“Crucifixon”, contemporary Indian artist F.N.Souza

You can read and/or print a pdf version of this commentary here.

It has often been said you can’t get to Easter morning and an empty tomb except by way of Good Friday and the cross of crucifixion.  But since boyhood, that pilgrimage of Holy Week seemed like the same old story and well trodden path. Palm Sunday always started out well enough with glory, laud and honor. But by Maundy Thursday things had always seemed to take a turn for the worse, leaving most children like myself to wonder just what was so good about Good Friday.

The standard line – as best I could figure it out – was that whatever was bad for Jesus, was good for us. And then a few days later — as it turned out — it was good for Jesus too; since obviously you can’t get yourself raised to new life unless you’ve first died. Bummer.

 However, that last part at least has become a truism for me in my own life thus far. The number of times a little part of me has died along the way has always subsequently been met by a new lease on life; and, most importantly, not of my own making. There’s that, as well as the gift of knowing through personal experience that losing something of one’s life has led to gain elsewhere.

Most of us who have made it to middle age, and then pressed on towards our own ultimate demise, have done so with a certain knowing and appreciation that eventually – one way or another — life is all about recovery; usually, that is, recovery from whatever has preceded it that left unchecked would stop us in our tracks.

Sometimes one is so utterly changed, some would call it transformation.  But even with the certain knowledge of my own mortal imperfections and feet of clay, the eyes of my imagination can still glimpse what one might at least call a hint of that other word, resurrection.

As a preacher’s son wandering my own early paths of unknowing, I could only wonder about the non-sense of a story that was referred to as the “Passion” for some strange reason. So the innocent, good and righteous sacrificial savior suffers a horrific death so we wouldn’t have to do so ourselves?  Still makes no sense. Never did, never will.

The carved wooden crucifix that hung on the wall of my father’s study where he would write his sermons was far more illustrative to me than any orthodox doctrine he would subsequently pound out from the pulpit. With eyes transfixed on the woodworkers craft, I was always fascinated by that twisted torso, the pegged feet, the outstretched arms, and the head hung in utter subjugation with a spiked crown of thorns that inexorably expresses the human capacity we all have for cruelty and human violence.

In contrast, I have always found most objectionable the most common depictions of the crucifixion in two millennia of artwork where a thorny crown gets replaced with a golden halo, and the bloody and tattered loincloth is replaced with the royal robes one would be more likely to see worn by those earthly monarchs and pompous clerics Jesus was so apt to criticize.

If Jesus died for anything, he laid down his life like most social prophets and martyrs as a complete and utter refutation and relinquishment of any such vestiges of earthly kingdoms. Whatever the subsequent followers of the donkey king would retrospectively make of him, he was regarded by the powers that be as nothing more than a nuisance. As more than one biblical scholar has pointed out, the real significance of Jesus’ crucifixion lay in the fact that anyone subsequently noticed and cared about the execution of a nobody.  But it is the way of a nobody, not a somebody, that has so often altered the way of an otherwise weary world.

Recently the secular media has been enthralled with the resignation of a papal prince and the election of his replacement. Live coverage breathlessly covered every moment of the transition of papal power; from Benedict’s departure, to the “smoke cam” vigil, to emergence and debut of Pope Francis.

While press and pundits speculated on how this mega-corporation might deal differently now with its administrative nightmares like alleged financial corruption and mishandled abuse cases, celibacy and the role of women in an institution more akin to the Middle Ages, little attention has been given to any discussion of the arcane doctrines which even many of the church’s members no longer follow or believe; let alone the gospel premise upon which the institution would presume to claim any legitimate right to exist in the first place.

Much has been made of Pope Francis’ re-emphasis on the church’s mission to the poor; while naysayers undertaking their own post-election vetting process of the Holy Father have resurrected decades-old allegations that Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis I, once cooperated – if not collaborated — with Argentina’s brutal military dictatorship; when many priests sympathetic to those who opposed the regime’s treatment of dissidents were regarded as no more than a nuisance. They were allegedly identified by the church hierarchy, arrested, imprisoned, tortured and even killed.  Time and again throughout human history, it seems, we see the Passion play reenacted; only to have the names and places change, but the actors are seldom out of character.

At the same time, simple gestures and symbols matter.  The introduction of Francis to a watching world at the very least suggests a rebranded image of a peasant Pope. It has been said the fisherman’s ring on his finger is gold-plated this time; whereas his immediate predecessor’s was solid gold.  Still, such a choice was hardly ever a dilemma for the Galilean peasant sage; let alone those first followers who struggled to make sense of Jesus’ words, his deeds and early demise.

Over my morning coffee last month I happened to catch the live coverage of the former Pontiff’s departure from the public eye. The television cameras followed every small step the old man would take, as he emerged from his impressive Vatican residence, impeccably adorned in his pure white cassock.  He would walk past dozens of members of his household staff who would bow and curtsy, to a polished black limousine, adorned with a shiny silver papal seal on the door, and two flags posted on the front bumper like any other head of state.

A short drive led to a helipad, where a gleaming white papal helicopter waited to whisk him off to the Apostolical Palace, where he would temporarily reside until a renovated monastery is completed for him.  Somehow, the monastic life never looked so, well, opulent.

At the same time as all this was occurring, on the other side of the globe in the Capitol in Washington, DC, President Obama and congressional leaders were attending the unveiling of a statue commemorating the life and work of Rosa Parks; who helped ignite the American civil rights movement on December 1, 1955, when she refused to give up her seat for a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was arrested for civil disobedience in violation of Alabama’s segregation laws.

The statue depicts a 42-year old African American woman in a heavy woolen coat, seated and gazing out an imaginary window to an unknown future, while awaiting her arrest.

“This morning, we celebrate a seamstress, slight of stature but mighty in courage,” President Obama said at the gathering. “In a single moment, with the simplest of gestures, she helped change America and change the world.” Then the President went on to speak of how one lacking wealth and living far from the seat of power had touched off a movement.

Anyone who knows anything about our nation’s story knows about the day Rosa Parks stood up to entrenched power and suffered the consequences; striking a blow against bigotry and injustice, with a kind of freedom that could not be silenced or denied by simply arresting and prosecuting her; but instead would bring release to both the cultural captors and captives in an entire society.

