I don't know

Theological seminary, in the Episcopal Church, if you go to seminary as diocesan sponsored on an ordination track, your bishop selects the seminary you go to. And generally you quit your job, sell out and relocate the family to be at seminary in residence for the, at your own impoverishing expense, three year duration. That is, blessedly, slowly changing now for many reasons including economic both for the student and for the small, economically, financially stretched parishes that most of us serve, but it was the way things mostly used to be, and I expect, mostly still are. 

In my case, my Pennsylvania bishop had mercy on the fact I was recently retired from the Navy where we had moved around and lived in fourteen different places in our twenty years, and that we, Linda especially, and Tass, had set down roots and we meant not to move again even if I had to go off to seminary by myself, likely either Virginia or Sewanee. And I told the bishop that we would not be relocating the family again.

In an interview with dean and faculty, I was admitted to Virginia, in Alexandria across the Potomac from Washington, DC, though seeing that the 1979 fall semester was already several weeks into Hebrew, that board recommended I wait until fall 1980, to which I acquiesced. In that meantime, the bishop came up with two other possibilities that I could do as a day student, saying if I wished he would get me admitted to the one of my choice. UCC seminary at Lancaster, an hour's drive some forty miles east and south and through aggravating Harrisburg traffic, or Lutheran seminary at Gettysburg, 31 miles and a half-hour south of Camp Hill (we lived on the west side of the Susquehanna River), straight down US15. For various and sundry reasons, all of which I am thankful, I chose Gettysburg. Where I found out, among many other things in my three years there, that I knew nothing.

Nothing before I went, nothing while I was there, and, as is constantly, increasingly, revealed to me in the daily experience of life, nothing to this day. Like Sergeant Schultz of "Hogan's Heroes", I know nothing. Which should but does not take me out of the loop of opinionated seeing and judging as I live and look.

We were taught, and I've come away with it these forty years, to look first of all in studying scripture, not to bring our own history and viewpoints into it, but at the author, the author's situs im leben, the author's own intent and meaning for the text. And to look for and consider textual variations in what has come down to us over the centuries. The gospel of Mark, for example, ends at 16:8a with the women fleeing in fear and saying nothing to anyone, key to Mark's agenda; but more was added later to "finish" the story as some later reader(s) thought it ought to finish like the other two synoptics - - including postresurrection appearance and wild words about handling snakes and condemnation of nonbelievers. And in the Gospel according to John, chapter 21 as an add on second ending. 

What brought me to this point this morning's wandering was reading the Revelation lesson (scroll down) for tomorrow, Easter 4, Good Shepherd Sunday; popularly, Mothers Day. I get it, I can and do understand Patmos John's message. What I don't know is his state and frame of mind in writing extremely violent images and a very different from whom we know God and Jesus vowing with relish and great satisfaction, that those on the other side will be thrown alive into the lake of fire. The lectionary doesn't take us into those horrors, but it is there, enshrined as canonical, the word of God. Revelation was long delayed in being accepted in the New Testament, and for reasons of the vehement, unChristlike hatred that did not bespeak Jesus, Martin Luther and many others felt that Revelation had no place in Holy Scripture. But, like some of the scenarios in the book of Joshua, it's there, and our job to not rationalize it away, but to understand it and try to understand the mind of the writer. Patmos John seems bitter, enraged, filled with vitriolic hatred, vengeance, and he teams God and the Lamb up with himself. And I don't know, I think I understand where he's coming from and how and why he feels as he does, but I really don't know.    

Revelation 7:9-17

I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying,

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing,

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor
and power and might
be to our God forever and ever! 
Amen.”

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, "Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?" I said to him, "Sir, you are the one that knows." Then he said to me, "These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.

They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;
the sun will not strike them, 
nor any scorching heat;
for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." 

++++++++++

Pic and sunrise, a new day