Advent 3 (the satan)
It is snowing. It has been cold, below freezing, for a few days and lightly snowing most of that time. Not much has accumulated, less than a foot, but winter wonderland is back. I am typing on our sectional, with a big window looking out into our front yard behind me, and a big shelf of snow just fell off the roof; it took about twenty seconds. For that time I was looking through nothing but that wispy white sheet. For twenty seconds, I was inside an avalanche. It is all very, very lovely.
Reading (interminably) N.T. Wright again last night. I find I like to take him a section at a time. While I finished NTPG, I have been reading JVG for a couple of years, in pieces. I think it's because he is explicating the gospels and each section is like a sermon or homily. I find I need time to reflect. Also, of course, his take on apocalyptic is different from all I was taught as a young person and that kind of realignment takes time.
Last night I read the section on "the satan." A brief discussion of the Temptation narratives. Wright notes the story shows up in Mark and Q, and while he considers the possibility earlier in the book (dare I say, smiling, tome) that none of the solutions to the synoptic problem are conclusive because there may be far more strands in the gospel records than we can ever identify (a historically reasonable solution, in my view) here Wright argues for the historicity of some foundation in the temp narrs using the most plausible solution to the synoptics we have: Mark came first, but another document of Jesus' sayings called Q was incorporated into Matthew and Luke. There are problem with this, and he describes them well earlier, but if that explanation is accepted, then the temp narrative is indeed old.
And what does it mean? I personally do not know if a personal being, an evil spiritual being, Satan, exists. I do not know if demons are real. NTW doesn't seem to argue either way here in any depth; he mostly posits that Jesus must have had some kind of struggle-experience after his baptism, at the beginning of his ministry. For me, that could have been spiritual, psychological, or both. The things Jesus is offered by the satan, the adversary, represent conventional Jewish kingdom expectations which Jesus, typically for Wright, overturns. It is a good analysis.
I am reminded again that while I believe NTW to be very brilliant, he is by no means the only gospel historian writing now who is highly intelligent. I think what makes his book most readable for me (for it is not clear, concise style) is his very, very ambitious attempt to avoid what should be called "the Schweitzer fallacy." Schweitzer is still famous for undermining earlier attempts to find the historical Jesus, illustrating how many of those Jesuses were only reflections of the social or political agendas of the author/period. NTW, conversely, tries to climb into the mind of a first century self-proclaimed prophetic Jew. I love it. Not just because it provides a kind of (neo) neo-orthodoxy, but because it is the only responsible way to proceed historically. Everyone has biases, Wright included, and his show from time to time. The criticism which could most be leveled against him, I think, is that he is a Christian: the gospels are the documents which support and illustrate his faith-core. But as I have long said, and everyone who has looked at NT studies has said: no one is neutral; no one is objective. But Wright's strength is that he is methodically, painstakingly trying to be ancient. Once, after a gospel reading in a service, my son, about 13 at the time, turned and looked at me and said, with utter heartfelt integrity, "he was weird," meaning Jesus. That struck me as a better assessment, a better critical reaction, to the gospel record than I find in many professional scholars.
This post (and a stack of papers waits to be scored) was not supposed to about NTW at all. Or only briefly. It is supposed to be about my own struggle with the satan as I step out, tentative and searching, into my own ministry.
For while I have been active in my parish almost since I got there, as lector, as warden on vestry, I have not (ever) thought of my life in terms of converting it into a life of ministry. Well, not since my early 20's anyway, and I had no idea what the hell I was talking about then. But since my "call" about a month ago (and reading Genesis, I love to see how Abraham got several calls, not just one to get him to where he needed to be; bring on more, God) I have opened my heart and mind to the idea of serving in the priesthood. I still almost chuckle when I say it. I have thought about it for several years, mostly because others mentioned the idea, but I have a good tenured job and while I think I have some of the gifts priest need to have, much in me must be shaped and distilled. My call came as a desire to work in the community of the church full time. I still like that idea, but I look at my self and life in very new ways as I proceed.