But what is often overlooked is the fact that Rosa Parks had been a civil rights activist and fighter for racial equality long before, and after, that particular December day in 1952.  It had been a lifetime of words and deeds that culminated in her own particular moment before the arresting authorities in her own Gethsemane. It was quite literally her own via de-la-Rosa!

Rosa Parks had been a civil rights activist and fighter for racial equality long before, and after, that particular December day in 1952.  It had been a lifetime of words and deeds that culminated in her own particular moment before the arresting authorities in her own Gethsemane. It was quite literally her own via de-la-Rosa!

In this same way, one cannot read the story of Jesus’ death and the early followers claims of some kind of “resurrection” apart from the life of the one who died, but whose words and deeds of a nuisance and a nobody have remained vitally alive for them.  As Stephen Patterson writes in Beyond the Passion: Rethinking the Death and Life of Jesus:

While centuries of Christian art have often portrayed a royal, haloed Jesus, triumphant even on the cross, some artists have depicted a crucified Jesus as less of a sacrificial victim who overpowers and vanquishes death by his own death; and more a martyr, whose death is but an ultimate expression of the way he lived his life.

F.N. Souza, who died in 2002, was just such a contemporary artist. Born in the Catholic province of Goa in India in the 1950s, he was among the first of the post-Independence generation of Indian artists.

“Crucifixon”, contemporary Indian artist F.N.Souza

Souza’s Crucifixion is a jagged and jarring image of Jesus in all his suffering. As one critic puts it: “His depiction of an agonized black Jesus expresses the artist’s own feelings of religious conflict, as well as cultural tensions between black and white, Christian and non-Christian, and the oppression and collaboration of the power systems that so often come with colonized societies ruled by empires.”

The early followers and gospel writers of “the way” provide multiple accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection as a retrospective, pointing clearly to the fact these were hardly historical accounts; but rather personal transformative experiences, shaped by post-resurrection faith communities. They had no more tangible proof of Jesus’ still-living presence than we have today.

My friend and biblical scholar, Harry Cook, makes a similar point with regard to what is generally agreed to be the earliest of those canonical gospel accounts. “In Mark’s telling of the Easter story,” Harry conjectures, “he leaves the women at the empty grave astonished, unsure and afraid to tell anyone about it. That’s where Mark’s gospel ends — and with a conjunction, no less, as if the scribe had lifted his stylus from the page in mid-sentence. Some of us who study such texts think the ending was deliberate as if to say, “If you want to know how this story turns out, finish it yourself.”

For those of us who have long sought another path to Easter, it would appear the resurrected Word and way is known to us. Alleluia, Alleluia.

© 2013 by John William Bennison, Rel.D.  All rights reserved.

This article should only be used or reproduced with proper credit.

To read more commentaries by John Bennison from the perspective of progressive Christianity and spirituality go to the Archives

“Raising of Lazarus” – mid-12th century mosaic, Capella di Palatina Palermo, Italy

Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

(John 11:44)

From Little Gidding, The Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot

Avowed atheist Susan Jacoby recently created a dust up with a recent article in the New York Times Sunday Review entitled, “The Blessings of Atheism.” She wrote in response to all the god-talk that appeared in the immediate aftermath of the Newtown massacre; where much of the attempts at consoling the bereaved stirred up, once again, the unanswerable questions or inadequate answers to human suffering and death so often peddled around in popular religious belief.

So too, not long ago author and “non-believer,” Christopher Hitchen’s posthumously published his little book Mortality; recounting his rambling thoughts on his own imminent demise; after a terminal diagnosis left him a sufficient number of days to find himself “deported from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady.”

But what, or where to, after that?  What if this really is all there is?

It seems there has always been the human hankering to imagine all kinds of fanciful notions, in our attempts to recapitulate our mortal existence into something more than it is.  Many religious traditions, including centuries of “mainline” orthodox Christianity, employ great mythic stories to describe a life subsumed into something greater than we can either know, or grasp, except by “faith.” Heaven knows, some folks try to better themselves, merely in the hope of a remote possibility there is something more, after our death, which is a certainty.

There has always been the human hankering to imagine all kinds of fanciful notions, in our attempts to recapitulate our mortal existence into something more than it is.  … Heaven knows, some folks try to better themselves, merely hoping in the possibility there something more, after our death, which is a certainty.

Where theologians fail to persuade, even a Harvard neurosurgeon recently stepped in to describe what he says was his own scientifically verifiable near-death experience in his book, Evidence of the Afterlife. But in the end, the unanswerable question persists for many: Is it all dust and ashes?

This is the liturgical time of year when many in the Christian tradition undergo a seasonal pilgrimage in which the faithful are reminded at the onset we mortals are nothing more than dust. And so we will one day return to that from whence we came.

Then the traditional forty days end with the perennial re-enactment of a passion play commemorating the mortal demise of the one whom Christians even these many centuries later would profess to follow. Many do so in the hope of some kind of immortality for themselves in some indecipherable form or other; attributing to Jesus a “resurrection” that means the same thing to them as god-like immortality; while others of us may find such imaginings to be not only reasonably implausible, but of less importance than what we take to be of greater significance and meaning in this faith tradition.

Such indifference is somewhat akin to the unimportance of debating “believability” in all those wonderful miracle stories found in the gospels; which, by definition, can’t be explained without explaining them away. But where, in addition, the point of the miracle isn’t so much the dazzling magical  feat, but the consequence of healing the outcast, or feeding the hungry multitude, or inspiring someone like Lazurus with a new lease life. It is what I call the Lazarus factor and effect that’ll be further explored in this commentary.

Otherwise, the vainglorious hope of immortality can become so enshrouded in our mortal fears that we become – like Lazarus in his early grave – so wrapped up in death that we fail to truly acknowledge and appreciate the gift of our mortality for what it is; nothing more, nor less.

With the certain assurance then that we are but dust and ash, we can ask ourselves if the gift of our mortality is not only enough, but more than enough?  And if so, as the psalmist says, how then shall we “number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom?” (Psalm 90:12)

Mortal, can these bones live?

The biblical tradition is certainly full of life and death struggles; including plenty of stories of murder and mayhem. There are great mythic tales of the dead being raised or renewed to new life.  The prophet/priest Ezekiel, preaching to the exiles after the destruction of Jerusalem in the 6^th century BCE, gives an expansive image of a valley full of dry bones, and asks, “Mortal, can these bones live again?”  (Ezekiel 37:1-14)

Rattling bones are then reconstituted with sinew, flesh and the breath of life. But context is always essential when giving authoritative weight to anything as important as scripture. And so, lest we read too much into the story and miss the point, the prophet provides his own interpretation. “Then he said to me,” Ezekiel explains, ‘Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel.”

