Migrant Stories #1

 During June we looked at Creation Stories during worship and supplemented that theme with weekly Text Studies. I try to approach these stories from a couple of different angles, because I believe each of them hold meaning for us. First, it is self-evident that there are multiple sources from which these stories have come to us. A quick example is how the creation story in Genesis 1 refers to God with the common term for God, Elohim, while the second story in Genesis 2-3 uses the phrase YHWH Elohim. If those term uses were random, we might just say that it is happenstance, that any writer might use one term or the other when referring to God. But, at least in those first two chapters, the uses are consistent enough to where it seems evident that the stories were given from two different sources, with different ways of speaking of God. 

 

Beyond making these initial observations – which, I think, is simply a matter of intellectual honesty – and drawing the conclusion that we are looking at two different sources – which, I think, is simply logical – lie some great conversations. Biblical scholars have made educated guesses about who these communities are, when they wrote the texts, what lay behind the oral tradition and writing of the texts, and so on. These are matters that I’ve learned to call “going behind the text” and can be dismissed as a lot of guesswork, but here’s why it is important. The communities who wrote these texts – fully inspired in their service to God, I believe – are embedded in time and space. That is to say, they are more like us than not. They wonder how the world can be so harmonious and consistent in its seasons and fruitfulness one day, so full of thorns and thistles, with crop failures and drought another day. They wonder what it means to believe in a God of love, when times are challenging. They wonder if God’s power is unlimited or subject to human participation or whether life is really a matter of randomness after all. The reason I draw attention to the sources of these creation stories is because I find them more meaningful when we recognize our kinship with those communities who cultivated and gave us these stories. 

 

At the same time, the creation stories have meaning in themselves, apart from the questions about their sources. To hear the story in Genesis 1 as a song is fascinating. The first verse has seven words (in Hebrew), the second has fourteen, the word for ‘earth/ground’ appears 21 times, the name of God appears 35 times, and the whole thing is situated within the rhythm of seven days, one week. That points to a very deliberate manner of writing, more poetic than prosaic, a fitting way of saying something beautiful beautifully. The second story, where God gets down and dirty by making the human and animals out of the ground, where God walks in the garden in the cool of the evening, where God can’t seem to find Adam, and where it all falls apart, has a kind of raw beauty of its own. It is not poetic, but more mythic and reads like a fable. There is a talking serpent, after all. What a fascinating view of God this story offers, a God who can be genuinely disappointed, angry, but still compassionate toward the human community, who can’t leave well enough alone. This story also has powerful meaning in itself.

 

And so, in July we will turn to Migrant Stories, beginning with this weekend’s reading of Genesis 12:1-9. It is fascinating that the whole history of the Hebrew people as an elected people starts with this story of Abraham. God’s first word to Abraham is the command, “Go.” Our Migrant stories begin with the progeniture of God’s people pulling up roots and being displaced. My guess – guess! – is that there was a pretty robust conversation throughout the Hebrew tradition over whether their life with God was essentially one of constant movement with nowhere to lay their head, or a settled people for whom the Conquest stories of Joshua showed their true colors. And, honestly, that seems to be an ongoing question for the human community. Think of the great migration stories as human beings made their way from Africa to various continents, or crossed the Bering Strait into North America. Think of migrant farmers, called “essential workers” one day, and “aliens” the next. Think of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, or a truck full of desperate migrants left to die in the heat of the desert. Throughout every place and every time, the earth has been full of migrant stories. At the same time, we value having a place we call “home.” This juxtaposition of settled/unsettled, at home and on the go, makes us very similar to the communities who render the Migrant Stories of Genesis. I encourage you to find kinship with them as they lead us through migrations based on a desire to live better, or drought, or oppression, or violence. Their world is our world in that respect, so we listen for how God is present in our kind of world. 