Now, for the satan. I found myself Sunday, in church, not passing the chalice but just attending, thinking how much I struggle in my parish. My second meeting with my priest went very well. I saw more of his personality than I have in eight years. He is opening up, yes, but also, entering discernment has put us on a different footing. I like it. He is an intelligent and good man; I see it more every time we talk. But he is also, most of the time, inside himself, a very private and shy person. As he is our only clergy person, that can be tough. In some ways, he reminds me of my father, though my dad was much more withdrawn and much more chaotic beneath that withdrawal. Also, my church is small, mostly older people, still without a choir. There is much I like about our traditional service; the music isn't one of those things.
But how odd, after all this time, to be standing there and looking so critically at the small numbers, the age of the people. I may well need a larger community, but as I have said, I have to stay connected to this parish while I am in discernment or start all over. Of course, it's true I just entered discernment! But my wife and I seem to take just enough to keep us in the parish, and its location has always been the selling point.
Then, last night, I woke up in the middle of the night, from a dream, thinking, "man is only a material being; he has no spiritual component." Now, I am fully willing to admit man is only matter and mental phenomenon; that latter, the utterly complex set of sensation, thought, will, and emotion I call me. I don't think man has to have a spirit. But as I enter discernment, predictably, the tension I have long allowed (struggled with, suffered under?) in my own mind: God and my faith are real/God and my faith are not real; that conflict has to be worked out more fully.
I swear, I feel like someone brought into a college football team because he throws a football once, for the first time, well. He has natural aptitude, maybe, for throwing the ball. But he doesn't know much about football or playing on a football team or strategy or plays or clock management, etc. In short, I have to learn much and grow much more if I am ever going to wear a collar. The exciting thing, for me, is that that process itself may show me God in a way I have not known. God may have revealed himself to Abraham a piece at at time (same with Isaac, same with Moses) but what if at the first theophany Abraham (or Moses) said: forget it. Nope. Not budging. God might have pulled a Jonah on them; no way to say (and as I write of these persons, of course, I see them through the thick myth/literary/historic lens). Had they rejected their first theophanies/calls, their lives might have been completely different. If Moses had heard I AM in the burning bush and then hustled it back down the hill to check on his sheep and his wife, he would never have stood on Sinai/Horeb.
The thing this most reminds me of, the process in my own experience closest to this, was my own recovery. As some who read here know (and really, no more than "some" have ever read here: hah!) I had some very bad depressions, major depressions, in the early 90's; and I had anxiety, and OCD, since childhood. Climbing out from beneath mental illness is the crowning achievement of my life. I forget that, often. But I have not had serious depression, even briefly, in well over a decade. And I have been free (almost) of clinical obsessions and pathologic anxiety for a two or three years, maybe, with a gradual decrease before that during the years I saw Sharon, my last therapist (though, as my doctor notes, I really should get another therapist, even for occasional visits, as a sort of second string bench-resource should I need it). I still struggle with vestiges of fear, anger, what I would consider normal everyday human neurotic stuff. Even there, I gradually heal, uncover new serenity and intimacy. But the violence of my depressions, the dominance of my daily OCD. Not a part of my life. I take no meds.
When I began recovery (1990) all I could see was a dim, I want to say liminal, path ahead. Recovery, now, was painful as hell. Discernment can't be that bad! But the feeling, as my brain works through issues of faith and community, is similar.
I told a good friend I had entered discernment, an older (of course) guy at my church who, with his wonderful wife, was one of the key people who brought me to this place. We didn't have much time to talk, but he said something like, "this is going to be good for you." He could not have said a better thing. It was exactly what I needed to hear. "This is going to be good for you." What a glorious thought. Discernment is meant to be good for you, however it turns out. The church canons, my own priest, show a deep respect and concern for anyone crazy enough to begin exploring. You see, I can only hope and pray, it may well be God himself who gives me what I need to make the journey. And now, if I was wearing shoes and not wool socks, I'd take my shoes off. For to make such a claim, that the Holy Spirit would support and nurture a single person on this globe of suffering and death...that is walking on to holy ground. May God continue to let me walk there.
For if my life and faith were put together enough to enter ministry while I am solidly in "mid life," what a gift. If not, I am going to grow in one direction or other! Such exploration can only produce growth. But if God is genuinely calling me, or will genuinely respond to my awkward and human progression...what a thing that will be.
***
I know evangelical friends who might tell me Satan (not the satan) is already opposing my new inquiry, maybe. I know recovery friends, many of whom I have not seen in years, who would tell me God has been protecting, preserving, healing me all along. He didn't wait for discernment! Maybe. But whatever lies ahead, it will be more genuine, vital and authentic than much of what lies behind. May God bring me into his kingdom as he wishes me to be.
