now... i had read with interest the Q & A from Bishop Spong, since i had known him as a controversial figure in the Episcopal church, particularly within New Jersey... it would never have occurred to me to equate the pagan practice of child sacrifice with the crucifixion.  i am at odds with him as well as to it (child sacrifice) being predominate in Jewish tradition.  it was exactly because Jewish practice/Hebrew worsip experience repudiated child sacrifice that the story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son becomes so powerful - his willingness to be obedient to God even when God is asking him to do something that God, Godself, has forbidden...

As far as the sacrifice of the paschal lamb goes, i believe the concept of sacrificing the first born lamb reflects back to the practice of giving all first ruits of any endeavor to God.  if you might reacll, this was an issue between Cain and Abel, back in Genesis.  For Yom Kippur, it was not so much that an animal was sacrificed > the practice was to bring forward a goat, first born male without blemish, and the high priest would, in the name of all the people, place his hands on the head of the goat to transfer all the sins of the people into that goat.  the goat was then allowed to escape into the wilderness (the probable origin of the term "scape goat")...  it is only with respect to the reception of the sins of the people upon an innocent that the Yom Kippur observence resembles the crucifixion.

part of what limits Bishop Spong's interpretation of the crucifixion , in my opinion (and if i might be so bold as to disagree with a bishop), is his lack of belief (or apparent lack of belief) in the Trinity.  Jesus was so much more than a, or even The, Child of God> Jesus was God, Godself.  so it was not simply God sending God's son to death ona cross ,but God taking that role willingly upon Godself... to paraphrase John's gospel, "God loved the world so much that God gave Godself to the end that all who believe... "

there is no way to deny that being in covenant with YHWH involves blood.  that is the point of circumcision.  there is no oath stronger than a blood oath, and the Hebrews bound themselves to God with their blood, and the blood of their children.  that said, only the willingly given lifeblood of one who was fully, completely, perfectly human, and yet at the same time fulland completely possessing the power and divinity of God could represent both sides of the covenant and redeem us all...

and it is because of his lack of understanding of the Trinity that Bishop Spong misses that this act of self-sacrifice demonstrates the identity of God more than anything else... our Triune God is the Lover - Creator God... the Belovéd - Redeemer God... and the Love That Binds - the Holy Spirit.  we, as part of God's good creation, are continually swept up in that dance of love and spirit... the love that would give any thing to redeem us and bring all of us (believer and non-believer alike) back into that wondrous dance.   God loves us.  God is love by definition.  and it is that definition that redeems us all...

Bishop Spong, the retired Bishop of the Diocese of Newark (NJ, Episcopal) was asked the following question by Allan Hytowitz via e-mail: "How do you personally, and Christian doctirne in particular, reconcile the contradiction of that biblical prohibition against child sacrifice with the claim that 'God sacrificed his [sic] child' in explaining the horrific death of Jesus? It seems to me that rather than the 'sacrifice of Jesus' being of benefit to Christians, it serves more to threaten them with death and/or eternal punishment if they are not obedient to the wishes and decrees of the Church."

Part of Bishop Spong's response reads, "I think you have hit the Christological nail right on the head.  The whole sacrifice mentality that permeates Christian theology needs to be raised to consciousness and expelled from Christianity... Child sacrifice was part of ancient religion even in Judaism as the story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac suggests.  It was later replaced with animal sacrifice that was very much a part of worship in the Old Testament.  The Passover observance was marked byt the sacrifice of the paschal lamb.  Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, was also marked by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, whose blood was thought to cleanse the people from their sins.  It was all but inevitable that the crucificion of Jesus would be interpreted against the background of these two Jewish worship traditions... Even the story of the cross in which we are told , 'none of his [Jesus'] bones were broken' was drawn from the liturgy of the Yom Kippur sacrifice.  Because that was how the 1st century Jews interpreted the death of  Christ does not mean that we are bound by that thinking forever.  Humand attitudes toward child sacrifice are today violently negative.  Attitudes towards animal sacrifice are expressed in such words as 'cult worship', 'black magic', and 'dveil liturgies'.  I wonder why these negative concepts are not allowed to flow toward the interpretation of Jesus' death as a sacrifice required by God to overcome the sins of the world.  That idea makes God barbaric.  It makes Jesus the victim of a sadistic deity.  It introduces masochism int oChristianity and it deeply violates the essential note of the Gospel, which is that God is love calling us to love.  Why can we not see the cross, not as a sacrifice, but as an ultimate expression of teh humanity of one who was so whole he could give his life away and of one who wanted to demonstrated that even when you kill the love of God, the love of God still loves its killers?  why can we not get away from that message of guilt and control that is found in the pious but destructive phrase 'Jesus died for my sins'?  I believe that the future of Christianity rests on our ability in the Christian Church to aescapte the language of sacrifice and punishment and begin to think in terms of finding in Jesus the power to live fully, the grace to lvoe wastefully, and the courage to be all that we can be."

