Soul Survivor

Section Internet Links	Jock's Notes	Wayne's Notes	Discussion Notes	Back to Index
Jock. - Elaine Pagels and John Crossan The two chapters tonight - the examples of ML King Jr. and Dr. Paul Brand - seem to be the way in which Yancey found a meaning of Jesus in other than words. There seem 2 perspectives in this book overall, Much of the book is about words - about truth and those words that carry it. But the other perspective is clearly not words, but practice. In the actions of the two mentors under first review we see lives of service - service that ordinary folks could not easily see themselves in. Service not to church but to humankind. Yancey is an author and a wordsmith. Many of us have spent a lot of time gathering and reviewing the words of our belief. We have engaged in dispute. The "dark night of the soul" that many of us have experienced has mostly to do with not believing. Matters of faith have more frequently than anything else been taught us as being about true belief - and this has always been a package of words. We ask each other "What do you believe?" and we ask of ourselves, "what do I believe?" Without belief there is no faith, and without faith there is no charity. Or so we generally think. Belief is a given - an essential. This perspective necessarily leads to disaffection and often leads to a loss of faith. So what is it about King and Brand that gave Yancey new insight? And what insight is there for us in his sharing of his own story?
I've been reading two rather parallel books lately that speak most surely to this theme. Both are scholarly researches that try to answer just what birthed Christianity. They do not examine so much the "belief" of the early church, but development and characteristic and the perspective of the communities that became the early church. They bring attention to the fact that Jesus' words are often words about deeds. They make us consider not so much what Jesus said, as ask what would Jesus do? Elaine Pagels in Beyond Belief - The Secret Gospel of Thomas, describes how the early church community and its leaders were torn also in these two directions of words and practice. Between inspiration and orthodoxy. Between the Spirit and the Bishop. The Gospel of John clearly put an emphasis on words - Christ was "logos" and "belief in Jesus" became the distinguishing thing about a Christian. She points out that belief has come down through the ages as the paramount feature of Christianity. We have disputed gently and violently on the meanings of belief ever since. John Crossan in The Birth of Christianity - Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus, finds that these two dynamics were personified by two groups. First there were the travelling charismatics who carried forward the sayings of Jesus. These embodied the "prophetic" extremes advocated in the sayings of Jesus - having no possessions, healing the sick and so forth. Secondly, there were the communities that sustained these persons. The communities were the necessary anchor for these travelling charismatic teachers.
Pagels has immersed herself in the Nag Hammadi codices or "lost Gnostic gospels" these last few decades, and has come to a most positive interpretation of this witness to early church practice. In the second century Ireneus of Lyons declared that anything outside the "4 pillars" of Matthew Mark Luke and John was heresy. The first 3 were seen as historical, and the last as defining the cosmic Christ. The church was persuaded of this and stamped out other expressions of faith. The earliest Christians did not subscribe to "belief" as defined by others, but welcomed people into the mystery that they could commune directly with God. Diversity was a measure of God's active hand in their affairs. It was the need for control and agreement that led to orthodoxy in all its flavours. "Jesus said, 'Let the one who seeks not stop seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished." Thomas 2 But Pagels sees in the multitude of perspectives in these many other gospels, and particularly in the Gospel of Thomas - the sayings of Jesus - a richer more amazing gospel, more in line with other testimony of what Jesus said and did. Thomas points out that Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God being before us if we could only have "eyes to see" and "ears to hear".
Crossan gives evidence that the Didache was written by a religious genius, who balanced these 2 themes, by honouring the commitment and christlike example of the charismatics, and the words of Jesus that commanded such lives of commitment, but realizing that without stable community there would be nothing at all. No base. And that those who must stay and work and raise family were not to be made to feel second class because they could not meet the high standards of Jesus. They were to do what they were able. "We do not have just the sayings of Jesus, but even if that was all we had, those words themselves are not just words about words but words about deeds; those sayings are not just about vision but about action. Faith is not just in words but in the God who through words demands deeds. Whether each group likes it or not, itinerants and householders are locked together in dialectic by Jesus himself. The kingdom of God is not in either group alone but in their interaction'." (p 406) "...for on the one hand, if you are able to carry the entire yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect; but, on the other, if you are not able, undertake that which you are able to bear." Didache 6:2 A link to the Didache is on the Internet Resource Page - on the Book Study Collection - on the Borg's Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, Each of the above is a distinct direct link to that page. I list them all to introduce them for general reference as on the StDavids leftside menu.
