Fancy Gap Friends Fellowship

2013 Spiritual Condition Report

Tony — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 21:02:08 +0000

As we have considered the queries received from the Spiritual Life Commission, a concern has risen among us regarding what spiritual life really is and how it is measured. While the number and scope of activities in which a meeting is involved may sometimes serve as a gauge of spiritual health, there is not necessarily a correlation between the two. Outward signs such as activities and ministries, or numbers attending or giving cannot and must not be substituted for that deep inward connection to the Spirit. Therefore, we have chosen to respond separately to the issues of ministries and activities and spirituality.

Ministries and Activities:

During this year, we have become involved in several new ministries. In August, we began working with a local soup kitchen. Our meeting serves a meal twice a month to around 100 people. We are not only building relationships with folks we are serving, but people who share our concern for feeding the hungry but have no connection to our meeting have become involved with this as well which gives them the opportunity to be a part of God’s work in the world. We are also partnering with another organization in our area to help feed the hungry. They provide us with boxes of food which we deliver to folks in our community who request it. This gives us the opportunity not just to provide food, but also to visit people in their homes and get to know them and find out what other needs they have. There are some who are housebound with whom we have a time of prayer and worship when we visit.
We have also started a community reading/discussion group that meets biweekly focusing on recognizing and experiencing God in our daily lives. Most of the folks in the group are members of other churches, but have found themselves confused or even doubtful of some of their religious background and training in a society that is increasingly pluralistic. For the past few months, we have been reading and discussing a book on remaining true to our own faith tradition while being welcoming and hospitable to those of other faiths. Some in the group have expressed a sense of renewal of their faith as a result of being able to explore issues in an open and welcoming atmosphere.
As the result of a concern raised by one member, our meeting has also become involved with the local humane society. Several of our members have volunteered at a food pantry for pet owners and we have given monthly financial support to this cause. We have also given to the our local food banks, the Red Cross disaster efforts, and Friends’ ministries in Kenya, Ramallah, and other places.
We are also realizing the important part fellowship plays in the life of the meeting. During the past year, we have planned picnics, meals, and other times for our members and attendees just to enjoy being with one another. Some of the most spiritual moments in our meeting have taken place over a cup of coffee in a local coffee house or around a lunch table. We continue to be blessed by our fellowship with the wider world of Friends. This year we hosted a Friend from Baltimore Yearly Meeting for a weekend of fellowship and worship. We also had the opportunity to participate in Friends in the Blue Ridge, a group of Friends meetings from various traditions and backgrounds scattered throughout the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia that gather once a year in Blacksburg, Va. for a day of worship and fellowship. We are delighted to have two members of our meeting serving on the planning committee for this year’s gathering.

Spiritual Life

Having summarized our primary ministries and activities, we turn now to an assessment of the spiritual life of the meeting. The term “Spirituality” is so fluid it seems important to define it within a context. The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality defines it as follows:
“ a word that has come into much vogue to describe those attitudes, beliefs, practices which animate people’s lives and help them to reach out toward super-sensible realities.”
Although we have read many definitions for the term, “spirituality” one of our members who is a clinical chaplain reminds us this term is more about “ animation, the meaning of life, and reaching out in relationships and to offer a cool cup of water and a hand up to those who are in need.”
The aforementioned article also quotes St John of the Cross as saying, “…the deeper our love for God, the deeper our love for our neighbor. For when love is rooted in God, the reason for all love is one and the same.” In our opinion, then, and as we sense the “super-sensibilities” of the fellowship, the meeting continues to grow stronger. We aren’t enslaved to outward structures, schedules and the trappings of traditional religion. We seem to have a way of continuing our relationships as we go about the work of our callings as individuals and members of the Society of Friends. The Fellowship serves as a reliable touchstone for our individual missions as healers, educators, parents, and students. We have no life that is separate from the spirituality of the meeting, nor does the meeting function as a separate entity from our daily lives. We seem to be growing into a fellowship that gives and takes as individuals have needs. The meeting is a synchronicity of our individual lives and the joining of those lives in a collective purpose that is made manifest in the resulting activities of feeding the hungry, pursuing community studies, providing shelter for other creatures and encouraging our young Friends. Our meetings for worship and business are saturated in relational meaning and purpose. We love each other and hope to demonstrate that in quiet giving to those in need.
As for our hope for our meeting in the coming year(s) it is reflected well in Bianca Bradbury’s poem, “For the Quakers” as published in a little book called, Peace Prayers published by Harper,

