G: “What is the meaning behind the conversation in the charity shop? ”
J: “Why are we all so angry and confrontational?”
D: “What on earth have we [Catholics] done to deserve cows roosting above us?!”
S: “What is a ‘progressive reflection on the lectionary? (Also, what is the lectionary?)”
Dear G, J, D and S,
thanks for the questions!
A lectionary is a set of readings, set for every day, or every Sunday, of the year. The one I mainly use is called the Revised Common Lectionary, you can see it here. I’ll be starting a series of progressive reflections on the lectionary soon, basically giving a spin on one of the readings for the Sunday of the week that we’re in. Like I would do in church. This week’s gospel text is the calling of the first disciples in Mark, where Jesus says: ‘I’ll make you fishers of men’. This is, generally, used as a ‘cringe’ verse to encourage people to go out and ‘fish’ for new converts. But that’s a thin reading of the text. I think it’s much better to read is as being about Jesus calling people out of the system of domination and oppression (symbolised by the Roman controlled, heavily taxed, industrial fishing industry on the symbolically VERY important Sea of Galilee/Lake Tiberias home of the arch villain of the gospels, the wicked Herod Antipas aka ‘the fox’) and into ‘the kingdom of God’ which is antithetical to the way of violence, and is characterised by justice and peace. Check OT references to fishing like those in Jeremiah 16 and Amos 4 to see the parallels.
In other words, a progressive take on that passage is that the Jesus way is to step out of the domination system which depends on violence, and into the kingdom of justice and peace.
As you know, in last week’s post I related a conversation I had in a charity shop, it was a pretty accurate version of the story, although I left out some of the more hair raising claims that were made by a person I’d never met before.
Among other things, I was informed that Donald Trump is dead and has been replaced by CGI and clones, and that the Catholic church has got what’s coming to them, that the ‘cows are coming home to roost’.
It was a real conversation, but in a way it was also a sort of ‘ideal type’ of encounter that I often have with people. I feel like there’s a bit of pressure on someone like me (a ‘minister’) to deal cleverly with such situations. But I don’t tend to deal with them cleverly. I mainly say things like, “ah, uhm.” I sometimes think, later, of well worded responses which would have changed the person’s mind in an instant.
Except, of course, they probably wouldn’t.
My experience is that minds are rarely changed in an instant. The best way to address misinformation rarely seems to be to point out that it is misinformation. Partly because that leads into a kind of combat situation. Symbolic violence.
Perhaps this is a convenient get-out-clause to release me from the responsibility of telling people that they’re dead wrong. But on rare occasions I have decided to do just that, and I don’t remember it ever working out well unless we already have a well established, truth telling, relationship.
So instead, I try to walk a different path. And principally I try not to build walls. I hope that the woman who bought the casserole dish last week will talk to me again, perhaps next time we bump into each other in the post office. Maybe, over time, she will want to know my opinion on the Catholic church - if so she will find out that I don’t think they deserve to have cows roosting above them. Maybe. Or maybe not, perhaps we’ll never meet again.
One of the recurring motifs in the Bible is sibling rivalry. Cain kills Abel, Jacob robs Esau of his birth-right, Joseph is sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, and Jesus’ story of unhappy brothers known as ‘the prodigal son’ is one of the best known bible passages. And the trope isn’t limited to the Bible, of the various brotherly un-love tales that litter antiquity Atreus and Thyestes is one of the most gory - it results in Atreus killing his brother’s children and baking them in a pie before tricking Tryestes into eating them.
In some ways the ‘warring brothers’ is the ultimate Old Testament metanarrative. The result, if you haven’t read through to the end, is tragedy: a scattered people, and a vain hope for restoration which, some might say, continues to generate unspeakable violence today. The story has a coda, of course, in the story of an anointed leader who, it is prophesied, will re-unite Judah and Ephraim, yet again there is a tragic result. He gets killed (albeit there’s a twist). The way of violence ends up in tragedy.
Why are we like this? Why are we so angry? Why do we keep killing each other? Why do we insist on confrontation?
I don’t believe that we humans are ‘fundamentally bad’ as some would have it. Like Kropotkin, I think we’re wired for cooperation more than we are for competition, but nevertheless we seem to fall back into systems that rely on competition all the same. It’s harder to walk the narrow path, after all. I think part of the reason is fear. If I were to pick another repeated refrain from the Bible to be a guide here, it is simply this: “do not be afraid.” Easier said than done, thanks, Bible!
We fear things that we don’t know, things we don’t understand. In my experience it’s only by letting people tell you their views, their opinions, and crucially their experiences, that we begin to understand their lives. I appreciate that this is weak, but love is rather weak. I appreciate too that it comes from a place of privilege, ‘easy for you to say’ - yeah, fair point. But ultimately I think this remains the loving way. Perhaps it’s only by loving others enough to listen to their bullshit that we can stop the cycle of hatred.
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Delighted to know it's a series following the lectionary. Good to have something different and a new interpretation to think about. Great start to my Tuesday morning, thank you.