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Note: these excerpt threads are subject to continual revision and updating as opportunity and priority permits Gordon W. Lathrop: "The Gospel of Mark is not a full cosmology. Rather, the book involves, as at least part of its concern, a significant reorientation of Plato’s work. This reorientation takes the likely story of Timaeus and deals with it as a broken myth. Such breaking receives the terms of the myth and its power to evoke and describe our experience of the world. But the coherent language of the myth, its consequent and contained system, is seen as insufficient, and its power is seen as dangerous. The myth, then, is both true and not true, capable of truth only by reference to a new thing, beyond its own terms. In Mark, that new thing is the word of God and the presence of the Spirit known in the crucified and risen one. In Mark, that new thing is the encounter with the God whom the church has called the holy Trinity. And in this broken myth, Bartimaeus and the hole in the heavens function as broken symbols: the philosopher is blind and then a candidate for baptism; the perfect sphere is torn as the triune mercy of God is made known on the earth. These symbols evoke the whole myth, and that account is seen as broken, in need, now referring beyond itself..." [34-35] Holy Ground: A Liturgical Cosmology "By the end of the Gospel there is no experience to counter the final word of death, except for the very ambiguous empty tomb. But the ending of the Gospel sends the reader or hearer of the book -- sends us -- back to Galilee where the risen one is to be seen, that is, back to the beginning of the Gospel book itself. There, shockingly if we know the Timaeus, we see again that this is a text about another son of God than the perfect cosmic sphere. Indeed, we see the heaven itself torn open. And there, after once again coming across baptism and the call to follow, the reader or hearer encounters Jesus in the text, in a synagogue and then in a house, receiving the crowd, teaching, healing. Hearing this text in the house of the church, house of the word, is then the very seeing of the risen one which the young man in the tomb promises. Jesus lives in the text as it is present in the assembly. The Gospel book itself, read in the assembly, is the resurrection appearance. The whole assembly comes into the hidden meaning of the story, the now manifest, risen identity of the crucified one. The whole assembly becomes the locus for seeing the torn heavens, receiving the Spirit, hearing the voice of God, being reoriented in the world. Even more, as the text continues the reader or hearer comes to understand that the fragments of bread from Jesus’ great meals are still being passed out. Eyes are healed in that shared bread to see the crucified one as risen. Finally, we see that the way of Bartimaeus, the way of baptism, is open also to us. The house, the word, bread, baptism, the way: the Gospel of Mark unfolds toward the exercise of the very symbols which give a center to the Christian assembly. The Markan reorientation of cosmology comes to liturgical expression. Indeed, Markan cosmology is a liturgical reorientation, not an ideology, not an idea..." [37-38] Holy Ground: A Liturgical Cosmology "Although it is popularly assumed that Genesis gives us a single cosmogonic account with a single cosmological understanding and that the rest of the Bible simply supports and follows this Genesis account, the truth is much more complex. Many biblical texts are best read as reversals and transvaluations of a great diversity of worldviews. Mark uses and breaks the likely story of the Timaeus. But in doing so, Mark stands in the deepest biblical tradition. In other places in the Bible yet other accounts of the origin of the world are presumed. Yet other ways of holding all things in coherence are in play. The biblical business, time and again, seems to be to propose a hole in these systems or to reverse their values while still using their strengths, to turn or re-aim their words toward another purpose. The biblical concern seems to be to break these systems before the encounter with God and to fill biblical liturgy with just that encounter... Time and again a diversity of cosmologies are received into the biblical tradition. Then, by the addition of a few elements, by the juxtaposition of a contrary text, by a mimesis and reversal of values, by a tear or a hole, these cosmologies are re-aimed, reoriented... The New Testament carries this general biblical pattern of reinterpretation yet further, with christological and trinitarian purpose. When the reinterpretation has to do with cosmology, a liturgical expression frequently lies close at hand..." [38-43] Holy Ground "Many different cosmologies fill the pages of the Bible. They do not necessarily cohere or agree... What can be found, widespread in the cosmic accounts of the Bible, is the critique and reversal in these accounts, the hole in any perfect cosmic sphere. For the scriptures, none of the various candidates for central cosmic principle can be adequate - not the perfect sphere, not the ruling planets, not the conquering god, not the dominant role of humanity, not the end of time, not the logos, not the son-of-man, not the tree of life. But the cosmologies suggested by all of these can be received if they are turned, if