A Special Report...

This past Sunday Chris and I attended worship service at, Pilgrims in the Park in Bryan, TX.

Pilgrims in the Park is an open air church service conducted, administered and financed by the seventy year young Rev. Lenni Lissberger, for "all wayfarers on life's journey". Services are held under a picnic shelter each Sunday in Neal Park, a small public park on the west side of Byran, TX.

Rev. Lenni prepares lunch for her parishioners every week. This week she brought sandwiches, boiled eggs. cookies, coffee and orange juice. She pays for the food and supplies out of her own pocket. The parishioners are very grateful.

There were roughly thirty people in attendance this Sunday. All but four or five were homeless folks.

On the front of the worship bulletin - which Rev. Linne also prepares and prints each week - are there words...

Regardless how much money you have in your pocket,

Regardless of where you spent the night,

Regardless what language you speak,

Regardless of the color of your skin,

Regardless of who you love,

Regardless of whether

you have a family,

or we become

your family,

You are welcome here!

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There was hymn singing and praying. There was a time for greeting each other and a time for scripture reading. Rev. Lenni gave a short inspirational talk. Several of the congregants helped in the service. One read the scripture, another handed out bulletins, several participated by expressing their sorrows and thanksgivings during the community prayer. Most all were homeless, down on their luck and destitute, but one could sense that they really cared about each other's welfare.

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After the service, several people, without being ask, packed up the coffee jugs and other things, folded the table and loaded everything neatly in the back of Rev. Lenni's car. Next week when she arrives there will be several there to help unload and set everything up again.

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I don't know that I have ever witnessed more honest and selfless expressions of the teachings of Jesus - to love one another, to show compassion, to include those on the margins of society - than I did that morning. The people who attend worship service at Pilgrims in the Park are very special people... And the Rev. Lenni Lissberger, who makes it happen, week after week, is a very special human being.

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Shalom,

barry e

The move from Polytheism to Monotheism

In all my studies of religion I had never thought to ask the question, “What motivated humans to move from polytheism to monotheism.” The question and the answer came to me while reading Robert Wright’s book, The Evolution of God, (Little, Brown and Company, 2009). Five hundred sixty seven pages crammed full of interesting information, much of which I have read in other sources, but the section regarding the move from ‘poly’ to ‘mono’ was so new and informative, I thought I would share it with you. So, here it is in short, capsule form…

When King Hammurabi came to power in Babylon, near the beginning of the second millennium BCE, all of Mesopotamia was polytheistic. There were dozens of gods worshiped throughout the country. Hammurabi’s base was Babylon and the god of Babylon was Marduk.

Hammurabi had aspirations of ruling all of Mesopotamia, but he died before that could happen. In the ensuing centuries, however, Babylon did rule all of Mesopotamia and Marduk eventually became the head of the Mesopotamian pantheon.

In a move of major theological development, the champions of Marduk began to demote the other gods of the pantheon from being Murduk’s subordinates to being mere aspects of him. i.e. Adad, once known as the god of rain was now, “Murduk of rain.” Nabu, the god of accounting became, “Marduk of accounting.”

Among other things, there was a very practical political reason for this move. Each of the gods of the pantheon wielded a certain amount of political power. Each had priests, temples and followers. By consolidating the powers of these lesser gods into Marduk’s realm, the political power of would be opposition was nullified. Wright states it like this; “For Babylonians who wanted to suffuse all of Mesopotamia in multicultural amity and understanding, what better social cement than a single god that encompasses all gods?”

Later, in the fourteenth century BCE an eccentric pharaoh known as Amenhotep IV came to power in Egypt. This new young pharaoh was quite ambitious and eager to seize control. He elevated his favorite god, Aten, from being a garden-variety deity to “he who decrees life”; he who “created the earth”; he who “built himself by himself.”

But Amenhotep IV was not interested in the slow absorption of other gods into his god Aten, as had taken place with Marduk. Instead he had the names and the temples of all other gods erased from the face of the earth and their priesthoods dissolved. Aten stood alone at the top of the heap in a monotheistic fashion. But Aten eventually fell from grace and was replaced by other gods and other pharaohs.

Some claim that Aten nonetheless changed the world forever. Sigmund Freud, in his book Moses and Monotheism, suggests that Moses was in Egypt during Aten’s reign and then carried this idea of monotheism to Canaan, where it would launch Judeo-Christian civilization.

While most Jews and Christians think of the Torah and the Bible as referring to a single God, close study shows that the early Israelites worshipped many gods. The Israelites were polytheistic, just as most of the rest of the world at that time. There are many references to this fact in the Bible. Wright does a masterful job of explaining this and how the Kings of the day used the movement from ‘poly’ to ‘mono’ in much the same way as Amenhotep IV did, to attempt to expand their power.

...Toward the end of the seventh dentury BCE, this opportunity was seized by the most important king in the theological history of Israel… His name was Josiah and he assumed the throne around 640 BCE. … Josiah wasn’t adverse to a little thuggery... For starters, Josiah had priests take from Yahweh’s temple and burn “all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah” and for “all the hosts of heaven” (which in this case means defied celestial bodies). He removed horses used is sun worship form the entrance to the temple and “burned the chariots of the sun with fire.” He wiped out the shrines built for “Astarte the abomination of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the abonination of the Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites” – and, as a kind of exclamation point, covered these sites with human bones. Josiah also banned mediums, sorcerers, household gods, idols, and miscellaneous other “abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem.”(2 Kings 23:5,20)
He tore down all the “high places” or alters across Judah where other gods were worshiped. But the alters were not his only target. He “deposed” the priests associated with these gods, including those who “made offerings to Baal, to the sun, the moon, and the constellations.” In the former northern kingdom he “slaughtered on the alters all the priests of the high places who were there, and burned human bones on them. Then he returned to Jerusalem.” This presumably made for a more powerful Jerusalem, for all sources of divine authority and political power were now gone. Josiah had ‘centralized the cult,” as scholars but it.

