Rev. Robin R. Meyers, PhD, is senior minister of Mayflower United Church of Christ Church, Oklahoma City, and Professor of Social Justice at Oklahoma City University. Class Not Dismissed is the title of Robin’s contribution to our next unending conversation. He tells a wonderful story about Marcus as a substitute teacher for “the other University” (University of Oregon not Marc’s home institution, Oregon State University.) Robin rightly declares that even though Marcus is no longer with us the work he so deeply engaged continues. Robin is at the forefront of that continuing work. Robin is a clear and wonderful and even edgy writer. I will name three recent books that indicate such: Saving Jesus From the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus; Spiritual Defiance: Building a Beloved Community of Resistance; and The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus. Check them out. They are on Kindle as well as other formats.
I am including in this introduction Blessings that were offered at the spring 2015 meeting of Westar (aka Jesus Seminar) at the closing banquet which were offered by Robin.
Bless you Marcus, for being Marcus Borg. A scholar, a teacher, a pipe-smoking, dog-loving Lutheran whose heart never left home but whose mind went in search of the historical Jesus.
Bless you, Marcus, for being the embodiment of the Socratic method of teaching proving to your students that the final act of grace is to make a person gracious. When some of them would proudly announce to you that they did not believe in God, you would ask them to tell you about the God they did not believe in, whereupon you would add, “I don’t believe in that God either.”
Bless you, Marcus, for handing out an outline of your lecture and then giving it exactly as it appeared — not recommended by rhetoricians as the most exciting approach; but then no one ever accused you of being an exciting speaker, just a brilliant one. After all, it is not in chewing that we are nourished, but in chewing food.
Bless you Marcus, for starting every lecture by asking the crowd to identity their religious background. “A show of hands — how many Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, UCC’ers, Unitarians? How many are the ‘Walking Wounded,’ aka Spong’s Church Alumni Association?” Who knows, Marcus, if you took this poll for yourself, or so the audience could better understand itself, but Aristotle would be proud, since he taught that “audience-centeredness” is the key to persuasion.
Bless you, Marcus, for your red socks, and the egg timer you put on the podium, and for answering the perennial question from clergy, “How the hell do we preach this stuff?” by assuming that clergy are supposed to figure that out, and to be bold about it.
Bless you Marcus, for never casting a shadow over anything or anyone (that’s how your beloved wife Marianne put it). All of us are living with what one friend of yours called your “absent presence.” That sounds good, but Marianne confessed to me that she is done with noble speech and proper grieving now — she just wants you back.
Bless you, Marcus, for knowing how brief our days are, and heeding the wisdom of the Advent hymn, “Awake, awake, for night is flying.” You were a great teacher. And death was your great teacher.
Bless you, Marcus, for restoring credibility to Christianity. You caught lots of people walking out the church door and asked them to turn and look back one more time. And thanks for your patience with Jarmo, who was apparently the last non-family member to see you before you died. Marianne said that the two of you discussed something called “Essentialism,” and that Marcus was not quite the same after that. She said she is pretty sure that’s what did him in!
Bless you, Marcus, for loving your four-legged friend Henry so much that you were surprised that you could love a dog so much. One night at dinner, Marianne told me that you said to her in earnest, “I wouldn’t want to have to choose between you and Henry.” He always kissed you goodnight, Marianne told me, and after you died Henry anointed you by leaping up on the bed and licking you all over your face — a send-off of sorts from one old soul to another.
Bless you, Marcus, for being someone that more people knew than you ever knew you – like the funeral director who came to carry out your body, and had read several of your books and could not believe that it was Marcus Borg that had died. She brought a patchwork quilt to cover you, and it struck Marianne as so appropriate because it was your favorite metaphor for the church that is dying for transformation (she thinks you go it from Sallie McFague, this patchwork metaphor), but now you were wrapped in it. “Attend to your part of the quilt,” you used to say. “You cannot take it all on. Do your part. Identify what is yours to do and do it.”
Bless you, Marcus, for leaving behind a body of work that lives on in place of your own body (ashes to ashes, stardust to stardust). You are deeply missed because so many people are so deeply grateful – and this may be your last best lesson, Professor Borg – that the relationship between gratitude and sorrow is what makes grief redemptive, not to mention resurrection something more than magic.
Bless you, Marcus, for knowing and living by Mary Oliver’s promise, that “When death comes, I want to say, all my life I was a bride married to amazement, a bridegroom taking the world into my arms.” So be it, Marcus – we drink a toast for you tonight. Here’s hoping that with the ears of eternity you can hear this blessing – spoken by your colleagues tonight who miss you, and love you, and who were, and are – all of us – blessed by you.
Bless you, Marcus, for being Marcus Borg.
