Moses, You Were Wrong

The Lost and Found

We recently visited one of our kids and daughter in law. Well, actually we visited our grand kids but their parents come with the package. But seriously folks…. The visit was a bit of an unexpected pilgrimage.

They were both raised in our former church tradition: the churches of Christ (Campbellite Restoration Movement, acapella, sola scriptura, conservative). But they have been on a spiritual journey for the past decade.

My step-son was two when his mother and I left the churches of Christ and married so he has been exposed to the Episcopal church and then the Orthodox church in his childhood during his times with us. His father remained staunchly church of Christ so that was his primary church experience over the years.

About five years ago we visited and attended their church with them in Boston. We didn’t have a car, and even if I did I hate driving in Boston, so we went with them. It was actually my first experience of “contemporary worship” if I don’t count the folk Mass of our low church Episcopal parish. (Over the past 25 years I think we’ve attended our kids’ churches with them maybe three times while visiting, twice was in the churches of Christ.) The church had a very good multi-instrumental band and several excellent singers, the teaching pastor was a very good preacher and there were “high church” liturgical elements in the service that he had introduced that were way outside of their “Restoration Movement Christian Church” tradition and affiliation. Our son said there were several Berkeley School of Music students in the band and “we do the same crappy contemporary Christian music everyone else does, but it’s done really well….” (An interesting side note: There were two dark haired young men sitting in front of us, one was wearing an icon bracelet. During the “greet your neighbor” part I asked if they were Greek Orthodox and they said yes, a bit surprised that I asked but I pointed to the icons. They went up for communion, I didn’t ask about that.)

Anyway, on this recent visit, again we didn’t have a car and after riding with them around town taking grand kids to school and events I was even less inclined to try to drive to downtown Boston from their house to an Orthodox church so we went to their new church with them, literally a walking block from their house. They had visited several churches in their area and settled into this one. It is even further outside the traditions they were raised in than the previous one.

It is a small church, a merger of an established but declining Evangelical Covenant church with a start up mission that was using their building. They had similar doctrinal foundations and denominational affiliation so they joined together to form one parish. We met an joyful elderly woman who had been a member there for over fifty years and loved the merger. The congregation was multi-generational, multi-ethnic with lots of mixed race marriages, and lots of young children.

The band was smaller than their former church. The lead pastor played acoustic guitar and sang. There was also a keyboard, a subdued drummer and an incredible Haitian “back up singer” who also did a solo. They were all competent musicians and singers so there were no cringe moments except a split second when the pastor obviously hit the wrong button on his laptop for the “backing track” of one of his songs.

The pastor had a very kind, gentle demeanor, and a voice much like what you would expect to encounter if you called a suicide hotline. I don’t say that in jest nor as a jab. His persona was reflected in the entire service and I imagine in the culture of the church.

The hymns and extemporaneous prayers called on Christ and the Holy Spirit to heal our brokenness, visit our sorrows, and indwell us that we might be a light on the earth. The pastor’s sermon (which was based on the text of a reverent reading from the Gospel, a series on the Beatitudes, during which we all stood) focused on healing, restoration, peace and finding Christ in all things. There was no hint of selling a particular politicized “world view”, a prosperity gospel, or a denominational identity. There was a “passing of the peace”, open communion of juice and crackers in individual serving cups, set out on a table that people went forward and picked up for themselves, and that several of us in the congregation did not participate in. At the end there was a liturgical benediction.

Later, my wife noted that the texts and verses of the “call to worship” and introductory hymns were similar in their invocations to the Orthodox prayer: “O heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of truth who art everywhere present and fillest all things, treasury of goodness and giver of life, come and abide in us and cleanse us from all impurity and save our souls, O Good One.” In fact it pretty much summed up the entire ethos and focus of the service.

Sunday night after the grand kids were in bed we talked about our spiritual paths. We talked about conversions, discomforts, de-constructions, de-churching, and living with our spiritual dissonances and disappointments with our churches. Our son noted that he has recognized that “religious fundamentalism” is an issue on both sides of a pendulum: One can be “fundamentalistic” about conservative religion/politics or liberal religion/politics. It is not a specific set of dogmas but a mindset ABOUT a particular set of dogmas one embraces and about those who do not agree with them, and he is striving for a middle path. Of course, coming from our church of Christ backgrounds, our discussion touched on how we can believe that Orthodoxy is “the one true church” (unlike his current church which is explicitly ecumenical) without being fundamentalistic and condemning of everyone NOT Orthodox like many of those in the churches of Christ did. I explained that, just like in the church of Christ, one can find both an exclusivistic approach and also a more graceful, nuanced approach among online Orthodox apologists regarding the spiritual state of non-Orthodox people (whether Christian or not).