So it has continued over the centuries - this dynamic - the saints who believe in they find Jesus in the actions of service and the those who believe they find Jesus in the formulae of belief. Pagels would see in King one who followed the words of Jesus more than the all the other words in the bible. She would have observed his preaching more of Justice than of Salvation. She would likely think King would have been a fan of the new found gospels when they spoke of the Kingdom of God being upon us and among us. Pagels would see in Brand also one who had the eyes to see and the ears to hear. She would see one who understood Jesus words of compassion and charity to be a means of finding and grounding one's faith. Crossan would perhaps see in King the wandering one, the one who could say the words of Jesus to inspire the communities he travelled to. And in Brand perhaps we see the healer ever mindful of the mind of Jesus.
Yancey had grown up in a place where the pulpit thundered with the exactitudes of what to believe to get to heaven. These beliefs were in contrast to the world he saw outside of that church. In King and Brand, he found mentors who covered all the bases. Their service was rooted in faith, their faith was rooted in the words of Jesus. "In the end, it was not King's humanitarianism that got through to me, nor his Gandhian example of nonviolent resistance, nor his personal sacrifices, inspiring as those may be. It was his grounding in the Christian gospel that finally made me conscious of the beam in my eye and forced me to attend to the message he was proclaiming. Because he kept quoting Jesus, eventually I had to listen." (p 40) "The great societies of the West have been moving away from an underlying belief in the value of a single human soul. We tend to view history in terms of groups of people: classes, political parties, races, sociological groupings. We apply labels to each other, and explain behavior and ascribe worth on the basis of those labels. After prolonged exposure to Dr. Brand, I realized that I had been seeing large human problems in a mathematical model: percentages of Gross National Product, average annual income, mortality rate, doctors-per-thousand of population. Love, however, is not mathematical; we can never precisely calculate the greatest possible good to be applied equally to the world's poor and needy. We can only week out one person, and then another, and then another, as objects for God's love" (p 80) So there we have it. Service gives meaning to faith. Belief is not only about words, but also about deeds and commitment. This was Yancey's first lesson. From among black people and lepers. How does that relate to our world? What does this mean for us? That will be Wayne's exploration next.

Wayne. - Fr. Rene Fumoleau and Jean Vanier "Today I feel shame, remorse, and also repentance. It took years for God to break the stranglehold of blatant racism in me - I wonder if any of us gets free of its more subtle forms - and I now see that sin as one of the most poisonous, with perhaps the most toxic societal effects" (16). Racism. That is the word that links Yancey and Martin Luther King Jr. Social Ostracism resulting from contracting a frightening illness links Yancey with Paul Brand. Here are two of religion's most deadly enemies. Yancey had to break out of the clutches of both racism and the need to socially ostracize people who are different - people we fear - in order to rediscover the power of what spirituality and religious faith can have in our lives. In Drs. King and Brand, we have examples of two heroes of the twentieth century who, as Jock has so well stated, were able to move beyond faith-ful words to faith-ful deeds. It is important that we do not pit words against deeds. Rather, we need to integrate them. I think we do King and Brand an injustice, however, if we focus this evening on issues related to racism against blacks and on the social ostracism of leprosy. Jock suggested I make a personal appropriation of lessons learned from these two chapters this evening. So, I am I going to say some things about racism and social ostracism much closer to home. To help me do this, I am going to refer to mentors who have significantly influenced my life and with whom I have had personal, as well as literary encounters. My mentors are Fr. Rene Fumoleau (still alive in living in a small village Litsel K, or Snowdrift on the shores of Great Slave Lake NWT) and Jean Vanier (still alive and living in L'Arche - Troisly Breuil, a small community north of Paris, France - a community he founded forty years ago, and which fathered 120 replications around the world, located in two dozen countries.) We will be spending a whole evening, later in the course, on Henri Nouwen, (who died, eight years ago this week) a former colleague of Vanier who lived at L'Arche, Daybreak in Richmond Hill, Ontario. I will deal mainly with Vanier as I first knew him when he visited the graduate school in Switzerland where I was a student during the 1960s. First, then, some words about Rene Fumoleau. Perhaps, more than any other Canadian, Rene has made us aware of the process we need to take if we are to move past the racism our society chronically practices against the First Nations of this land. Rene, is an Oblate missionary priest (Oblates of Mary Immaculate), belonging to the same religious order as Fr. Ron Rolheiser, whose book we studied here last winter. Rene came to Canada from France during the 1950s and began his missionary service at Fort Good Hope, among the Sahtu people of the Dene First Nation in the Mackenzie River Region, NWT. Over a period of about thirty years, Rene went through the fours stages of understanding and relating to Native people that I referred to last week. (Noble. Wretched. Redeemable. Respected - see my previously posted website notes - summarize only now). Rene came on the scene in the 60s and 70s - during a time when "human rights and justice issues resonated strongly from voices within the Canadian churches. (Much of this was prompted by the American Civil Rights and the South