"By him, with him, and in him." Amen.
Reading (interminably) N.T. Wright again last night. I find I like to take him a section at a time. While I finished NTPG, I have been reading JVG for a couple of years, in pieces. I think it's because he is explicating the gospels and each section is like a sermon or homily. I find I need time to reflect. Also, of course, his take on apocalyptic is different from all I was taught as a young person and that kind of realignment takes time.
Last night I read the section on "the satan." A brief discussion of the Temptation narratives. Wright notes the story shows up in Mark and Q, and while he considers the possibility earlier in the book (dare I say, smiling, tome) that none of the solutions to the synoptic problem are conclusive because there may be far more strands in the gospel records than we can ever identify (a historically reasonable solution, in my view) here Wright argues for the historicity of some foundation in the temp narrs using the most plausible solution to the synoptics we have: Mark came first, but another document of Jesus' sayings called Q was incorporated into Matthew and Luke. There are problem with this, and he describes them well earlier, but if that explanation is accepted, then the temp narrative is indeed old.
And what does it mean? I personally do not know if a personal being, an evil spiritual being, Satan, exists. I do not know if demons are real. NTW doesn't seem to argue either way here in any depth; he mostly posits that Jesus must have had some kind of struggle-experience after his baptism, at the beginning of his ministry. For me, that could have been spiritual, psychological, or both. The things Jesus is offered by the satan, the adversary, represent conventional Jewish kingdom expectations which Jesus, typically for Wright, overturns. It is a good analysis.
I am reminded again that while I believe NTW to be very brilliant, he is by no means the only gospel historian writing now who is highly intelligent. I think what makes his book most readable for me (for it is not clear, concise style) is his very, very ambitious attempt to avoid what should be called "the Schweitzer fallacy." Schweitzer is still famous for undermining earlier attempts to find the historical Jesus, illustrating how many of those Jesuses were only reflections of the social or political agendas of the author/period. NTW, conversely, tries to climb into the mind of a first century self-proclaimed prophetic Jew. I love it. Not just because it provides a kind of (neo) neo-orthodoxy, but because it is the only responsible way to proceed historically. Everyone has biases, Wright included, and his show from time to time. The criticism which could most be leveled against him, I think, is that he is a Christian: the gospels are the documents which support and illustrate his faith-core. But as I have long said, and everyone who has looked at NT studies has said: no one is neutral; no one is objective. But Wright's strength is that he is methodically, painstakingly trying to be ancient. Once, after a gospel reading in a service, my son, about 13 at the time, turned and looked at me and said, with utter heartfelt integrity, "he was weird," meaning Jesus. That struck me as a better assessment, a better critical reaction, to the gospel record than I find in many professional scholars.
This post (and a stack of papers waits to be scored) was not supposed to about NTW at all. Or only briefly. It is supposed to be about my own struggle with the satan as I step out, tentative and searching, into my own ministry.
For while I have been active in my parish almost since I got there, as lector, as warden on vestry, I have not (ever) thought of my life in terms of converting it into a life of ministry. Well, not since my early 20's anyway, and I had no idea what the hell I was talking about then. But since my "call" about a month ago (and reading Genesis, I love to see how Abraham got several calls, not just one to get him to where he needed to be; bring on more, God) I have opened my heart and mind to the idea of serving in the priesthood. I still almost chuckle when I say it. I have thought about it for several years, mostly because others mentioned the idea, but I have a good tenured job and while I think I have some of the gifts priest need to have, much in me must be shaped and distilled. My call came as a desire to work in the community of the church full time. I still like that idea, but I look at my self and life in very new ways as I proceed.
Now, for the satan. I found myself Sunday, in church, not passing the chalice but just attending, thinking how much I struggle in my parish. My second meeting with my priest went very well. I saw more of his personality than I have in eight years. He is opening up, yes, but also, entering discernment has put us on a different footing. I like it. He is an intelligent and good man; I see it more every time we talk. But he is also, most of the time, inside himself, a very private and shy person. As he is our only clergy person, that can be tough. In some ways, he reminds me of my father, though my dad was much more withdrawn and much more chaotic beneath that withdrawal. Also, my church is small, mostly older people, still without a choir. There is much I like about our traditional service; the music isn't one of those things.