The familiar passage is not about the reconstitution of one’s mortal nature, but the assurance of an enduring legacy left to those who still draw breath.

Okay, but what about those who nonetheless wonder about our own individual mortality? What about those of us who have felt as though we were as good as dead at one or more times in our life?

The Lazarus Factor

Like the Ezekiel passage, the fanciful story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in John’s late gospel must be read in the larger context. Jesus himself is portrayed performing death-defying miracles, despite the fact he does so at his own mortal peril. “Rabbi,” his disciples question him, “the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?”  (John 11:8)

The Jesus character in John’s gospel heightens the story’s suspense, delaying his arrival until Lazarus is dead and buried.  The same Jesus character refers to mortal death as mere slumber, from which he has the power to awaken his old friend; whose mortal body has already begun to decompose.  On one level — like all the miraculous tales that are spun in the gospels — it’s all about believing what is unbelievable.  Standing before the mourners, Jesus calls to the dead man in the tomb, “Come out!” and Lazarus stumbles out.

But Lazarus’ temporary good fortune only seals Jesus’ own permanent fate.  As soon as word spreads the a life-giving gesture Jesus performed, the religious hierarchy could only see the deadly ramifications for the descendents of those same Israelites Ezekiel had envisioned being raised up seven centuries before!

The Lazarus Effect

The Lazarus factor produces what I like to call a Lazarus effect. And that effect has less to do with exactly how one mortal man was brought back to life, only to one day face his inevitable earthly demise all over again.  Instead, the greater miracle that we have is about the gift of days extended to Lazarus following his first “little death” until he dies once more, once and for all.  It begins from the moment Jesus both calls and commissions him with the words, “Lazarus come out!”  And then – as if to be sure none of those observing such a feat miss the larger point — he commands them, “Unbind him, let him go.”

Though raised from the dead, Lazarus has not been unbound from his mortal nature. But where will Lazarus go, and what will he do with his new lease on life? How will he choose to live out his remaining days; freed to choose blessings that remain possible as part of our mortal nature, or the tragic choices that despoil and pre-empt such a gift?

Though raised from the dead, Lazarus has not been unbound from his mortal nature. But where will Lazarus go, and what will he do his new lease on life? How will he choose to live out his remaining days?

Numbering Our Days

Ninety-four year old Norm Hendrickson, a retired postal worker from Upstate New York, was recently in a limousine on his way to a wake for his late wife when he simply stopped breathing. When the limo arrived at the mortuary, the funeral home staff hastily placed him in a casket beside the urn containing the cremated remains of the woman he’d been married to for sixty-six years; and who had suffered with Parkinson’s Disease for several of the last years of her life.

Their daughter Merrilyne reacted quickly to the sudden change of venue, placing a light-hearted sign for arriving mourners, which read, “Surprise – it’s a Double-Header – Norman and Gwen Hendrickson – February 16, 2013.”

“Oh, that doesn’t surprise me,” one mourner remarked, “He wanted to be with Gwen.”

A somewhat similar, but painfully poignant story is dramatized in the French film, Amour (nominated for five Oscars this year). Described as an end-of-life love story, it chronicles in tedious and stark detail the journey an elderly couple undertakes; when Anne and George struggle to cope with a debilitating condition that befalls her, slowly stripping away any semblance of what the rest of us would want to call a real life. One critic writes, “Though the prognosis is terminal, the couple’s commitment is eternal. That’s why the movie is called Amour.”  Not so.

Spoiler alert: Though the couple’s love for one another is clearly expressed so tenderly and laboriously, it is not eternal. George’s occasional phantom remembrances of his wife in better days are only that. Nothing endures beyond the blunt reality of their shared mortality. To imply otherwise suggests a kind of sentimentality that borders on disrespect for the dead; the deeper truth George and Anne face so courageously, and to which they inevitably succumb.

Together in death — as in life — is our common story. We try our best to simultaneously live with each other, put up with each other, relish, and cherish one another; only to all end up finding our own way to the grave, one way or another.

Together in death — as in life — is our common story. We try our best to simultaneously live with each other, put up with each other, relish, and cherish one another; only to all end up finding our own way to the grave, one way or another. 

It’s no surprise it leaves everyone asking and wondering, believing or disbelieving, discounting or proclaiming the idea there is something else, something more. And, every generation seems to find their own way of wrestling with our mortal nature.

In Columbus, Ohio, a young and perky hospice volunteer who confesses she’s “passionate about death” now facilitates conversations in emerging communities known as “Death Cafés.”  (As we all know, human beings seek community any way we can.)

Over tea and muffins at a local Panera Bread eatery, informal groups gather to talk about anything and everything related to death and dying.  Starting in Europe a number of years ago, such ad hoc gatherings have sprung up in dozens of locales around our country. “The goal is to raise death awareness with the view of helping people make the most of their lives,” says organizer Lizzy Miles.  “People figure out what death – and life – should be all about.”

The Virtual Boneyard

As the Facebook phenomenon has evolved and aged, it was bound to lead to this recent headline: “Dead Profiles Create Vast Virtual Cemetery.”

Since whatever lands on the worldwide web stays in cyberspace for an internet eternity, what happens to one’s online identity that goes on existing in ones moniker and account when it survives ones own mortal demise? Unless friends and family can access your secret password close your online account, follow explicit rules on Twitter or Blogger, or make use of such sites as MyDeathSpace.com, there is a part of you that could conceivably “live” forever; as long as someone, somewhere, has a Wi-Fi connection, that is.  So, fear not, right?

A Fitting Death

So-called death education is nothing new, of course. Understanding how one’s death is a part of – and not the antithesis of – one’s life can be instructive.  Once one has fully reckoned with one’s mortality – that we are finite beings composed of water, wind and sod – there is clarity to what the hours of the day, and days of our lives might best comprise.  Some accept it with morbid resignation, while others believe it’s but a grand prelude to something else. But if one lives long enough to consider such things, there is also the opportunity perhaps — extended again and again — to consider a third alternative, and appreciate the mixed bag and blessing of mortality itself.

