Sunday Sermon [Redemption Song]

Hola Everybody...
Today's blog art is by the great Salvador Dali. I can't find an image of it, but Dalí made a gift of a work similar to this to the people incarcerated at New York’s infamous penal colony, Rikers Island in lieu of a personal appearance there. He was supposed to give an art class there in 1965 but canceled due to illness. He donated the then new gouache-ink-and-pencil sketch, specifically “For the dining room of the Prisoners of Rikers Island”, as he inscribed it. And he sent some encouraging words for the boys: “You are artists. Don’t think of your life as finished for you. With art, you have always to feel free.” 

It was stolen by correction guards in 2004 and is believed to have been destroyed… 

* * *

Redemption Song

Woman, why are you weeping?

-- Jesus to Mary Magdalene (John 20:15)

For a long time I refused to go to funerals. I simply wouldn’t go. On one level, I didn’t want to see my loved ones garishly made up lying in some casket. I have seen many, many people leave this existence. Most of the people I was raised with are dead or dying. I grew up in a violent world and quite a few were taken in the prime of their lives -- victims of violence, disease, or addiction. On another level, I didn’t want to come face-to-face with death. Especially death warmed over as I used to call funerals in mainstream US culture.

I didn’t like funerals. Didn’t like death… So I never went.

Then one day, I was shopping with a lover and she picked out a dress she loved so much she said, “This is the dress I want to be buried in!” We laughed about it then. We were young and she, was beautiful, full of life. She was the Bonnie to my Clyde, committing crimes of life in that devil-may-care way only the foolish and young can justify. We didn’t last long together, perhaps less than two months, but we created so much drama in one another lives that we would become forever attached. Years later, after all had been done between us, she died in my arms.

People have a fucked up knack of dying around me.

When it came time to make preparations, her sister confided in me that she knew what dress to bury her in and when I saw it, it cut me deep because it was that very same dress we picked out that day so many years before. When I told her sister, she smiled because my former partner in crime had told her sister the same thing. I wasn’t planning on attending her funeral, but her sister insisted.

I am not a practicing Christian. I don’t accept Jesus, or anyone else, as my savior, nor do I believe in a literal translation of the Bible, Old or New. However, I do think that some of the teachings attributed to Jesus of Nazareth are sublime. My personal belief, borne of personal experience and investigation, is that the core teachings of Jesus were corrupted for personal and political gain. Thomas Jefferson held similar views and he wrote a version of the Gospels, now known as the “Jeffersonian Bible.” In it, he excised the parts he felt were contradictory to the core message of the Nazarene of love and hope. And believe me, there is much contradiction in the Gospels.

When Jesus finds Mary Magdalene crying at the door of the tomb, he says to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” As I see it, Jesus wasn’t asking a rhetorical question. He wanted to know why we worry and sob and fret when hope is always present, if we could just tap into it.

For me, Easter is about liberation, and it’s especially meaningful for a person like me who sometimes feels chained to moodiness and negativity too much of the time. The celebration of the resurrection is a chance for us to acknowledge Jesus’ message of love and in so doing, grab the hope that is already there.

Anyone else notice that of all the people he showed himself to, it was the women first? In fact, of all the women, it wasn’t his mother, but Mary Magdalene to whom Jesus appeared first. There is a gospel, not accepted by the mainstream church, which describes Jesus kissing Mary Magdalene on the mouth… I don’t take Jesus’ resurrection literally, but there is a message there that resonates with my own life. Jesus’ life, like mine, was a redemption song. And like Jesus, it was the women in my life who tended to me -- nurtured and guided me through my own passage to a new life. Maybe this is saying something about the Feminine Principle and how far we have moved away from that healing force. For me, this was no accident of the Gospels. Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene because she, more than any other disciple, believed in him. All those other motherfuckers, betrayed and denied him, didn’t they?

When I cried at my ex-lover’s funeral, it seems as if I cried for all the loved ones I had never said good-bye to -- the one’s whose funerals I never attended. It was as if all that loss I was holding on to came out like a river. It was at once one of the saddest and most liberating experiences in my life. I read somewhere the other day that the opposite of loss is finding. I know that sounds simple, but it is a deceptively profound statement.

