Perhaps this is what is missing from the Anglican convenant … the bigger picture … maybe if the picture is enlarged that might help? And if the picture is enlarged and there is still the type of conflict that threatens to tear apart community, then perhaps that picture can be enlarged even more? … I’m thinking there gets to be a point when the conflicts start to look trivial in the context of a larger view of the universe …

Also thinking the word “disagreement” is perhaps not the entire story … perhaps a better way of looking at it is “diversity” … as in Canada where we celebrate diversity and talk about the melting pot and as in South Africa where we celebrate the Rainbow Nation. So we do have seem actual and tested examples to go on here … so not entirely new.

Something different starts to happen when we celebrate diversity rather than focusing only on disagreement …

There are real and practical repercussions when community is fragmented and people can’t agree on even the simplest form of civil communication. Trust becomes an issue. Things get blown out of proportion. The level of conflict increases, albeit underground for an extended period of time. People not even directly involved in the original disgreement, become casualties and invariably get caught in the exchange. Sometimes people not even directly involved in the original disagreement try to pursue their own agenda .

It can happen that some other events can come along and refocus everyone’s attention elsewhere. This can happen. It might not.

It seems to me that when anyone’s strongest negative opinions remain unchallenged there’s another kind of danger in that … because our opinions and our fears often form the basis of our actions, albeit negative and unhealthy. I’m thinking disgreement can be healthy and help create a balance .. .something along the lines of Christopher’s blog today … if we pay careful attention to what it is our overt disagreement is about and also to what is not being said, i.e what is implied.

I just wish disagreement wasn’t so darn stressful!! It’s a lot easier when the topic being disagreed upon isn’t too close to home, i.e when we don’t have any personal investment in it … one way or another … The way I see it, if the Anglican church can’t figure out a way to negotiate diverse opinions in a postive, life-giving way, within the wider Christian community then what hope do the rest of us have?

In my what makes you an Anglican ought to be be the form of worship.
What makes you a Christian is the love.

This ties in somehow with what Bill Morrow was talking about, sacrifice. As far I as can understand it, in the Old Testament we sacrificed a lamb to either purify the place of God or to purify ourselves of unintentional (vs deliberate) sin. Okay, so Jesus was the lamb. He allowed himself to be the sacrifice … Jesus and Paul they mention a few places the Jesus’ blood is the blood of the covenant.

I’d thought this meant somehow the promises made in the OT that a messiah was going to come … but it seems there is more to it than that. I’d always thought the people in the OT were instructed not to ingest the blood of the sacrifice … that the blood was somehow unclean … that menstruating women for example, were considered to be somehow unclean … but apparently, based on what I learned from Bill Morrows talks, that wasn’t necessarily the case, because while the flesh of the animal was ingested, the blood of the animal signified life … and was actually sprinkled around the temple to purify the place, so everyone was instructed not to ingest the blood but to let it flow to the ground. Eating the blood of a sacrifice was considered a big ‘no, no’.

Okay, so now Jesus comes along and says ‘I am the sacrifice.’ ‘Eat my flesh AND DRINK MY BLOOD.’ So I’m thinking the ‘eat my flesh’ part kinda ties in with the Jewish peoples traditional view of sacrifice, but the ‘drink my blood’ perhaps part not so much …. that drinking the blood of a sacrifice was a definite ‘no, no’ and possibly quite shocking to the people of his time.

Setting aside any ideas on this being any literal command to actually eat/ drink Jesus body in some kind of cannibal ritual … I don’t think anyone would have seen it that way in those days anyway. But the idea of drinking the blood, in those times, would have meant something entirely different even from a ritual/ metaphorical perspective than it does to us today … and been really shocking. I think nowadays we are in some way more comfortable with drinking blood than eating flesh … I’m thinking of the popular vampire Twilight series for example. But it was different in those days …

What this seems to point to, quite simply is another way of Jesus saying that it’s okay to ingest the life (divinity?) which also kind of ties in with the curtain of the holy Temple place being ripped at the same time … that we don’t need all the ritual practices and priest to separate us, the common folk, from God. There seems to be more to the significance of this blood part … that’s what I’m thinking anyway …

Now I’m trying to figure out how Love fits in with this … and how this brings peace when there was previously enmity …

As far as I can understand Jesus took on our transgression within himself…he entered into our pulled – apartness when he became human. So that split between flesh and spirit became part of who he is, it became ‘in’ him….but because love and life are perfected in him the split was healed , Not only did Jesus’ touch heal whatever it touched on the street, but the very nature of humanity itself was healed by virtue of being Christ’s body. (The law, btw is what signifies death and sin…)

1. What does it mean to Love your enemy as yourself? First I need to ask: How do I define my ‘enemy’? I’m thinking it is anyone or anything I’m in opposition to or don’t agree with and anyone or anything who is opposition to me … Then what does loving my enemy mean? I’m thinking it doesn’t necessarily mean giving into pressure to sign a contract which agrees with everything my ‘enemy’ wants … particularly if such contract encourages an unhealthy attitude moving forward or doesn’t benefit all parties in a healthy, life giving way. I’m thinking that would be akin to signing a contract with the ‘devil’ …

2. Did Jesus commit suicide? He knew what he was doing. We in the West culture have an abhorrence of suicide. It’s not necessarily like that in other cultures … I’m thinking of Japanese Samurai – hara kiri, Romans falling on their sword, Islamic suicide bombers … but in all these cases suicides seems like an honourable path to take … often as a means of taking away shame. In Christian teaching we are encouraged to lay down our life for a friend though. Maybe that’s similar. Are we with our Western philosophy being heavily influenced by the idea that Jesus died for us on the cross to take away the shame so we don’t have any shame, therefore we don’t get to view suicide the same way? Judas committed suicide and look at how we still view and revile him today. We don’t see Judas’ death as an honourable suicide. Maybe in those days it was? Was Jewish tradition of the Old Testament always against taking one’s own life? I don’t know?

Okay, so what are ordinances? Google tells me:

or·di·nance (ôrdn-ns)
n.
1. An authoritative command or order.
2. A custom or practice established by long usage.
3. A Christian rite, especially the Eucharist.
4. A statute or regulation, especially one enacted by a city government.

It sounds like an ordinance is a mechanism used to govern, control, maintain order through external means, for example laws or ritual practice.

How does Paul see Jesus doing this?

This is where it gets a bit tricky and confusing. How does this apply in practical terms …. Through Jesus’ blood and flesh, he has attempted to break down the wall of separation and made one body of two people. I don’t completely understand the blood and flesh part. But having listened to Bill Morrow’s talks on ritual practice in the old testament recently, maybe I can try to do this based on what I’ve learnt, and having been through a whole lot of attempts at informal as well as legal contract making myself recently, and the pressures this brings to bear and also thinking about the Anglican covenant and recently seeing how Jesus’ role in bringing about his own death was active rather than passive … perhaps to throw it all in the pot and see what comes out …

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new person out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.