gregoryjenks

Category: Reflections

  • The stories that define us

    In his daily meditation for this past Sunday, Richard Rohr correctly invites us to embrace the concept of original blessing and eschew meta-narratives of violence, since these are stories that shape us.

    I have immense respect for Rohr and his theological reflections, but I quickly found myself dissenting from the process by which he constructed his otherwise worthy appeal.

    First of all, the Enuma elish is from several hundred years before the Babylonian exile and most likely was not the form of the ANE creation myth that was known to the Jewish exiles, let along the theologians who composed Genesis 1.

    As I shall point out below, the Jews had their own versions of God slaying the dragon / sea-monster in order to create the world, so they really did not need to borrow this stuff from their goyyim neighbours.

    And then I found myself wondering why even progressive theologies—with higher than usual openness to the spiritual insights of other religions—still tend assume that our tradition is pure and non-violent, while other (pagan) traditions are crude and violent?

    Secondly, to conjure up an early form of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity from the opening verses of Genesis—as Rohr does in this reflection—is very bad exegesis and even worse interfaith theology.

    “Creator” is a function of God (Elohim) in Genesis 1, and not a title — just as it is not the ID of the first person of the Trinity in Christian tradition, despite contemporary attempts to make it so in a gender-free formula such as “Creator, Redeemer and Giver of Life”.

    The Hebrew term ruach (wind, spirit), does not refer to the Holy Spirit when used in an ancient Jewish text. While ruach-elohim is literally “wind of God”, it is probably best understood as as Hebrew superlative form, and translated as “a powerful wind” or “a strong storm”, just as a phrase like gibeah-elohim means “very big hill” rather than “hill of God”.

    Finally, there is no logos/Word—or even feminine Sophia figure—in this ancient creation poem, simply a God who says, “Let there be light,” etc.

    Thirdly, the violence that Rohr finds so abhorrent is still implicit in the story with echoes of ancient conflict traditions in the Hebrew terms that occur within the first few sentences. In any case, the violent defeat of the primordial sea-monster or dragon is explicit in other Hebrew creation poems found in the Psalms and in the Prophets. The ancient Jews, it seems, were not averse to depicting creation as a violent defeat of the primordial serpentine opponent of YHWH.

    Perhaps more significantly for both Jewish and Christian readers, this violence is matched and even excelled by the ghastly stories of Abraham (almost) sacrificing his son, Isaac, and Jephthah actually sacrificing his own daughter, not to mention those defective Christian understandings of the atonement which see the death of Jesus as a substitutionary sacrifice in which an innocent person is killed in place of the many sinners.

    The violence does not end there within the Christian Scriptures, but is deeply embedded in apocalyptic visions of the destruction to be wreaked upon humankind and all of creation at the end of time.

    To be people of peace we need both a creation myth and a redemption myth that eschews violence, and what we have in the Bible are origin myths and end-time myths that are dripping with violence and destruction.

    No wonder the modern world is in such a mess.

    All of this is related to the myth of St George slaying the dragon, which is an ancient oriental archetype for the victory of civilisation (imperial violence, or the violence of civilisation, as John Dominic Crossan would remind us) over the forces of chaos. The rider on the white horse has a long mythic history long before it was attached to the name of St George, and it is extended further in the Book of Revelation—a.k.a. the Apocalypse [!!!] of John—where the victorious Christ figure sits upon a white horse as he rides out to destroy Satan, a.k.a that great dragon or serpent.

    Rohr should know all this, and probably does.

    So I wonder why he penned a reflection that leaves all these issues aside and does not see the violence embedded in our own tradition and celebrated in our central liturgies?

  • Dean of Grafton

    Text of the response by the Eighth Dean of Grafton to the community welcome at the conclusion of the installation and commissioning liturgy at Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton on Friday, 2 February 2018.

     

    180202 InstallationThank you for the generous welcome extended on behalf of various communities represented here tonight.

    Thank you to each of you for being here this evening to make this such a special celebration.

    Thank you for the exceptional care and support to me and to Eve and our family since my cancer diagnosis first disturbed our plans to hold this event in September. It has been a richer and more blessed journey these past few months because of your care and support.

    Thank you as well to the search committee, chaired by Bishop Sarah, which has invited me to engage in this new ministry opportunity.

    Twelve months ago today exactly, I arrived back in Australia with no firm sense of what ministry I would undertake after my time in Jerusalem. It seems that God still had plans for this Lismore boy who has now returned home to the beaches, the rainforests, the timbered ranges and the generous river valleys of his birth. It is good to be home. It is good to be here.

    As a Cathedral Parish we are first of all a community of people called together as followers of Jesus. Tonight we reaffirm our commitment to learn and to practise what Jesus has taught us about living as a colony of God’s Kingdom here in this place and at this time.