But how odd, after all this time, to be standing there and looking so critically at the small numbers, the age of the people. I may well need a larger community, but as I have said, I have to stay connected to this parish while I am in discernment or start all over. Of course, it's true I just entered discernment! But my wife and I seem to take just enough to keep us in the parish, and its location has always been the selling point.
Then, last night, I woke up in the middle of the night, from a dream, thinking, "man is only a material being; he has no spiritual component." Now, I am fully willing to admit man is only matter and mental phenomenon; that latter, the utterly complex set of sensation, thought, will, and emotion I call me. I don't think man has to have a spirit. But as I enter discernment, predictably, the tension I have long allowed (struggled with, suffered under?) in my own mind: God and my faith are real/God and my faith are not real; that conflict has to be worked out more fully.
I swear, I feel like someone brought into a college football team because he throws a football once, for the first time, well. He has natural aptitude, maybe, for throwing the ball. But he doesn't know much about football or playing on a football team or strategy or plays or clock management, etc. In short, I have to learn much and grow much more if I am ever going to wear a collar. The exciting thing, for me, is that that process itself may show me God in a way I have not known. God may have revealed himself to Abraham a piece at at time (same with Isaac, same with Moses) but what if at the first theophany Abraham (or Moses) said: forget it. Nope. Not budging. God might have pulled a Jonah on them; no way to say (and as I write of these persons, of course, I see them through the thick myth/literary/historic lens). Had they rejected their first theophanies/calls, their lives might have been completely different. If Moses had heard I AM in the burning bush and then hustled it back down the hill to check on his sheep and his wife, he would never have stood on Sinai/Horeb.
The thing this most reminds me of, the process in my own experience closest to this, was my own recovery. As some who read here know (and really, no more than "some" have ever read here: hah!) I had some very bad depressions, major depressions, in the early 90's; and I had anxiety, and OCD, since childhood. Climbing out from beneath mental illness is the crowning achievement of my life. I forget that, often. But I have not had serious depression, even briefly, in well over a decade. And I have been free (almost) of clinical obsessions and pathologic anxiety for a two or three years, maybe, with a gradual decrease before that during the years I saw Sharon, my last therapist (though, as my doctor notes, I really should get another therapist, even for occasional visits, as a sort of second string bench-resource should I need it). I still struggle with vestiges of fear, anger, what I would consider normal everyday human neurotic stuff. Even there, I gradually heal, uncover new serenity and intimacy. But the violence of my depressions, the dominance of my daily OCD. Not a part of my life. I take no meds.
When I began recovery (1990) all I could see was a dim, I want to say liminal, path ahead. Recovery, now, was painful as hell. Discernment can't be that bad! But the feeling, as my brain works through issues of faith and community, is similar.
I told a good friend I had entered discernment, an older (of course) guy at my church who, with his wonderful wife, was one of the key people who brought me to this place. We didn't have much time to talk, but he said something like, "this is going to be good for you." He could not have said a better thing. It was exactly what I needed to hear. "This is going to be good for you." What a glorious thought. Discernment is meant to be good for you, however it turns out. The church canons, my own priest, show a deep respect and concern for anyone crazy enough to begin exploring. You see, I can only hope and pray, it may well be God himself who gives me what I need to make the journey. And now, if I was wearing shoes and not wool socks, I'd take my shoes off. For to make such a claim, that the Holy Spirit would support and nurture a single person on this globe of suffering and death...that is walking on to holy ground. May God continue to let me walk there.
For if my life and faith were put together enough to enter ministry while I am solidly in "mid life," what a gift. If not, I am going to grow in one direction or other! Such exploration can only produce growth. But if God is genuinely calling me, or will genuinely respond to my awkward and human progression...what a thing that will be.
***
I know evangelical friends who might tell me Satan (not the satan) is already opposing my new inquiry, maybe. I know recovery friends, many of whom I have not seen in years, who would tell me God has been protecting, preserving, healing me all along. He didn't wait for discernment! Maybe. But whatever lies ahead, it will be more genuine, vital and authentic than much of what lies behind. May God bring me into his kingdom as he wishes me to be.
"By him, with him, and in him." Amen.
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