Theirs is the gentle finger on the pulse
Of war’s old woe.
Persistent with clear unrancored eyes
Of faith they go
Where disillusionment lost the charted way.
Unerringly
They reach across the desperate long miles,
The sullen sea,
And find the thin, small fingers in the cold,
And touch and hold.

While we may not literally reach across long miles, it is our hope and our mission to do that socially: to find the cold, hungry, thin fingers that are miles from our world of comfort and across seas of differences, to just touch and hold if we can do nothing else.

Approved by Fancy Gap Friends Fellowship at meeting for worship with attention to business held April 7, 2013

A Quaker View of Salvation and Atonement

Tony — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 16:19:16 +0000

As we approach the Easter season and our thoughts turn to Christ’s death and resurrection, salvation and atonement, we are reminded of the Church’s quest to fully understand the deeper
meaning of these events in terms of two questions, who killed Christ and why? The Church’s
attempt to answer these is the basis for the doctrine of atonement. Although several different theories and understandings have been offered, historically the Church has at different times
in history embraced two main theories.
For the first thousand years or so of the Catholic church’s history, their understanding of the atonement was shaped primarily by Augustine. Utilizing scriptural references to Christ giving his life as “a ransom for many”, Augustine explained the events of Easter in what came to be known as the Ransom Theory of Atonement. Ransom is a word we generally associate with kidnapping and a price being paid to return someone or something unharmed which is exactly how this theory explains the atonement. Rooted in the story of Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God in the garden of Eden and the concept of “original sin”, the Ransom Theory supports the idea that in that act all mankind fell into the power of Satan or the Devil. The only way this hold could be broken was by paying a ransom to Satan to have mankind released and returned to God. However because all mankind was under the curse of sin because of Adam and Eve, no human was able to do this. Therefore Christ came and by his suffering and death paid the ransom to Satan to redeem, buy back, and liberate mankind from his control.
The Ransom Theory of Atonement was closely associated with both the Governmental and Recapitulation theories which come from the same basic understanding.
A shift in the Church’s understanding came close to the end of the twelfth century when Anselm of Canterbury rejected the idea that Satan controlled the world and that he was the one to whom the “ransom” was paid. Also coming from an understanding of original sin as the problem, Anselm proposed that Christ’s death on the cross was a debt paid to God on behalf of sinners to satisfy the problem of sin and was known as the Satisfaction Theory of Atonement. This was the understanding of the atonement held by the Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation and therefore found its way into the doctrine of those churches as well.
Those sixteenth century reformers expanded on this theory. Man, they said, was separated from God by sin, and because God is pure and holy, a sacrifice had to be
offered so that God could forgive sin. Again, since original sin was passed on to all the seed of Adam, no one born of Adam’s seed could be that sinless, holy sacrifice. This is why the virgin birth is so important. Christ had to be born pure and without sin in order to be able to be the sacrifice for man’s sin. Since Christ died in the place of sinful men or as a substitute for them, this was called the Theory of Substitutionary Atonement.
So to return to our original question, in one way or another the answer offered by all these theories is that man’s sin killed Christ. But why? Either to deliver mankind from the control of Satan, or to satisfy the need for justice or forgiveness for sin. The logical extension of these theories is that God sent Christ to die, and everyone involved in it -the Romans, the Jews, even Judas were all doing the will of God in bringing it about.
A Third Way
There is another theory that has been around since the time of Anselm as well. It had a number of proponents, one being Peter Abelard. This theory held that Christ’s death on the cross was a victory over the powers and systems that enslave man. Christ’s purpose in coming to earth was to reveal God’s great love for mankind, but also to proclaim the kingdom of God with sermons, stories and the example of his own life. Because this theory placed as much emphasis on the teachings of Christ as on his death and resurrection, it came to be known as the Moral Influence Theory of Atonement. Although Abelard and others who held to this understanding were ex-communicated by the Church, their ideas lived on and continued to resurface throughout church history.
Some of this thinking re-emerged in the 1930′s when it formed the basis for what became known as the Christus Victor Theory of Atonement. This understanding also put as much emphasis on the life and teachings of Christ as it did on his birth, death, and resurrection. Christ came to show us what the kingdom of God was like and even instructed us to pray for its coming on earth.
This is where we hit a big problem. A lot of people, even religious people, didn’t want to know what it was like. Not if it meant things like
Give away your possessions
Love your enemies
turn the other cheek
submit to others (go the second mile)
put God’s desires and plans for the earth ahead of your own will
Ultimately the world rejected this kingdom Christ came to promote and put him to death. Unlike the Moral Influence Theory, however, the resurrection is central to the Christus Victor understanding of the atonement. In that act God showed that all the powers of the earth could not eliminate or destroy his kingdom, and the risen Christ invites his followers to join him in spreading this kingdom throughout the world.