This move from ‘poly’ to ‘mono’ seemed to have stuck for what would later become the three Abrahamic religions. Josiah seems to be the person in history who was most instrumental in making that happen (brutal but effective). Was his motive religious or politics? Hum!

Interesting...

barry e

From: Sigmund Freud (1932) - A Philosophy of Life

While the different religions wrangle with one another as to which of them is in possession of the truth, in our view the truth of religion may be altogether disregarded.

Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race.

Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundation instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief.

If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man’s evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity.

Sigmund Freud

Shalom,
barrye

The Invisible Velvet Curtain (it actually exists)

The Rev. Father Donald Cupitt, Anglican priest and Christian author, calls it a painted veil….I have often called it an Invisible Velvet Curtain that hangs between the pulpit and the pews of most all Christian churches.

An Invisible Velvet Curtain that separates ‘Popular Christianity’…. (the domain of the people-in-the-pews), from ‘Academic Christianity’…. (which is the domain of the church hierarchy from the pulpit to the Pope)

For the past six years, the Delphi Study Group (a.k.a. the Sojourners class) has been studying this Academic understanding of Christianity. We have been studying what students are taught in seminaries and religion classes in colleges and universities around the world.

Our studies have brought us in contact with many of today’s church leaders, historians, pastors, bishops, professors, biblical scholars and theologians. We have studied their writings, …listened to their lectures both in person and on the computer. …. We even took a semester of classes on the Old Testament from Yale University, via the internet.

We have come to appreciate many of the differences between these two understandings of Christianity. Some of these differences are somewhat shocking, some even traumatic…. But all of them are interesting.

We have discovered that these two belief systems (Popular vs. Professional or Academic) are so different in their respective views of Christian doctrine that if stripped of their Christian identity, and viewed separately,… most people would not recognize them as elements of the same religion.

Yet we have also discovered that while there are many differences between Popular and Academic Christianity, one point remains the same…. The teachings of Jesus of Nazareth….. to love one another, to care for the disadvantaged, to seek justice for all people.

The Church as a whole is moving toward a fuller understanding of Academic Christianity…More and more Christians are beginning to see over, under and around the Invisible Velvet Curtain…its a long slow process… but as it happens, the teachings of Jesus…. (as opposed to the teachings about Jesus)…. will become more and more the center of our faith journey.

barry e

Everything changes

Actress Marlene Dietrich was a popular film star in the 1930’s 40’s and 50’s. She made a movie in 1936 called The Garden of Allah. She had a favorite cameraman on the movie set that (she thought) seemed to take all her shots with just the right lighting, just the right angles to bring out her best features.

Some twenty years later on yet another movie set, she came across that same cameraman and insisted that the director allow him do all the film shots of her.

One afternoon after viewing the film of that day’s shooting, Ms Dietrich confided in the cameraman, “I don’t know,” she said, “they just don’t seem the same as they did before, they look different for some reason.”

To wit: the cameraman replied, quite discreetly… “Well you know Marlene darling, my camera is twenty years older..”

Whether the difference was the age of the camera or the age of the actress is immaterial… the point here is that everything changes over time.

If things did not change, we might still be communicating with our friends and relatives up North by use of the ‘pony express.’

If things did not change, we might exit our local mall some morning to find a parking lot full of horses and buggies…and perhaps an ample supply of fertilizer for our rose gardens.

Everything changes over time… even religion. If religion did not change over time, we might still be sacrificing our first born children to the gods on a blood soaked alter.

If religion did not change we might still believe that God resided just a few hundred feet up in the air, just beyond the blue canopy that hangs over the earth.

Even our concept of who or what god is… changes over time.

3500 years ago people believed in many gods, even a few goddesses as well… Each god or goddess had control over a particular element of nature.

3000 years ago the world went through what is called the First Axial Period, where some, perhaps most, religions began to combine the powers of all their gods and goddesses into one supreme God. This change, even in the relatively small Hebrew nation, took several hundred years to facilitate.

This new supreme God of the Hebrews had but one primary purpose… to watch over and protect the Hebrew nation. That supreme God – known by the name Yahweh – was the tribal God of the Hebrews… and the Hebrews only.

2000 years ago that concept of God changed again when the Christians made the God Yahweh into a personal God for all people, Jew and Gentile alike. A supernatural God residing ‘up there’ or ‘out there’ that is all powerful, all seeing, all knowing.

Today we are in the midst of yet another ecclesiastical change. One that began some 200-300 years ago. A change that moves the concept of God from that of a supernatural being, ‘up there’ or ‘out there’…. to a god ‘within.’… A change that moves the concept of God from the creator of life, to the essence of life itself.

Not all Christians comprehend or are in agreement with this concept, and so the struggle to understand goes on… perhaps for another 100 – 200 years. The hierarchy of the Church is aware of the change, but the reality of it has not yet ‘trickled down’ to the people-in-the-pews.

This is the nature of all religions, and all of life. For thousands of years, as humans have gained wisdom and knowledge, everything around us has changed.

That which does not change… becomes obsolete... irrelevant.

barry e