their terms are re-used to speak of the living God, if the community encounters that living God through all the gaping holes in their cosmological fabric. For Christians, that encounter is with the triune God, with the Spirit and Voice presenting Jesus through the tear in the heavens, with day of the resurrection as an eighth day, with the crucified one as logos or as tree of life or as son-of-man, holding all things into mercy, known and tasted in the power of the Spirit. For Christians that encounter with the triune God takes a communal, liturgical form... the God who comes through these biblical holes holds the entire cosmos in mercy, allows diversities of cosmic descriptions, but is guarantor of none of them. The God who comes through these holes is not a God beyond the spheres, but one known in our midst, on the ground, amid all the conditions of the world. The God who comes through these holes is the God of the burning bush. Precisely because of that encounter, the place on which you are standing is holy ground (Exod. 3:5). It is God and God’s beloved, real world that are holy, not our theories of world-coherence..." [44-45] Holy Ground: A Liturgical Cosmology "For these gospel books, just as the story of Exodus 3, the activity of God takes place in the midst of the actual places and circumstances of this world. As these books were read in the assembly, the community would have heard stories read to proclaim the work of the risen Christ in its midst, exactly as Mark's Gospel seems to have intended. In these books, the risen Christ is perceived to be none other than the historical Jesus of the stories, indeed, the historically crucified Jesus, encounterable now. Stories, even stories of the same event, could be told with differing accents precisely because the intention of the telling was to announce the work of the historic Crucified-Risen One in the present community... It is no wonder, then, that the three Gospels written after Mark all add an image of the Christian assembly at the end of their books, as the locus of the appearance of the Risen One. Mark's Gospel as a whole already provides a schema for such a meeting... But these final stories were not told in order to make the hearers wish they had been there too. Rather, in each case, the stories at the end of the Gospels characterize the actual continuing life of the assemblies that knew this book..." [130-133] Holy Ground "This day's feast celebrates the many little and nameless ones throughout the world and through history -- the poor merciful peacemaking persecuted ones, many of whose stories have been forgotten -- who have been so sealed as God's own. But the stories of their being claimed by God have not stopped the parallel stories of their suffering and the earth itself being hurt... In the cross-death, Jesus shares the lot of the little powerless and persecuted ones. But he also comes among the trees torn down to become execution posts, seas overfished by starving people, and the earth desperately farmed for the sake of absentee landlords and unjust taxes. Those realities fill the stories of the Gospels. Jesus comes among our history of social and ecological sin. He does not stop it. Rather, he is killed by it. But in the resurrection, he does become another foundational word, a word that describes the meaning and God-intended fate of the world. He becomes bread shared on the holy ground, the healing sabbath that is rest from the hurting of the earth, the tree of life itself, the sea of peace, the down payment on the earth restored... If you wish to be part of the company that the Spirit of God gathers around this Jesus, the assembly -- the countless number -- is still open. Everyone is welcome. Joining that number, you will indeed be sealed. But the seal of the living God marked upon your forehead will be the mark of the wounded tree. Baptism is that great washing whereby we all join this company, this gathering of all the saints. That washing immerses us in the death of Christ in order to raise us together with Christ. The signing with oil is the sealing on the forehead with which new Christians are still marked, the seal that old Christians still remember. But that seal upon our foreheads is the sign of the death of Christ, in order that we might be raised with Christ. Gathered by the Spirit of the Risen One before the throne and the lamb, raised together with Christ, every Sunday this assembly is together made a living word of God to the world: do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees; the earth belongs to God; do not hurt it. Indeed, every Sunday the word read and sung in the assembly, in one way or another, says this same thing about God's intention for the beloved earth, the holy ground. And every Sunday, we are invited to live the course of our lives in accordance with the word that we have been made, to come away from destructive ways and be healed... Dear sister or brother, will you help keep our assembly open for yet others to join us in a resistance to the inevitablity of sin and damage as the lot of the earth, open for yet others who long to see God working in the life of the world? And will you trust that seal upon your forehead? It is not make-believe, not a Pollyanna wish for happy times. It is the seal of the wounded tree, of God come among our wounded cosmos..." [210-213] Holy Ground: A Liturgical Cosmology |