To return to our original question of who killed Christ, this theory offers several answers:
1. The Empire – In this case it was the Roman Empire that pronounced the death sentence and carried it out, but empire in general because it can’t stand the competition. Jesus said to Pilate,
“ my kingdom is not of this world.” Another allegiance is always a threat to empire.
The Roman Empire spent almost 300 years trying to stamp out the kingdom of God through persecution, but it kept growing until finally under Constantine they assimilated the kingdom of God into the empire. And then, to be a good Christian, meant to be a good citizen and give undivided loyalty to the empire which was the same as giving it to God. It took more than a thousand years to get the kingdom of God and empire separated again. Here’s what appears to be an innocent example.
Many of us went to Vacation Bible school as children. In the opening exercises, people often marched in with an American flag, a Christian flag, and a Bible, and we pledged allegiance to all three. But to which one did we offer our allegiance first? Flags of empire, ,no matter how good the empire, do not belong in places of worship. As Tony Campolo explains all earthly kingdoms including America are Babylon, and while we as Americans may live in “the best Babylon there has ever been, it’s still Babylon and we are called to come out of it.” There is indeed “one nation under God”, but it is not America or any physical country; it is that kingdom of which Jesus spoke that spreads throughout the entire earth and owes its allegiance not on any one nation or flag, but to God alone.

2. The Religious Leaders. Like empire, they also were threatened by the kingdom of God.
Jesus distanced himself from them in the beginning. He hung out with sinners and told the religious leaders they were missing the point. He was a dangerous threat to established religion’s control over people. They decided what was right and what was wrong, who was in and who was out. And they didn’t want to relinquish that control – even to God.
And this has been acted out in religious history over and over again through religious wars and persecutions. separations, and power struggles, ex-communications and heresy trials. Like the religious authorities against whom Jesus struggled, through its leadership, creeds, and doctrines the church has continued to determine what beliefs are acceptable and who may and may not be included in the kingdom of God.
3. The mob/crowd of bystanders, the folks who yelled crucify him. They were not in power officially like the empire or organized religion, but they were threatened just the same. Why? Because different is always a threat to the crowd. The minute someone is perceived as different they are no longer part of “us” and it doesn’t matter whether it is theology, skin color, national origin, sex, language or life style. The crowd believes in majority rule. Those who don’t go along are subversive, dangerous and their voices have to be silenced.