More than three decades ago, I built pine coffins and wooden urns for a brief time; as part of a variety of alternative funeral products and services meant to get people comfortable talking about end-of-life choices while they were still very much alive. The first sarcophagus-shaped wooden box I assembled was my own. Made of simple knotty pine, with shiny brass screws and hemp rope handles, I carved my own initials into the lid, “J.W.B.”

When it was done I thought I should make sure of the fit. So I crawled in and lay down. I placed my hands over my chest and closed my eyes in repose. I first thought to myself how the hard wooden cross braces on the inside of the box stuck into my shoulder blades and weren’t all that comfortable.

Then I chuckled slightly to myself, as I acknowledged the fact the next time I lay there my physical comfort would not be such a serious consideration. Now if I could only  hold on to some faint smile when I come to the end of my days.

Mortality as Tragedy or Blessing

It would seem the circumstances surrounding the nature of our death often determine whether it is seen more as a tragic loss, or a blessing, a relief and release. We arbitrarily decide when a younger person gets short-changed; or with longevity and a prolonged lingering that leads to eventual release, when one is able to strike a good bargain with a longer life.

Children have a life to live, we say; and parents should not outlive them. No one should have to suffer the indignities of decrepitude or pain in order to get from this side of the grave to the other.  No one should take the life of another before “their time;” or at least suffer the consequences if they do.  We execute people for killing other people to deter them.  But all of that happens nonetheless, all the time.

When someone succumbs to their own death after what has seemed to have been a relatively long life it can be seen as a blessing; especially if the alternative may only be one of diminished capacity and quality of life.  But so-called mercy killing is taboo. There may be something unfortunate about any death that usurps the possibility of anything more. But death is truly tragic when it occurs in violent circumstances where there exists the possibility to do otherwise, and we choose not to do so.

For example, the slaughter of children in a country addicted to a mindboggling stockpile of weapons that are so easily used to kill is truly tragic as long as we choose to allow their unchecked proliferation. But if we as a nation survive our own such self-destructive behavior long enough to consider an alternative to such a tragedy of our own making, we might find ourselves unbound – like ‘ol Lazarus — from the shrouds of death to live another day.

If we can survive our own such self-destructive behavior long enough to consider an alternative to deadly tragedies of our own making, we might find ourselves unbound – like ‘ol Lazarus — from the shrouds of death to live another day.

 

Mortal Fear, or Mortal Faith

Faith and fear are classically posed as our antithetical options. Clearly, there are those who live in mortal fear there is nothing more to us than our mortal nature. Some of those folks may cling to something they call faith, in the hope there is actually something more to us than our mortal nature.

There are others of us who instead live in mortal faith. It is not only the simple acknowledgement that this is really the only kind of faith we mortals can realistically have.  It is also a willing trust that not only says this is it, that’s all there is, but furthermore that’s OK, and more than OK.

There is the mixed bag and bargain from the first breath we take, till we breathe our last. It’s a mixed bag for sure. But it might be the height of human hubris and folly to make anything more out of it than there is. Is it enough? Is it more than enough? Is the gift of mortality, the waxing and waning of days sufficient blessing in and of itself?  If so, how then shall we live?

A Mortal’s Prayer:

 From earth we come, and to earth we return; formed of water, wind and sod. For breath of life and length of days, let us humbly accept our mortality; with gratitude for whatever compassion and affection we might bear one another, until we each come to our journey’s end. Amen.

© 2013 by John William Bennison, Rel.D.  All rights reserved.

This article should only be used or reproduced with proper credit.

To read more commentaries by John Bennison from the perspective of progressive Christianity and spirituality go to wordsnways.com

A Reflection for Saint Valentine’s Day

 Pop song by Mercer & Bloom, 1940

A popular football star falls in love with an online fantasy girl who doesn’t exist in real life. Unwittingly, he entrusts his heart to what is nothing more than a figment of his imagination, and the cruel hoax by those who would take advantage of his vulnerability and naiveté.

As many more of us have now learned in this brave new internet world, the phenomenon is known as “catfishing;” where bottom-feeding predators fabricate online identities, in order to trick people into emotional relationships, or worse. And it’s as easy as shooting fish in a barrel, because everybody loves somebody sometime.

But as in the case of Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o, catfishing eventually comes to an end with the inevitable break up and subsequent heart break. In this case, Manti is informed the girl of his dreams who has never existed has died. His fans and friends hitchhike on all the emotions that swirl around such a tragic tale of love and death. Who could doubt his feelings of affection were real, despite the fact the object of those affections was not?

If there’s a lesson here for anyone who might take the risk to love and lose, it may well be that when it comes to our adventures in romance it is good for the lovelorn to remember that even in the “real” world, when it comes to our most intimate relationships, there can be a big difference between projection and reality.

In many years of ministry, offering pastoral counseling to couples who asked for a little objectivity in their troubled relationships, the two most common, well-worn delusions I repeatedly heard in one form or another was, “I thought he’d change,” and “she’s not the girl I married.”

Of course no one stays the same, I’d tell them; that is, if they’re still breathing.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean someone will change for the better either (whatever one thinks that better might be)! Once we all got clear on who the other person actually was — and wasn’t — it was a lot easier for them to decide what to do about it.

Or, as the old Crosby, Stills and Nash song goes, “If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.” Chances are, at least the one you’re with is real.

As the old song goes, “If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.” Chances are, at least the one you’re with is real.

 

I share these comments as one who has tried loving and losing more than once, and probably even exaggerated a bit when it came to my own fishing tales, filled with unrealistic expectations and projections.  I suspect like everyone else, I’ve known how exciting courtly romance can be; with the risk of vulnerability, and what the late-Scott Peck used to refer to as the “neurotic breakdown of ego boundaries.”

But like Peck I’ve also come to appreciate that love is less a feeling sometimes, and more a vested act of making someone or something else to be of more importance than one’s self. So on Valentines Day, it may be helpful to remember how it all began.

In ancient Rome, February fourteenth was the time young men chose their sweethearts for the spring festival. Fearing potential conscripts for military service would prefer a little romance to trudging off to war, Claudius II forbade the solemnization of such marriages during his brief reign (268-270 CE). When a priest at that time named Valentine defied Claudius’ edict, he was thrown in prison and condemned to death.