Of course the issue is, just like how “bible churches”, using the same set of texts, can come up with radically different views of people who are not members of their church or other Christians and un-believers, so Orthodox people using the same biblical texts and patristic/hagiographic sources can come up with radically different beliefs about the spiritual state of non-Orthodox people.

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The beginning point of the issue, I think, is how one’s theology regards the state of the fallen human being. The Orthodox view in a nutshell is that the image of God in the fallen human being is never obliterated by sin (original or unoriginal and unimaginative for the rest of our life). So even the pagans have an innate sense of the true God and of Christ in whose image we are all created, and the Holy Spirit is able to touch that part of us. Hence, even in pagan religions and philosophies one can find commonalities with Christian theology and spiritual disciplines and praxis. I was first exposed to this idea as a young church of Christ convert when I read C.S. Lewis who believed  “…that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a false god […] is accepted by the true God and that Christ saves many who do not think they know Him” (Letters 247). That made intuitive sense to me even in the face of the air tight exclusivist interpretation of Scripture I was learning in the church of Christ. (In the church of Christ extremes one could have the same historical roots, understandings of baptism, eucharist, etc. and still go to hell for having a kitchen in your church building or playing a musical instrument in a worship service much less for being a Baptist, Catholic, Buddhist, or pagan.)

When we discovered Orthodoxy, Fr. John Finley was catechizing us and he said, “The Orthodox church is the one true church.” I thought “here we go again…” and said, “Father, I’ve been a member of the one true church three times already, you’re going to have to do better than that.” Obviously he did. But it wasn’t the standard cop out “well, we can’t judge…if God wants to be merciful that’s up to Him, etc.” which to me is just a “theological shrug” with a secret sense, whether we hope it is true or not, that we DO really know and yes, everyone else is going to hell.

So in Orthodoxy I discovered over the years that within the patristic and monastic traditions, and the teachings of the saints of the church there is an unapologetic recognition of the ability of the human being to have knowledge and experience of the true God apart from formal membership in the institution of the church. In the monasteries of Greece, within the courtyards and narthexes of the churches there are icons of the great pagan philosophers who were regarded as prophets, seers and heralds of Christ. They are not canonized as saints of the church (the icons have no haloes). But, the existence and placement of the icons say to us that they are not cast out of the church but are recognized as “in the narthex of the Church” (the place of the catechumens and penitents) and honored by God as having true knowledge insofar as they followed and could understand the image within them. (In the Orthodox tradition, a catechumen and penitent who dies is given an Orthodox funeral and is considered fully embraced by the Church and Christ.)

The Wise Aristotle, a fresco in the narthex of the Monastery of Philanthopinon, 1542*

Saint Nikolai Velimirovic (also called “The New Chrysostom”) penned this recognition of “prophetic truth” that speaks to the soul within the pagan philosophies in his “Prayers by the Lake”:

“All the prophets have from the beginning cried out to my soul, imploring her to make herself a virgin and prepare her­self to receive the Divine Son into her immaculate womb;

Imploring her to become a ladder, down which God will descend into the world, and up which man will ascend to God.

Imploring her to drain the red sea of sanguinary passions within herself, so that man the slave can cross over to the promised land, the land of freedom.

The wise man of China admonishes my soul to be peaceful and still, and to wait for Tao to act within her. Glory be the memory of Lao-tse, the teacher and prophet of his people!

The wise man of India teaches my soul not to be afraid of suffering, but through the arduous and relentless drilling in purification and prayer to elevate herself to the One on high, who will come out to greet her and manifest to her His face and His power. Glorious be the memory of Krishna, the teacher and prophet of his people!

The royal son of India teaches my soul to empty herself completely of every seed and crop of the world, to abandon all the serpentine allurements of frail and shadowy matter, and then–in vacuity, tranquility, purity and bliss–to await nirvana. Blessed be the memory of Buddha, the royal son and inexorable teacher of his people!

The thunderous wise man of Persia tells my soul that there is nothing in the world except light and darkness, and that the soul must break free from the darkness as the day does from the night. For the sons of light are conceived from the light, and the sons of darkness are conceived from darkness. Glorious be the memory of Zoroaster, the great prophet of his people!

The prophet of Israel cries out to my soul: Behold, the vir­gin will conceive and bear a son, whose name will be — the God~man. Glorious be the memory of Isaiah, the clairvoyant prophet of my soul!

O heavenly Lord, open the hearing of my soul, lest she become deaf to the counsels of Your messenger.“ **

This is far from a theological shrug about whether or not non-Christian religions have “light” and that they can hold not just shadows of truths, but aspects of truth in its fullness. But, of course, as Christians we believe that the fullness of all truth is Jesus Christ and Him crucified, by which they all will be saved just as “we” are. If I recall it was Frederick Buechner who said something like, “Christians are no more saved than anyone else, they just know the name of the person to thank for it.”

