Meeting Again for the First Time

 

Breakfast this morning, I'm trying, see, not very hard, but trying, is a mug of black coffee and a couple of slices of deli thin-sliced turkey breast rolled up and cut up into about a dozen little bite-size bits; avocado oil dribbled over instead of mayonnaise, and parmesan cheese instead of salt. It's okay, though to really enjoy it you have to pull a Little Jack Horner: sit in a corner and say "what a good boy am I". 

At early afternoon dinner I'll make up for this nonsense with a proper slice, maybe one rib, of the prime rib roast. Here's how I'm going to cook it:

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Instructions

Trim your rib how you like it best.

Generously salt the roast, insert a thermometer probe near the edge of the roast, set the low-temp alarm for 30°F and place the roast in the freezer.

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 225°F.

When the low-temp alarm sounds, remove your roast from the freezer.

Heat a heavy skillet (cast iron is preferred here) over high heat. 

Sear the roast well on all sides in the skillet, 2.5 minutes a side. 

Season with pepper and/or any other seasonings you like.

Place the roast on a rack set into a rimmed baking sheet. Insert a probe into the very center and set the high-temp alarm for 120°F. 

Cook the roast in the oven until the high-temp alarm sounds. 

Remove the meat from your oven. The temp will rise between 5° and 7°F.

Let it rest for 30 minutes, lightly tented with foil. 

Carve and serve!

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The recipe is from online and is stored in a file titled LAMB, where I also keep my recipe for roast leg of lamb. The reason for the freezer treatment is to help avoid having the outside inch of the roast coming out gray instead of pink. I tried this recipe last Time, a year or so ago I guess, but still got the inch of gray meat instead of pink, so I'll try to be more deliberate and careful about it this Time. My grandson Ray, schooled in culinary arts and a former chef, does it perfect, but I'm trying this myself.

Opening a bottle of French Malbec to enjoy with this roast beef.

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Okay, that was my intro. But what I'm actually interested in this morning is Richard Rohr's meditation for today. If I get back to it I'll try to remember to copy and paste. Fr Richard spoke of John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg who, along with Robert Funk of the Jesus Seminar, and Professor Bart Ehrman of Chapel Hill, is a theology, New Testament, and Christianity favorite. Not flat-earthers, don't insist Earth was created fifty-five-hundred years ago, see Christianity as what Jesus propounded for loving treatment of others in this life, not something about holding correct dogma and the egocentric religion of scrambling for personal salvation into the hereafter. 

Reading about Marcus Borg again moves me to collect a copy of his book "Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time" from my office at church, where I may have several copies, having at one Time thought to lead a class reading and discussing the book and Borg's views. I've forgotten it, I'll have to read it again, it may have answers to some of my quest "Seek The Truth, Come Whence It May, Cost What It Will"; which involves credible faith, not scientific proof and not accepting the dogma of others' thinking. Furthermore, with my eighty-seventh birthday just over the horizon, I may contemplate that approach to ministry as my next step in retirement, some sort of Holy Book Club, or its "Thinking For Dummies" step-brother Holy Essay Club.

Actually, contemplation requires exercising the mind, and in my progressive form of retirement I'm perfectly happy sitting here checking the Vessel Schedule and looking across the Bay watching the Pass for arriving ship traffic. 

But back to Marcus Borg (1942-2015), Fr Rohr's essay this mornin prompted me to search out and read maybe half-dozen or so articles about Borg, Wikipedia, a couple of his obituaries including the one on ENS, the Episcopal News Service. Also an essay about him from a series "The False Teachers" by Tim Challies, an evangelical Christian "blogger, author, and book reviewer" and I'd add "apologist". Challies did a creditable work of describing Borg's position, then dismissed him with, basically, "he doesn't believe what we believe, so he's a false teacher" mentality that reminded me of watching Jerry Falwell on tv patting his Bible and with a smugly angelic smile boasting, I believe every word in this book is literally and inerrantly true. Jiminy Jeepers. Gimme that old time religion, it's good enough for me, sung at the Scopes Monkey Trial a century ago. 