4. And finally the betrayers – Jesus own followers from Judas who may have thought he was going to force his hand, to Peter who denied him, all the rest who fled the scene in fear of 1-3 above, people who felt they had to put their personal safety above everything else. We’ve all been there on both sides, sometimes standing alone wondering where all those other folks who stood for the same thing disappeared to, or not speaking out ourselves when we know we should for fear of the consequences.
The common denominator for all these groups is that they were operating in what they perceived to be their own best interests. Given a choice between God’s will and their own, they chose their own. And therein lies the answer to the second question, why did Jesus have to die on the cross?
The world and all its systems not only rejected but sought to destroy this kingdom Jesus came to create and thought initially they succeeded. Could the ending have been different? Yes, Jesus told his disciples not to fight, that if wanted to resist he could have called 10,000 angels to his defense, but he chose instead to accept the cruelty the world inflicted on him. He told Pilate, “ you have no power but what’s been given you,” and he also said, “No one takes my life from me, I lay it down of my own free will.”
The world thought they had him, that they had gotten rid of this kingdom of God by killing its leader and stamping it out, with no resistance. But to their surprise the kingdom didn’t go away and the story didn’t end there. Through Christ’s resurrection, God showed that this kingdom would prevail, not through might and power as the world understands them, not through fighting violence with violence, but by Jesus’ words from the cross, “Father forgive them,” not through hostility and hate, condemnation and exclusion, but through peace and reconciliation, acceptance and inclusion.
And he lives and invites us to abandon our lives of selfishness and self-will and find purpose and meaning and life giving renewal in the Kingdom of Love and Light.

That to be saved is only this,-
Salvation from our selfishness,
From more than elemental fire,
The soul’s unsanctified desire,
From sin itself and not the pain
That warns us of its chafing chain;
That worship’s deeper meaning lies
In mercy, and not sacrifice, . . .
That the dear Christ dwells not afar,
The king of some remoter star,
Listening at times, with flattered ear
To homage rung from selfish fear,
But here amidst the poor and blind,
The bound and suffering of our kind,
In works we do, in prayers we pray
Life of our life, He lives today

