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Category: Spiritual Theology (page 2 of 5)

A Christmas Meditation: The Gloria in Excelsis as Antidote to Anger

Fr. Larry Hart

The Light of Creation Is the Light of Bethlehem

As I begin to write it is Christmas Eve morning. It is a beautiful day. The sun is shining right now at 9:00 A.M., and the beauty of the sun glinting off of tree, and grass, and flower, and the tile roof tops “makes me,” as John Denver said of sunshine on his shoulder, “happy.” But when I took Jack for his walk at sunrise with the wind blowing and rain falling, I also felt happy as I paused for my first prayer of the day, because the clouds, and the wind, and the falling rain are also beautiful and therefore an immense joy to me. I believe that if I am open and attentive to it there is beauty in everything––absolutely everything. I am utterly convinced that both John Keats and Robinson Jeffers were entirely correct: “A thing of beauty is a joy forever;” and “In the invulnerable beauty of things we see the face of God.” And I believe that the Christmas light is the light that shone at creation and in the life of Jesus and enlightens the heart of everyone who welcomes it.

A Night Message

However, the first time I woke up this Christmas Eve morning at 3:15 A.M. I was not thinking about beauty, but about anger. I think maybe that was because Brenda and I watched the George C. Scott’s film version of Charles Dickens’s Scrooge right before going to bed. The character of Scrooge, you may remember is not only incredibly greedy and miserly, but also saturated with anger and resentment. At any rate, I woke from a dream I cannot now really remember other than the looping thought that the whole world, like Scrooge in his drab, empty, and cold house, is shriveling and slowly dying from toxic anger; and, that Christmas is the antidote.

A World Mired in Anger and Hostility

I try not to read too many internet news articles, (I have a small brain and it is easily filled with junk), but I do browse headlines. What I notice is how many of them have to do with how violent and angry people are––in politics, in sports and entrainment, in business, in just everyday life. The headlines attempt to hook us into reading the full story or opinion by using the highly charged language of anger, much of it vulgar and violent sexual language––the same language I hear angry people yelling at each other on the street or couples shouting at each other in counseling. It is as if our culture is so enraged, so addicted to anger, it has runout of words capable of expressing the intensity of its collective fury. Be that as it may, there is, in my opinion, no word in the English language more violent than that four-letter word beginning with “F.” I don’t know. Maybe humanity is devolving.

A Useful Tool and a Dangerous Corrosive

The anger in us can range from mild irritation to full-blown rage. It may pass quickly or settle into fixed resentment. It is, of course, normal to experience anger. Like anxiety anger helps us to mobilize our resources for action. It is part of our flight-fight response––our human survival mechanism. At times anger is the appropriate response to a particular situation or the actions of others. For example, it can become the catalyst for peace and social justice work. Anger can, then, like a hammer, be a useful tool, but if it is your only tool that’s a problem. When anger becomes chronic, even when it is like a difficult to diagnosis low grade infection, it is corrosive and damages the body, mind, and soul.

For some people hostility seems to take over their life and becomes a personality trait. Whether we think of anger as a psychological or spiritual disorder it is easily recognized as involving beliefs that others are unworthy or that they are likely to be sources of frustration. Angry people tend to be suspicious, cynical, jealous, and bitter. They also tend to evaluate others harshly, are slower to make positive judgments, less forgiving, and frequently hold even those they love to impossible standards.”

The list of ways chronic anger can affect a person’s well-being, and even put the health of others in jeopardy, is long. Research links it to anxiety, depression, obesity, low self-esteem, sexual performance problems, increased heart attack risk, unfulfilling and unsatisfying relationships, a higher probability of abusing others emotionally or physically or both, high blood pressure, stroke, migraines, and drug and alcohol addiction. It can even reduce the bodies immunity to disease.

The saying of the Apostle Paul is often quoted to show that it is not anger itself but what we do with it that matter: “In your anger do not sin,” wrote Paul (Ephesians 4:6). In 2 Corinthians 10:1 the word translated as “gentleness” (prautes) was defined by Aristotle as the balance between being too angry and never being angry at all. To be gentle in this sense is to be angry at the right thing or person, at the right time and place, for the right reason, and to a reasonable degree. To be angry in this way requires both a great deal of emotional maturity and spiritual wisdom.

Christmas Is the Antidote

In my dream Christmas was given as the effective antidote to chronic anger, hostility, and resentment which meant specifically the Christmas message as given in the nativity narrative of the Gospel According to Saint Luke.

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angels, praising God and saying:

Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom God’s favor rests.
(Luke 2:13-14)

Several brief observations on these lines may be helpful in explaining my dream:

First: Praise is the natural response of any being, angelic or human, who has experienced, encountered, or known the presence of God. To praise is to acknowledge with both heart and mind that God is not only to be praised but is praiseworthy. It is to acknowledge that God is that power immeasurably greater that ourselves who alone can bring sanity and serenity to our lives.

