A Little More About the Ultimate Truth of God

by Nathanial Putnam

Christ showed up at airport security. In my rush to get to the gate on time for my flight to a Minnesota monastery, where I’d be meeting for the first time with a community of monks who have invited me to think about joining them, I forgot to empty my water bottle before the checkpoint. After I passed through the metal detector, barefoot on thin carpet under a low, dim ceiling, a grey-bearded man wearing a turban and a blue uniform with a gold badge told me I was supposed to go back out and empty the water there. I glanced behind me, at the rows of silhouettes snaking towards the terminal, and then back in front, where musical voices and footsteps echoed off gleaming tiled aisles to the departure gate.

When I faced him again, his green eyes softened. “What time does your flight leave?”

My gut clenched and my weight shifted, leaning me closer to him, on the balls of my feet. Is this poise? Is this what grace means? To know that I’ve made a mistake, not know how it’s going to get resolved, and still hope? My father—who himself has a grey beard and green eyes–taught me to show special respect to people from different cultures. In this instance, would that mean apologizing profusely, or asking politely for pardon?

I didn’t say anything other than answer his question directly, quietly looking him in the eye. He turned and walked away, carrying my bottle in hand.

Grace, here, required being completely at the mercy of someone who doesn’t know how how obsessively I attempt to appear reliable and dependable on a daily basis, even in situations with stakes as low as the quality of the cup of coffee I serve to strangers—let alone how mortified I’d be to show up a day late for the people who might consider inviting me to move in with them for the rest of our lives. What did that security guard notice when he looked back at me? I was most likely just one of the thousand hurried and harried he’d see on that shift, one of the hundreds of relatively oblivious who’d shuffle through his line, and probably one of the dozens of pushily panicked who’d make the same mistake. But did he observe how clearly I knew that I depended on him, and that any mercy he’d care to show me would be gratuitous? Grace, again, rocked me off balance—nothing I could earn, nothing I could demand, nothing I could even expect.

He disappeared for a few minutes, and then returned with my now-empty bottle.

“This isn’t how we do it,” he insisted. “I could get reprimanded. This isn’t our procedure. I’m risking my job.”

All I could do was say thank you, I’m sorry, I understand, and thank you again. I couldn’t even remember to bless him with the salutation my father had taught me the Sikhs use: “Sat Sri Akaal” – “God is the ultimate truth.” I may never know the full truth of why he decided to pour out the sloshing water and let me pass into a bright corridor. But thanks to him, I now know a little more about the ultimate truth of God.

Save the Date!

As many of you know,
our Sunday morning Mass accompanist Irene Jacobsen
has been struggling with breast cancer.
Join us on Sunday afternoon, June 30th, at 400 pm,
in the church for a benefit concert in her honor.
Your favorite church musicians will be performing,
and all the proceeds go to support Irene.

Bible Study Returns!

Starting tomorrow, weekly Bible study is back!
Join Nathanial Putnam in the church at 2 pm or at 7 pm
to learn more about the lectionary readings.

If you have any questions,
please email Nathanial at putnam.nathanial@gmail.com.

Team Challenge’s Fun Run this Saturday in Emeryville

Are you looking for something fun to do this Saturday while raising money for a great cause at the same time? Team Challenge will be hosting a Fun Run (lots of walking involved!) this Saturday, May 18th, at 9:00am in Emeryville. All proceeds go directly towards research and better medicine for Crohn’s and Colitis! Hope you can join.   Register online here.  Limited amount of T-shirts available.

Thank you, St. Augustine’s!

As a part of my practicum on interreligious topics at St. Augustine’s, I have been posting weekly to the St. Augustine’s Young Adults blog since last November. In the Ph.D. program I am in at the Graduate Theological Union, one of our requirements is to complete a practicum. The idea is for us to step outside of the classrooms, the books and the theoretical discussions of academia and to see how what we have learned may be applied in the real world. I have been studying interreligious topics for several years and I was looking for a place where I could interact with people outside the academic environment on these topics.