i have met a new friend... lately i am meeting lots of new people, mostly from xanga, but a few from online... some (most) of the IMers are looking for hookups, which is odd since my profile is quite clear as to marital status. 

but it is nice to get the opportunity to talk to people from other places with other viewpoints.  i met someone from sweden, Rf, who has the most interesting job > market researcher with a specialization in experiential design.  as Rf explains it, you come with a new business, say a boutique, and an idea about what you want to sell, and the sort of clientel you wish to attract, and he will design the layout, the customer flow, the work flow, in essence, the entire experience.  sort of like feng shui meets industrial design...

Rf speaks 6 languages, since his father was in the diplomatic corps in sweden, and that made me feel like a doofus, since i only speak two... my poor attempts at spanish are laughable, and my german is horrid!  but i am determined to learn more!  he got his baccalaureat in marketing and his mba, so we had a really spirited discussion about micro vs macro economics, and the merits of capitalism (he) vs socialism (she)...

it was so much fun... we also talked about the origin of the myths prevalent in tolkien, and the bastardization of Christianity (and religion in general) at the hands of the institutionalized church...

i haven't felt so much like i met a kindred spirit in forever... we even like the same types of music...

sin... Eckhart Tolle, calling it "the primary error" , defines it as "forgetfulness of [God]...the illusion of absolute separateness that turns reality into a nightmare"... (A New Earth, p54)

we have talked alot about it over the past 6 weeks, not surprisingly since it was Lent, then Easter... especially at Easter when we praise God that we can be freed from sin and its consequences... i like Tolle's definition,though, for it seems to cover most of the ground of our sinfulness > we sin against God when we forget that we are a part of God's good creation, and act as if we did not need to care about the world around us.  we sin against our fellow humans when we forget that we are all connected by the Holy Spirit and by Jesus' saving death in the family of God's children... we sin against God when we forget that God loves each and every person, believer or no, with an all-consuming love, and that we are all connected within and through that love...

the Gospel lesson for this past Sunday speaks of Jesus appearing to his disciples in the upper room, which was locked out of fear.... when Jesus appears, he doesn't even acknowledge the betrayals of his followers, the falling asleep in Gethsemane, the running away when the soldiers took him, the denial of Peter, the abandonment on the hill of Golgotha... all he does is wish 'Peace"....  and right on the heels of the overlooking of all their shortcomings, Jesus tells them that if they forgive the sins of any , they are forgiven, and if they retain the sins of any, they are retained...

how can we not forgive others, and right away, when Jesus refuses to even reproach, as he righteously and rightfully could, those who had failed him?  that is exactly what we are called to do, to love everyone enough to be able to accept their shortcomings, their betrayals, as part of their humanity....

if you truly love someone, you are aware of their weaknesses, and you love them anyway.  so the call is to be aware of these weaknesses, and when they cause your loved one to betray you, you forgive them anyway, without reproach, without recrimination, without even mentioning it.   even if it WOULD make US feel better...

"and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us..."   in the same way that we forgive, so are we forgiven....

