Comments for Julia

Sunday, January 31, 1999

Rev. Julia Jarvis

" Original Blessing"

Psalm 139

A line from the United Church of Christ's Statement of Faith states, that "God seeks in holy love to save all people from aimlessness and sin." This begs the question of what is sin. I was raised in a community that believed in the doctrine of 'original sin'--based on a belief that we are all born in sin and need to be saved from our sins. This concept of original sin was developed by the early church's theologian, St.Augustine, late in his life. Augustine's interpretation of sin entered into the history and Latin theology and is the basis of the Council of Trents' decree on original sin. Augustine's interpretation was an actual mistranslation of one of Paul's letters to the Romans regarding sin.

Matthew Fox, (a former Catholic priest who was silenced several times for his radical theology and is now an Episcopal priest) wrote a book many years ago which presents a different view and had a profound effect on my life called "Original Blessing. Since reading "Original Blessing" I began to believe we are born fully endowed with the potential to be holy, creative partners of God. Fox doesn't deny the fact that our world is broken torn and sinful. But, and I quote, he says "We do not enter as blotches on existence , as sinful creatures, instead we burst into the world as "original blessings". And anyone who has experienced the birth of a child can attest to that! My husband Randy, part-time theologian, likens original sin to the half-empty glass metaphor. When you are born half empty you start out behind-and you focus on what you shouldn't do. Original blessing is half-full which focuses on what we can do in life with God as our creating/blessing partner. Rabbi Heschel says "Just to be is a blessing; just to live is holy."

This perspective changes how we look at sin. As we grow and are hit with life's experiences we also have the potential to lose our gifts through not having our gifts nurtured. I define "sin" as a separation from life/God/community/and self. Sin is not living up to our potential for a variety of reasons. Those reasons could come from a lack of parental love and nurturing, our own mistakes and choices, abusive experiences, and societal injustices. There is not harsh judgment implied when and if we do sin. If we sin then we need even more of God's compassion and mercy so we can return to wholeness and reunite into the fullness of life. Furthermore, God seeks us like a lover, seeking to be with us, nurture us, and bring us back to our whole selves.

What does it mean to have the fullness of life--to be fully ourselves within the heart of God? An excerpt from Nelson Mandella's inaugural speech captures part of the answer:

I hear in this Mandella calling us to being fully ourselves. A far cry from the doctrine of original sin.

So, how do we find wholeness? How do we become our most authentic selves which God created? How do we realize God's original blessing? I don't think we can find it in formulas or diets which work in a matter of days or months. This is a lifetime journey following an inward path which comes through love...experiencing the unconditional love of God; the unconditional acceptance of ourselves and sharing that love with the world. This is summed up in Jesus' saying that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart soul and mind and to love your neighbor as yourself.

I always heard that God loved me....but the love always seemed to come attached with strings--"I will love you if you are a good girl and you have to follow all these rules to be a good girl". My image of God was of a male who sat on a throne high in the heavens watching my every move. Jesus scholar, Marcus Borg talks about the importance of how we image God in his book " The God We Never Knew. He describes his own early God as a chastising, finger shaking lawgiver and judge. "God had requirements and Christianity was about how to meet those requirements." In reflecting back on his childhood days in church Borg remembered his pastor, Pastor Thorson did a great deal to shape this God image. Pastor Thorson would often shake his finger at the congregation while preaching. He would even shake his finger while pronouncing the forgiveness of sins. There is another similar image of God saying God is like a high school principal unhappily leafing through all of our records." Makes me nervous just thinking about it.

My journey toward fullness has taken me in a different direction from these images. It has taken me a long time to expand and reimage God. The movie and book "The Color Purple" brought fresh new and powerful images of God into my changing theology. I was most moved by the character Shug's sense of God. In expressing her belief about God to Celie, the main character, Shug states, "The thing I believe is God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside, find it. God ain't a he or a she but an It. God is in everything. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be." Other Biblical images I discovered also helped break my old God mold. Instead of a monarchical model, I began looking at God as lover, friend, parent, and breath...all images found in scriptures. The story of the Prodigal Son and the forgiving, loving embracing, and celebrating Parent became an important, healing image for me.

In several biblical books and passages God is seen as lover and we are the beloved. Song of Songs has powerful often erotic images portraying the love between God the lover and us the beloved. If you have a chance spend some time reading it over--a wonderful and ancient love story. In the New testament the church is seen as the bride of Christ and Christ is the bridegroom. (Borg, The God We Never Knew, pg. 73-74.)

Roberta Bondi, church historian, in her book, In Ordinary Time passionately describes God as our lover. "God loves us extravagantly, ridiculously, without limit or condition. God is in love with us; God is besotted with us. God yearns for us. God does not love us in spite of who we are or for whom God knows we can become'....God loves us, the very people we are. I remember the first time I read this in Bondi's book I began weeping. For so long I had not really believed in the love of God, but for some reason her words seemed credible. I believed! I genuinely felt loved in that moment.

Thus, if God loves us, is besotted with us, we can now love ourselves unconditionally. We are lovable. We are blessed with love not sin! I . I think, especially for women, loving ourselves is the much greater task than believing God really loves us. Christine Northrop, lecturer, writer and gynecologist, talks about ways women can learn to love themselves which is crucial in their day today health. She encourages women to look in the mirror at least three times a day and say, "I unconditionally except myself as I am right now." Northrop added a much harder exercise which would earn one a Ph.D. in self acceptance. Stand in front of a full length mirror completely naked and say the same thing. I know that would be a challenge for many of us, man or woman!

Finally, I am not just proposing a private love feast between and God and ourselves. There is obvious purpose in working on relationships with our God and ourselves but there needs to show some outpouring of this love towards the world--to manifest the glory of God within us. Episcopal Bishop Shelby Spong talks about human happiness in his latest book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die. He states that our identity is nothing less than a gift to us from the community where we live. "I cannot achieve my own destiny except as a part of the destiny of my interdependent world. I can seek my own well-being only in terms of the well-being of the community. (pg. 160-161)

Thomas Merton, famous contemplative Catholic monk who died in the 60s, one day was on a downtown corner in Louisville, KY. He was waiting for the crosswalk to change to walk across the street and found himself amidst many people, poor, white, black, women, men and children. Suddenly he was overwhelmed with the realization that he loved all these people and that they were neither alien, to nor separate from him I saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can each, the core of the reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more greed. ("Something of a Rebel: Thomas Merton His Life and Works, pg.36 by William H. Shannon.) Merton was a God bearer.

Nelson Mandella ends his inaugural speech with these words:

The good news is that the presence of God welcomes us, is besotted with us, hugs us, celebrates with us and forgives us. This is our original blessing!

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