The Meeting
John Greenleaf Whittier

Whittier poem

Doing Church on the al-Qaeda Model

Tony — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 20:08:14 +0000

Six of us sat in monthly meeting talking about our upcoming Thanksgiving activities. For a number of years we have been getting a list of families in need of assistance from Social Services and providing them with food boxes the day before Thanksgiving with a turkey and everything they needed to prepare a traditional holiday meal. Last year we did 10 boxes, this year our small meeting approved doing food boxes for 12 families. This year we have also become involved in serving a prepared meal at the soup kitchen in Galax one night a month. Since our time in November was the Monday night of Thanksgiving week, we had decided to do turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce and the works to the approximately 60 people that showed up for a meal at the soup kitchen.
After some consideration those present approved a $750 budget for Thanksgiving. This included all the food for the boxes and the meeting approved paying for the 5 turkeys for the soup kitchen meal. However, considering the scope of what we were doing, finances seemed like a much lesser problem than the small number of folks we had to do it all.
A lady who attends our fellowship from time to time has been helping with the meal at the shelter. She told some friends of hers about it and they called to find out if they could help even though they were not part of our fellowship. Between these folks they agreed to cook one of the turkeys, make dressing, and provide green beans and potatoes for the 60 folks at the soup kitchen. They also suggested that we do cupcakes and decorate them with candy pumpkins rather than trying to do pies. We put the list of what we needed on our website and one of our members offered to buy the cupcakes and another said they would provide rolls for 60.
There is a lady who runs a catering service in the extended family of one of our non resident members who offered to cook two of the turkeys and provide a cranberry sauce salad. I also have a friend who was in a serious accident last spring and has made a miraculous recovery. I visited him regularly while he was in the hospital and while he was changing my oil we were both saying how amazing it was that he was fully recovered and back at work. He said he had a lot to be grateful for, so I explained what we were doing and asked if we might get one of the turkeys cooked at his house. After checking with the lady of the house he called me and told me they would be glad to cook a turkey and make dressing to go with it.
I noted that we were up to 10 folks involved in preparing the meal who were not members of our fellowship which was kind of interesting, but everything was being taken care of except for one turkey which we had planned to cook at our house. Then our first disaster struck. I had been so busy getting folks to provide food for the soup kitchen that I had not followed up with Social Services on the names of the families for whom we would be providing food baskets. When I did call back they told me that regrettably due to privacy laws they were no longer able to provide us with names.
While this may have seemed like a welcome relief, I knew that there were folks in our fellowship who enjoyed delivering the food boxes so much last year they had already asked off for the day before Thanksgiving to help again. One of our college students had even mentioned cutting some classes in order to get home in time to help deliver food. Somehow I had to come up with a list of folks to whom we could deliver those boxes. So I called a branch of the Mount Rogers Community Services Board and explained what we wanted to do. The lady I spoke with indicated privacy laws were an issue for them as well, but that if she could get folks to sign waivers they might be able to help us, but that would take time and she wasn’t sure if they could get us names before Thanksgiving. I called the local Red Cross and asked them to keep a list of names of folks who called in needing food. And I called a friend at Rooftop Community Action who agreed to post a notice there. She also suggested that I put the notice on facebook. Really, facebook?
Within a week we had four families who responded from Facebook and the Red Cross gave us the names of four families, so we only needed four more to reach our goal of 12. Then, on Friday afternoon our contact from Mount Rogers called. She said she knew we had asked for 10 or 12 and she hoped it wasn’t a problem that they had come up with 14. The major problem was that 9 of these households were unable to prepare a meal for themselves and needed the food cooked. I knew there was no way we could add cooking for 9 households to preparing the dinner for the soup kitchen.
I had also lost sight of the fact that the Red Cross in Galax was doing a fund raiser selling turkey dinners the Friday before Thanksgiving and that I had volunteered to help deliver them around town. With a prayer for help I called Mount Rogers and asked if we could possibly deliver the prepared meals to the 9 families on Friday of that week rather than Thanksgiving. They saw no problem with that, so I immediately went to the Red Cross to talk to Joan and Kathy to see if we could add in 9 more households. They graciously agreed to do so and also gave me the contact information for a lady who had called them from Maryland. She was going to be spending Thanksgiving in the area and was hoping to find a service project with which she could help.
It hit me as I was leaving that this was a double blessing; not only would we be feeding those 9 households, but rather than Food Lion we would be paying the Red Cross for the meals so that money would go on to help with hurricane relief in New Jersey. I was feeling pretty good and very thankful when I stopped by the soup kitchen where I got the news that the number they were feeding had increased in the past couple of weeks and they thought we should expect around 80.
This was Thursday night and the meal was Monday, there wasn’t even time for another turkey to thaw out. Once again the Red Cross came to the rescue. It turned out they were serving the exact same meal we were (even down to the green beans and potatoes) and since it was all donated, they offered to give us whatever they had left over which turned out to be a whole turkey, dressing, rolls, and some other things. We hoped it would be enough.
Another issue for us was serving the meal. Due to work schedules only 4 of us from the fellowship were available to actually help at the soup kitchen. But the couple from our neighborhood came to help and our new friend from Maryland showed up with her boyfriend and three other members of his family, so we actually had enough folks to rotate serving so that no one had to do it the entire three hours.
And it was definitely a loaves and fishes thing. When we closed down for the night we had fed 102 people. And on Wednesday 5 of us delivered food boxes to 12 families as we had planned to do all along. All total we provided Thanksgiving meals for a little over 160 folks. But what was just as amazing is that from the six of us in monthly meeting making this all happen involved more than 30 more people between the shopping, cooking, and delivering of the food and help in locating families in need.
What actually happened here was that a small cell of folks, like al- Qaeda, created a subversive plot, not for evil, but to spread goodness and love and light in a way that not only went way beyond what we could have accomplished by ourselves, but also between those who received the benefits and those who helped provide them touched the lives of almost 200 people. And that’s what being the church is all about – the leaven that spreads throughout the loaf, making it possible for the kingdom of God to be made real in the lives of others. It’s not about how many people can be gathered in one place on Sunday morning at 11 or any other time; it’s not about the work of perpetuating itself, it’s about making the face and feet and hands and heart of God visible in this moment wherever you are.
It’s all about how we understand Jesus’ original words about the church, “upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” For some of us that makes the church a force, for others it makes it a fortress. They need to circle the wagons because they feel they are under attack – public prayer was taken out of schools, the ten commandments cannot be posted on courthouse walls, manger scenes are no longer permitted on the lawns of government buildings, so we must be under attack.
But I will say again – no where in history is it recorded that any army ever marched into battle with gates as weapons. We are not the defense here, but rather the offense. Our calling is not to huddle behind the gates, but slip through and in the midst of a dark world create little cells of love and light that provide a visible witness to Christ’s presence among us.