Second: Biblically the word “glory,” doxa in the Greek, refers to a bright, dazzling light which is indicative of the presence of God––the God of highest heaven. As a word of praise it would be somewhat like shouting: “The light of God,” or “The shining of God.” Many people who have had a near death experience describe it as an overwhelming sense of peace and well-being. It is like, they have said, encountering a “light”–– a living entity radiating tremendous love, acceptance, and warmth. They report feeling enveloped by this light or loving presence and that it permeates their being.

Third: Among the ancient Hebrews “peace” or “shalom” is used as both a greeting and farewell. It is actually a blessing. It is like saying to the other person may God grant you everything you truly need for your life to be whole and complete––everything you need for your total well-being. But notice how this hymn, known as the Gloria Excelsis, is the announcement of the birth of Jesus. That’s the context of this whole second chapter of Luke. The peace of God is not a psychological technique or a theological concept like you might find in the latest book by a celebrity theologian or self-help lecturer, but rather the peace of God is a person––the peace of God, the angels are saying, is an infant sleeping in a stable in Bethlehem.

Fourth: Notice the phrase: “those God favors.” The peace of God, the perfect and complete harmony of life found only in Christ who is our peace, rests this night and forever on those God favors; God’s favor, or grace, is in one sense universal, covers the whole earth, while in another sense its rests, or is upon those who see it, hear, feel it, and respond in love and gratitude. A simple loving response to the presence of Christ as the peace of God has the power to reorient our entire existence.

Now, hold these four observations in mind while at the same time remembering how Jesus taught the inwardness of spiritual religion:

What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.
(Mark 7:20-23)

Putting It All Together

When I put all of this together––the Gloria in Excelsis Deo, Jesus’s teaching on the inwardness of spiritual religion, the biblical understanding of spirituality as the personal presence of God; and Saint Paul’s mystical wisdom in Ephesians 2:14-22 (“Christ is our peace. Christ’s message was peace. And if we are in Christ, we will have peace in us and become a dwelling in which God as the Holy Spirit lives.”) becomes, when I consider it all together, what I believe to be the meaning of my dream.

Henry David Thoreau was correct, “The masses of humanity live lives of quiet desperation.” Most people, in spite of their vociferous denial, live fractured and pointless lives, controlled by fear and anger they are estranged and alienated from themselves, from others, and from the deeper currents of life. They believe they can wring happiness from life if they manage events and people around them effectively. But life is riddled with strange twists and turns and uncanny contingencies. Events elude our control and people resent and resist our attempts at manipulation. When things don’t go as we wanted or planned, we become frustrated, angry, and resentful. The more our hostility grows the more out of synchronization with reality we become. But the mysterious light, and life, and love of God has, not metaphorically but in every actuality, entered the world known and inhabited by humankind, making it possible for those on watch (most often in the cold and dark) to see, and hear, and welcome this Divine power and presence of Bethlehem, to discover a new liberation, a gracious redemption––freedom from things like compulsive anger, toxic resentments, and the inner malice hidden even to themselves. How else can we respond but, “Glory to God in the highest! Peace on earth!”

A Not Too Serious Reflection On Good Without God

September 11, 2021 / Larry Hart / Comments Off

Larry Hart

The Problem for Satirists

Malcolm Muggeridge, the British intellectual, journalist and former editor of the satirical journal Punch once lamented how difficult the work of a humorist is in the modern world. He related how the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Ramsey, at the end of a performance of Godspell “. . . rose to his feet and shouted: ‘Long Live God,’ which as I reflected at the time,” noted Muggeridge, “was like shouting, ‘Carry on eternity’ or ‘keep going infinity.’ The incident,” Muggeridge said, made a deep impression on my mind because it illustrated the basic difficulty I met with when I was editor of Punch: that the eminent so often say and do things which are infinitely more ridiculous than anything you can invent for them.” I thought of the Muggeridge anecdote again recently when I read of Harvard University’s appointment of atheist humanist Greg Epstein as its Director of Chaplains.

That gave me a mild jolt when I read it. One would think just by definition a chaplain would be someone pastorally qualified to assist religiously orientated persons in meeting the contingencies, demands, moral questions, and spiritual crises of life. And so, I thought of the Muggeridge quote along with the divinity students and their professor at Union Theological Seminary gathering up house and office plants for chapel services and asking the plants forgiveness for human maltreatment of the environment. I hope they made sure the plants were properly watered before the service; otherwise, the forgiveness of the plants might have been with some reluctance and less generous than hoped for. I also thought of the comedic episode in which Harvard University and Professor Karen King were duped into believing that they had purchased a genuine fragment of a lost manuscript supporting the claim that Jesus may have been or may perhaps have been thought to have been married. So, at first, I thought Harvard’s announcement of an atheist as Director of Chaplains was another bit of unintended self-satire. But then I tried to look at it from the point of view of Harvard academics and administrators, and I think I saw things more clearly.

