Vicki Garvey - Reflection on Peace

JOB'S EPIPHANY

JOB'S EPIPHANY

This is today's (Sept.19,2012) post on "Episcopal Cafe'" under the "Speaking to the Soul" section.

The lesson from the Common Lectionary that pertains to this post is Job 42:1-17. The author quotes Job in verse 5 in the second paragraph. In the Contemporary English Version the language is slightly different when Job says, "I heard about you from others; now I have seen you with my own eyes." (Could the word eyes be replaced with the word soul?) This does not change the meaning of the verse but I think it is a more contemporary.

To read this on Episcopal Cafe' go to:

http://www.episcopalcafe.com/thesoul/jobs_epiphany.html#more

"The conclusion of Job.

Job quotes the two questions that God has spoken earlier. Then he concludes with the wonderful acknowledgment of his epiphany: 'I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.'

Knowing God and knowing about God are vastly different things. Knowing about God is the context for vast theological disputes such as the conversations that have filled this remarkable book. But knowing God -- "now my eye sees you" -- moves us into awe and silence.

An innocent man suffers? Impossible, said the friends, holding on to their conventional theology. But Job clings to both sides of the dilemma with dogged tenaciousness -- "God is...; and I, though innocent, suffer..." He holds the mutually incompatible in tension long enough until he experiences a transcendent truth that reconciles them. The friends know about God. But Job is willing to engage the mystery fully enough actually to know God.

Mystics from every religious tradition connect the experience of the divine -- enlightenment -- with various descriptions of the effect upon the self. Some describe an evaporation of the duality of self and other into an experience of the whole, a unitive experience. All mystical spiritualities posit the disillusion of any form of self-centeredness. Some call it the dismantling of the false self, others speak of the surrender of the ego or of the "I" -- the self (small "s") dissolves into the Self (large "S"), the individual knows union with God.

Yet, whenever I read this story, I am left pondering what has been lost. Does the restoration of a new family really make up for the family he has lost? Does it really make sense in the end? Is God and the universe truly just? The resignation that I experience at the end of Job doesn't bring me the same satisfaction that it seems to bring Job.

Maybe the experience of God simply can't be translated. It can't be given from one person to another. We must have that experience for ourselves. It's not enough just to talk about God. It's not enough to know about God. Maybe we need more than to hear about Job's encounter with the numinous. We also must be able to say, 'I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you...' Then, all else may be relative to the ultimate for us, as well as for Job."

Posted by Lowell Grisham on September 19, 2012 7:59 AM | Permalink | Digg this

A quote from the Wisdom of Solomon (7:27) is interesting to consider in light of the above post, "She (Wisdom) is but one,yet can do all things; herself unchanging, she makes all things new; age after age she enters into holy souls, and makes them friends of God and prophets,"

GOP Jesus

Tea Party Jesus: Sermon on the Mall

Quotes about Power, Institutions, and Civil Disobedience

Today (8/18/2012) several posts from the Episcopal Cafe' had similar though not exactly parallel themes about power, institutions, and civil disobedience. The three sections are far to lengthy to include all that they said so I choose some quotes from each as well as links to the original web address so that you can read the complete articles if you wish.

The first quote is from Lawrence L. Graham and was titled "Born Again" (not the evangelical writing one might expect from that title.):

“Jesus dared to confront the religious powers and secular principalities of his own time. And his teachings are not merely artifacts of an historic past, nor the story of a one-time rabbi in long-ago Israel. They are the plumb line by which real Christians measure the uprightness of their every thought, prayer and action – no matter how impolite or shocking or radical or liberal our fickle secular society may think them.”

http://www.episcopalcafe.com/daily/episcopal_church/born_again.php

The next quote comes from Lowell Grisham:

“Martin Luther King said, ‘ Everyone has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.’ ‘An injustice wherever it is, is a threat to justice everywhere.’ He quoted future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, ‘A justice too long delayed is justice denied.’ “

“I see another more subtle threat to justice these days -- a threat to economic justice. For the past thirty years the wealthy and powerful have manipulated the political and economic system to their advantage. They have created a massive concentration of wealth and power in the hands of fewer and fewer people. The greed and manipulation of the elite in the financial industries provoked the recent economic meltdown that has injured so many and threatened the foundations of government and economic stability. While cloaking themselves in the guise of freedom, the wealthy and elite have declared a silent war on the rest of us and upon the government, the only thing that can stand up to them on behalf of the poor. They are attacking the safety nets and programs of compassion and opportunity that offer a hand up to the unfortunate. Who will stand up to them?”

-From a post by Lowell Grisham http://www.episcopalcafe.com/thesoul/civil_disobedience_and_the_str.html

The final quotation is from Andrew Gerns:

"A Russian judge convicted the three singers known as Pussy Riot to two years in jail for "hooliganism" because they sang (or at least videotaped themselves singing) a protest song in a Moscow cathedral. Were they hooligans or prophets? ...

Using swear words in church is an abuse of God," said the prosecutor, demanding three years jail for the punk band Pussy Riot following their 40-second protest in Moscow's Orthodox cathedral. Their crime was to sing "Mother of God, chase Putin out", invoking that young Palestinian woman who desired that the mighty be brought down, the lowly lifted up and the hungry fed. Her story, and that of her son, was also to end up in court. And the charge against him was not wholly dissimilar.

To many, swear words are more than mere rudeness. Profanity is a theological category generated by the binary opposition of sacred and profane. As expressed in the book of Leviticus, the things of God are strictly to be separated from the moral and physical corruption of the world. Death, shit and blood represent a threat to God's perfection, just as dirty fingers threaten the perfection of a blank piece of paper. Thus the complex rites of purification for those who would approach the holy....

...The problem comes when the holy is employed as a cover to evade critical scrutiny. Even more so when questionable moral or political ideologies are smuggled into the holy – from menstruating women being ritually unclean (thus unable to be priests doing holy stuff in the sanctuary) to the Orthodox church's support for Putin. For values thus inscribed within the holy can easily come to regulate the politics of a community in ways that resist any sort of challenge. Then religion becomes an adjunct of totalitarianism. And when this happens a pussy riot is an absolute moral necessity."

http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/religion_in_the_news/hooligans_or_prophets_whats_th.htm

We have heard that our mothers tell us not to mix religion and politics; but our mothers were wrong with this one piece of advice. Others have said that we should have a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other (or perhaps in the 21st century a laptop or i pad). These quotes speak to that concept and it is interesting to note that all of the above quotes come from a church web site, The Episcopal Cafe'.