Update on Thanksgiving dinner

fancygapfriend — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:25:25 +0000

Jeff and Trish have offered to bake and bring 60 rolls – if would be helpful if folks would give us their names when they sign up to bring something, just so we will know who is bringing what

fancygapfriend — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:20:18 +0000

If folks don’t mind, it would be helpful if you would leave your name so we will know who is bringing what- thanks!

Rolls

fancygapfriend — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:19:18 +0000

Jeff and Trish have offered to provide 60 rolls

soup kitchen

fancygapfriend — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:00:16 +0000

I can bring cranberry sauce and cup cakes

Thanksgiving Meal at Soup Kitchen

fancygapfriend — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 15:58:45 +0000

Friends will recall we are serving a Thanksgiving meal at the soup kitchen in Galax on Monday, Nov 19. Lately they have been feeding around 60 so that’s the number for which we will need to prepare. Monthly meeting approved buying the turkeys (we think about 5) but we will need:
volunteers to cook turkeys
dressing
green beans and potatoes – Bob and Sharon grew potatoes in their garden and said they could provide what we needed
rolls
cranberry sauce
cupcakes for dessert -Sharon has bought candy pumpkins to decorate the cupcakes
If you can provide one of the items listed, please leave a note here -also we will need folks to serve from around 4 till 7