Misunderstanding Religion

The explanation is in Epstein’s popular book Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. The book is something of a marketing tool, rather like Marcus Borg’s books or those of Richard Rohr but without the ambiguous metaphysics. Like them it is primarily aimed at educated, affluent, conservative Christians looking for a way out but still have the feeling they ought to be “good” and ought to do “good;” as well as progressives looking for validation that being good is enough. Consequently, Epstein reassures readers that they need not believe in God or be “religious” in order to be good people. Of course, even if Epstein’s saying so is a rather trite truism, he is correct. However, the insinuation in his title that a billion people are atheistic humanists, while a nice sales touch is a bit of an exaggeration. My own on-line research shows 450 to 500 million convinced atheists in the world (200 million of them in China), and I doubt he knows how many of them actually share his values or beliefs. It seems to me more and more that both fundamentalists and radical progressives make an awful lot of assertions that sound good but are misleading. And even where those are rather minor, they do annoy me. It is a lapse in intellectual integrity that obfuscates and misdirects. But I am starting to ramble, the real explanation behind Greg Epstein’s appointment as Director of Chaplains at Harvard is his and Harvard’s misunderstanding of religion and what Christians mean by good.

First, Epstein makes the crucial mistake made by other atheists, humanists, nominal adherents of any faith, and the nonreligious in general; namely, that religion is a set of specified beliefs and prescribed rituals, ceremonies, and practices (I am using each of these terms in its more technical sense). “The word “religion” itself originally meant something like “that which fastens, binds back or to; or ties together.” Religion is, therefore, simply whatever binds one to, connects or reconnects one to, or ties one firmly to one’s God. A Hindu, a Buddhist, a Moslem, a Jew, or a Christian in prayer is each engaged in religious practice not because there are no differences in their prayers or beliefs but because, if praying from the inside out, each is engaged in a practice meant to bind them so intimately to their Ultimate Concern (to use Tillich’s rather abstract phrase for God) that the two become one.

Now, doing good is obviously one of those classical spiritual disciplines or religious practices that helps the devotee of any of the great faith or wisdom traditions in the strengthening and deepening of this conscious contact. In the Christian faith this is largely the very point of doing good. To state it succinctly: The object of doing good is The Good––is communion with God who alone is good. Atheistic humanism, on the other hand, seeks to do good and to be good because––well because it’s reasonable. It is actually a very optimistic philosophy which says that through the use of human intelligence, which is all we really have going for us, we can identify and follow what is good–– what is useful, beneficial, advantageous, helpful, of high or excellent quality, and what is right and virtuous.

The Measure of Good and Everything Else

The roots of humanism are usually traced back to the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras (490-420 BCE). Protagoras said, “Man is the measure of all things.” Protagoras is interpreted as having meant that the individual human being, rather than a god or an unchanging moral law, is the ultimate source of value. This was scandalous to Socrates and then to Plato, both of whom believed in an unseen reality of perfect truth, beauty, and goodness. For Plato what he called “The Good,” was the source and determinative guide to all knowledge, wisdom, truth, beauty, and virtue in the visible world of human beings. Humanistic philosophy, contrary to Socrates and Plato, considers with Protagoras human reason as the sufficient starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry, and for determining what constitutes moral attitudes and behavior. Human beings are capable of shaping their own lives and living a meaningful existence both individually and socially.

Neither Greg Epstein’s desire to be a chaplain and do good, nor Harvard’s University’s appointment of him as Director of Chaplains is really to be unexpected given their perspective as atheistic humanists that moral insight is a matter of the intellect––entirely a function of our cognitive processes. Harvard believed it was merely doing the reasonable thing––supporting something good without all the encumbering baggage of religion. However, anyone on a genuine religious or spiritual quest, or who has even minimal experience in the contemplative or prayerful life, is bound to find such a notion as amusing as a university chaplain or professor might find the fundamentalist delusion of a seven-day creation. From the religious or spiritual perspective, Harvard’s administrators and academics have ventured into a realm which they are simply not capable of comprehending. What the Rabbi and Hebrew scholar, Nahum Sarna says in his commentary Understanding Genesis (xxv) is pertinent:

The Bible scholar has to recognize the presence of a dimension not accessible to the ordinary norms of investigation. Truth is not exclusively coincident with scientific truth. After all the massive and imposing achievements of scientism have had their say, there must yet remain that elusive and indefinable, essence which lies beyond the scope and ken of the scientific method, and which is only meaningful to the ear that is receptive and attuned. It is not unreasonable to demand, surely, that an awareness of the existential human predicament be an essential requirement for understanding of the biblical message that addresses itself precisely to this predicament. Such a demand is no less scientific than to expect a musical critic not to be tone deaf, even though he may be possessed of a prodigious and expert knowledge of the mechanics of production and conversion of sound waves, the theory and techniques of composition, the history of music and the biographies of the great composers.

