A Fresh Perspective

Spiritual teacher Richard Rohr likes to say that our tendency is to see things, not as they are, but as we are. The point he makes is that many things in our lives prevent us from seeing what really is. Our capacity to see reality is shaped by many factors: our upbringing and the ways we are socialized into adulthood, our education, our social and community networks, our physiology and genetics, our religious faith and the ways we are indoctrinated into that faith. All kinds of influences affect how we see. Thus, the truism: We see as we are, rather than what really is. In his wonderful piece on love in his first letter to the Corinthians Paul makes the point that we all see a “poor reflection as in a mirror.” The NRSV says, we see “dimly.” We are all limited and biased in what and how we see. That’s part of the human condition. However, I believe, that we will see truth and reality more clearly if we see through the lens of Jesus. Everything in our scriptural text today is focu...

I am struck by the comment by the storywriter that as the two disciples were discussing the things that had happened with regard to Jesus, “Jesus himself came near and went with them, but,” says Luke, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” We get off track, I think, if we start speculating about Jesus’ appearance or whether this was a vision or something else. The point being made, it seems to me, is that Jesus is not with them in the same way he was with them prior to his death. Jesus is now the living Christ, the cosmic Christ and what we now experience is the Spirit of Christ, not the human Jesus. But what does this mean – this inability to recognize Jesus? What’s the point? These two disciples on the road to Emmaus represent all disciples, they represent you and me. There is great irony when the two disciples say to Jesus who is walking with them, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place in these days?” Of course, the...

Luke’s introduction to the story of the rich man and Lazarus reads: “The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this [Jesus’ teaching about not being able to serve God and money—that money is a rival god] and they ridiculed him. So he said to them, ‘You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God’” (Luke 16:14-15). How did the religious leaders justify their love for and accumulation of money? It wasn’t that difficult. A number of Scriptures teach that material wealth is the blessing of God and that disease and impoverishment is the result of God’s judgment. If there were no Scriptures to support this view there would be no prosperity gospel preachers with huge empires. Joel Osteen would not have the largest church in America if he did not have Scriptures he could employ to justify his theology of wealth and material blessing. It’s in the Bible. It’s bad theology, but it’s in the Bible. ...

Recently in a webcast, Richard Rohr offered a simple rule of thumb for discerning, evaluating, and judging the redemptive value of biblical texts. The first question to ask of any biblical text, he said, is not, “How does this text help me, save me, guide me?” Those are questions that leave the ego in charge. The first question to ask is: What does this text say about God? How is God imaged in the text? How does the text portray God? Father Rohr says: If the God depicted and imaged in the text is operating at a level lesser than the best person you know, then you know that the text is not presenting an authentic revelation of God. If the God portrayed in that text is not as just or loving or compassionate or understanding or gracious or forgiving or kind or fair as the best person you know, then you know it can’t be a reliable portrait of God. When we read accounts of God ordering Israel to put an entire civilization under the ban—to kill men, women, children, animals, and d...