The Politics of Compassion

Tony — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 19:46:05 +0000

Scripture: The Kingdom Life Luke 6: 27-36

In his book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg suggests that the King James rendition of verse 36 “be ye merciful” may not be the best translation of the idea behind the verse. We normally think of being merciful as a sort of top down thing, a king might be merciful to his subjects, or a master to his slaves. We don’t usually think about equals having the ability to be merciful to one another. There is also a tendency to associate mercy with suspended punishment, someone has to have done something wrong to receive mercy.
Borg suggests a better translation might be “be compassionate as God is compassionate.” The word compassion comes from two root words -passion which means “ to feel” and the prefix com which means “with.”
So when we have compassion we are feeling with others, identifying with what they are feeling and experiencing. A feeling of compassion leads to being compassionate. So compassion is both a feeling and a way of life that flows out of that feeling.
The Hebrew word for compassion is actually the plural form of the noun that in singular form means “ womb.” A woman feels compassion for the child of her own womb. A man feels compassion for his brother who came from the same womb. This adds a new dimension to how God identified with human kind in Jesus. He came through the womb and therefore is truly our brother.
The Jews believed compassion was located in a certain part of the body, the loins which in a woman is the womb and in men is the bowels. This explains some of the odd sounding phrases of the Old Testament to us. When it speaks of bowels of mercy, or someone’s bowels are shut. That doesn’t mean they need a little Activia, it really means they are being hard hearted and not showing compassion to someone else.
God is compassionate to us. In the Hebrew this is saying God is like a womb. God gives birth to us, God is life giving, nourishing, caring, embracing, and encompassing.
There was a conflict in Jesus’ world between two images of God. One was shaped by the Jewish religious leaders and their reading of the Torah, “ be holy as God is holy.” This image of God led to sharp social boundaries: the righteous and the sinners, the pure and the impure, the clean and the unclean, the physically whole and the not whole (blind, crippled, deaf, etc), male and female, Jew and Gentile.
And once these boundaries were set, once an individual was identified as sinner, impure, unclean, or any of the other labels, there was little or no opportunity for change. In Jewish society there was a place for everyone and once that place was assigned, it was pretty much permanent. And since the temple was the center of Jewish life, these boundaries affected every aspect of life, religious, social, and economic. Sinners, the impure and the unclean were not only barred from the temple, they were social outcasts and even their offerings were not acceptable.
Jesus immediately distanced himself from the religious establishment by establishing a new paradigm, one that replaced holiness with compassion, be compassionate as God is compassionate. He introduced an open and inclusive table where all were welcome, the ultimate sign of acceptance. He was criticized for it by the religious establishment time and time again, “He eats with sinners and publicans and tax collectors.”
He talked about being clean and pure on the inside rather than the outside. He healed the sick and made the not whole (blind, lame, lepers, mental) whole again. He elevated women to a new standing, encouraging and defending Mary for sitting at his feet listening to his words rather than taking her proper place in the kitchen. He surrounded himself with the poor and the needy, and even reached out to Gentiles on more than one occasion.
And it wasn’t just religious law in question. He was turning things upside down socially by treating equally. There was no more every one in their place, -and that really upset those in power, enough to want to get rid of him permanently.
Jesus’ point of view on this is probably best illustrated in the Good Samaritan story. We usually look at it as a story about individual, a priest and a Levite who were not compassionate, and a Samaritan who was. But it’s about much more than the individuals. It’s also an enditment of a religious system that placed purity over compassion. Neither the priest nor the Levite could approach the half dead man by the side of the road without risking becoming unclean or impure by touching him.
The Samaritan’s actions were not restricted by the Jewish religious system. Jesus asked at the end who acted with compassion ? Who was a neighbor to the one who fell among thieves?
And when the obvious answer was the Samaritan, Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.” Go to the poor, the outcasts, the untouchables, the marginalized
and don’t worry about the purity laws or becoming unclean by touching or associating with people the religious system did not accept. Be compassionate as God is compassionate.
And this wasn’t just for individuals. This was part of the manifesto of the Kingdom of God, what John Puncheon calls the “ topsy turvy kingdom.” It was not just for the church. It was a new paradigm for shaping political, economic and social life – the politics of compassion.

We have the same struggles today, holiness/purity vs compassion . Too many times people outside the church don’t see the compassion, they see judgement, condemnation, even hate for those who are on the outside, people of other religious traditions, people who are different, people who dare to question what they teach and believe. And just as in Jesus’ earthly days, the people who most need compassion are often the ones least likely to receive it from the religious community.
Just to make sure we understood, Jesus told another story about the end of time when the great King would come and all the nations would be gathered before him and he would divide them in the same way a shepherd separates sheep and goats, one on the left and the other one the right. But the criteria will not be holiness or purity or orthodoxy, or any of the other things the church is often preoccupied with. It will be compassion, or the lack thereof. “IN AS MUCH AS YOU HAVE DONE IT (OR DONE IT NOT) UNTO THE LEAST OF THESE MY BRETHREN YOU DID IT UNTO ME.
How much plainer can it be? Be compassionate as God is compassionate.