Every ideal of humanism is rooted in Judeo-Christian spirituality. Attempting to study moral and ethical values as only a product of human reason and imagination is like studying flowers with severed stems in a vase––not completely unproductive but severely limited. To possess ultimate values, one must be possessed by Ultimate Concern. To understand them one must have truly lived in the aura of theirJudeo-Christian meaning.

Atheistic Existentialism: A More Reasonable Alternative

Since early in my high school years, I have thought; indeed, have been thoroughly convinced, that the only logical perspective left for me, or anyone else, apart from some sort of belief in God, a Higher Power, the Ground of Being, Spirit, or whatever appellation you want to use, was existentialism. As a young teen I was greatly impressed by the realism, honesty, and courage of atheistic existentialism. If the axiom of humanism is: “Humanity is the measure of all things,” for existentialism it is, “Life is meaningless, totally contingent, and absurd.” There is nothing and no one anywhere to help, support, or save you. However, not many, if any, can actually live by that presupposition or the despair it generates. The existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger told his students that they must not go out and commit suicide after taking his class. As a philosophy atheistic existentialism was not able to live with its own intellectual conclusions and so invented a meaning to life: Life, it was decided, is meaningful if one lives “authentically.” A life is said to be authentic to the degree to which one’s actions are congruent with his or her beliefs and desires, despite external pressures to conformity. But this is, as they say, merely “whistling in the dark.” If the atheist is right, if there is no God and no resource greater than the human mind, then the original assertion of existentialism with all its radicalism and despair holds: Life is without meaning, or purpose or, any particular dignity. Nothing you can achieve matters. Regardless of how much wealth you accumulate, how much power and control you have, what status you achieve, it is all nada! Any good you do, any social contribution you make, any compassion you express, any familial affections you have, any love or kindness you feel in the end comes to nothing––is nada!

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“That fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
(Stephen Crane)

“I am”… I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair
(Neil Diamond)

It just seems to me that for convinced atheists, existentialism rather than humanism is the more rational, moral, and courageous way––or from my Christian perspective the one most worthy of respect.

Willingness in the World as We Know It

What humanists believe, and want everyone else to believe, is that reason alone can lead to moral and ethical values. But we know almost instinctively that isn’t true. Friedrich Nietzsche, who was certainly one of the most brilliant philosophical thinkers of the last two hundred years, despised Christianity and its emphasis on virtues like humility, compassion, trust, and self-sacrificing love. He believed the teaching of these precepts made sniveling and weak slaves of the people who believed them. But he was no less disdainful of enlightenment thinking with its unwarranted confidence that reason and scientific thought has an answer for every question of human existence.

As Nietzsche reasoned matters through he concluded that the real driving force, the fundamental motivation, and guide for every living thing was “the will to power.” It seems to me that this is the direction in which reason alone always propels us–– always drives us toward pathological power and control. Nietzsche is merely the logical conclusion of atheistic humanism, where reason itself is generally little more than an instrument in feeding the delusion of power. The will to power is neither moral nor immoral, it is amoral; and, from the perspective of every wisdom and spiritual tradition raises an issue as old as human existence and as new as now; namely, that “willingness is the essence of all spiritual progress “(Alcoholic Anonymous), whereas “blind self-will is the affliction that holds humankind in bondage” (Gerald May, Will and Spirit). Clearly, the masses of men and women in the world as we know it, regardless of the beliefs they profess, have opted, practically speaking, for willfulness over willingness. Globally, there are undoubtedly far more atheistic humanist, or just plain atheists, than what Greg Epstein has enumerated.

Marriage and Family as a Way to God: Part 1

July 18, 2021 / Larry Hart / Comments Off

Larry Hart

The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.

— Thomas Moore

If we as individuals, relinquish our attachment to self- supremacy and open our hearts to the awesome simplicity of spiritual truth, all of our endeavors. . . can become deeply spiritual acts.

–– Gerald May

Marriage as a Sacramental Gift

Marriage is a sacrament –– the sixth of the seven sacraments. Sacraments, to use the simplest of definitions, are outward or visible signs of inward invisible grace. For the contemplative devoted to the spiritual life, the sacraments are widows through which the unseen realities of God may be glimpsed, and through which the light of God’s mysterious presence shines into this world. The sacraments provide a physical means to a spiritual end. To say, therefore, that marriage is a sacrament is to say that marriage is a way to God. I am, however, not speaking of marriage, merely as a religious rite or ceremony, but as a continuing way of everyday life that is pure gift.

The gift, or grace, that God gives in the sacraments is the gift of God’s own-self. Grace is the presence of the Holy Spirit working in us, transforming us into the likeness of Christ, inspiring us in gratitude, joy, and understanding; strengthening us in patience, endurance, and everything good. “Grace” derives from the Greek word, “charis.” In secular Greek, “charis” was related to “chairo,” meaning “to rejoice.” As far back as Homer it denoted an extraordinary “attractiveness” or “excellence” in an individual that the Greeks thought could only be explained as a gift of the gods. Marriage is meant, then, to be experienced as God’s favor, blessing, and loving-kindness which leads two people not only into an ever deeper and more fulfilling intimacy with each other, but with the God who enfolds them in the mystery of divine union.