African anti-apartheid movements beyond our country). Disadvantaged First Nations people needed recognition and justice to guarantee them equality within the larger nations. At the same time, spiritually arrogant Christians and other humanitarians began, for the first time, to more humbly attend to Native understandings of spirituality and justice." In 1975 Rene wrote a book entitled: As Long as This Land Shall Last - A History of Treaty 8 and Treaty 11 (1870-1939). That book has been re-published this year by University of Calgary Press. It tells, essentially, of the agreements that were signed by the Crown and the Native Peoples of Western and Northern Canada, sixty to one hundred and thirty years ago. I will quote the last paragraph from his book (published three decades ago): "The success of the Indian's efforts to obtain recognition in the North of the future will depend on many factors. Not least among these is the support of the Canadian public. Without this, a satisfactory and lasting solution seems improbable. There should no longer be the attitude of superiority and condescension of past generations in dealing with the Indian. Today, a humble recognition of this Government's limitations and this culture's shortcomings should be coupled with a collective determination for justice." Since Rene wrote those words, land claims settlements have been reached in the Eastern Arctic, (Nunavut) and agreements have been signed with the Dene Nation in Decho (Mackenzie) in order to begin construction of a major pipeline project. It was halted in the 70s until the Native people were satisfied their land and cultural rights would be protected. A good deal of credit for the progress that has been made in these past three decades is due to the efforts of Fr. Rene Fumoleau, and people like him. Fumoleau was a man of words - he was a priest; he wrote a book about injustice and failed agreements with our First Nations people. He was also a man of deeds. Most of his efforts during these decades have been advocacy; participation in public demonstrations, etc. Like Martin Luther King Jr. Fumoleau realized that words need to be combined with deeds (linking politics and values). "Seismic changes have occurred in me," writes Yancey about Paul Brand. "He taught me that the Christian life I had head in theory could actually work in practice." (67) Brand spent most of his life with mistreated humans. Brand taught Yancey the value of pain. "Pain is the greatest gift I could give my leprosy patients," he once said. To feel and to know pain is to know you are alive. Brand also taught Yancey about the sacredness of the human body which the leprosy doctor reverenced in spite of its flaws. He saw the human body as bearing the marks and traces of God. Drugs may sedate us, but they cannot treat the main problem so many of us experience. "The main problem," Mother Theresa had said, "was that lepers were unwanted people." They were rejected and ostracized by the majority. Brand determined that in spite of the poor masses of people he encountered daily, he would focus on one group - lepers - and seek to live with and do something for them in the midst of their agony and loneliness. Jean Vanier was a man like Brand, even though he was a philosopher; not a medical doctor. He was a PhD graduate and a professor at the University of Toronto, the son of the former Governor General, Georges and Pauline Vanier. A great Canadian family. Vanier left his university position and the ease that being raised a Vanier might have afforded him in Canada. He moved to France during the late 50s and became the guiding inspiration for a new and revolutionary kind of humane, caring treatment of mentally ill people. Vanier resented the fact that mentally ill adults were institutionalized in most advanced societies. He believed they could only become all God had created them to be, in spite of their disabilities, if they could live together in communities of equality with others who would , in a spiritual of mutuality, support them. All L'Arche communities exist to be "a sign, not a solution," to the painful reality of mental illness and dysfunction in our world. In 1964, Vanier took in two men from a local mental institution in Troisly Breuil, France and was determined that he would live with and learn from them. In the intimacy of their lives together, Vanier discovered things about himself that only his two disabled friends were able to see. He considered what he received to be much more significant than what he offered . Formal theories have been devised to explain the basic meaning of what Vanier came to describe as the miracle of life in community. But basically it boils down to people living together in a spirit of embrace, rather than of isolation and rejection. L'Arche communities, wherever they may be found around the world today, seek to live the vision of equality and mutuality that Vanier first learned forty years ago. In Vanier, we have another an example of what Yancey means when he writes (86) "The true measure of our worth will depend not on a curriculum vitae or the inheritance we leave, but on the spirit we pass on to others." Or to quote the words of Jesus "Whoever finds ones life will lose it, and whoever loses ones life for my sake will find it."
Discussion 6 small groups were asked to consider who might be mentors for them. A rather remarkable thing was noticed. Each group had the same observation - that mentors were those close in family, and in life, whose example more than words made deep impressions on them. They named family: fathers and nieces and aunts, etc. And they named teachers, youth leaders, Sunday-school teachers, professors. They named people who were counselors and ministers. And they included political leaders. A mentor they agreed was someone with integrity, congruence, who was an exemplar, who was authentic. They recognized the implication of this functional identification of mentoring also, that it suggests our own responsibilities in turn to be these things for others.

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