Grief is what we add on to loss. It is a learned behavior, specific only to some cultures. It is neither unavoidable nor universal. In some Buddhist cultures, for example, you will never see someone cry at a cremation. Their cultural perspective on death is one of acceptance in a way foreign to Western theories of grief and loss. Similarly, when Jesus appeared to the disciples he asked, “Why are you troubled?” Jesus says to the disciples in Luke’s gospel when he appears to them after his “resurrection.”

My Buddhist practice has slowly transformed my view of grief -- has actually opened the door for me to see that there’s an alternative to grief. It’s not that grief is wrong, only that there’s another possibility. Loss of a loved one can be viewed in another way, a way that avoids the long days of aching, oftentimes crippling grief. 

Over the years since my ex-lover’s death, I have attended many funerals and have had two others die in my arms. I sometimes cry at funerals but I understand death differently today. A teacher once explained it to me in simple terms. “Have you ever been to a concert and experience the shouts of ‘more!’ coming from the audience when it came time to end?” he asked. “Usually, the musicians will play one or two encores, but eventually they have to pack up their gear and leave. I’ve experienced this many times and when I’m going home, I usually reflect on how great the music was and how lucky I was to have been there. I never felt grief at the end of a concert.”

And that is exactly how I experience life and death today. I see it as if a magnificent concert had come to an end. I revel in the wonderful performance. I was there shouting loudly, “More!” when it came to end the performance. My loved ones struggled to stay alive a little longer, but eventually they had to let go -- they had to pack up their instruments and “go home.” Today, I choose to see instead what magnificent lives my friends and loved ones led. What powerful inspirations they were in my life. I reflect mostly how fortunate I was to have been in their lives to witness their glorious and beautiful power -- their shining power of example. Today, I walk away from funerals feeling a lot like I do after watching a great performance: sadness, yes, but also a sublime exhilaration. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Too often grief is seeing only what has been taken away from you. The celebration of a life is recognizing all that we were blessed with, and expressing that gratitude. When I die (and we all will die eventually) I hope this is what people will feel for my own performance and that people will celebrate life and not just mourn my death. Only a Higher Power of your choosing will know the extent to how I have lived my life will cause recriminations. A part of me finds some humor in that. Shit, in the famous words of Curtis Mayfield, “If there’s a hell below/ We’re all gonna go.”

Whatever your belief, this has to be part of the message of the resurrection, whether you understand it as literal or not. That the concerts of our lives continue reverberating and in that way create more beauty and more life. That our lives are never ended, but live in our deeds and actions… and our memories.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Sunday Sermon [Who Was Jesus?]

¡Hola! Everybody…
Many People from fundamentalist Christian backgrounds will find the following offensive and even shocking. Their traditional view of Jesus as the redeemer who died to save humankind from eternal damnation is what holds their whole world together.

I have no quarrel with religious beliefs, especially beliefs that help make people kinder human beings. My advice for people who think they may be offended is to leave this blog immediately. Others may find what I have to say eye-opening or maybe even refreshing (or not think of it at all). Whatever the case, the choice to read is yours. However, the choice to think critically is yours… and mine.

* * *

-=[ Who was Jesus and What Did He Say ]=-

What shall it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his soul?
-- Jesus of Nazareth

Contrary to current popular opinion, Jesus wasn’t a Red State Republican. ::grin::

Jesus was born and raised a Jew. He lived and thought of himself as a Jewish teacher. All of his direct disciples were Jews. He felt that his job was to teach Jews about God and about the right way to live (though his teachings are truly for all people).

He did not intend to begin a new religion. He wouldn’t even have known what the meaning of Christian. In fact, Christian is a word that appeared after he died to describe people who believed some things that he himself never believed.

He wouldn’t have recognized the name Jesus Christ. His name was Yeshua or Yeshu (rhymes with day shoe), which is Joshua in English and Jesus in Greek. He didn’t have a last name. No one did in those days. Men were called “So-and-so son of So-and-so,” or “So-and-so from Such-and-such a place.” Whatever the case, Christ isn’t a name, it’s a title. It’s the Greek word for mashiakh, which is a Hebrew word that means “The Anointed One.”

