Archive for 'Blog'
Oh hypocrisy! The Pope has a boyfriend!
Unlike his ecclesiastical followers, Jesus is utterly silent on same-sex relationships. You’d think that would give them pause in their rush to condemn, not just certain sexual activities, but gay sexuality itself. Oh hypocrites! Whether it’s bible-thumpers like “Judy”, or – dare I say it – the Pope himself, these people need to look at themselves before they condemn us.
Full StoryGay Paul
I’d like to write a play about Paul. I think it would open just before the end, with Paul in chains, in prison, an old man, awaiting an inevitable sentence of death at the hands of Nero – although, as always, hopeful of life. He’s alone. Or at least, he says he’s alone, although he’s dictating a letter to Timothy, his beloved. He asks him to come and see him before he dies.
Bring my cloak, he tells him.
Bring my books, especially the parchments.
The first time I made my defence, everyone abandoned me. No one took my part. May God not hold it against them.
But you, come!
And greet the family of Onesimus. He served me well, and now he is dead; executed for Christ – and for me.
Come!
Is he asking Timothy, his beloved Timothy, to die with him?
That’s the play.
Fresh thoughts on Paul
In turning the church decisively toward the Gentiles, Paul created the need for the gospel accounts. A new and growing population of pagan adherents who knew nothing of law or prophets needed not just Christ, as incarnated in Paul by the Holy Spirit, but also the historical Jesus. They needed the stories; they needed to know who this man was, this man on whom their faith was based. Hence the demand for the gospels. And the interesting thing about the gospels is this: they can be assumed to go well beyond what Paul himself knew about the life and teachings of Jesus. So without knowing it, Paul created demand for information about the historical Jesus whom he himself hardly knew. Like all revolutionaries, he could not have known the consequences of his own revolution.
Full StoryBack home
Paul is an uncomfortable figure, particularly for someone like me. I’m a literary man. I spend hours a week consuming liberal journals. I’d feel at home in the Hellenistic pagan world that was the target of Paul’s missions. Indeed, I’d feel at home in Athens, the city that heard his brilliant apologia for the Christian faith – and shrugged (Ac 17, 22 ff). The virtues of first century pagan culture are the virtues on which I was raised. There’s something a bit embarrassing about the certainty of Paul, the single-mindedness of Paul. Paul, the fool for Christ, would never have been invited to dinner at my house.
Full StoryWhat Paul didn’t know
We know more about Jesus than did Paul. He never quotes the sayings of Jesus, never refers to his miracles, never touches his teachings. It’s hard to imagine a pre-gospel world, in which the faith consisted of two fundamental truths: Jesus died, and Jesus is risen: only that. All Paul’s thought flows from that basic source: but does ours? To what degree are the teachings of Jesus different from Paul’s?
Full StoryArrival
I’d forgotten how beautiful this city is. And I’d forgotten how seductive the Moslem cultures of the Mediterranean are: the wild taxi rides (no seat belts), the tender stillness of those old streets as light fades from the sky, and a few boys still kick a soccer ball around despite the dusk and the muezzin makes the last call to prayer as a deeper silence falls on this usually cacophonous city. There’s a tenderness, a sweetness to this culture.
Full StoryJournal – 3: The weakness of our God
But he’s the God of weakness, not strength. That’s the whole point; and that’s the theme of today, the crucifixion. Weakness and silence. I speculate: that’s why we hate God so much. That’s why we reject his love, why we rise against him, try to destroy him, try to eradicate his weakness from the face of the earth. We demand a God of power, who will serve us and deliver our “solutions” to the problems and limitations and constraints of this life (especially pain, death, change, Uncertainty). It doesn’t work. God is weak – as love is ‘weak’.
Full StoryHoly Week Journal – 2
I tell those voices – and the Lord – that he made me this way, and he loves me this way, and that I have to be both faithful to my nature, which is sexual and gay, and to his path, this Holy Week: this week in which we all in our different ways try to accompany Jesus in his fear, his fidelity, his incredible loneliness, his need, his humiliation, his pain, his abandonment, his death agony.
Full StoryHoly Week Journal
Was I the only one who thought of the current child abuse scandal, and the mounting chorus of questions about Pope Benedict’s own implication in it, as we walked along? This is the man who has, by general agreement, put in place exemplary structures to safeguard children now – and yet he finds himself and his beloved church sullied by a widening series of ugly revelations from the past. This is the man whose dream is the revival of the church in Europe, and with it, Catholic European culture. Where is that vision now?
Full StoryThe third sex
We share the outrage and defiance of this woman, whose accusers slink shamefacedly away before the silence of Jesus. We are the third sex. We stand alone, like her, and like her, we have nothing to fear from the judgment of men.
Full Story