 

See you in worship, 

Mark of St. Mark

Oh, Those Southern Baptists

 Last week I promised to circle back and address the recent actions of the Southern Baptist Convention. I have a treasured history with the Southern Baptist Church. When I was a teenager, my best friend was part of an SBC where we helped to organize a weekly “Coffee House.” It was a very formative time in my life and made a significant impact on our community. Then, when I was in college, I was the Youth Minister at a local SBC, learning from a sincere and good pastor/mentor, and made some wonderful friendships that last until this day. The folks at that church strongly encouraged me to attend a Southern Baptist Seminary, but in the end, I chose to attend a Presbyterian one. More correctly, I feel that God sent me to the Presbyterian one and, wow, am I ever happy! Since the mid 80’s there has been a concerted effort to make the SBC more conservative theologically, politically, and in terms of polity – which is rather contrary to the whole spirit of their original design. It has long been a Baptist distinction that theirs was a “cooperative” church, not a hierarchy where leaders or groups transgressed the conscience of individual churches. The whole tenor of the conservatizing movement within the SBC has alienated many of the more progressive-minded churches and has led to firing seminary professors who disagree with the movement. I know some folks who have been lifelong members of the SBC who simply cannot believe how it has changed. 

 

And so, the movement has now become the majority voice in the SBC and has acted to disfellowship or censure or otherwise punish churches that ordain women to pastoral ministry. That seems like such a 1940’s sort of argument to be having, doesn’t it? And, of course, the warrant for disallowing women to be pastors is I Timothy 2:12-15, “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.” Boom! Fini! Done with this silly argument, right? 

 

Well, not quite. First, let me say that while I Timothy begins by saying it is a letter from Paul, I deny that strongly. (Don’t take my word for it, please, but do read Marcus Borg’s and John Dominic Crossan’s book The First Paul for some real insight.) Simply put, this is not Paul’s language or perspective toward women. In Romans 5, Paul – the real one – puts the disobedience in Genesis 3 on Adam, not Eve (see vv. 12-14.) Second, in Galatians 3:28, Paul – the real Paul – says, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” For the real Paul, the redemption in Christ has made us one, not owners and slaves, men and women, with different levels of status in Christ. Whoever wrote I Timothy, in the name of Paul - an attempt to further Paul’s message, not necessarily an attempt to deceive – had a very different opinion and perspective. It's a odd thing that two writers – each of whom could be “inspired” in their own way – have two very different perspectives. But it would be another matter entirely if the same person could have such an expansive view of what it means to be “in Christ” in one place and a contrary one in another. 

 

Southern Baptists know the books of Romans and Galatians as well as I Timothy. What they don’t have is the courage to do is to say, “If A does not equal B, then it’s not the same.” Somehow, they’ll make it the same, Doggonit, and so women need to keep quiet! I suspect that by the time I Timothy was written, Paul – the real Paul – was rolling over in his grave. 

 

When the Presbyterian Church (finally) got around to approving the ordination of women, we too struggled with the difference between Paul’s letters to the Romans and Galatians, over and against the letter to Timothy. We chose to adhere to Paul’s original vision of our liberty in Christ, which contradicts societal norms of that time and the norms of the majority voice in the SBC. We did so because the Spirit of God is always reforming us to be the body of Christ in our day. And I think we were right. 

 

So, join me in rejoicing that God has called Jennifer McCullough to be the Associate Pastor of Ark and Dove Presbyterian Church in Odenton, MD. While we will miss them when the McCullough family move to the other coast, we rejoice in the call to pastoral leadership for which Jennifer has so powerfully trained and answered. Thanks be to God! 

From One Groundling to Others

 Three things this week.

First, Happy Pride Month, my friends! I am continually honored to be part of a community that is gay, straight, cis-gender, non-binary, transgender, married, single, divorced, widowed, parents, grandparents, childless, and … I’m running out of words. However our culture has come to define family and partnerships, the good news of the Gospel is that in Christ, all are made one. So, however you identify yourself and whoever you love, our choir put it so well last week as they sang, “Love is love is love is love.”  

 

Second: Oh, those Southern Baptists! My grandmother would say, “Sometime you don’t know whether to give someone a spanking or a hug.” If there is anything that exposes the need for a critical approach to reading the Scriptures, it’s a bond of people in the 21^st century who feel that a human being who is female cannot be called to ministry as the pastor of a church. This is a big topic and I’ll address it more next week (and include some really good news in the process!) 

 

Finally: Over the last two weeks, we have begun our Saturday or Sunday worship with this Land Acknowledgement: For thousands of years, Indigenous People lived in Orange County, hunting, cultivating, and gathering in harmony with and thanksgiving for the abundance that this land yields. Those native people are often called the Gabrieliño, Juaneño, and Luiseño people, with names coming from the Spanish Missions nearby. Many of the native folk decolonize their name, preferring the title, “Tongva” or “Acjachemen” people. We honor their history and lament their displacement even as we profess that the earth belongs to God and everything in it. 

