them the business” if he’s not even talking to them? So, if he’s not “calling out” the religious leaders with a long series of “woes to” them, then what IS he doing?

What he is doing is actively engaging in teaching of the crowds and disciples - those who had gathered around himself in invitation and care - what it means and looks like to follow him. Doesn't look like seeking out the places of honor, doesn't look like converting seekers into death dealing ways, doesn't look like making arbitrary and random oaths that render your word meaningless, are self-indulgent in the value they place on the things that are about you and what you have power in or over, and don't honor God with wondrous awe, etc. Speaking of agency and empowerment, woe if you take that path!

All of this implies that (even) the central actor of the story is placing himself INSIDE it. My friend Glenn Runnalls often says, in reference to 1 Cor. 13: 8-13, “A 1 Corinthians kind of loving requires a first Corinthians kind of knowing.” This speaks to the question of totalizing schemes - of my wanting my story to be THE story, everyone’s story. Even Jesus wasn’t seeking to win the war of the antagonisms of his day by making his story THE story. I mean this in the sense that Jesus wasn’t standing above and over his context. Instead, he Incarnationally situates himself inside it and, in sharing our context of warring antagonisms with us, also shares with us his Way of life and love.

Hearing this in the space of the text, I “go away astounded.” My “astounding” is accompanied by a desire to put this training into practice, to engage in a fuller love where grace and truth are bound to one another in the embodied person of Jesus, who shares himself abundantly with us. This is repentance.

Please don’t imagine that this “fullness” of love is limited to the territory of politics. A female Catholic friend just shared with me this weekend how there is antagonism in her relationship with her apparently agnostic or Deist boyfriend around questions of religion. This summer, another friend shared with me that she had found herself speaking harsh truth to someone who she thought was "in a cult." After reflecting on that experience and hearing the scriptures invite into a different kind of love, she was wondering how to relate to someone in such a situation without being harsh or offensive. In what other territory of your life, where antogonisms and pretentiousness otherwise reign, might Jesus be whispering into or reaching out and touching your soul with this sharing of the love embodied in the whole of power and grace of his person?

I used to think I had to entertain reconciliation to our popular imagination for how “everyone will see” the Second Coming. In recently previous generations, the popular belief was that “everyone will see” (Rev. 1: 7, Isaiah 40: 1-11) on television in some grand event displayed on the News, or something, when Jesus returns. “Ha we told you!” Christians everywhere will shout while a confused news caster tries to narrate what they can’t understand and what challenges their heathen atheism. I was recently asked how I think God will make it so everyone on the globe sees Him returning all at once together.

In the last few years, I have been touched by desire for intimacy and care. I was previously less aware of these desires. It’s not that I was previously blissfully unaware, and nor that I “suppressed” them. In fact, if anything, my habit was more frequently to futilely indulge them without naming or owning them for what they were. And, at times, that indulgence, or any number of other pursuits or ways of interpreting the world, actually served as a distraction from or covering over of despair in alienation and death.

Besides an ongoing process of healing from what I semi-recently (in the last year and a half) learned was trauma, part of what awoke me to the embrace and touch of these true desires was the desire and touch of, for, and from a beautiful woman (don’t let your imagination go wild here, because that’s not even how it was, lol). As David Bentley Hart has said: "Beauty evokes desire. It precedes and elicits desire, it supplicates and commands it, and it gives shape to the soul that receives it."

As I got honest with myself and faced, named, and owned these desires, I also found myself in a place of uncertainty of whether or not I would ever enter the territory with this beautiful woman where such intimacy and care reign. In the midst of that uncertainty, I entertained what I only later learned was the lie that obtaining intimacy, care, and faithfulness, that entering that territory depends on my doing, saying, and being everything perfectly. The lie also included the sub-lie that the threat of the harsh desert territory of alienation and death hangs over me always as the harsh, punishing judgment for not doing everything right to obtain wholeness and belonging.

My entertainment of this set of lies naturally, at times, looked like extreme anxiety and fear, and like my WAY over-extending myself to do everything in my power I knew to do in order to close the gap of possibility and uncertainty around to actuality and knowing. This is an over-simplification, as there was a lot of other stuff going on, too, but it's also not an untruth.

My being given to see that I had been, unbeknownst to me, functioning on a lie was, at one and the same time, also the gift of seeing that entering a territory where intimacy, care, and faithfulness reign means and requires entrusting myself to the reign of just such a territory, rather than and as opposed to finding my way there by my own exhausting power. I died and found my life outside myself.