I could have ended up doing my practicum at a parish that was resistant to interreligious topics, in which case, the work I would have done would have been more fundamental. But I imagined from my involvement at St. Augustine before I started the practicum that the parishioners here were already open and interested in interreligious topics. So from the beginning, I did not see myself as bringing wisdom and enlightenment down from the mountaintop. My role was not to change the way people think, but to start conversations and listen to conversations already begun. There is certainly a lot more that could have been done!

With this entry, I bring this blog series to a close. At the GTU, we are going into the final month of the spring semester and I will be focusing on getting my papers and course assignments completed.

I am grateful that I had this opportunity to complete my practicum at St. Augustine’s. I especially want to take the opportunity to express my gratitude to: Pastoral Associate Karen Miller, with whom I originally proposed and planned this practicum; to my friend and colleague in the Christian Spirituality Ph.D. program at GTU and Faith Formation Minister for Teens and Young Adults at St. Augustine’s, Jen Owens; to Fr. William Rosario, who has been very welcoming and supportive of this project; to Administrative Assistant, Jackie Gamble, who proofread my blog entries before they were posted to the website, to Director of Music Ministries, Jim Gilman, who showed great curiosity in my perspectives and who graciously worked with me for my Advent liturgical music presentation, and to all the people I have had the opportunity to interact with at St. Augustine’s.

Br. Luke Devine is a Benedictine monk of Saint Martin’s Abbey in Lacey, Washington. He entered monastic life there in 2001 and took his solemn vows in 2006. Br. Luke studied for a master’s in theological studies at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry and is now studying for a Ph.D. in Christian Spirituality at the Graduate Theological Union. Currently, he is doing a practicum on interreligious topics at St. Augustine Catholic Church in Oakland, CA.

Yom HaShoah/ Holocaust Remembrance Day

This week, the topic of this blog will likely seem jarring, especially at this time of year. As Catholics, we have journeyed through the desert. We have taken up a Lenten sacrifice as a reminder of being in a time of self-reflection about who we are and our relationship with God. We did not sing “Alleluias” or “Glorias” during mass as another reminder of our sense of preparation. All of this culminated in magnificent Holy Week liturgies and boisterous ringing of bells during the “Gloria” sung at the Easter vigil mass, all in celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. In the church’s liturgical calendar, we are now in the Easter season, which will last until Pentecost, fifty days after Easter.

And yet, just as we begin this season of joy and celebration, I present a somber topic. This Monday, April 8, our Jewish brothers and sisters observe Yom HaShoah to commemorate the approximately six million Jews who were killed during the Shoah (Holocaust) by the Nazi regime during World War II. Yom HaShoah is a national holiday in Israel that is also observed by Jews globally. This occasion is also referred to as Holocaust Remembrance Day although this more general title includes a remembrance of the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust, particularly Gypsies and homosexuals. Although the term “Holocaust” (the Greek word for “burnt offering”) is widely used, people are also using “Shoah” (the Hebrew word for “catastrophe”).

It is trite to say that this was one of the most tragic moments in human history and to say that maybe some good can come out of it. But it is true that Christians began a fruitful time of serious self-reflection after World War II. We considered the possibility that our theology and our difficult history of marginalizing and persecuting Jews may have contributed to Nazi anti-Semitism, or of establishing a social atmosphere where Nazi anti-Semitism could emerge. We questioned whether we did enough to intervene.

In 1965 during the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church issued the document Nostra Aetate condemning the use of Catholic theology to support hatred and persecution of the Jewish religion and people. Besides issuing documents, Christian and Jewish scholars began to collaborate in their studies. Understanding ancient Judaism is necessary to understand Christianity. But post-Shoah scholars also realized that in order to gain a clearer understanding of ancient Judaism, it was necessary to discard the traditional lens that led to viewing Judaism as obsolete and perpetually inferior to Christianity. In 2000, over 200 rabbis and Jewish intellectuals signed Dabru Emet, a document stating an affirmative response regarding Jewish-Christian relations. Dabru Emet specifically rejected the idea that Christian anti-Judaism was the basis for Nazi anti-Semitism (although many Jews expressed their disagreement on this point). The Shoah was a turning point in Jewish-Christian relations which led Christians to rethink our perception of and our relationships with not only Judaism, but all other religions.