 

It is no accident that we have offered this Land Acknowledgment during a month when we have been focusing on “Creation Stories” in Genesis. Those stories give an incredible amount of attention to the land. We have seen that the Hebrew word for “land,” adamah, is the feminine form of the same word that is translated “human,” adam. Adam is born out of the adamah, so to speak, then God breathes God’s own breath into adam’s nostrils, making it a living being. The dirt out of which adam was formed is sometimes translated as ‘dust,’ the same substance that we talk about on Ash Wednesday when we quote Genesis 3:19, “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Our Land Acknowledgment is partly a way of remembering the history of the ground on which we gather to worship each week, as well as a way to remember that being “grounded” is part of our identity as human beings. 

 

When the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek, the Greek word ge was used to capture the meaning of the Hebrew word adamah. Ge, of course, is the root of our words geology and geography, and it gets translated in the New Testament as land, earth, country, or ground. It can refer to the “Land of Israel” or the “ground beside the seashore” or the “earth” vis-à-vis “heaven.” The word ge shows up over 250 times in the New Testament. A small word, but no small topic.

 

So, why am I going on and on about these Hebrew and Greek translations of dirt? Because these words matter and give meaning to our world. Think about it: When the Bible uses the words land, earth, country, or ground, it is talking about the original source from which human life was formed. We can quibble with that scientifically, but it’s a theological statement: We are grounded beings. When we speak of “the land of our birth,” we’re not just identifying a location. We’re connecting our lives with the flora, fauna, and other inhabitants of that land. When we use a spade to plant a seed into the “ground,” we are investing in the same life-giving power of the earth that gave rise to human life in the first place. To offer a “Land Acknowledgement” of those who inhabited this space before many of our ancestors arrived, is to honor for their history, and lament their exploitation, in the “common ground” that our histories share. And we could go further, acknowledging the plant life, rock formations, birds, fish, and mammals that inhabited this space long before humans migrated here. A “Land Acknowledgment” is a statement of faith – God has placed us within a history that is sacred. 

 

Please understand if you ever hear me refer to someone as a “groundling,” it is a term of endearment. In the end, what signifies us most as human and a human community is our oneness with all of God’s creation. 

 

Your fellow groundling, 

Mark of St. Mark

Talking about Homelessness

I want to share some thoughts about the challenge of homelessness in Newport Beach, and in Orange County more broadly. Because of the encampment that has appeared at the OCTA Bus Station near Fashion Island, the issue of homelessness has become more urgent for a lot of folks in Newport Beach. The “Point in Time Count” that I participated in this past January actually showed that the number of homeless persons in Orange County has gone down by 17% over the last two years. So, while the number of homeless folks on our streets feels more urgent now, it is largely a matter that it has become more visible. I think it is important to keep this distinction in mind, because if our actions toward homelessness solutions are driven by optics, our efforts will be all about improving the visibility, not helping people find housing solutions. 

In the Christian community we have commitments to justice and compassion that enable us to push beyond simply treating other persons as “eyesores” or trying to maintain our property values. If there is one person without a home in a county as prosperous as Orange County, it is a matter of justice that we try to understand the root causes of homelessness and address them, as well as all of the practical matters that arise when someone’s attempt to make a home conflicts with our sense of safety or propriety. 

It doesn’t help that we often propagate myths about the struggles that homeless persons face. We often hear that homeless people come from other places to here because of our beautiful weather. While the same could be said about me (ahem!), a study by UCI and the United Way showed that almost 70% of the homeless persons in OC went to high school here. When I participated in the Point in Time Count, every person I interviewed was from here, not an import due to our fair weather. 

We often hear that it is drug use or mental illness that makes people homeless. While there are undeniably some folks who are “chronically homeless” (i.e. unable to live in a home without a strong wraparound support system), the number one cause of homelessness in OC is the disparity between wages and housing costs. And, as we’ve learned in our efforts to house people at United to End Homelessness, the lack of affordable housing continues to be the number one impediment of helping people find permanent housing. That means, simply and starkly, that those of us who are able to pay the high housing costs in OC are actually contributing to the system that causes many to lose housing and prevents many from regaining it. That’s the discomforting truth about looking at root causes - It is never an “us” v. “them” scenario. There is only “we.” And that’s where justice meets compassion.

