Memories, Conversions and Convictions: Thinking about Our Journeys

good morning everyone uh it's a little early but i want to get my stuff out of the way um welcome everybody who is present with us streaming and upstairs in overflow and of course all you wonderful human beings thank you very much for being here welcome to all saints church and welcome to 2014 lent event i want to remind each of you that if you're visiting with us and you would like to know more about all saints church we have red welcome bags at the entrance to this building right upstairs contains uh brochures about all the different ministries of all saints church and also brochures and flyers about upcoming speakers etc etc we've got mike farrell here next week talking about global warming and dr jane goodall the next sunday talking about all sorts of stuff so if you want to keep abreast of what's going on give us your name and uh telephone number and contact information on a flyer i mean on a card inside one of those red welcome bags and i send out a little email blast to everybody every thursday and keep you coming back we have uh at all states church we put our faith into action every sunday we want to make sure that you stop by the action table today uh what's going on is that we've got um a bad thing in california that if you are on assistance because your family is poor and you have another child or bring another person into your family you don't get assistance and we want to correct that of course all of you are crunched in your faces about that what an injustice that is please drop by the action table i've signed i've written a letter to the state assembly and i want you to sign on to it now i'm going to get out of the way so that the director the senior associate for education and formation and children and families john depp house can introduce you to the lent event and to our speaker before i do that i just want to say what a personal pleasure it is to welcome marcus back to this wonderful wonderful place a place where he resources us and he's been resourcing me since i was a child and he was a child too will you warmly welcome to this podium john depp house good morning it's really wonderful to all be together with such um energy and anticipation i want to give you the quick rundown of the lent event for the next couple days i know you've heard this information but we'll share it with you again we have books lots of books by marcus borg in the back so please stop by the table if you'd like to return this evening for the presentation mysticism resistance and counter advocacy you can sign up on the lawn today or you can sign up tonight before the presentation thanks registration will be open at about five o'clock this evening today at 4 30 we have our taze worship service we'll talk about contemplation a bit and then we'll practice it together as a community so come gather today as we worship with today at 4 30 in the church and then tomorrow evening is the seven o'clock pm presentation along with mama's hot tamales before at 5 30 come and eat some tamales and come to the presentation in the evening so i'm honored to introduce our presenter this morning no stranger to this place uh marcus j borg is canon theologian at trinity episcopal cathedral in portland oregon internationally known in both academic and church circles as a biblical and jesus scholar he was hondure chair of religion and culture in the philosophy department at oregon state university until his retirement in 2007 he's the author of 19 books including jesus a new vision and the bestseller meeting jesus again for the first time the god we never knew the meaning of jesus two visions reading the bible again for the first time and the heart of christianity both bestsellers his newest books are jesus uncovering the life teachings and relevance of a religious revolutionary a new york times bestseller conversations with scripture on mark and three books co-authored with john dominic crossen the last week the first christmas and the first paul his novel putting away childish things was published in april 2010 described by the new york times as a leading figure in his generation of jesus scholars he has appeared on nbc's today show and dateline pbs's newshour abc's evening news and prime time with peter jennings npr's fresh air with terry gross and several national geographic programs a fellow of the jesus seminar he has been national chair of the historical jesus section of the society of biblical literature and co-chair of its international new testament program committee and is past president of the anglican association of biblical scholars his work has been translated into 11 languages his doctor's degree is from oxford university and he has lectured widely overseas and in north america marcus borg's combined gifts of careful scholarship and accessible language have reinvigorated millions of people's faith journeys and we join the grateful chorus as we are called back to the faith of jesus where contemplation action and justice together are needed for a vibrant 21st century faith would you join me in warmly welcoming our presenter this morning dr marcus borg um this is kind of ominous to have this right in my face let me begin with a quick sound check to make sure that you all can hear me okay anybody having any problems put up a hand okay great now i will try to ignore this um i want to begin by saying that it is very nice for me to be back here at all saints every time i am here i say to the audience the attendees the ecclesia