Jesus once or twice referred to himself as a prophet. But he never thought of himself as the Messiah. The Messiah is a figure in Jewish legend that will supposedly appear one day to make the world perfect. Jesus never thought of himself as the son of God. True, he called God father, but that was (and still is) common in Jewish prayer. He didn’t mean that he was literally a son of God. He knew that he had a human father. He didn’t think that a male God had come down to earth and impregnated a human female, who had given birth to a hero, as in Greek and Roman mythology. What he meant by “son of God” was someone who takes after God, just as a son takes after his father. What he intended to teach was that if you truly love God, and treat your fellow human beings with respect and compassion, then you are a child of God.

Jesus knew he wasn’t the only son of God. On the contrary, he wanted everyone to become a son or daughter of God. His message was that no matter how poor, stupid, or confused we think we are, all of us are capable of becoming children of God. He explicitly stated that anyone that acts with unselfish love is God’s beloved child. The second part of his message was that it is equally true that everyone is God’s beloved child and that God’s love is always present for us, no matter how selfishly we act.

The composition of the Gospels is an extremely complex subject, but what follows are some brief discoveries.

Jesus never wrote anything himself. The earliest account we have of him is the Gospel According to Mark, which dates about 70 years after Jesus’ death. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke probably date 20-30 years after, and the Gospel of John probably a little over a 100 years from Jesus’ death. None of these books were written by a direct disciple of Jesus. Jesus did have disciples named Matthew and Mark, but they weren’t’ the authors of the Gospels attributed to them. The Gospels were written in Greek, a language Jesus may, or may not, have known. His language was Aramaic, which is related to Hebrew. His original words, in original Aramaic, may never have been written down; if they were, they have been lost.

Seventy years is a long time; ninety or a hundred years is even longer. During those years, many stories were told about Jesus, and there were many reports of what he said. Some of these were handed down orally from Jesus’ own disciples, who lived with and knew him, even if they always didn’t understand his teachings. Disciples of disciples, who never knew the actual Jesus, made other stories and reports up much later.

Some people faithfully attempted to repeat the words he taught, and others added very different teachings, according to their own interpretation of what was true.

When the Gospels finally came to be written, their authors inherited a mixed collection of teachings and stories, only part of which originated in the life and teachings of Jesus himself. Thomas Jefferson, a deeply religious man and author of the Declaration of Independence, once said, “There is internal evidence that parts of the Gospels have proceeded from an extraordinary man, and that other parts come from very inferior minds. It is easy to pick out the diamonds from the dunghills.” Imagine a president saying something like that today! Eventually he would spend a winter distilling what he thought was contradictory and created what is now called the Jeffersonian Bible, or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.

And there are passages in the Gospels that seem to contradict the authentic teaching about God’s love, as in the end of Mark’s Gospel, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever doesn’t believe will be damned.” Such sayings make Jesus sound ignorant and small-hearted. I think Jesus would have been amused to hear such words put in his mouth.

Another example, Jesus teaches us not judge (in the sense of condemnation) but to keep our hearts open to all people. Later scriptures have Jesus as the final “judge,” who will float down on clouds for the world’s final rewards and condemnations. Jesus cautioned against anger, taught the love of enemies, but the later “Jesus” calls his enemies “children of the devil,” and attacks them with savageness and contempt.

Which Jesus are we too follow? I think the task for an earnest spiritual seeker of any faith is to separate the diamonds from the shit. Like Jefferson, I don’t think it’s that hard to see through the political motivations of later interpretations.

I do not identify as a Christian, but I believe the real Jesus was one of the most beautiful men who ever lived. He himself would probably have not considered himself beautiful or even special. He would have said that we are all beautiful; we are all special because -- he definitely said the following:

We are all children of God.

Love,

Eddie

Jesus was a Radical (Progressive)!

¡Hola! Everybody...
A little sumptin’ for the Holy Rollers amongst us...

* * *

-=[ Jesus’ Radically Progressive message ]=-

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Gospel of St. Matthew 5:3-10

[Warning: this posting is violent and has simulated sound effects]

DANG! I have to make several meetings today, so I won’t be able to give this post my usual care...

