Biography
The Rev. Alan Jones is Dean of Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco, California. Born in England, Alan was educated there and at General Theological Seminary in New York City, where he later founded the Center for Christian Spirituality. Dr. Jones is a well-known writer and skilled storyteller. Among his books on Christian spirituality are Passion for Pilgrimage, Soul Making, and Sacrifice & Delight: Spirituality for Ministry. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]"Who Is God?"
We learn about who God is by telling stories. Let me begin by telling you one.In the beginning, before there were any beginnings and endings, there was no place that was not already God! And we call this unimaginable openness, "Ain Soph" - Being-without end. Then came the urge to give life to our world and to us. But there was no place that was not already God. So "Ain Soph" breathed in to make room, like a father steps back so his child will walk to him. Into the emptiness "Ain Soph" set vessels and began to fill them with divine light, as a mother places bowls in which to pour her delicious soup. As the light poured forth, a perfect world was being created! Think of it! A world without greed and cruelty and violence! But then, something happened. The bowls shattered. No one knows why. Perhaps the bowls were too frail? Perhaps the light too intense? Perhaps "Ain Soph" was learning. After all, no one makes perfect the first time. And with the shattering of the bowls, divine sparks flew everywhere! Some rushing back to "Ain Soph," some falling, falling, trapped in the broken shards to become our world, and us.
Though this is hard to believe, the perfect world is all around us, but broken into jagged pieces, like a puzzle thrown to the floor, the picture lost, each piece without meaning, until someone puts them back together again. We are that someone. There is no one else. We are the ones who can find the broken pieces, remember how they fit together and rejoin them. This is the repairing of the world -- the mending of creation. In every moment, with every act, we can heal our world and us. We are all holy sparks dulled by separation. But when we meet, and talk and eat and make love, when we work and play and disagree with holiness in our eyes, seeing "Ain Soph" everywhere, then our brokenness will end, and our bowls will be strong enough to hold the light, and our light will be gentle enough to fill the bowls. As we repair the world together, we will learn that there is no place that is not God!
This generous and open-hearted God is not as alive and well in our world as one might think. What we call "God" is sometimes little more than a makeshift idol of our fears and prejudices. In fact, the word "God" has a tortuous history! It is a revelation and a threat to some people that the idea of God has changed over time. We find it difficult to understand that the statement, `I believe in God' has no "objective" meaning. It only means something in context, when proclaimed by a particular community. Consequently there is no one unchanging idea contained in the word "God"; instead, the word can mean all sorts of things -- some of which are contradictory or even mutually exclusive. When one conception of God has ceased to have meaning or relevance, it has been discarded and replaced by a new theology. Many believers deny this vehemently. For them belief is about timeless truths. True belief never changes or develops but affirms that Abraham, Moses, and all the people of the Bible experienced their God in exactly the same way as we do today.
The good news is that the Great Religious Traditions are beginning to listen to one another. Is there a great Planetary Story emerging which is truly inclusive and which treats the earth as sacred? Is the human race in labor with a new version of its purpose and destiny? Or is it the same old story of division and hatred? If we are going to survive and flourish, we need to listen to one another's stories over and over again so that God can speak to us in new ways. Out of that mutual listening might come belief in a God in whose name it would be impossible to hate and kill.
God is invoked for all sorts of ungodly purposes. The question is which God and who's included in the story? Racists claim to be godly people. White Supremacists think that God is on their side. Some have wanted to designate the United States a "Christian Nation." A few people in Arizona (and some in Idaho and Wyoming) think that being Christian and that standing up for "family values" means being racist and anti-Semitic. No wonder some secular humanists treat religion with indifference or contempt.
We would be better off without such stories. Better atheism than belief in such a God. This raises the question of the nature of religious story-telling and the kind of society it seeks to nurture. Can we imagine a shared and inclusive story that honors yet transcends our differences?