whoever you are okay that all saints is one of the flagship churches of the episcopal church in this country and i wish there were a thousand all saints ten thousand all saints can you imagine if american christianity was made up mostly of congregations like this one in part that's about the vitality of this place but i'm thinking if even small congregations of 100 people had the basic orientation toward what it means to be christian that is the dominant orientation here american christianity and this country would be a very different place so nice to be back with you i don't have a good follow-on comment to ed's quip about us having known each other since we were children but that was about 21 years ago that we met so we have grown up fast i want to begin my time with you this morning with a prayer a morning prayer from the celtic christian tradition from celtic christian ireland around the year 700 so we go back in time some 13 centuries to emerald green ireland christ as a light illumine and guide me christ as a shield overshadow me christ under me christ over me christ beside me on my left and my right this day be within and without me lowly and meek yet all-powerful be in the heart of each who speaks unto me and be in the heart of each to whom i speak this day be within and without me lowly and meek yet all-powerful christ as a light christ as a shield christ beside me on my left and my right in your name oh christ our body and our blood our life and our nourishment amen the title of my talk this morning consists of three words memories conversions and convictions and what i mean by those three words will become clear as i move through the talk and my purpose in this talk a major purpose anyway is to create or foster a conversation i haven't given this particular talk before so i don't know how long it will take i know we have to be done by 11 o'clock so don't get terribly concerned and so i don't know how much opportunity there will be for interactive q a when i'm done but i imagine that what i'm going to say this morning might foster a conversation in your own minds or between you and friends and so forth and i begin with a bit of autobiography the idea for this talk originated just over two years ago when i was invited to preach in my home congregation trinity cathedral in portland oregon on the sunday of my 70th birthday and it happened to be a sunday in lent my birthday always falls in lent and of course lent is a season that is dominated by the theme of death and mortality uh god i don't know if i have to say anything more you know a season dominated by death and mortality is a laugh line you're a good audience and to say the obvious lens begins on ash wednesday with that solemn reminder of our mortality ashes placed on our foreheads in the shape of a cross the words thou art dust into dust thou wilt return spoken over us echoing language from the service for the burial of the dead ashes to ashes and dust to dust and that combination of lent as a season of being in touch with one's mortality and my 70th birthday led me to do some serious reflection about my own life eventually leading to that triad of memories conversions and convictions now as i said in that sermon 70 maybe the new 60. but it is getting up there and i remember john updike in one of his last novels having a main character a man who had just turned 70 and he reflects early on in that novel that half of american men who reach 70 will not reach 80. one has a better chance in combat quite frankly and that didn't become terribly morbid for me as if i'd never thought of things like that before but it did lead me to reflect about convictions and by convictions i mean foundational ways of seeing things of seeing our lives of seeing what is real of seeing what matters foundational ways of seeing that are not easily shaken now i want to make a distinction between convictions and dogmatic claims let's say and i also want to mention the obvious that turning 70 doesn't necessarily make one wise one can be an opinionated old fool but anyway i thought well i want to use at least half of my sermon to share with the congregations the central convictions that i now have the premise being if we're not going to speak about what we really think when we're 70 then when and but back to the triad of memories conversions and convictions it also led me to think about the major conversions in my life now i think of conversions as of course major changes but not every major change is a conversion for example uh a divorce can be a major change loss of a job especially if it becomes chronic unemployment is a major change you can add other major changes without me multiplying examples but those in themselves are not intrinsically conversions they might become the occasion for a conversion but a conversion is a major change in how we see our lives more broadly perhaps in what we think life is about and then memories especially memories of growing up of childhood the understandings that we absorbed in the particular family location time and place church if we grew up in a church and so i suggest to you the usefulness of that triad of memories conversions and convictions for thinking about your own lives and perhaps for engaging in conversations with others about that whether somewhat structured in the context of a spiritual journey group or simply in an unstructured way in once again conversations so let me now for a few minutes apply that triad to my own life and i begin with memories especially since being christian has been so