Matthew 25

Whosoever Belives

Tony — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 21:11:58 +0000

Whosoever Believes

For the next few weeks, we are going to be looking at some of the things Jesus said that seem to make Christianity exclusive rather than inclusive, those passages that cause some Christians to say that Christianity is the only real and valid path to God. Some of the things Jesus said do sound like he is saying that every other religion is a dead end that will eventually lead people to death and destruction, or eternal punishment because they didn’t believe the right thing.
Rather than starting with the correctness of lack thereof of what people believe, let’s begin with the word believe itself. After all, the traditional question asked of the adherents of all religions is what do you believe?
What happens if we try to use the word believe in a sentence?
It’s clouding up, I believe it’s going to rain. Here believe means I have reached an opinion based on observable phenomena.
I believe if you turn right at the intersection, you’ll find the place you are looking for. Here it means if my memory serves me correctly I think I’m telling you what is right.
I believe she is telling the truth about what happened. I have made an informed decision based on me perception of the facts.
I believe in God the Father. I affirm my conviction that God exists.

Is this what Jesus mean when he says believe? Let’s take a look at the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in John 3.
Nicodemus a religious leader comes to Jesus by night and says, “ we know you are a teacher sent from God because of the things you do.” Nicodemus has accepted information as true based on personal observation. Jesus, however, sort of leaves Nicodemus’ belief statement in the dust and says, you must be born again. We’ve talked about this as in invitation to Nicodemus to re-think everything he has believed or known up to this point and accept a different version of reality.
Jesus tells Nocodemus that God so loved the world that He have His only begotten son that Whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life (life of the ages). For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved. He goes on to say that whoever does not believe is condemned already.

The Greek word translated believe is pisteuo which literally means to trust, or to entrust. The noun form of the word is translated faith (as in Hebrews 11, the great faith chapter) and the verb form is translated believe.
Our word believe means accept the information presented as true, but does not necessarily call for any action on our part. The Greek word means to not only receive information in one’s mind and accept it as being true, but also having enough confidence in it to act upon it or be willing to act on it. It’s not just to trust in it, but to entrust yourself to it.
John uses the verb form almost 100 times, but does not use the noun form at all. In his gospel the word believe is about trust in action, or trust that leads to action, actions that are consistent with beliefs.

There really is no word in the English language that captures the full meaning of the Greek term In a religious sense we tend to view believe as affirmation of or assent to certain creeds or doctrines or propositional statements about God, but even that doesn’t begin to do justice to the full meaning of the Greek word It’s not enough. Belief begins when we act on those things we affirm. As Donald Miller says in Blue Like Jazz, “what I believe is not what I say, it’s what I do.” Maybe one of the clearest pictures we have of believe in our lives is political affiliation, the idea of embracing a certain set of values and understandings and seeking to live them out.

So how does this affect our understanding of this passage and its claim that everyone who does not believe in Jesus is condemned? It changes the definition of believe, again from what we say to what we do. From a Quaker perspective we talk about minding the Light as a demonstration of our faith. Barclay talks about a “: universal and saving Light” which if not resisted but followed will lead to the individual’s salvation. Quakers never said believe in it, but rather follow it, mind it, surrender to it – entrust yourself to it
Fox tells a story in his journal about how he proved to European people in America that this Light was present in the soul of the original inhabitants. In his own words he asked an Indian if there were something inside him that convicted him of wrong doing and the man indicated there was indeed such a spirit inside him. Fox seemed to feel no need to help the man identify the spirit as the Living Christ; it was enough to know that the Spirit was there and that he did try to follow it.
Paul makes a similar argument in Romans, creation itself is a witness that causes people to recognize God and respond in faith to that which was previously unknown to them, and that there is therefore no such things as an I didn’t know anything about God excuse. Barclay admits that knowledge of the Biblical account of God’s relationship is helpful, but not absolutely necessary in order to respond to God. But it is necessary for individuals to respond to the light they are given.
In Matthew 25, Jesus makes a distinction between “the sheep and the goats”, a dividing of those who have served him and those who have not. This division is not based on beliefs in the sense of what people say they believe, but rather on belief expressed through service to God and fellow man “in as much as ye did it unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me.”
So who are the real believers? Those who can articulate their faith in terms of traditional Christian creeds and doctrines, or those who may not know all these yet are led to give their lives to caring for the sick, the needy, and those in desperate circumstances and situations?

Whosoever believeth – who does that really mean?