The story of “Water Into Wine,” John 2:1-11, whatever else it may mean, certainly is a sign that marriage is a sacred gift to be received with both profound reverence and exuberant joy. The story as you probably remember goes like this:

On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’s mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’s mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”
“Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”
His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.
Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water; ”so they filled them to the brim.
Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.” They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had
come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”
What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

If this pericope is read for information only, rather than with an openness to its transformative dimension which “surprises with joy,” then its sacramental celebration of marriage as a way to God will likely be missed.

Here is what I mean. When we read this text focused not only on the element of miracle, but on miracle as that which violates or sets aside the laws of nature, as that in which God “makes possible what is impossible,” rather than as an event in which God is somehow involved; and, as that which, whatever its actual particulars, astounds and in the wonder and joy of that astonishment becomes a sign pointing to the mystery of God, we will fail to grasp or enter into the “supernatural” character or sacramental reality of marriage.

Notice also that the stone jars in this story normally contain water used in purification rituals. When Jesus finished doing whatever it is he did, they contained wine. A perfect symbol for the sacred chalice of the Last Supper, in which the wine represents the blood of Christ that purifies our souls. And, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” All of this at a wedding in Cana of Galilee.

The Longing and Fulfillment of Intimacy

Whatever individual differences there are in our experience of marriage and family, it is there that we all hope to find our yearning for loving intimacy fulfilled. Intimacy occurs when what is deepest within us touches and is touched by what is deepest within another. Intimacy is the sharing of life from its most mundane to its most extraordinary events and moments. Sharing household chores, changing diapers or caring for a child, discussing our uneventful day, paying bills, taking a walk together, shopping, a kind or encouraging word, a gesture of affection may all seem inconsequential but are significant over time in building intimacy; as are, the larger and more dramatic moments and events of our days and nights –– life threatening illnesses, catastrophic injuries, shared values and faith, lived fidelity, acute crises, bitter sorrows, exuberant happiness, great successes, devastating failures and those moments of decision when “two paths diverge in a yellow wood.” Intimacy comes when we share a long journey together.

Knowledge

Intimacy is a way of knowledge. When Scripture uses the verb “to know” for coitus, as it repeatedly does, it is not fumbling for a euphemism, it is saying something utterly profound about sexual union. The popular evangelical writer Francis Schaffer observed that “animals mate but people meet.” And this meeting, this encounter, between two persons at the deepest level of their being is knowledge, it is enlightenment, and it is literally “love-making.”

It is not without major significance, then, that the Bible uses the word meaning “to know” for both human copulation and wide-awake awareness or consciousness, of God. Indeed, biblically this experiential knowledge of God is life, and joy, and peace.

This is what the Lord says: “Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the Lord.
–– Jeremiah 9:23-24, NIV

For you granted the Christ authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
–– John 17:2-3, NIV

From the perspective of Judeo/Christian spirituality, then, knowledge and wisdom are profoundly relational –– personal. Love is a way of knowing. Abraham Maslow, the most frequently quoted psychologist in the twentieth century, posited this same connection between love and knowledge more scientifically in writing of a way that transcends the limits of empirical objectivity:

But I propose another path that is, in the sense of greater perspicuity, of greater accuracy of perception of the reality out there outside ourselves, outside the observer. It comes originally from the observation that loving participation, whether as between sweethearts or as between parents and children produced kinds of knowledge that were not available to non-lovers.

Maslow thought that this was further evidenced by the ethological literature ––the study of animals in their natural environment.

Saint Paul is clear on this point with The Corinthians who were intensely occupied with themes of wisdom and mystical theology. His argument can be
outlined like this:

1) No one really knows the thoughts within a person, except the spirit which is in the
person (1 Corinthians 2:11).

2) No one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God who searches the
depths of God and knows the thoughts of God (1 Corinthians 2:10,11).

3) The unspiritual person does not accept the things taught by the Spirit of God, to the “natural” person such things are foolish, for what is spiritual can only be grasped
spiritually (1 Corinthians 2:14).

4) The spiritual person, having been taught the thoughts of God by the Spirit of God, is wise and understanding, and appraises everything; for he or she now
possesses “the mind of Christ” (2:13-16).

5) The spiritually immature within the Christian community are discernible by their
obvious loveless attitudes (1 Corinthians 3:1-3).

6) True wisdom “boasts” only in that “we belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God
(1 Corinthians 3: 18-19, 21,23).

You might consider stoping here and reading chapters two and three of I Corinthians. Then come back and re-read this short outline, holding in mind the simple definition given earlier of intimacy as an encounter between two persons in which what is deepest within one touches and is touched by what is deepest in the other. Such intimacy is love and wisdom and knowledge. It is communion. It is two becoming one. It is what we all dream of, all hope for –– to be known, understood, and loved. It is total fulfillment.