As the legend goes, while Valentine was in prison awaiting execution, he befriended the jailer’s blind daughter with kindness. As a result of an act of selfless compassion towards another, the girl miraculously regained her sight; just in time to read a farewell note, signed simply, “From your Valentine.”

The fanciful tale does not say if Valentine had any romantic notions for the sightless girl. It does suggest however that just as human passions are impossible to forbid for long, neither can acts of loving compassion be banished. To the contrary, such love is not blind. Hence, Valentines Day is as much about such acts of love – even in death – as it is about the romantic mush more commonly associated with the observance.

…just as human passions are impossible to forbid for long, neither can acts of loving compassion be banished.

 

At the same time, when it comes to my beloved who is very real indeed, I am well aware it is only the finest Belgium chocolates that constitute a perennial edict that is to be neither defied, nor ignored.

© 2013 by John William Bennison, Rel.D.  All rights reserved.

This article should only be used or reproduced with proper credit.

To read more commentaries by John Bennison from the perspective of progressive Christianity and spirituality go to *http://wordsnways.com

http://thechristianprogressive.com

“Arrest of Jesus” – Duccio di Buoninsegna, d.1319. Jesus said, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not assault me.” (Mt.26:55)

UNARMED and DANGEROUS:

A Gospel of Non-violence in a Violent World

 [This is the fourth commentary in a series that can be found in the Archvies, in response to the heated debate on gun violence. A pdf version of this commentary to print/read is here.]

“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.”   NRA spokesperson, Wayne LaPierre

“But I tell you: don’t react violently against the one who is evil: when someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other as well.”    Jesus of Nazareth, according to Matthew

Swearin’ and Cursin’

We recently observed our annual national holiday in commemoration of Martin Luther King, a civil rights leader and gospel preacher, who was also the prophetic voice of non-violence in our age.

This year, the holiday coincided with the Inauguration, including the swearing in ceremony of the President and Vice-President in our nation’s capital; a city where a memorial now stands with a larger than life size statue of a slain leader who was neither a politician, statesman, nor military hero.

At the inauguration ceremony, the VP was first sworn into office, using the Biden family Bible that looked to be the size of the New York City phonebook in its sheer heft. Then it came time for the Chief Justice to administer the oath of office once more to the President, the “leader of the free world,” and commander-in-chief of both our armed forces and armed conflicts around the world.

The President had chosen not one, but two, stacked Bibles on which to take the oath. The bottom one once belonged to Abraham Lincoln, and the other was Martin Luther King’s “travelling” Bible.

The symbolism on this day of dual observances, and with this particular president, was none too subtle; given his mixed racial background. One Bible had once been read by a president who lost his life to a lone gunman in his efforts to free a people from bondage; the other by a descendant of freed slaves, who died from a gunman’s bullet; while trying to emancipate a nation from its lingering, discriminatory injustices, and providing an alternative dream and vision of what we, as a people, might still become.

The sixteenth president of the United States had once presided over a horrific civil war; general consensus being it was a necessary means to a just end. The slain preacher from a segregated South had employed a very different tactic of non-violent resistance to defeat the forces of injustice and inequality, refusing to return evil with evil.  And for their trouble, both were cursed by at least one man, armed with a gun. A bullet in the head violently ended both their lives; just as victory for their greater cause was in their grasp.

I could not help but wonder about that ceremonial act of swearing one’s oath, one’s allegiance, one’s heart and soul, with one’s hand placed on a stack of Bibles. Do the promises sworn bear any resemblance to any of the words imprinted on those many pages bound between the front and back covers of that thick book? If so, which passages?  For surely just as many similar stories such as that of Abraham or Martin — waging war or refusing to raise one’s hand in retaliatory anger — can be found in that compendium of books we call the Bible.

I could not help but wonder about that ceremonial act of swearing one’s oath… on a stack of Bibles. Do the promises sworn bear any resemblance to any of the words imprinted on those many pages … of that thick book? If so, which passages?

But in the end, for those of us who would even consider the disarming and dangerous words of a Galilean sage named Jesus, what does it mean – even require – if we were to claim we would heed, accept and follow as his disciples?

How the West Was Won

My long-departed paternal grandmother was once the proud president of the North Star Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She was in every sense the typical family matriarch; at once stern and loving, opinionated and adoring, with a sense of propriety that was second to none.

She was also a staunch churchwoman. Her most impressive accomplishment as far as I was concerned as a boy growing up in the fifties was the fact she had once taught Sunday school lessons in the city of Minneapolis to Jimmy Arness; who grew up to play the role of Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke, the most popular TV western series of all time.  As far as I was concerned, watching the latest episode every Saturday night throughout my childhood was as much a religious observance as anything that followed Sunday mornings.

The stories of Marshall Dillon, his sidekicks Chester, then Festus, along with Doc and Miss Kitty the saloon “hostess” might have varied slightly each week. But the intro always began the same way, like any good liturgy. A towering Marshall Dillon would step out into the middle of Dodge City’s dusty and deserted main street.  The lone figure of someone ready to challenge the law and order of the town would appear at the other end of the street in a standoff. The bad guy would draw his gun first, and two shots would ring out. Then, following a brief pause, Matt would slide his six-shooter back into its holster as the smoke cleared. That’s how the wild West was won. And for a boy growing up in the fifties, it was wildly entertaining.

There was also a none-too-subtle message repeated with each episode. Might makes right; particularly when combined with righteous might. Not only that, the good guy always wins. Which is, of course, a lie.

Bible Winners and Losers

Based on my own many years of faithful Sunday school attendance, it made me wonder just which action-packed Bible stories my grandmother might have once taught her students.  Moses was certainly a good guy, who defeated Pharaoh’s pursuing armies; engulfing them in the Red Sea with the wave of his righteous rod.

David with the head of Goliath – Andrea del Castagno, 1423-1457

And young David, armed only with a slingshot and a good eye, dropped Goliath like a stone. But why exactly he had to then take the giant’s own sword and chop off his head for a trophy was something I might have wondered about; had that not been omitted from my children’s book of Bible stories. I’m sure my grandmother would certainly have preferred a modicum of discretion. After all, spiking the football is just bad taste.