Yom HaShoah can be an occasion for Christians to remember this history and its significance alongside Jews. In the Bay Area, the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco is offering programs throughout the day on Sunday, April 7 (the day before the official Yom HaShoah):
https://www.jccsf.org/programs/jewish-holiday-events/yom-hashoah-holocaust-rememberance-day/yom-hashoah-70th-anniversary-of-the-warsaw-ghetto-rebellion/
. There is a link to register, but it is free. Standing with our Jewish brothers and sisters can be one way that we act upon the Lenten theme at St. Augustine’s to “Open the Eyes of my Heart.”

For more information about Holocaust Remembrance Day, visit the website for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC:
http://www.ushmm.org/remembrance/dor/
.

Br. Luke Devine is a Benedictine monk of Saint Martin’s Abbey in Lacey, Washington. He entered monastic life there in 2001 and took his solemn vows in 2006. Br. Luke studied for a master’s in theological studies at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry and is now studying for a Ph.D. in Christian Spirituality at the Graduate Theological Union. Currently, he is doing a practicum on interreligious topics at St. Augustine Catholic Church in Oakland, CA.

Passover Seder and the Last Supper

Last fall when I began my practicum at St. Augustine’s and was brainstorming ideas of what to do, one idea was to host a Seder meal on the Thursday of Holy Week. But last fall, I was also taking a course on Jewish-Christian relations and that topic came up and I realized it was not so simple.

The Seder meal begins the week-long Jewish celebration of Passover, the commemoration of the Israelites’ flight from slavery in Egypt recounted in the book of Exodus. For Jews, Passover commences on the 15^th of the month of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar. Only occasionally does this coincide with Christian Holy Week. The feast includes drinking of four cups of wine to recall the fourfold promise of God in Exodus 6:6-7, “I will bring out,” “I will deliver,” and, “I will take.” Matza bread is an unleavened bread eaten as a recollection of the bread the Israelites baked quickly before the dough could rise so they could leave Egypt that night. Briefly, the Seder Plate includes six food items such as two types of bitter herbs symbolizing the harshness of slavery in Egypt, a paste of fruits and nuts representing the mortar used in Egyptian building projects during slavery, a vegetable dipped into salt water or vinegar during the meal as a reminder of the tears wept in Egypt, a roasted lamb bone, and a hard-boiled egg also remembering the night of flight from Egypt. The meal is a part of a program of activities that I cannot do justice to describing here.

Here, my intention is to describe the relevance of the Seder for Christians. All four Gospels mention that Jesus’ Last Supper takes place during or around the Passover. The Synoptic Gospels mention preparing for the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Matthew 26:17, Mark 14:12, and Luke 22:7) while John recounts the washing of the disciples feet “Before the feast of Passover” (13:1). But scholars now question the identification of the Last Supper as a Passover Seder meal. One point to consider is that if the Jewish authorities were as involved in Jesus’ trial, prosecution and execution as the Gospels describe, it would likely have been a violation of the Passover observance. If they were indeed violating the Passover, it seems that the Gospels would not have held back mentioning these further vilifying actions. For further reading, see this article by Jonathan Klawans of Boston University.

There is a well-intentioned effort now for Christians to seek greater understanding and appreciation of Judaism and learning about the Seder meal as the basis for the Last Supper would seem to be a beneficial activity. But questions emerge such as, is this a Christian pilfering of a Jewish tradition? Would it be better if Christians attended Seders at synagogues or with Jewish families to experience the Seder in a full Jewish context? And yet, is it an imposition on Jewish communities to host outsiders to their faith at one of their most sacred holidays?

Finally, Christians must keep in mind that the association of Jesus’ Last Supper with the Passover Seder meal may prevent an appreciation of the Seder as a commemoration of the Exodus event on its own terms; instead, it risks reinforcing the idea that its only value and meaning is as a prefiguration of Christ.

Br. Luke Devine is a Benedictine monk of Saint Martin’s Abbey in Lacey, Washington. He entered monastic life there in 2001 and took his solemn vows in 2006. Br. Luke studied for a master’s in theological studies at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry and is now studying for a Ph.D. in Christian Spirituality at the Graduate Theological Union. Currently, he is doing a practicum on interreligious topics at St. Augustine Catholic Church in Oakland, CA.