central to my life from the very beginning especially memories of the understanding of christianity that formed in my mind in childhood that i absorbed growing up that i internalized just because of my own immediate family and surroundings and to get at that i suggest a memory exercise memory exercise right now i can't remember if i said this last year or not okay but a memory exercise think back to whatever you think of as the end of your childhood 10 12. these days it might be more like eight i'm not sure and think back to the understanding of christianity that you had absorbed internalized assimilated and even if you grew up in a non-church going family it's hard to imagine growing up in this country and not having formed some impression of christianity by age 12 or so and i encourage you to do that on your own if we were in a weekend workshop setting we would have time to explore that put you in small groups to talk about it and so forth but we don't have that kind of time of course this morning so let me simply share with you my memory of how i would have answered the question at age 12 what's the heart of the christian gospel what's most central to being christian in a sentence without very many semicolons it's a good question for you to ask of yourself right now by the way now at the age you are how in a sentence would you describe the heart of the christian gospel when i think back to what my answer would have been i think it would have focused primarily around four elements to put them in a single sentence jesus died to pay for our sins so that we can be forgiven and go to heaven if we believe in him now note what it emphasizes the afterlife uh certainly heaven maybe hell if you'd been able to convince me at age 12 or so that there was no afterlife i would have had no idea why i should be christian that's how central the whole notion of going to heaven was second element sin and forgiveness sin was the primary issue in our life with god and hence our great need was forgiveness third element is the role of jesus in all of this he died to pay for our sins he died in our place to pay the debt that we all owed to god in shorthand i call this the payment understanding of his death theologically it's known as the substitutionary or satisfaction understanding of the cross substitution in our place satisfaction to satisfy the debt we owe to god and the fourth element was believing believing all of this including of course believing that jesus died to pay for our sins and often it included believing that christianity is the only way now i don't think there is anything terribly idiosyncratic about the understanding of christianity i've just shared with you it is sufficiently widespread that it might be called the quote common christianity unquote of the recent past what a majority not meeting 99 percent but certainly more than half of protestant christians and catholic christians would have absorbed half a century or more ago and of course what i've described continues to be the heart of conservative christianity today and it also is fairly widespread amongst mainline christians i don't think many mainline christians would recite exactly the four elements i just mentioned but i think it's the default position in the minds of many people what they think they perhaps should believe also affects how they understand much of christian language the word sacrifice for example which in the bible has nothing to do with payment for sin in the minds of most christians when they hear the liturgical words christ our passover is sacrificed for us the default position is oh yeah that's jesus dying to pay for our sins and by the way think of how the understanding i've just reported is reinforced by the language of most liturgies including the book of common prayer now this may not be so true here at all saints because you know you have modified your liturgy but if you have recently attended a fairly standard episcopal worship service or a lutheran one or a catholic one or whatever it's interesting to count up the number of times in a single worship service that sin is mentioned that forgiveness is asked for that the word mercy occurs think of it for a moment the most common meaning of the word mercy is what you hope for ask for when you deserve to be punished even the prayers of the people more than one form of those prayers of the people include the word mercy lord in your mercy hear our prayer what does it say about god if we are constantly asking for mercy it goes with that whole notion of a punitive god the god who would be fully entitled to punish us and for some christians maybe mostly our conservative brothers and sisters who will punish us unless we believe the right things live in the right way or whatever in its own way the prosperity gospel is part of this if you want your life to turn out well here and now be a good christian and if your life doesn't turn out well here and now it's because you haven't believed strong enough but it's that same notion of reality being built in such a way that we will be punished if we don't get it right so that understanding of christianity is very very widespread now to the conversion part and here i'm not going to detail my conversions i don't have time for that and i'm not sure how interesting it would be i'm simply going to say i no longer believe any of that and and i know i'm kind of talking to the choir here you know but even the choir needs encouragement uh rehearsal needs to learn how to sing this song in the most joyful way possible and