Still, there are other Bible stories about good guys whose dismal fate I don’t recall hearing as much about when I was growing up. John the Baptist loses his head (literally) over a disgruntled whim of Herod’s step-daughter (and step-niece – Herod having married his brother’s former wife).  I suspect John’s condemnation of Herod’s incestuous behavior in violation of Jewish law was something Grammy probably never would have taught Jimmy Arness.  Regardless, the good guy certainly doesn’t come out the winner in that one.

There’s the story of Stephen’s emboldened, but unwelcomed preaching before the religious hierarchy (Acts 6-7).  As we all know, reaction to such fervor can be violent. When sufficiently enraged, the weapon of choice in those days was often an incited crowd with a fistful of stones.

“The Stoning of Stephen” Stain glass window, Trinity Church, Boston

So Stephen is pummeled to death for preaching his gospel. Then Peter (according to legend) gets crucified upside down for finally finding enough courage to refuse to deny Jesus in death what he found himself unable to do in life. And there was Paul – the “ambassador” for Christ – who may have wasted away to death in jail.

Good guys all, all meeting a rather ignominious end; in an ancient world rife with violence, brutality and the constant threat of death for those who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, raise a hand to defend themselves. And that doesn’t even begin to beg the question about the one portrayed as the perfectly good guy: Jesus, the good shepherd of the sheep. Coming up with a reason the good guy loses – and thereby somehow makes losing a good thing and the winning ticket — has resulted in more than twenty centuries of convoluted theological shenanigans; culminating in the notion by some that this good guy died for all us bad guys, thereby making all us bad guys good enough to share eternity with the Good Guy.  So, never mind, go ahead. Our continued cursed, violent ways have already been atoned.

Grammy never explained that one either.

Jesus was no itinerant gunslinger

Paladin was another cowboy hero from the TV westerns of my boyhood.  Uncharacteristic of the other good guys, the character played by Richard Boone was dressed all in black. Gruff and tumble rough on the outside, he had a heart of gold for good folks, but spared no mercy for the bad guys.  He roamed the wild West, looking to rout out trouble wherever needed. His simple calling card: “Have Gun Will Travel. Wire Paladin, San Francisco”

Jesus was also an itinerant good guy; at least in the eyes of those who subsequently made a lasting legend out of his character in the decades following those numerous showdowns recounted In the gospels. He ultimately bit the dust at the hands of those who weren’t necessarily faster on the draw when it came to discursive retorts, but clearly had him outgunned. If the Galilean ever had a calling card, it might have read: “No gun, but travels. Follow Jesus, Nazareth.”

There is no historical basis to lead one to believe Jesus was ever armed with anything more than a healing touch, a compassionate heart, and a message that — while absolutely subversive — was inherently non-violent.  Why then was an unarmed itinerant peasant rabbi such a threat to those who could only fight back with the most commonly accepted and practical solution to that meddlesome Jesus problem?

Why? Because that’s the way it so often works in this world. That’s the way it worked back then, and the way it still works today. Ya’ gotta fight fire with fire, and the more firepower the better. Might makes right; and righteous might – when convinced of divine favor tipping the scales in our favor – is better yet. It makes us winners; at least for as long as one’s adversary can be quelled, with an uneasy lull we like to call peace.

But just as soon as the smoke clears from the barrel of the gun, we’re able to see once again that retaliatory violence is nothing more than a perpetual cycle in human history. Nowadays we’ve gotten more sophisticated with the weapons sometimes employed. But whether slingshot or six-shooter, sword or drone, the tools employed are simply different means to the same never-ending end.

At the same time, Jesus was no naïve wimp and pushover. Far from it. In fact, it was his prophetic denunciations with which he refused to be silenced that were his undoing. And he did so, fully cognizant of the very dangerous world in which he lived.

For example, when he told the story of the good guy from Samaria (that most listeners would have assumed was the bad guy), he showed how we might alternately treat a nameless victim of violence left for dead as oneself, or one’s neighbor. More importantly, such a tale was told in the context of the acknowledged reality just how dangerous the world is.

Consider, it was that same road Jesus himself trod from Jerusalem to Jericho that was filled with armed bandits. That was a given in this story; a story that contrasted the dispassionate observers of law and order (those respected authorities that “passed by on the other side”), from the disarming generosity of the good bad guy (the Samaritan). The story does not peddle the portrayal of a different kind of utopian world, distinct from the one in which you and I live; but rather a different response to the harsh realities with which we are confronted.

The story does not peddle the portrayal of a different kind of utopian world, distinct from the one in which you and I live; but rather a different response to the harsh realities with which we are confronted.

Just Another Useless Utopian Gospel?

[Jesus said] “As you know, we were once told, ‘An eye for an eye’ and ‘A tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you: don’t react violently against the one who is evil: when someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other as well. When someone wants to sue you for your shirt, let that person have your coat along with it. Further, when anyone conscripts you for one mile, go an extra mile. Give to the one who begs from you; and don’t turn away the one who tries to borrow from you.

 “As you know, we once were told, ‘You are to love your neighbor’ and ‘You are to hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. You’ll then become children of your Father in the heavens.”  [Mt.5:38-42]

Note: Walter Wink (Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary, NYC), provides a thorough study of this particular gospel text in his classic essay, “Beyond Just War and Pacifism: Jesus’ Nonviolent Way.” An earlier commentary by this author entitled “Sword Fights” (Words & Ways Archives, May, 2011) provides a detailed summary of that informative work.

 Of all the many words attributed to the unarmed itinerant sage from Galilee, some of those accepted by many biblical scholars as most authentic are found in that collection of sayings commonly referred to as the Sermon on the Mount. Among those teachings are the ones about refraining from retaliatory violence, and turning the other cheek in an act of non-violent resistance, and loving your enemies. Non-violent, peaceful resistance, Jesus unequivocally insists, wins; even if you lose your life to find it. How in the world does that work?

If someone strikes you, the two conventional options (and natural instinct) is to either fight or flee. If you fight, you either win or lose the round. If you flee, you lose the round, only to fight another day. Whether you’re the good guy or the bad guy hardly matters. Whether it’s viewed from opposite perspectives as suppression, repression, retaliation or oppression, little changes. Bottom line: it never ends.

Jesus’ suggestion we offer the left cheek after the right is struck (as well as giving up every stitch of clothing and submitting to carrying a load twice as far as demanded) is so ludicrous — even comic, with the images it conjures up — that we cannot take it seriously, in a literal sense. At the same time, however, it nonetheless confronts us with the equally ludicrous consequence of the alternative; that is, perpetuating the unending and mutually destructive cycle of retaliatory violence.