Marriage and Spiritual Practice

Marriage is a spiritual practice, and like all spiritual practices is meant to lead to a deeper and more intense communion with God, a larger consciousness of the presence of Divine Mystery, a greater experience of the One who is Love (1 John 4:7-21). The key biblical text is, of course, Ephesians 5:31-32: “’For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.” That is, Christ and the church are a profound mystery, in that they are not two but one. In the same way husband and wife are also a great mystery in that they are not two but one.

This “mystery” is perhaps best understood by resorting to what is known as inaugurated eschatology, which very basically says the kingdom of God is already here, but will not be fully consummated until Christ’s second coming. Consequently, Saint Paul can refer in the same place to how we wait with sharp anticipation our future adoption as the children of God; and, yet, are even now in this very moment are already the children of God (Galatians 4:1-7, 28). Inaugural eschatology is a way of explaining this mysterious paradox of “the already and the not yet.” At their wedding ceremony a couple enters the state of one becoming one.

To reiterate, then, marriage is the spiritual discipline or practice of union with Christ by husband and wife continuously discovering how to live into this union with each other. The specific and principle dimensions of that practice are stated in Ephesians 5. Because verse 27 is so problematic for contemporary men and women I am going to do a very quick exegesis of the chapter as it relates to Christian spirituality in general and to marriage as a spiritual discipline in particular. Here are the verses as translated in the New American Standard Bible –– one of the more literal if somewhat wooden translations –– followed by my comments:

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

Fundamental to Buddhism are the Four Noble Truths: (1) Life is suffering. (2) Suffering is due to craving, desire, or attachment. (3) Letting go of attachments brings freedom from suffering. (4) Following the eight fold path teaches how to let go, and extinguishes desire and its suffering. Islam has the Five Pillars: (1) Faith in Allah as the one God. (2) Ritual Prayer five times daily. (3) Charity, paying the tax to help the poor. (4) Fasting during Ramadan. (5) Pilgrimage to Mecca. And Judaism has the Ten Commandments: (1) Worship Yahweh alone. (2) Do not make idols. (3) Do not take the name of the Lord in vain. (4) Keep the Sabbath holy. (5) Honor your father and mother. (6) Do not kill. (7) Do not commit adultery. (8) Do not steal. (9) Do not testify falsely. (10) Do not covet. And Christianity has the Two Great Precepts: (1) Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. (2) Love those around you as you love yourself; indeed, love others in the same way Christ loves you (Matthew 22:35-40; Mark 12:28-31; John 13:34). Jesus says that the entire Old Testament hinges on these two precepts. The final test of Christian authenticity is love. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). And Saint Paul taught the earliest Christians that every ethical principle and every moral imperative is rooted in and grows out of these two precepts (Galatians 5:14). And here it is again in Ephesians. The essential mark of Christian spirituality, of the contemplative life, is to be imitators of God, “walking in love as Christ walked in love,” loving as God loves (1 John 4:7-12; Matthew 16:24-26; Luke 17:22-18:4; John 17:1-13). I would suggest that you pause again. Read each of these passages along with Philippians 2:1-11 –– read them slowly, thoughtfully, meditatively. Don’t read them thinking about married life, but rather with regard to what is essential to the beatific vision. This, I think, is good preparation for understanding our problem verse in Ephesians 5. When you are ready begin again here.

But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints; and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous person, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

Here Paul addresses the problem of the self-absorbed life –– the life of the person who is “covetous,” who is determined to get what he or she wants when they want it regardless of what anyone else thinks, feels, wants or needs. New Testament Greek scholar William Barclay defined “pleonexia” as an “accursed love of having,” which “will pursue its own interests with complete disregard for the rights of others, and even for the considerations of common humanity.” He labels it an aggressive vice that operates in three spheres of life:

• In the material sphere it involves “grasping at money and goods, regardless of honor and honesty.”
• In the ethical sphere it is “the ambition which tramples on others to gain something which is not properly meant for it.”
• In the moral sphere, it is “the unbridled lust which takes its pleasure where it has no right to take it.”

Here in this text the Apostle Paul identifies it as idolatry. In this instance Paul is thinking of idolatry in the same way as the modern theologian Paul Tillich who asserted that whenever anything other than the truly Ultimate becomes one’s ultimate concern, that is idolatry. It is also , of course, literally polytheism or the worship of many gods. The heart and mind becomes filled with complicated, and at times competing, drives, passions, and ambitions. Paul seems to have this in mind when he advises against coarse jesting and unfitting talk. The Persian wisdom teachers said, “It is not good to talk or joke about what is not allowed.” What they meant is that there are ways of talking about base things that fix them in our mind, nourish their development, and lead to their enactment. What is being discussed is that purity of heart without which we cannot see, or experience the reality of God’s presence and peace (Matthew 5:8); or, as Paul states it here, “No impure, self-serving, or greedy person, who is actually the same as an idolater, has any share in the kingdom, in the spiritual reality of God. ” Soren Kierkegaard said with both simplicity and profundity, “Purity of heart is to will one thing.”