    As a Cathedral we serve the wider diocesan community. I invite the prayers of each ministry unit across the Diocese, as we seek to discern how best to make the spiritual and cultural resources of this place more available to you in your own context.

    As a Cathedral we seek to be a place of pilgrimage and prayer for all people of faith, for people of all faiths, and those who do not claim any faith. Our doors are open, our hearts are open, and our minds are open to insights and challenges emerging from our ever expanding knowledge, our evolving social contexts, and the impact of new technologies.

    As a Cathedral we are a place where the civic community gathers to celebrate our shared life as a city. Here we mark times of tragedy and loss, and here we affirm our unique local character and our many successes as a city.

    Finally, as a Cathedral we are a place that affirms hope. As a traditional place of asylum and sanctuary, we speak truth to power, and we speak peace-shalom-salaam to those without hope or power.

    Thank you for sharing the journey that begins this evening …

     

     

  • Anointed with the spirit of the LORD

    Reflections on the first reading for the Third Sunday of Advent …

    Today’s lectionary offers us a rich set of classic texts for Advent.

    As the sermon will focus on John the Baptizer, this brief note will explore the first reading from Isaiah 61.

    This one of several passages in the central part of the great Isaiah Scroll, that scholars refer to as the Servant Songs. No one is entirely sure how the figure of “the Servant” was understood at the time that the texts were being created, but we know it came to play a significant role in the spiritual imagination of the Jewish people around the time of Jesus.

    Isaiah is one of the three OT books most often cited in the New Testament. (The other two are Deuteronomy and the Psalms.) A similar pattern is found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, where the ancient library of this controversial Jewish sect also has more copies of these three books than any other books from the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, a copy of the Isaiah Scroll was among the first Dead Sea Scrolls discoveries in 1947.

    Who is the Servant of the LORD? Is it a person? Is it the nation as a whole? Is it Jerusalem? From a Christian perspective, we recognise that Jesus of Nazareth is the quintessential Servant of the LORD. But what about us? Are we not also called to be the ‘Servant of the LORD’?

    In today’s passage the Servant is someone on whom the Spirit of God has been poured out. As a result of that anointing with the divine Spirit, the Servant will bring good news to the oppressed, bind up the broken hearted, proclaim liberty to the captives, release to the prisoners, and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. In Luke’s account of Jesus’ sermon in Nazareth (Luke 4), he imagined Jesus claiming these same words to describe his own ministry.

    Notice the down to earth consequences of the Servant’s ministry as the Anointed One, the Christ. The mission of the Servant is not to increase attendance at religious ceremonies or raise the level of offerings. Real people will find their own lives turned around. Adverse personal circumstances will be reversed. Destroyed and abandoned towns will be rebuilt. A new beginning for all the people of God, and not simply an increase in religious activity by the faithful.

    May the Spirit of the LORD be poured out upon us all, and may we each claim our vocation as the Servant of the LORD.

  • Grace upon grace

    In the months between the diagnosis of an aggressive bladder cancer and my discharge from hospital this morning, I have been on a journey of grace, a pilgrimage to wholeness.

    My initial reflection on this close encounter with Lady Cancer, aka Holy Wisdom, was published on August 17. This update is being written on November 15.

    Yesterday I returned to the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital (RBWH) as planned so that my catheter could be removed and they could check whether I was successfully “voiding” from my newly fashioned “Neo-Bladder” that Dr Geoff Coughlin had created from a section of my small intestine as part of the 11.5 hour robotic surgery on October 20.

    Apart from the hero’s welcome extended to me by the beautiful nursing staff of Ward 8B South all went as expected.

    The catheter was removed around midnight, and by the time the doctors made their morning ward rounds at 7.00am I had successfully and repeated demonstrated that all was working well.

    It had been anticipated that while in hospital for this brief pitstop, I would be taught how to self-catheterise in case I ever experienced a blockage and needed to relieve any build up in my Neo-Bladder. After checking the ‘performance data’, Dr Coughlin asked that I be discharged immediately and that the nurses do not take the time to teach me how to self-catheterise as the risk of my ever needing to do this was so low that it was not worth the time and effort to show me.

    This was good news compounded by good news. Or, as John 1:16 would express it, Grace upon grace.

    After Eve collected me from the drive through at RBWH we returned to St Francis College so she could continue with her work there today, and I then drove myself home.

    It does seem that the surgery has been a success and that my recuperation is proceeding as well as could be imagined, and possibly considerably better than that.

    For all this I am most grateful, and I am especially grateful for the care, the prayers and the support of family and friends around the world. I am especially appreciative of the Grafton Cathedral congregation through this whole process. It has been a most “interesting” way to commence as their Dean and Rector: not one I would ever have chosen, but one which has drawn us closer together with the bonds of affection.

    With God’s continued blessing and grace, I hope to be back in the Deanery early next week and perhaps even during the coming weekend. While I shall continue on sick leave for the time being, I expect to be well enough to preside and preach at the Cathedral Festival on Sunday, November 26 when we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. I am already working on my sermon!