so forth so let me now move to my convictions some of them are negative some of them are positive okay i'm an agnostic about what happens after death and i'm using the word agnostic in the precise sense of the word the word agnostic means one who doesn't know agnosticism is not a kind of halfway house to atheism okay it just means i i don't know and with regard to this question i can't imagine how anybody could know now i'm very much aware of course that there are many different beliefs about what happens after death but believing something to be the case has nothing to do with whether it is you know and you don't have to think that one through very far to get to that point you can believe that the earth is flat okay but it has nothing to do to say the obvious with whether it is moreover if there is an afterlife i don't believe and can't believe that only christians are eligible for it i mean what kind of sense would that make and that's grounded in my own conviction that christianity has no monopoly on god and no monopoly on goodness a second connection or conviction i should say when sin and forgiveness are emphasized as the central dynamic in our life with gog it greatly impoverishes what the christian life is about as if the primary issue is we've been bad it completely ignores the multiple biblical images for the human predicament for the human condition for that from which we need rescue or deliverance without trying to be comprehensive think of the exodus story the problem is not that the hebrew slaves are slaves because they've been bad if moses had gone into egypt and said to the slaves in the ghetto my children i have good news for you your sins are forgiven they would have said what are you talking about can't you see that's not our problem our problem is that we are in bondage to the power that rules our world and if the issue is bondage and it is a powerful image for the human condition then the solution is not forgiveness it's liberation liberation from that which constrains us or another quick example the bible very frequently speaks of our problem our predicament as blindness there are people who have eyes but do not see and if our problem is limited vision or blindness forgiveness doesn't address that at all or another image the bible frequently speaks of our condition as being in exile not only in the story of the jewish experience of exile in babylon but also the ending of the story of creation where our primordial archetypal ancestors are expelled from the garden and they live their lives east of eden separated from that which gave them birth from that to which in some ways they belong and in a way the whole story of the bible is how do we return from exile that even shapes of course the most famous parable of jesus parable of the prodigal son the problem is not really that he's a sinner he journeys into a far country he goes into exile and there of course he does squander his inheritance and so forth and even though he has a sense of being sin of having sinned the solution is a journey back home and even though he has a carefully prepared confession the father in the parable doesn't even let him blurted out but rushes out to meet him and embrace him the point being if we keep emphasizing sin and our need for forgiveness we miss so much of the riches of the bible a little aside here i have a buddhist acquaintance who once said to me you christians must be very bad people you're always confessing your sins and asking for mercy by the way there's a great line from an evangelical scholar whom i respect very much author dallas willard who taught at usc for many many years and recently died he critiques and the fact that this comes from an evangelical makes it even more powerful in my mind he critiques this understanding of the gospel as christianity being in the sin management business how do we manage our sins and then so also seeing jesus as payment for sin payment for our sins profoundly limits and distorts what jesus was really about i'm almost inclined to say that the notion of jesus as payment for sin betrays jesus as deeply as judas ever did and then finally in terms of the elements that formed my childhood understanding believing is much overrated i mean it really is you can believe all the right things and still be mean believing has very little transformative power so i don't believe any of that anymore i mean i believe what i just talked about but you know that childhood understanding and yet i am still a christian and a more wholehearted christian than i was as a younger person when i was primarily filled with and i'm not talking about 12 now but i'm talking about 20 and 30 when i was primarily filled with skepticism and puzzlement about a lot of this so let me now move to the more positive statements um first one for me god is real for me it's no longer a matter of believing in a being who may or may not exist my conviction that god is real comes out of a series of experiences that began in my 30s and i'll say more about that tonight a second positive conviction is about jesus that he is the decisi for christians now he is the decisive revelation of what can be seen of god in a human life this is what it means to speak of him as the word become flesh the word become embodied incarnate and this has been the status of jesus from the very beginning of christianity in him we see the word become flesh the revelation of god's character of what god is like and of god's passion not meaning suffering now but of what god is passionate about and i mentioned