For the past several days, Dan's site has been discussing various aspects of Roman Catholic tradition and belief.  i have been amazed at the way many of these practices are perceived, both within and without that tradition.  i confess to feeling the way i did in seminary, during Church History I and II, when i often found myself in the odd position of defending and clarifying the theological bases for many of these things, even though i am Episcopalian, not Roman Catholic.

the vestry (governing board) of my church has questioned why i am teaching comparative religion to my 7th and 8th grade class.  when the Sunday School Superintendant and i defended the course, saying it was in the context of comparative Christianity, they said they didn't see why the children needed to learn why other Christians believe other things.

these series of posts on TheTheologiansCafe should show exactly that necessity.  as well as each person knowing why their religious traditions are the way they are...

please explain to me why the guys you don't want to be interested in you (married ones find me particularly fascinating) are, when the one you want doesn't have the time?  or why the one person you want/need to hear from just can't spare the time, but the others are clamoring for your attention?  i was never this fascinating when i wanted to be.... wtf????

and to the one w/ whom i share the and the music, many s

for Saturday, the meditation should have been:

Think about this day... what it must have been like for the apostles and early disciples of the Church.  Your leader has died, and not even a normal death or in battle, but crucified as a criminal  -- the nearest equivalent would be for him to have died in the electric chair.  All of your hopes for the coming of the Kingdom of God, a new world order of peace and truth and unity and harmony, have been dashed. crushed. destroyed. ground into the dust under the boot heel of Imperial Rome. 

no longer are you a part of a dynamic movement of spiritual revival among your people, but now just another Judean failure.  and your best friend is dead, too...

if you have ever lost someone you loved to distraction, someone you loved more than anything, and then broke up with them or they died , imagine that feeling, but perhaps even deeper.  imagine you watched that loved one die... there is no room for denial because you witnessed that death. they are "not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead"...

how long a night must have been that friday night!  how long a Sabbath day.... and now another night to endure... and then another day... the rest of your life stretches out before you in loneliness and despair and in the servitude of Rome....

and then came Sunday...

On this day the Lord has acted...

If you hear thunder today, don't be surprised - that is as it should be, for on this day, Good Friday, God broke into our time-bound world with a horrendous crash, and we will never be the same.  A baby is born, poor like many, in a make-shift shelter like some, and receives preparations for a funeral (myrrh) as a birth gift like none other.  This baby was born in the shadow of the cross, human ibued with the divine, God incarnate....  only his mother aware at first of the awe-some and awe-ful nature of this child.

When Jesus accepted God's call to death, death on a cross, the death of a criminal, a death he did not deserve, he rewrote the human story of disobedience that had begun with Adam and Eve.  No longer are we doomed to languish in our sin, but now have a new paradigm, a new pattern of possibility.  And this death, this atonement, this rewriting is once for all -- every time we fall back into our disobedience, Jesus points the way out for us.

i am lonely and feeling a bit at loose ends.  Dj is going to lose his job by the end of the year, but not a resumé has been sent or a net worked.  i am supposed to go to school this fall, but i am having a hard time stepping out in faith and committing to $42,000 a year  when Dj might be out of work. 

he works so hard, and for what?  there is no time for much other than work , only tv and church. 

leaving me feeling lonely.

so ok, that was rather self-pitying.  i think i had better go back to working too hard myself or else i will sound like a true asshole.  perhaps i will feel better tomorrow.  after all, tomorrow is another day.

and i guess i have every right to quote miss o'hara since my name rhymes with scarlett....

they are tearing up our street.... two days ago they had a thing like a reverse zamboni come down the street, chomping up all the asphalt, and it was pretty amazing.  it breaks the asphalt up in front of itself, then vacuums all the debris up into a large chute which throws the debris out, over the top of the reverse zamboni, into the bed of a dumptruck that is driving in front of the reverse zamboni.... even though both vehicles are driving very slowly , it takes very little time at all.  again, i was amazed.

why does it take longer to create than destroy?  it took God six days (over millions of years) to create this lovely world where we live, and yet humanity will have destroyed it pretty much within the next 50.  even though we have never been a partciularly cautious race, it has only been since the Industrial revolution, the late 1800's, that we have made such a damaging footprint in nature.  we sowed the seeds of global warming with unrestricted development and growth, and now it seems as if we will finally reap our rewards.

it was destressing enough that the Republicans would not sign the Kyoto Accord, and now our current Republican administration says things like "it it our God-given right as Americans to consume as much energy as we like"...  just because we CAN does NOT mean we should. 

what gives us the right to do as WE please?  how are we better than the rest of the world?  it is fast coming to the point where instantaneous communications will have made borders meaningless, especially since many services, formerly taking place in this country, have been outsourced offshore.  if a technician in india is reading your x-rays for a doctor in this country, do borders really matter?  and if borders have less meaning, shouldn't we be trying to be better citizens of the world? 

americans seem to think of their pockets before morality.  this saddens me.