Often I want to shout, "Before you talk to me about God, I want to know who's excluded and who's included, who's in and who's out." Sometimes I find it difficult to trust people who talk a lot about God because I cannot bring up the question of "God" in any meaningful way without telling the story about the formation of a trustworthy and reliable community. I don't want so much a "shelter from the storm," so much as a community where everyone has a place and not just any place, but an honored one.
As Americans, we each have two identities: our ethnic one and our inclusive American one. We always have at least two stories going on at once. There's bound to be conflict and tension among us, which is wonderful when recognized, destructive when not. We need to appreciate how our stories come across to others. Do we know how hostile and exclusive they sound? If we don't use our imagination to think through how we come across to others, we close ourselves off, not from others but from our deepest selves. Not only America but the whole human family need a shared story.
Our language about God gets polluted when we insist on treating "God" as an idea to prove a point, or to exclude whole classes of people. A merciful God gets lost when we abandon our stories in all their fullness and strangeness. We become quarrelsome. We fight over "ideas" instead of jointly listening to the playful themes of "stories." Without stories, we have no arena where we can adjudicate our conflicts in a creative way. A story gives us an opportunity to listen and to make room for each other.
What is the alternative? The secular solutions offer no hope. Secularism has no room for the sacred, and we need to live in a sacred space to stay human. We need those among us who are willing to utter the sacred words. The trouble is that the sacred words themselves have been debased to serve base interests. The prophetic mission of the Church is often tied to specific political agendas. And this is deadly. When we identify with a particular program we, in effect, excommunicate those who disagree with us.
We are good at spotting ways in which we exclude with regard to race and gender, but not so good when it comes to political opinions. The New Christian right is just as bad as the liberals. It advocates a crusade to change American society with highly specific programs, about which there is no shadow of doubt. We suffer from the disease of God-is-on-our-sidism. The sociologist, Peter Berger, points out that God is co-opted by both sides: "God is `for' tuition tax credits; God is `against' them. God is `for' the MX missile; God is `against' it. God is pro-life; God is pro-choice." We subscribe to rival orthodoxies in which there are no ambiguities, no areas of uncertainty. We do not listen to one another. There is no community of trust, no saving word binding us together, no God worth believing in, no tale to tell.
That is why a substantial percentage of the population, while wanting to believe in someone or something, doesn't want to "belong" to an organization, still less to a denomination. They want a do-it-yourself religion. Better to be one's own minister, telling one's own private story in one's own private religion, than be subject to the craziness of some religious leader. The consumerist approach to spirituality is understandable, but it makes belief in God very difficult since the word "God" becomes merely a buzz word for good feelings about one's self and bad feelings about the people we don't like. "God" is part of the paraphernalia of the religion industry. Ministers are in the business of market research, looking for better ways to package and sell their particular brand of "God."
Are there, then, certain guidelines for our story-telling? The first thing is to learn to "listen." Secondly, we have to be in constant conversation with each other about our various stories. Our stories have power and for them to be truly alive, we must be free to question them, to collide with them, to argue over their true meaning and to struggle with others about where they might be leading us. Thirdly, in order for us to listen to each other and enter into conversation about our shared stories, I must be able to trust you and you to trust me.
So, let me end, as I began, by telling you a story about God.
Once upon a time there was a holy rabbi who was granted a vision of the Last Judgment. He found himself in a courtroom. There before him was a table. On it were the scales of justice. There were also two doors and both of them were open. Through one he could see the light of Paradise, through the other the darkness of Hell. It was the Day of Judgment and the human race was on trial.
The defense counsel entered the courtroom carrying a little bundle of good deeds under his arm. It had not been a great year for good deeds! Next, the chief prosecutor came in with two assistants. Each of them carried an enormous sack of sins. They were bent over with their sheer weight. Dropping their sacks before the scales of justice, they took a deep breath, and went back for more. "This isn't even a tenth of it," they said as they dragged in more sacks. The defense counsel, whose tiny bundle of good deeds was beginning to look pathetic next to the great pile of sins sitting on the floor, buried his head in his hands and sighed.