in passing that this is one of the distinctive qualities of christianity to find the decisive revelation of god in a person without invoking any notion of superiority or good better best simply difference jews find the decisive revelation of god in a book muslims find the decisive revelation of god in a book to the extent that buddhists might would speak about revelation they would find revelation in a set of teachings christianity is the only major religion that finds the decisive revelation of god in a person a third conviction sometimes the bible is wrong now i wish every american christian knew this at least 50 percent of american christians would vehemently deny it because they belong to churches mostly independent protestant churches that speak of biblical inerrancy and biblical infallibility and thus if the bible says something is wrong that settles it many of us grew up with a kind of taken for granted notion about that because of the way we heard the bible spoken of it's the word of god it's the holy bible it's the primary authority for faith and morals and so forth and so much of the conflict in modern american christianity has been generated by either the conscious insistence that the bible is always right or the unconscious acceptance that yeah if the bible says something is wrong that's that's pretty important now for you all i don't have to demonstrate this really but a couple quick things there are many passages in the bible in which god commands the slaughter of men women children and infants and this violent slaughterhouse god is not found simply in some old testament passages the book of revelation is probably the most violent book in the bible in terms of portraying a god who's going to not only destroy the vast majority of the human race but condemn them to hell forever really and of course as you all know there are passages again in both the old testament and new testament that either endorse or condone slavery was slavery ever consistent with the will of god and again as you all know there are many passages both old testament and new testament that speak of the subordination of women to men really and then one other example there are many passages in the new testament that clearly affirm that jesus early followers expected the second coming to be soon within their generation they were wrong now none of this is meant to trash the bible in any way it's simply an honest recognition of what it is namely the bible tells us what our spiritual ancestors in these two ancient communities thought tells us about their experiences of the sacred and what they thought life with god was about it includes the richness of their perceptions and their limited vision and their provinciality fourth affirmation jesus is the norm of the bible the standard by which the rest of the bible is to be judged i grew up as many of you did hearing that the bible is the word of god and that jesus is the word of god one of the favorite hymns of my childhood was about the bible sung to the same tune as a mighty fortress that great lutheran pep song i love it by the way i love it but the one about the bible god's word is our great heritage and shall be ours forever to spread its truth from age to age be this our chief endeavor in life it guides our way in death it is our stay lord grant while time shall last thy truth will hold fast and we also sang about jesus oh word of god incarnate a wisdom from on high oh truth unchanged unchanging o light in our dark sky and as a child it never occurred to me that the word of god as we see it in jesus and the word of god as found in the bible might be in conflict sometimes they are and orthodox christian teaching from the very beginning has been whenever there is a conflict between what we see in jesus and what we read in the bible go with jesus in colloquial language jesus trumps the bible very quick story i'm almost done i gave a talk in my home parish maybe five years ago now with the title you know adult education hour jesus is the norm of the bible and after the talk a young mom with a six or seven-year-old daughter came up to me and said i want to tell you something my daughter whispered to me while you were speaking my daughter said mommy i didn't know jesus other name was norm finally my one minute conclusion i just started looking at my watch but my fifth conviction in this list the christian life is not very much about the next life now it can and for many people does provide the courage to face deaths without a huge amount of anxiety that the one who has buoyed us up in life will continue to buoy us up in death whatever that means but the primary emphasis is not on the next life but it's about transformation in this life a two-fold transformation of ourselves from bondage through liberation to the freedom of the children of god from blindness to seeing again from a sense of exile and estrangement to a sense of reconnection and so forth and it's about a second transformation as well the transformation of this world into a world of yes greater compassion but also the social forms of compassion which are a world of justice and the end of violence that's the dream of god in the bible and to be christian is to participate in that two-fold transformation thank you thank you

Channel: All Saints Church Pasadena

Views: 10,238

Keywords: Progressive Christianity, peace and justice, community, spirituality, peacemaking, inclusion, nonviolence

Id: 96tfiRZAot0

Length: 49min 26sec (2966 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 25 2014