Again, in the Christian church we have the call to justice and compassion that compels us to do more than simply react to the visibility of homelessness. But, as always, justice and compassion work is long-term, difficult, and could even require us to concede what we feel are rightly our privileges. I am thankful that we have a community committed to both justice and compassion, with constant remembrance that we all live by God’s grace. 

If you want to read more about this issue, I was quoted extensively about it in a recent article in Stu News. You can find it here.

Mark of St. Mark

 

Creation Stories

This weekend we have lots of opportunities to engage in worship that is powerful and prophetic. In our Saturdays @5 service, we will welcome Rev. Paul Capetz, pastor of Christ Church by the Sea on the Balboa Peninsula as our guest preacher. Paul will be preaching on “The Gospel According to Matthew Shepard,” and then leading a discussion during our “Life Together” time about his experience as an out, gay pastor. It is an excellent way for us to think about our witness in the world during Pride month, to reckon with how often the church has been an instrument of harm and hate, rather than goodness and love in the world. As a way of living into our values of reflecting God's expansive love, I encourage all of you to make this a "double-header" weekend and join us for Saturday's service and discussion.

Then, on Sunday morning, I’ll be preaching on the creation story of Genesis chapter 1, kicking off a month of “Creation Stories.” Another important value for us at St. Mark is earth care. And one of the primary reasons many people in the larger church do not practice earth care is the troublesome word "dominion" in the first chapter of Genesis, where the humans are given dominion over the earth and told to "subdue" it. I would suggest that the church has long misread the first creation story in Genesis, including the use of this term "dominion." As a way of living into our values of environmental stewardship, I encourage you to be part of our worship on Sunday also. And, at the conclusion of the service, we'll have a brief Congregational Meeting. 

Did you know that the very first sentence of the Bible does not read, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”? That is how the King James Bible translated Genesis 1:1 many years ago, and so that is how it has been inscribed into our heads for many years. Even people who don’t attend church or read the Bible regularly have assumed that the first sentence in Genesis speaks of that moment when God created the world out of nothing. Many fine sermons have been preached on that verse, about how there was nothing then God made everything. I’ve probably preached a few paltry ones myself. 

 

But, alas, what the King James Version has made so familiar to us is not a good translation. Verse one is actually a subordinate clause. The main verb of that sentence does not come until verse two. So, instead of beginning with a grandiose declaration in verse one that in the beginning God created everything, then circling back to a description of a formlessness void in verse two, these two verses together are one long sentence. Here’s how our sanctuary Bible (New Revised Standard Version) translates Genesis 1:1-2, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (my emphasis). Notice that that the word “created” is not the main verb, but the verb “was” is. The earth was a formless void when God began creating the heavens and the earth. 

 

“So what?” you might ask. Well, it means a lot. First, everyone – regardless of which translation we read – agrees that the first chapter of Genesis describes God as the creator of the world. That’s not in question. What is in question is the nature of this creation story. Instead of a story about God creating everything out of nothing, a good translation of this text shows this to be a story of God bringing order out of chaos. Now we can imagine how critical this story might have been for the ancient communities, not only as a way of seeing the orderliness of the world as a gift from God, but also as a way of trusting that God brings order out of the chaos that we suffer. But, perhaps my use of the word “chaos” is a bit misleading. The Hebrew phrase, תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ (tohu va bohu) point to a kind of emptiness, which my mentor Bill Brown translates as “void and vacuum.” It’s not nothing, but it’s not something that has form or content either. My use of “chaos” does not imply a bunch of sugared-up third graders tearing up the teacherless classroom, but something that feels profoundly lonely, an arid, lifeless desert. It is out of that emptiness that God created, day after day, calling the creations of each day “good.” 

 

That’s what we get with the first creation story, which we’ll be holding during worship on Sunday. Next weekend, June 10^th/11^th, we’ll look at the second creation story that begins in Genesis 2. On June 17^th/18^th, we’ll look at the heart-breaking story of Genesis 3, where Adam and Eve disobey God, do the one thing that was forbidden to them, and then experience “Paradise Lost,” another kind of creation story. Finally, the last weekend of June, we’ll look at the story of Noah and the Flood, which is yet another creation story, involving destruction and re-creation. 

 

If you want to dig deeper into these topics with us, you can watch the Text Study videos that we upload each Monday, and participate in the Discussions that we have every Wednesday at 9:30AM. For more information, please contact me here. 

 

Mark of St. Mark