But just outside the door to Paradise someone was listening. It was Levi Yitzhak of blessed memory, the rabbi of Berditshev. When he was on earth, he had sworn that not even in death would he forget the plight of struggling humanity. When he heard the sigh of the defense counsel, he decided to slip into the court room. Seeing the tiny bundle of good deeds next to the huge sacks of sins, he didn't take long to size up the situation. He decided on a plan of action. He waited until there was a recess. Left alone in the court room, he began to drag the sacks of sins, one at a time, to the door leading to Hell. It took all his strength and a great deal of time to throw them in one by one. He was almost finished -- in fact he was holding the very last sack -- when the prosecutors and the defense counsel returned. Rabbi Yitzhak was caught red-handed. He did not deny what he had done. How could he? He had thrown away the sins so that the good deeds would outweigh the bad.
Since the court was bound to uphold the law, the chief prosecutor demanded justice. "It is written that a thief shall be sold for his theft. Let Levi Yitzhak be sold at auction right now in this court room! Let's see if anyone will bid for him."
By now the demons from hell and the angels from heaven had heard all the commotion in the court room and they came to watch the two parties lined up beside the scales of justice. The bidding began. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob threw their good deeds onto the scales and the Matriarchs added theirs. In, fact all of the righteous contributed what they could. But the dark forces were able to gather up unnumbered sins stored in the deep places of the earth. The scale on their side went down and down and down. Rabbi Yitzhak was doomed. His crime had been to throw away the sins of the world so that we could be forgiven. "I buy them!" said the chief prosecutor, and dragged him to the door leading to the great darkness.
Just then, above the court room, from the Throne of Glory itself, came a voice. "I buy him!" There was a great silence. And God spoke, "I buy him. Heaven and Earth are mine, and I give them all for Levi Yitzhak -- Levi who would have me forgive my children."
I pray that it is this God who is worshipped under various names and in various ways by the godly in this land and in every land.
Interview with Alan Jones
Interviewed by Lydia TalbotLydia Talbot: Alan, you are a spectacular story teller.
Alan Jones: They are great stories.
Talbot: Unfortunately, the story of the Christian faith is often misperceived, distorted and maligned. How is it in today's culture that people can discern the difference between a shallow theology and a larger one that you talk about?
Jones: I think a lot of it has to do with the approach to, for example, the Creed. When I was growing up, a monk who influenced me greatly changed my whole view of what the Creed is by saying, "You know, they are the chapter headings of a love story. If you look at each segment of the Creed, instead of seeing it as an explanation or some difficult pill to swallow, you see it as the chapter heading for a tremendous story about how madly in love with the world God is."
Talbot: As you were growing up in England, what was that journey for you?
Jones: Well, it was a great journey in England. I was born in 1940 during the Second World War. My mother came from a family of thirteen children. We weren't church goers, but I was sent to Sunday School and I gave my heart to Jesus when I was seven. The Anglican Church in England in those days had such a variety of beliefs and possibilities that it was as if you could go through the whole ecumenical movement without leaving the Church of England. I have evangelical roots on the one hand and have what I call catholic sensibility, on the other. I got all that from my experience in England. I started with evangelical roots; I ended up in a monastic Anglican seminary in the north of England. From there, I won a scholarship to finish seminary in New York City. In 1964 when I first came here, I just fell in love with the United States. So, that's how I began.
Talbot: You are not only in love with the United States and with the spirituality that you transmit, you are doing exciting things in San Francisco at Grace Cathedral, with the performing arts and music. Tell a little bit about how you are going to approach the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations.
Jones: Well, that is exciting. We have been asked by the United Nations Fiftieth Committee to have an inter-faith service on Sunday, June 25, 1995, the 26th of June being the fiftieth anniversary. Lots of things are going to be coming to San Francisco for that event and, of course, there will be other events later on in New York City. We want to draw the inter-faith community to celebrate their traditions and ask questions about how can we become one human family. There is so much to divide us, so much polarization.
Talbot: The arts and music become a vehicle. One human family -- you have a passionate concern for the future of that human family.