So, I’ve spent most of my Christian life as an evangelist beginning consciously in the Jesus Movement in the 1960’s. I admit I’ve been tempted now and then by systematic theology to exclusivism and “fundamentalism” (in its worst expressions and behaviors). The world in black and white is much easier to see clearly and a rigid scaffold holds up a lot of shaky structure. (Sometimes, I think, a scaffold is necessary but only temporarily while the infrastructure is being repaired…. but that’s another blog post.) But I’ve found that common ground is far easier to lay a foundation to build upon than earth that has been scorched by the fire of judgment. I’ve learned that what St. Paul said is true of even my own heart: “knowledge makes arrogant but love edifies”. I’ve learned by hard experience and sorrowful outcomes to attempt to hear truth rather than listen for heresy, and if I can do so I find that I am welcomed into people’s inmost lives.***

As one who, for good or bad, ego or charisma, presumed to be a teacher of the Gospel, James 3:1 was always in the forefront of my heart. “Do not many of you be teachers, my brethren, for we will be judged with greater severity.” It frightened me, but not enough to make me shut up sometimes, unfortunately. It used to be you had to have at least a modicum of social skills and sanity because the platform for being a teacher was to have real life encounters and face to face conversations with people, or if you wanted to speak to a group in a class setting you had to be a part of a community/church under personal supervision, scrutiny, and direction of church leadership. Now teaching has moved to the internet where anyone with a phone or computer can facelessly type “heretic” in a thousand comment boxes to hundreds of people you’ve never met, with no relationships, accountability or supervision. In my mind the stakes are higher and I think the judgment will be more severe, which is why my DELETE key is the first to wear out.

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, in his wonderful book “Beginning to Pray”, shares this story about Moses the Patriarch that speaks to the danger of teaching:

“In the life of Moses, in Hebrew folklore, there is a remarkable passage.

Moses finds a shepherd in the desert. He spends the day with the shepherd and helps him milk his ewes, and at the end of the day he sees that the shepherd puts the best milk he has into a bowl, which he places on a flat stone some distance away. So Moses asks him what it is for, and the shepherd replies, “This is God’s milk.”

Moses is puzzled and asks him what he means. The shepherd says, “I always take the best milk I possess, and I bring it as an offering to God.” Moses, who is far more sophisticated than the shepherd with his naive faith, asks, “And does God drink it?” “Yes,” replies the shepherd, “he does.” Then Moses feels compelled to enlighten the poor shepherd and he explains that God, being pure spirit, does not drink milk. Yet the shepherd is sure that he does, and so they have a short argument, which ends with Moses telling the shepherd to hide behind the bushes to find out whether in fact God does come to drink the milk. Moses then goes out to pray in the desert. The shepherd hides, the night comes and in the moonlight the shepherd sees a little fox that comes trotting from the desert, looks right, looks left and heads straight toward the milk, which he laps up, and disappears into the desert again.

The next morning Moses finds the shepherd quite depressed and downcast. “What’s the matter?” he asks. The shepherd says “You were right. God is pure spirit, and he doesn’t want my milk.” Moses is surprised. He says, “You should be happy. You know more about God than you did before.” “Yes, I do,” says the shepherd, “but the only thing I could do to express my love for him has been taken away from me.” Moses sees the point. He retires into the desert and prays hard.

In the night, in a vision, God speaks to him and says, “Moses, you were wrong. It is true that I am pure spirit. Nevertheless, I always accepted with gratitude the milk which the shepherd offered me as the expression of his love, but since, being pure spirit, I do not need the milk, I shared it with this little fox, who is very fond of milk.”

So all that to say, once in a while it is good for me to visit my kids and grand kids and participate in their spiritual lives. It is a gentle reminder that everyone, including myself, is offering milk to God out of love for Him as they know Him, and that simple offering of love is sometimes more blessed than a teacher-corrected, more complex knowledge of God. And it takes a hell of a lot of wisdom to know when to leave well enough alone.

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*See, Orthodox Christianity Then And Now, John Sanidopoulos, “Byzantine Frescoes of Ancient Philosophers” HERE

** Prayers by the Lake – Bishop Nikolai ( Velimirovic ) – Molitve na jezeru – Vladika. Translated and Annotated by: Rt. Rev. Archimandrite Todor Mika, S.T.M. and Very Rev. Dr. Stevan Scott
http://www.sv-luka.org/praylake/pl48.htm

***The link is part one of a three part interview. Part Two is HERE Part Three is HERE