So, let me start out by getting to the significant part: I have huge issues with the neoconservative characterization of Jesus’ ministry. I will say upfront (and I do not say this with rancor): anything less than equal rights for gays is at best hypocritical -- especially when mouthed by people of color. If you want to see the consequences of creating a separate set of rules for a class of people just look at the photograph above (t/h to Rippa). That’s what separate means. Separate is never equal. People against gay marriage are espousing a view that would create one set of laws for “straight” people vs. a set of (unequal) laws for “the gays.” In other words, such a view is bigoted.

Now, back to good ole Jay-sus(!)

I get a little confused because conservative Republican policies favor the wealthy and ignore the needs of the poor. Their policies are often grounded on greed, with no concern for the environmental or societal consequences for their actions. These values go counter to the teachings of Jesus. The Jesus I know taught that the love of money is the root of all evil. If one were to believe the neocons, Jesus would fit right in with the Likes of Lush Rimbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Ann Coulter. LOL!

Yeah! Jesus was a social conservative! He was born in a red state, hunted, drove gas-guzzlers, hated people of color, kicked the poor while they were down, and probably sent down the AIDS plague to punish the queers!

SMH...

Consider the following:

I can make a strong case that Jesus was a radical progressive (with socialist/ anarchist leanings)! I kid you not. Allow me to get all New Testament on yo asses!

According to my own “research,” Jesus came with a new progressive vision, saying repeatedly, “You have heard that it was said to those ancient times... but I say unto you... ” (see, for example, Matthew 5:21-22, 5:33-34)

BAM! (<-- sound effect)

Instead of an eye for an eye, he asked us to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:38-39)

PANGANA! (<-- Spanish for “BAM!”)

Instead of loving just our neighbors, he called upon us to love our enemies too. (Matthew 5:42; Luke 6:27, 35)

KA-POW!

He spoke of a new testament, distinct from the old testament that came before (Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20 -- King James version)

::BODY BLOW::

When the apostle Paul described Jesus’ New Testament, he explained that it was “not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.” (2Corinthians 3:6)

::SUPLEX::

Jesus was not a fundamentalist in the sense of being a biblical literalist. He would break one of the Ten Commandments when he thought is was a humane thing to do, as when he worked, healing people, on the Sabbath. The Jesus I know would never say, “Sorry about that lame leg, hooker, but can’t you see it’s the Sabbath?!! Don't bother me and get back to me some other time.” He did what he had to do as motivated by love, not scripture.

BOING!

As he CLEARLY said, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)

KNOCKOUT!

Which brings to the issue of relevance: What would Jesus do? Better yet, what should we do? Should we blindly follow Old Testament laws that encourage a belief in a jealous and vengeful God or follow the words and deeds of that old radical Rabbi, Jesus? Old Testament or New? Which depiction of Jesus do you think is more correct? Are the actual words from the New Testament still relevant?

So what was it: was Jesus some tame bible literalist as he is depicted by the neocons of today, or was he a radical progressive who tended to the most despised, the unforgivable, and the dispossessed? Was he the biblical conservative they make him out to be? One who would deny gays their rights, or was he a radical teacher, espousing a new way of seeing the world so radical and deemed so dangerous, the biblical literalists and pagans of his day had him crucified?

:;blank stare::

In the4 coming days, I am going to make a case for a radically progressive Christianity, a Christianity based on the core teachings of a man who was motivated through love, not hate, nor bigotry.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [Who Was Jesus]

Hola! Everybody,
Many People from fundamentalist Christian backgrounds will find the following offensive and even shocking. Their traditional view of Jesus as the redeemer who died to save humankind from eternal damnation is what holds their whole world together.

I have no quarrel with religious beliefs, especially beliefs that help make people kinder human beings. My advice for people who think they may be offended is to leave this blog immediately. Others may find what I have to say eye-opening or maybe even refreshing. In either case, the choice to read is yours. However, the choice to think critically is yours -- and mine.

* * *

-=[ Who was Jesus and What Did He Say ]=-

Contrary to popular opinion, Jesus wasn’t a Red State Republican.

Jesus was born and raised a Jew. He lived and thought of himself as a Jewish teacher. All of his direct disciples were Jews. He felt that his job was to teach Jews about God and about the right way to live (though his teachings are truly for all people).

He did not intend to begin a new religion. He wouldn’t even have known what the word Christian means. In fact, Christian is a word that appeared after he died to describe people who believed some things that he himself never believed.

