Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Little Boy, Juarez, Mexico, 2009. CAC archives.
"Bias from the Bottom: Week 1"
"Universal, Inherent Dignity"
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Paul offers a theological and solid foundation for human dignity and human flourishing that is inherent, universal, and indestructible by any evaluation, whether it be race, religion, gender, nationality, class, education, or social position. We now believe the reason that this one man enjoyed such immense success in such a short time is that he gave human dignity back to a world that had largely lost it. One more god in Greece and Asia Minor would have meant little, but when Paul told shamed populations they were temples of the divine, this made hearts burn with desire and hope.
The Acts account of Pentecost goes out of its way to emphasize that people from all over the world heard the Galileans speaking in the pilgrims' individual languages after the descent of heavenly fire and wind (see Acts 2:1-11). At least 17 nations or groups are listed and "about three thousand persons" (Acts 2:41) were baptized and received the Holy Spirit that day. The theological message is clear: God's favor is both totally democratic and unmerited. It was meant to be the end of all tribal, ethnic, and elitist religion. But it did not last long; by 313 A.D. Christianity began aligning with empires and emperors in both Constantinople and Rome.
One of the reasons Paul's teachings had so much influence in Asia Minor was that he restored human dignity at a time when perhaps four out of five people were slaves, women were considered the property of men, temple prostitution was a form of worship, and oppression and injustice toward the poor and the outsider were the universal norm. Human rights did not yet exist. Into this corrupt and corrupting empire Paul shouts, "One and the same Spirit was given to us all to drink!" (1 Corinthians 12:13). He utterly levels the playing field: "You, all of you, are sons and daughters of God in Christ Jesus . . . where there is no distinction between male or female, Greek or Jew, slave or free, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (see Galatians 3:26-28).
This is quite amazing, considering the divided world at the time! In Paul's estimation, the old world was forever gone and a new world was born. This was surely impossible and frightening to some people, but utterly attractive and hopeful to the majority who had no dignity whatsoever. Who does not want to be told they are worthy and good? Who does not want their social shame taken away? No longer was the human body a cheap thing, degraded by slavery, or sexual, verbal, and physical abuse. Paul is saying, "You are the very temple of God." Scholars now believe this is Paul's supreme and organizing idea. Such an unexpected affirmation of human dignity began to turn the whole Roman Empire around.
Paul's teaching on sexuality (1 Corinthians 6:15-20) is not the moralistic message that many of us have come to expect from Christianity. Paul is just saying that your body has dignity, so preserve it and defend it. We would now call this a healthy sense of boundaries and identity. When a woman had no sexual protection at all, this was revolutionary. A woman could now claim her own autonomy and refuse to give her body away to every man who wanted it. A man could start respecting and being responsible with his own body. This is a positive and dignifying message, not a finger-shaking, moralistic one. But we are now coming at it from the other side of history. People who hate Christianity after centuries of shaming moralism must also be honest and admit that feminism most strongly emerged in the Western cultures that were formed by what Rene Girard brilliantly called "the virus of the Gospel."
Gateway to Silence: Humble me.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, an unpublished talk, February 2015 at the Center for Action and Contemplation.
Last chance to participate in 2016!
Breathing Under Water:
A Spiritual Study of the Twelve Steps
a self-paced, online study
May 18-July 12, 2016
"If we try to change our ego with the help of our ego, we only have a better-disguised ego." --Richard Rohr
This online study, based on Fr. Richard's book Breathing Under Water, offers invitations to nurture an alternative consciousness and find freedom in powerlessness.
Learn more at cac.org.
Scholarships are available. Registration for Breathing Under Water closes May 4, 2016, or as soon as the course fills, whichever comes first.
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Richard Rohr's Meditation: "God's Most Distressing Disguise" Center for Action and Contemplation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States for Wednesday, 23 March 2016
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Little Boy, Juarez, Mexico, 2009. CAC archives.
"Bias from the Bottom: Week 1"
"God's Most Distressing Disguise"
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
In Jesus we have an almost extreme example of God taking sides. It starts with one who empties himself of all divinity (see Philippians 2:6-7), comes as a homeless baby in a poor family, then a refugee in a foreign country, then an invisible carpenter in his own country which is colonized and occupied by an imperial power, ending as a "criminal," accused and tortured by heads of both systems of power, temple and empire, abandoned by most of his inner circle, subjected to the death penalty by a most humiliating and bizarre public ritual, and finally buried quickly in an unmarked grave. If God in any way planned this story line, God surely intended the message to be subversive, clear, and unavoidable. Yet we largely made Jesus into a churchy icon that any priestly or policing establishment could gather around without even blushing.
Ilia Delio, a Franciscan scientist and theologian, challenges us to take the scandal and downward movement of the Incarnation quite seriously and to let it rearrange our priorities.
An incarnational bias is evident today in our globalized culture. The "problem" of immigrants, welfare recipients, incarcerated, mentally ill, . . . disabled, and all who are marginalized by mainstream society, is a problem of the incarnation. When we reject our relatedness to the poor, the weak, the simple, and the unlovable we define the family of creation over and against God. In place of God we decide who is worthy of our attention and who can be rejected. Because of our deep fears, we spend time, attention, and money on preserving our boundaries of privacy and increasing our knowledge and power. We hermetically seal ourselves off from the undesired "other," the stranger, and in doing so, we seal ourselves off from God. By rejecting God in the neighbor, we reject the love that can heal us.
Until we come to accept created reality with all its limits and pains as the living presence of God, Christianity has nothing to offer to the world. It is sound bites of empty promises. When we lose the priority of God's love in weak, fragile humanity, we lose the Christ, the foundation on which we stand as Christians.
Compassion continues the Incarnation by allowing the Word of God to take root within us, to be enfleshed in us. The Incarnation is not finished; it is not yet complete for it is to be completed in us. [1]
Gateway to Silence: Humble me.
Reference:
[1] Ilia Delio, Compassion: Living in the Spirit of St. Francis, (Franciscan Media: 2011), 61.
Last chance to participate in 2016!
Breathing Under Water:
A Spiritual Study of the Twelve Steps
a self-paced, online study
May 18-July 12, 2016
"If we try to change our ego with the help of our ego, we only have a better-disguised ego." --Richard Rohr
This online study, based on Fr. Richard's book Breathing Under Water, offers invitations to nurture an alternative consciousness and find freedom in powerlessness.
Learn more at cac.org.
Scholarships are available. Registration for Breathing Under Water closes May 4, 2016, or as soon as the course fills, whichever comes first.
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Center for Action and Contemplation
Center for Action and Contemplation
1823 Five Points Road SW (physical)
PO Box 12464 (mailing)
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87195, United States
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