    My guess is that I shall limit myself to the occasional liturgical duties during the next couple of weeks and then slowly begin to pick up other tasks following my installation and commissioning on Tuesday, December 5.

    We have much to celebrate and much good work to engage in for the common good. May God give us all the grace to do the work to which we are called.

    Grace and peace,

    Greg Jenks

  • Lady Cancer, Holy Sophia

    Lady Cancer, Holy Sophia

    Three weeks have now passed since my urologist visited my hospital bed to share with me the results of the biopsy on the tumors he had removed from my bladder some 36 hours earlier. Almost a week has passed since I sat in his consultation room to review the diagnosis and discuss treatment options.

    The details matter only to me—along with my family and closest friends—so I shall not review them here.

    However, I would like to offer a personal reflection on this new phase in my life.

    In doing so, I draw partly on some of the journal entries I have made in the past three weeks.

    Lady Cancer has moved in with me.

    Turns out, for some time now she has probably been quietly setting herself up in a corner of my ‘house’ to which I have paid little attention. In any case, she has now announced her arrival and it falls to me to respond to this uninvited companion.

    Following a chance conversation with a colleague while attending the Australian Anglican Deans conference in Bendigo over the first weekend of August, I have been reading, Die Wise, written by  Stephen Jenkinson. This is not a review of his book. I may write a review at some stage, but there is already a thoughtful review on the Seven Ponds web site.

    Jenkinson has spent decades working in palliative care, in the ‘death trade’ as he puts it, and offers a distillation of his own insights into what constitutes a good death within the wider context of the human story and the story of Earth.

    Once upon a time folk would have looked to the church for wisdom on dying well. These days the churches have mostly lost their confidence to speak about such topics, and joined the conspiracy of silence in our death-denying culture. Those believers who remain confident to hold forth on the topic of death have mostly shredded their credibility on the subject by exploiting fear of death as a lever for doctrinal conformity and moral compliance.

    Early in chapter two, Jenkinson points out that dying is something we do, and not something that happens to us. In English it always occurs in the active voice, and never in the passive voice. Too bad that we do not have a middle voice in English!

    In a sense, a cancer diagnosis is an invitation to embrace the awareness that I am dying — even if I continue to live, and continue to enjoy life, for many more years yet.

    Death changes from a theoretical possibility for someone else to become a personal existential reality for me.

    Once we know that we are dying, then we can become an active, aware and morally responsible agent who participates in our own dying. This does not mean that we hasten our death, but rather that we live each moment deeply engaged with others, with the world around us, and with our own dying — even if our death may be some considerable time away.

    The certainty of my own death is now firmly on the agenda of my life.

    That changes how I choose to live. It will now permeate my ministry as a priest and scholar. And it informs how I hope to die.

    The challenge, the opportunity and the privilege of being a dying person is to live each and every day from now on in such a way that the joy of being alive is affirmed, the meaning of life is explored, and the reality of my own death serves to magnify and sharpen the delight of being alive.

    I expect to live for many more years yet, while also knowing that may not be the case for any number of reasons (many of them unrelated to my recent diagnosis).

    I want to spend those years living with and for the people that I love. But I feel that the cancer diagnosis has been a wake up call. And for that I am grateful.

    Like everyone else, my days are limited. One day I shall die. It may not be immediate, but it is ‘soon’ and inevitable.

    ‘Lady Cancer’ has moved into my home, and she will never leave. She will be my companion on the journey from now until my death, and her arrival makes me aware of my dying as well as inviting me to choose how to live my dying in the meantime.

    I choose not to repel her as an unwanted intruder. She has every right to be in my house.

    For me, Lady Cancer is not draped in the garb of the Grim Reaper. Rather, she is the incarnation of Lady Wisdom, Holy Sophia, who we find in both the Jewish Scriptures and the New Testament.

    Here is one of many beautiful texts that speak of Lady Wisdom:

    Wisdom has built her house,
    she has hewn her seven pillars.
    She has slaughtered her animals,
    she has mixed her wine,
    she has also set her table.
    She has sent out her servant girls,
    she calls from the highest places in the town,
    “You that are simple, turn in here!”
    To those without sense she says,
    “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.
    Lay aside immaturity, and live,
    and walk in the way of insight.”
    [Proverbs 9:1–6]

    As a Christian, I encounter Holy Sophia in the humanity of Jesus, the sage of Nazareth, the prophet of God’s irresistible reign, and the human face of God. He lived a life that was holy and true. His death reflected the character and quality of his life. He died well. As his disciple I aspire to do the same.

    However long it proves to be, I intend to live this time of my dying with hope, with gratitude, with courage, with compassion, and with love for those who have a special place in my heart.

    This is a declaration of life and love, and not a resignation into death.