Jesus’ blunt “you’ve always heard it said, an eye for an eye, but instead I say to you,” confronts us with a choice. We can choose to arm ourselves to the teeth, and resign ourselves to the futility of endless pitched battles. We can pluck out an eye for an eye till we’re all completely blind. Or, we can look at the very same scenario and envision an alternate way of being.

That alternate vision comprises the whole of Jesus’ teaching, healing, and storytelling in parables. In such an alternate vision, the right to defend one’s self – blow for blow — gives way to the command to love the last person on earth who deserves it. Only in this way, Jesus says and shows, is there at least the possibility the aggressor’s hand can ultimately be stayed — and the cycle of violence broken – if the heart can be turned, along with the other cheek.

Only in this way, Jesus says and shows, is there at least the possibility the aggressor’s hand can ultimately be stayed — and the cycle of violence broken – if the heart can be turned, along with the other cheek.

Like a Ghandi, a King, a Mandela, and the other iconic saints of non-violent resistance to the brutal thugs, their reciprocal opponents, and the principalities and powers of our own time is anything but naïve, impractical or unrealistic.  That’s also why Jesus’ message is regarded as both disarming and dangerous to our greatest fears and unceasing folly.

A Gospel of Disarmament

So, how much good news is really good for us? How much gospel can we afford?

Alternatively, one might ask if a gospel of non-violence is any more dangerous than the predominant message with which our world seems so utterly consumed? A blatant example is at the forefront of our current daily discourse.

This commentary began with two quotes; one more than two millennia old, the other a recent news item by an often-quoted voice in the heated debate over the issue of guns and violence in our civic life. But to the assertion that a good guy with a gun is the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, one can point to a countless number of good guys that are dead as a doornail to refute such dangerous nonsense.

How then, one might reasonably ask, is a gospel of disarmament any less dangerous?  Perhaps we might look to those monumental breakthroughs that were the results of those who taught, lived and died in a way that was certainly dangerous, but equally disarming.  For it was just such exemplary lives that led millions to liberation, emancipation, a greater sense of justice, freedom and something more akin to what anyone would want to call true peace.

Most recently, the spokesperson who so vehemently advocates turning every household, grade school and street corner into an armed camp offered this hollow consolation: “There is not a law-abiding firearms owner across this United States,” Mr. LaPierre said, “that wasn’t torn to pieces by what happened in Sandy Hook.”

Again, Mr. LaPierre was sadly mistaken. Those who were truly torn to pieces were the victims of gun violence in Newtown. The gunslinger calls for arming ourselves with more, and more, and more weapons as the only way to settle our differences; in an unending showdown to tame our wild West.  The unarmed sage of non-violence utterly refutes such blind absolutism.

Which is the more dangerous one?

© 2013 by John William Bennison, Rel.D.  All rights reserved.

This article should only be used or reproduced with proper credit.

NOTE: This commentary is the fourth in a series of essays, in response to the most recent spat of gun violence. To read more commentaries by John Bennisonon this and other topics  from the perspective of progressive Christianity and spirituality go to the Archives, or the blog posts at The Christian Progressive

The author with his Christmas gift, circa 1956

When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child, and acted like a child.  I played cowboys and Indians, and cops and robbers. I had a cap pistol, a Fanner Fifty with real leather holster, and a lever-action, single shot Daisy BB gun. My father never hunted, nor took me hunting; and we had no firearms in our household. That was my experience growing up.

Admittedly, it was a very different than that of others I’ve known, respected, and for whom I have genuine affection. My friend Bob grew up in an inner-city with racial tensions, where personal safety was an understandable concern, if not necessity. Jeff grew up in the rough and tumble rural West, where his most prized family heirlooms are the guns he inherited from his father.

While I can do my best to understand and appreciate those very different experiences, the pressing issue of gun violence that grips our common life remains a shared responsibility for the common good. It requires something of each of us that we would individually prefer not to concede.

As a boy, my fascination with guns did not follow me into adulthood.  As a teen growing up and registering for the military draft in 1966, the American war in Southeast Asia was a stark reality. It was also the era when the devastating firepower of the M16 (AR-15) in the hands of an Army grunt left an indelible impression on many combatants, returning vets and those of us who opposed the war.  I never carried a gun, or served in the military. Instead, I went to seminary. And, in many subsequent years of ministry I have only dealt with peripheral and potential gun violence.

I began my adult profession as a young cleric serving on the staff of a large, posh parish in an extremely safe and affluent suburban community; where it was the custom immediately following the blessing of the alms at the altar to have an armed security guard then accompany the ushers mid-service from the sanctuary to the church office across a quiet residential dead-end street. The ushers were excused from the remainder of the worship hour so they could tally the take.

Upon my arrival I voiced my surprise and objection with the church leadership, posing the possible scenario of an aged, pistol-wielding private security guard blasting away a would-be thief on the steps of the church. They reluctantly agreed it might reflect poorly on a house of prayer. But when the request was made of the wanna-be cop to serve without his sidearm he quit in protest. We do love our guns.

I went on to lead another parish for two-dozen years, where some local notoriety had preceded me. Years before my arrival the local police had confronted a transient on the church premises early one Sunday morning; and, when allegedly threatened, shot him dead. For decades afterward the larger community knew us as that church where someone was killed.

Then there was the parishioner who gave his wife a warning shot one night with a bullet hole in their bedroom wall when accused of infidelity.

Soon after another female parishioner came to me who was frightened by her spouse’s violent temper, and mentioned he kept a pistol in their bedside table.  I ordered her to retrieve it and bring it to me, which she did. I locked it up in my desk drawer of the church office, until the husband came and demanded its return.  The wife later left him, taking the children with her. My last dealing with him was officiating over his funeral a few years later when, in his despondency, he committed suicide.

I would occasionally rail about the proliferation of all the guns in our society with which we collectively seemed so enthralled; but I knew I was a minority voice among my flock. I considered it a minor triumph when one of the pillars of the parish decided he no longer wanted the handgun he owned in his house. He brought it to me, and together we destroyed it.