This means opening and entrusting myself into the reign of that territory as I take each small step in front of me of my actually being, my own enacting and embodying the faithfulness, intimacy, and care I now see I want - in relation to others. This means and implies that I can’t possibly see the far-reaching extent of the reign of the territory of my desire. I do not and cannot grasp them and wield them with my own power in a territory whose boundaries I set and therefore grasp. They do not belong to me. Rather, I come under them as I entrust myself to them, one step at a time along a journey whose end is always unknown.

It was just this week when the potency of the lie of my own power was opened to me, along with the greater power of the truth into which we entrust ourselves. That Truth is a person. Saturday, I “led” a discipleship cohort in training to enter this reign of the territory of faithfulness, care, and intimacy that we are tasked by the Truth to walk in and witness to. At least three people shed tears in our gathering, and that’s not the first time something like that has happened. Just afterwards, I got this email, which has an unstated message: “I was part of a group in NC back in the 90s with some really great people. I thought I wouldn’t find that again. This group is clearly that and this group is being one of the best examples of the church. I’m thankful for all of you.” That email brought tears of joy.

This was a parable, as much for myself as for anyone else, to say that the kingdom of God isn’t “seen” in the ease and power of grand spectacles. Let the reader understand. See Matt. 24: 23-28. The point of the Parable of the Mustard Seed, btw, is that a mustard tree, relatively speaking, isn’t a big, tall, tree with a predominant central trunk standing over everything in the middle of a field. It instead stays closer to the ground with many branches and crawls across a large territory.

Jesus isn’t seen in the power of a grand spectacle any more than is the intimacy and desire in a relationship between a man and a woman. And, spectacles of worship don’t replace discipleship any more than our predominant concentration of all intimacy into the idol of the nuclear family replaces worship of Yahweh.

“Witness…is already in conflict with nationalist desire, and against the fantasy of any people for global influence of world domination. The disciples will be formed by the Spirit as witnesses. They will be turned out to the world not as representatives of empires but those who will announce a revolution, the revolution of the intimate, God calling to the world. They will enter new places to become new people by joining themselves to those in Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. As Jesus announces this divine desire, he ascends. The ascension of Jesus continues to play so small a role in ecclesial imagination precisely because we struggle to think spatially…

We more easily imagine the time of Jesus Christ, the time in which he wishes to announce his reign…than we do the space of Jesus Christ, the space he wishes to inhabit and to enter in. If the ascended Lord embraces our time as his time to be made known, then he also seeks to walk in the places of this world to announce his life as the life given for the world. It is true that the ascension of Jesus certainly marks the new time of his reign and the time of the Spirit. In this time what will be constituted is the moment of gathering that will become the church. Yes, as Jan Milic Lochman noted, Jesus' ‘journey to heaven’ becomes the disciples’ ‘journey to the ends of the earth.’ Jesus ascends not only to establish presence through absence, but he also draws his body into the real journeys of his disciples into the world. He goes to heaven for us, ahead of us. He goes with and ahead of his disciples into the real places of this world…

His ascension marks less his power and more his scope. He will reign over the whole cosmos and yet he rises to raise us into heaven [i.e. – into a territory of glory or authority in the Spirit], as John Calvin said, and to overcome the distance between us and God and between one another. Jesus’ ascension is in fact God claiming our space as the sites for visitation, announcing God’s desire to come to us. God’s desire will be seen in the pouring out of the Spirit in a specific place [Jerusalem] in order to enter specific places and specific lives. He ascends for our sake, not to turn away from us but to more intensely focus on us.

As he ascends, the disciples watch, and here the danger of watching becomes clear. Jesus is no action figure, no superhero to be consumed in spectacle. Watching Jesus and watching for Jesus was and is a significant temptation for his disciples. Such watching can easily undermine movement and easily undermine the priority of the journey. Luke presents to us two men in white robes standing by the disciples, just as they did at the tomb of Jesus (Luke 24: 4-5). These men echo a similar question to the one asked in the Luke passage, a question that basically means, Why are you performing actions that contradict the actions of Jesus? The women (in Luke) sought the living among the dead; these other disciples at this moment look into the heavens concerned with absence rather than looking forward to presence…This is a moment of loss, even as they know that they must go forward in faith. We must never discount that the next step must be taken at the sight of Jesus’ leaving. Such a step is understandably a labored step, unsure and unclear. Nevertheless it must be taken because faith always leans forward to Jerusalem, toward that place where God waits to meet us. We are always drawn by God to our future.”

- Willie Jennings, Commentary on Acts, pp. 18-21