For myself, I've spent the second half of my eighty-six years, as an Episcopal priest trying to honor the dictum of my seminary professors, to take my seminary learning out to the people I've served, and not tuck it away lest I offend big pledgers. The church of my seminary and the church of my cradle are both in the category absurdly called "Mainline Christianity" that embrace faith that is credible in the Universe and challenging for this life.

IDK. WTH. RSF&PTL anyway.

In all this, maybe what I appreciate most is that Richard Rohr, Roman Catholic, a Franciscan, is a thinker not a Fundamentalist dogmatist.

Scroll down, Fr Richard's essay this morning and a link to Tim Challies' 2014 essay.

T

image: morning has broken, 7H 32401

https://www.challies.com/articles/the-false-teachers-marcus-borg/

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations

Week Twelve: Paul: The Misunderstood Mystic

An Identify Transplant 

Thursday, 24 March 2022

Scholars Marcus J. Borg (1942–2015) and John Dominic Crossan refer to Paul as a “Jewish Christ mystic,” and explore what the phrase “in Christ” meant to Paul:

He was a Jewish Christ mystic because . . . Paul was a Jew and in his own mind never ceased being one. He was a Jewish Christ mystic because the content of his mystical experiences was Jesus as risen Christ and Lord. Afterward, Paul’s identity became an identity “in Christ.” And as a Christ mystic, he saw Judaism anew in the light of Jesus. . .  .

Paul’s transformation involved an “identity transplant”—his old identity was replaced by a new identity “in Christ.” . . . We have in mind an analogy to modern medicine’s heart transplant, in which an old heart is replaced by a new heart. In Paul’s case, his spirit—the old Paul—had been replaced by the Spirit of Christ.

Borg and Crossan view Paul’s mystical teaching on the gifts of the Spirit, from 1 Corinthians 12–14, as an extension of his identity transplant “in Christ.” Here they reflect on the implications of Paul’s reflections on love, “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (13:13):

The love of which Paul speaks is a spiritual gift, not simply an act of will, not something we decide to do, not simply good advice for couples and others. Rather, as a spiritual gift, love is the most important result (and evidence) of a Spirit transplant. As the primary fruit of the Spirit, it is also the criterion by which the other gifts are evaluated. . . .

For Paul, love in this text is radical shorthand for what life “in Christ” is like—life in the “new creation,” life “in the Spirit,” life animated by a Spirit transplant. As the primary fruit of a Spirit-filled life, love is about more than our relationships with individuals. For Paul, it had (for want of a better word) a social meaning as well. The social form of love for Paul was distributive justice and nonviolence, bread and peace. Paul’s vision of life “in Christ,” life in the “new creation,” did not mean, “Accept the imperial way of life with its oppression and violence, but practice love in your personal relationships.”

To make the same point differently, people like Jesus and Paul were not executed for saying, “Love one another.” They were killed because their understanding of love meant more than being compassionate toward individuals, although it did include that. It also meant standing against the domination systems that ruled their world, and collaborating with the Spirit in the creation of a new way of life that stood in contrast to the normalcy of the wisdom of the world. Love and justice go together. Justice without love can be brutal, and love without justice can be banal. Love is the heart of justice, and justice is the social form of love.

Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary behind the Church’s Conservative Icon (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 26, 138, 204–205.

Image credit: Jenna Keiper, Trash Can Study I (detail), 2020, photograph, New Mexico, used with permission. Dorothea Lange, “Bum blockade.” (detail), 1936, photograph, public domain. Jenna Keiper, Trash Can Study II (detail), 2020, photograph, New Mexico, used with permission. Jenna Keiper and Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story. 

Image Inspiration: The images on the left and right may not be immediately clear upon first glance. Perhaps there is room for our questions to stay with us gently, taking their time, until understanding slowly emerges as we walk along.