He wouldn’t have recognized the name Jesus Christ. His name was Yeshua or Yeshu (rhymes with day shoe), which is Joshua in English and Jesus in Greek. He didn’t have a last name. No one did in those days. Men were called So-and-so son of So-and-so, or So-and-so from Such-and-such a place. Whatever the case, Christ isn’t a name, it’s a title. It’s the Greek word for mashiakh, which is a Hebrew word that means “The Anointed One.”

Jesus once or twice referred to himself as a prophet. But he never thought of himself as the Messiah. The Messiah is a figure in Jewish legend that will supposedly appear one day to make the world perfect. Jesus never thought of himself as the son of God. True, he called God father, but that was (and still is) common in Jewish prayer. He didn’t mean that he was literally a son of God. He knew that he had a human father. He didn’t think that a male God had come down to earth and impregnated a human female, who had given birth to a hero, as in Greek and Roman mythology. What he meant by son of God was someone who takes after God, just as a son takes after his father. What he meant to teach was that if you truly love God, and treat your fellow human beings with respect and compassion, then you are a son of God.

Jesus knew he wasn’t the only son of God. On the contrary, he wanted everyone to become a son or daughter of God. His message was that no matter how poor, stupid, or confused we think we are, all of us are capable of becoming sons or daughters of God. He explicitly stated that anyone that acts with unselfish love is God’s beloved child. The second part of the message is that it is equally true that everyone is God’s beloved child and that God’s love is always present for us, no matter how selfishly we act.

The composition of the Gospels is an extremely complex subject, but what follows are some brief discoveries.

Jesus never wrote anything himself. The earliest account we have of him is the Gospel According to Mark, which dates about 70 years after Jesus’ death. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke probably date 20-30 years after, and the Gospel of John probably a little over a 100 years from Jesus’ death. None of these books were written by a direct disciple of Jesus. Jesus did have disciples named Matthew and Mark, but they weren’t’ the authors of the Gospels attributed to them. The Gospels were written in Greek, a language Jesus may, or may not, have known. His language was Aramaic, which is related to Hebrew. His original words, in original Aramaic, may never have been written down; if they were, they have been lost.

Seventy years is a long time; ninety or a hundred years is even longer. During those years, many stories were told about Jesus, and there were many reports of what he said. Some of these were handed down r=orally from Jesus’ own disciples, who lived with and knew him, even if they always didn’t understand his teachings. Disciples of disciples, who never knew the actual Jesus, made other stories and reports up much later.

Some people faithfully attempted to repeat the words he taught, and others added very different teachings, according to their own interpretation of what was true.

When the Gospels finally came to be written, their authors inherited a mix collection of teachings and stories, only part of which originated in the life and teachings of Jesus himself. Thomas Jefferson, a deeply religious man and author of the Declaration of Independence, once said, “There is internal evidence that parts of the Gospels have proceeded from an extraordinary man, and that other parts come from very inferior minds. It is easy to pick out the diamonds from the dunghills.” Imagine a president saying something like that today! Eventually he would spend a winter excising what he thought was contradictory and created what is now called the Jeffersonian Bible, or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.

And there are passages in the Gospels that seem to contradict the authentic teaching about God’s love, as in the end of Mark’s Gospel, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever doesn’t believe will be damned.” Sayings such as this make Jesus sound ignorant and small-hearted. I think Jesus would have been amused to hear such words out in his mouth.

Another example, Jesus teaches us not judge (in the sense of not to condemn) but to keep our hearts open to all people. Later scriptures have Jesus as the final “judge,” who will float down on clouds for the world’s final rewards and condemnations. Jesus cautions against anger, teaches love the love of enemies, but the later “Jesus” calls his enemies “children of the devil,” and attacks them with savageness and contempt.

Which Jesus are we too follow? I think the spiritual task for any earnest spiritual seeker of any faith, is to separate the diamonds from the shit. Like Jefferson, I don’t think it’s that hard to see through the political motivations of later interpretations.

I am not a Christian, but I believe the real Jesus was one of the most beautiful men who ever lived. He himself would [probably have not considered himself beautiful or even special. He would have said that we are all beautiful, we are all special because – he definitely said this:

We are all children of God.

Love,

Eddie