Let no one deceive you with empty words. for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them; for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light (for the fruit of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth), trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.

Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them; for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light. For this reason it says, “

Awake, sleeper,
And arise from the dead,
And Christ will shine on you.”

“Werde was du bist.” “Become what you are” –– the “fruit of the Light of Christ.” Your daily work of love no matter how seemingly small or undramatic illuminates the darkness of this world. Become what you are, children of God seeking to know and practice the wisdom of God. Live, then, with hearts awake to the mystery of the ages, which is Christ in you, live in awareness of the peace, power, and presence of God. Learn to live intimately.
“And Christ will shine on you.”

Therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.

To live in wisdom is to buy back, to redeem, to make the most of or fully appropriate our time. The image of someone buying up or cornering the market on something is at play here. But that is a rather strange way to talk about time. This is explained by the fact that in the Greek there are two words for time, Chronos which is clock and calendar or chronological time, and kairos which refers to the opportune moment, the decisive moment, the right moment as when fruit ripens on a tree and is ready to be harvested, it could be thought of in terms of a phrase used in the Hippie Movement –– kairos is “harmonic convergence.” Perhaps for this reason it is used in the New Testament to refer to something like a new or different order of reality. M. Robert Mulholland Jr. in his book Shaped by the Word makes this pertinent observation:

We find Paul in many places (Eph. 5:16 and Col. 4:5 are among the clearest of all) using kairos as though it had something to do with the very context of Christian existence in the world. In some sense Paul seems to be indicating that Christians, as they live their lives in the world, are living in an order of being that was inaugurated in the incarnation of Jesus and will be consummated at his return.

When Paul says, “Fully appropriate for yourselves the kairos: (Eph. 5:16, Col. 4:5), he is saying that we are to fully appropriate for ourselves, to completely immerse ourselves, to totally consecrate ourselves, to unconditionally yield ourselves to this new order of being in Christ which God offers.

This new order is radially different than the old. See, for example, Matthew 20:25-27. It is not about hierarchies, power and control, it is about helping, about compassion, about exercising hesed (loving kindness). It is the antithesis of the self- centered, self-absorbed life. Alfred Adler thought that every human being needs a sense of power –– the satisfaction that comes from knowing one has made a positive contribution to the common good of his or her family, church, or community.

And the feeling that what one thinks, feels, and desires (or fears) means something to those with whom life is shared. When the individual instead feels powerless and discouraged at an early age, he or she may become mistaken about the goal of life, and neurotically conceive of power as control, or status, or getting attention, or revenge –– hurting others in retaliation for the past hurts and humiliations of powerlessness. Charles Manson said that the words “Helter Skelter,” written in blood at both murder scenes, referred to a time when each person would look into his or her own heart and take it out on everyone else. Rollo May said, “Powerlessness corrupts and absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely.” Sadly, it is power in its more neurotic forms which is most often manifested in Western culture, and which most often furnishes the context for interpreting this text.

A woman, a dear friend and member of a church we served, once asked me who was the boss in our family –– me or Brenda? I answered that there really was no boss. “Well,” she pressed on, “if a decision has to be made and you don’t agree who has the last word, the final say?” “No”, I said, “we just keep talking until eventually we reach a mutual conclusion.” That did not satisfy her at all. So when our daughter came home from college, and we gathered for a church dinner, and were all sitting at the same table she asked our daughter: “Tell me. Who would you say is the boss in your family?” Our daughter thought silently for a long moment and then said, “I used to think Dad was the boss. But Mom makes most of the important decisions so I guess she is.” With that our friend was satisfied. It is a satisfying answer because it follows the logic of this world. But the logic of the heavenly realm is harder to grasp.

It is the sort of logic, which maintains that, “the greatest is the one who is the servant of all.” The highest is the one who has gone deepest. The “blessed” is the one who is poorest and weakest –– the anawhim. And the fullest is the one who is most empty. I love Eugene Peterson’s translation of Philippians 4:4-5, “Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet you are on their side, working with them and not against them.” It is as difficult to comprehend this with the mind as it is to understand it with the heart. More difficult still is to live it, but that is precisely what this verse is requiring.

The main thing that should now be noted is that when Paul urges the Ephesians to be in subjection to one another he is saying nothing at all different than what he has already said about what is absolutely necessary to Christian spirituality, about what is essential for knowing God, for seeing God, for becoming one with Christ. Communion with God grows, as we love with pure hearts. To love is to serve and to serve is love, and this practice of love and service is one “thing.” It is mystical knowledge.

Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

The English word “head,” used metaphorically, is almost automatically assumed to mean “the one in charge or in authority;” however, the Greek term can also refer to the source of something –– that which feeds or nourishes. Thus, Christ is the head of the church in that he feeds and nourishes it, and cares for it, and gives himself up for it. In fact, it is only in the context of Christ giving himself up for and nourishing the church that the husband in Ephesians can be said to be the head.