Jones: I hope we can be brought together by music and by story telling and by compassion because there is so much to divide us. We need an overarching vision that will bring us back together again as a human family.
Talbot: And an interfaith inclusivity.
Jones: That is right, with tolerance and compassion.
Talbot: How we look at God no matter how defined.
Jones: That's right.
Talbot: Thank you so much for this visit.
wow. good storyteller indeed.
Some people have recently said some things that lead me to think there is confusion about me and what I do so I want to take a minute to clear things up.
I lead a group of people who minister to and love the very poor and homeless. And as long as that is all I talk about, then most folks have no problem with me or my work. But when I talk about gay issues, or gender issues or imply the church ever did anything wrong, folk become very concerned. And tell me that if I stray off homeless issues, they won't support me. Or even be associated with me. In fact, some have actively tried to stop me. One guy called churches that I work with and told them I was a false prophet and heretic. (As we say in the South, "bless his heart".)
Let me be loud and clear about something. The same thing I see in Jesus that leads me to have concern and love for the very poor and homeless puts me squarely on the side of anyone who is on the margins.
Let me be even more clear:
I have only one desire, one mission, one calling. It is to reach out to those-
who are broken
who are hurting
who are marginalized
who feel forgotten
who are passed-over
who are weeping
who are unloved
who have been so hurt they are afraid to love
who have been told they are outside of God's love
who have been hurt in the name of God
who are not sure there is a god
who want to give up
who are so lonely they ache
who have only seen God used as a weapon
who have serious questions they are afraid to voice
who are afraid to hope anymore
who have been told their sexuality or gender separates them from God
who have been been made to feel less than fully human -and to tell those people that God is on their side.
Jesus called them the poor in spirit. And he called them blessed.
And said they get the Kingdom of Heaven.
If you have this God thing figured out, if you%u2019re convinced that you do all the right things that make your God happy, if you have no questions, no doubts, no fear %u2013 you aren't poor in spirit you are rich in spirit.
And Jesus doesn't have much of anything to say to you.
Sorry. I know that isn't what you wanted to hear.
But that is what I am here to say, and shout, and live out.
READ THE REST
This gets a big loud pentecostal holler from me.
Today, when religious institutions exclude women from their hierarchies and rituals, the inevitable implication is that females are inferior. The Elders are right that religious groups should stand up for a simple ethical principle: any person’s human rights should be sacred, and not depend on something as earthly as their genitals.be sure to read the rest
A great piece from Nicholas D. Kristof in the New York Times.
The Buddha resolved that dilemna by encouraging a space of "not knowing." Cultivate "the faith to doubt."
You must doubt deeply, again and again, asking yourself who the subject of hearing could be. Pay no attention to the various illusory thoughts and ideas that may occur to you. Only doubt more and more deeply, gathering together in yourself all the strength that is in you, without aiming at anything or expecting anything in advance, without intending to be enlightened and without even intending not to intend to be enlightened; become like a child within yourself...--17th Century Zen master Taksui
Love this. Thanks Brittian
THE FAITH INSTINCT
How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures
By Nicholas Wade
310 pp. The Penguin Press. $25.95
In any case, Wade says, religion is not going away, because it’s imprinted on the human genome.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 27, 2009, on page BR16 of the New York edition.
Very interesting.
Are Baptists Softening on the Emerging Church?
This one is:
Some critics see the emerging church movement as a heretical compromise with a pluralistic, truth-denying culture. Baptist history might offer an alternative explanation—ecclesiology is more defined by the practices of a Spirit-led community than by assent to the statements of a modern theological meta-narrative. Conversely, the emerging church movement may provide hope for reformation to Baptists ignorant of the difference between modern truths and Truth incarnate.
My comment on Tony's facebook:
good lord who isn't softening on the emerging church these days? pretty soon it's just going to be the pitiful rabid neocalvinists hunting down the heretics...then where will the world be. Woe to us all ;)
Interesting little column. I don't like much of Calvinism - new or otherwise...just sayin'.
But Andrew Jones has a more gracious and balanced perspective than I so I'll share with you his pov.