The husband is to show love for his wife by remaining faithful to her alone, by a willingness to sacrifice himself for her needs, by supporting her spiritual growth, and by seeing and respecting her as a person. The wife submits to her husband by being loyal only to him and no other man, by encouraging him, by working for what is in his legitimate best interest, and by being a true partner in the business of life (Proverbs 31:10-31).

It becomes even more difficult to read this verse in a flat one-dimensional
manner when it is recognized that the word translated as “submit to,” or “be subject to” is simply, due to the peculiarities of the Greek language, not in the text at verse 22. It has to be supplied by the translator trying to make good English sense. That is, in verse 22 the English word “submit” translates a Greek word that is not actually in the text. It does occur however in verse 21, which can, in part, be literally translated as: “submitting yourselves to one another in reverence to Christ.” Passages like the fifth chapter of Ephesians come originally from the Greco/Roman household codes. These were short statements of how to act ethically, or appropriately, or orderly in various relationships and settings – kind of like All I Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum. I enjoyed Fulghum’s book, and suspect its very simplicity was helpful to a large number of people. Of course, Fulghum didn’t literally learn everything he needed to know in kindergarten, and Ephesians 5 is not an exhaustive treatment of marriage and family relationships. It has to be interpreted within its own written context and within the context of the light of Christ. To regard this passage as saying nothing more than that all future arguments between a couple will be decided by agreeing, in advance, that the one, based on gender, will always be right, reduces the text to a logical absurdity, and renders it too trivial to be of any consequence to the contemplative life.

By now it should be clear that this passage has nothing to do with obsequious devotion. For the wife to be in subjection to the husband is no different than what it means for all Christians to be in subjection to one another. Or, for that matter what it means for a husband to love his wife. It’s all the same thing. “It is,” someone said, “demeaning to the mysteriousness of the one flesh union between husband and wife to define it in terms of a hierarchy.” It is demeaning because divine union pertains only between persons. Jordan and Margaret Paul stated the issue succinctly as a question in the title of their book: Do I Have to Give Up Me to Be Loved by You? To speak of becoming one with someone who has been reduced to a non-entity is meaningless.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body.

By way of furnishing a larger context for this comment, I begin with a paraphrase and elaboration of 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 –– Saint Paul’s description of what love is like:

–– “enduring the hard thing in such a way as to turn it to glory,” appreciating and affirming life in the midst of suffering, waiting for the answer to unfold naturally like a cherry blossom.
–– food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, medicine for the sick, encouragement for the disheartened. It is gentle yet strong. It is sensitive, yet sturdy.
–– it is courageous, fearing no loss or separation. Love is not envious. It does not desire to possess.
–– poised. Love therefore is not boastful, arrogant or rude. It is as gracious as a welcoming host, and as appreciative as an honored guest.
–– love forgoes its own rights for the sake of gaining rights for others. Love does not insist on its own rights if it harms or costs others their rights.

–– love is, therefore, not easily angered by every inconvenience, by the little things that get in our way or annoy us.
–– it finds no pleasure in keeping track of what our enemies owe us for the pain they have caused us; and it finds no satisfaction when people act in ways that prove our negative judgments of them were correct.

–– regardless of who that person is, or what the circumstances may be.
–– love believes that the center of everything is absolutely trustworthy and good; and, that “while the situation may not be trustworthy, God is.”

— love knows that no person or situation is ever beyond redemption, and is always open to being surprised by joy, by truth, by grace.

With this picture of love in mind, then, we are prepared to observe here in Ephesians 5:25-30 that husbands must love their wives with a love that is the same in kind and quality as that with which Christ loves the community of faith, the household of God, the church which is his own mystical body. He who loves his wife loves himself. How could it be otherwise if the two are one? The husband’s love is, therefore, one that seeks to nourish everything good in her spirit, and cherishes her person as sacred. Notice that at the deeper level there is no essential difference between subjection and love. The entangling distinctions of power and authority often debated by Bible commentators are cultural in nature and primarily, denials to the contrary, about willfulness, but with a deeper reading of Scripture in the light of Christ that all eventually disappears until only the guiding mystery of Christ’s love remains.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

In A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking said we are very close to understanding how the universe was made, but if we knew why we would know the mind of God. A fascinating statement from an atheist, but apparently one who nevertheless appreciates the mystery that runs through the whole universe and holds the cosmos in cupped hands. It is the audacious claim of Christians that they do indeed have the mind of Christ; and to further assert in trembling reverence and humility that they therefore know why it was made. Christian experience, tradition, and Scripture all converge in trusting that the universe was created by Love, through Love, in Love, and for Love (Ephesians 1:1ff.).

Invitation to Communion

So, verses 22-33 return us to the focal point of Christian spirituality –– union, communion, sacred intimacy, a loving oneness that can only be described as holy. Placed before us is not a list of onerous marital demands, but an invitation to discover in marriage a way to enter into union with the mystical presence of Christ.