The lack of reasonable restrictions we have when it comes to guns is rooted in their obvious appeal; leading to their preponderance in staggering numbers in a culture that allows utter unreasonableness to pose under the guise of “protection of freedom” and individual rights.  Whatever interpretation one brings to the inherent vagueness of those twenty-seven words in the Second Amendment with regards to one’s right to bear arms, it is helpful to remember they are not carved in stone, but rather amendable. That’s why it is called an amendment.

And like it or not, it may also be helpful to acknowledge the fact the avid sportsman, the inner-city gangbanger, the illegal trafficker on the black market, the law-abiding gun owner, and the lucrative gun and ammo industry share one thing in common. They love their guns.  That’s why we will not simply legislate our way out of this one through reasonable debate, a half-baked compromise, or a better argument.

The comic Eddie Izzard has the sober one-liner: “Guns don’t kill people. But I think they help, don’t you?” Blaming the lack of stronger mental health policies where funding has been systematically slashed, or obscenely violent video games, or Hollywood blockbusters that pander to the gratuitous allure of blood and gore is – in the end — all a smokescreen that attempts to obscure the obvious. We love our guns, and what they represent.

We love the cheap, readily available and disproportionate amount of personal power guns offer in the hands of everyone and anyone who wants it, for whatever reason. If one doubts that, just consider: The anticipated uphill battle to ban assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines that might simply pose a reloading inconvenience to the next mass shooter and merely reduce – not eliminate – the casualty count is ludicrous in and of itself.

To the usual rebuttal stricter gun controls will not stop the crazed among us from obtaining their Bushmaster, their bullet-proof vests and ammunition stockpiles, I say it is a hollow, fallacious argument. But furthermore, I don’t care. We have erred so long on the side of doing nothing, might it not be time to err instead on the side of doing something; regardless of its possible ineffectiveness?

We have erred so long on the side of doing nothing, might it not be time to err instead on the side of doing something; regardless of its possible ineffectiveness?

As a society that claims to be civilized — but so distinctly different from our neighbors to the north, or the vast majority of so-called first-world nations, for instance — we are not. They regard us as barbaric, and they are right.  But instead of a self-reflective examination as to why that is undeniably so, there is such a run on gun shows by fear-driven consumers to stockpile weapons and ammo, local police departments are having trouble keeping their firearms loaded and ready.

I write these comments on the one-month anniversary of the Newtown massacre, and a few days after Vice-President Biden convened the presidential commission on gun violence; attempting to engage all the presumed “stakeholders” in the renewed debate over gun control. Whether we have reached a tipping point with regard to the American public’s will to curtail our infatuation with guns remains to be seen.

The President has weighed in, even before his commission’s findings are released, stating, “If there’s a step we can take to save even one child we should take it.”  But the ever-popular polls suggest the obvious step that could be undertaken will not prove persuasive. Too many minds will remain unchanged. Too many of us love our guns that much.

In his opening remarks at the beginning of those commission’s hearings recently, Joe Biden refused to let us forget the carnage that horrified a nation only a month ago; wrought by a fellow American with a legally- owned and licensed assault weapon.  Three times Biden repeated the word “riddled” to describe the stacked bodies of the Newtown first-graders; as if to indelibly stir the conscience of our nation’s citizenry with a single image that should not only haunt us, but strengthen our resolve.  For all of us who have heard the long-standing arguments and endless debate should know by now, one cannot change another’s mind until there is first a change of heart.

For all of us who have heard the long-standing arguments and endless debate should know by now, one cannot change another’s mind until there is first a change of heart.

In this society, it appears we still love our unrestricted right to own and carry a gun more than life itself.  Bluntly put, we love our guns more than we love our children.

© 2013 by John William Bennison, Rel.D. All rights reserved.

This article should only be used or reproduced with proper credit.

To read more commentaries by John Bennison from the perspective of progressive Christianity and spirituality go to <http://wordsnways.com>

A pdf version to print/read can be found here.

Adoration of the Christ Child by the Three Kings – Jacques Daret, ca 1403

 Opening lines from Richard III, Wm. Shakespeare, 1594

The opening lines in this particular Shakespeare tragedy depicts Richard – one of the Duke of York’s sons – offering fleeting praise to his own decadent brother Edward’s good fortune; Edward having wrested the king’s crown from Henry VI.  The underlying problem however has only been kicked down the proverbial road. For, left disgruntled and brooding over own sorry lot will lead soon enough to Richard’s own scheming and murderous treachery; resulting in his own brief and fleeting season of royal triumph and defeat.  So much for one king’s rise, and subsequent darkening of days.

If ever there was a winter of our own discontent, those days certainly seem to be upon us. We live in a nation where those vying to exert their political positions of power thought their New Year’s Eve party was best celebrated in the legislative chambers of Congress; fighting over who will wrest the good fortunes of our exorbitant abundance from whom, and how much.

Depending on your point of view that battle may have been won or lost in the latest bout, but the larger wrangling war is far from over. This season of our discontent covers the landscape; from Sandy Hook to Hurricane Sandy’s aftermath; from battles at the borders and beyond, to inner city violence. And all the while, some of our neighbors flock to their local Walmart to stockpile more weapons and ammo.

These comments are written on the sixth day of January, and some of those neighbors of mine are wondering why we still have our holiday lights up.  The holiday gift-giving season is so, like, last year. But for you and me it’s the twelfth day of Christmastide, and this is Twelfth Night. And I’m still wondering about what gifts I might still have to offer. And I’m still hoping for a new dawning, and for the shadows to flee away.

“For behold, darkness covers the land,” says the ancient prophet (Is. 60). “Deep gloom enshrouds the people.” And an age-old alternative to a longed future still flickers in those shadows.

The story of the Epiphany (epi-phanos, ‘light all around) still has a babe in the manger, waiting for someone to notice, to wonder and to wander to the unlikeliest of places, beneath the newest star. The Magi – those strange characters from afar — will first ask the enthroned King where his presumed replacement might be found, and the familiar plot line to yet another variation of the same tragic tale will commence.

But Twelfth Night is about gifts, given and received. What does the one whom we might seek to truly know have to give us in this winter of our discontent?  And what will we offer in return?  What gifts shall we offer to this world, worthy of the holy alternative; the other One we might instead seek to follow?

What Gift Shall I Offer: A Play in Three Parts

Slight variation, In the Bleak Midwinter, English poet Christina Rosetti, 1872

 The story of the Visitation and Adoration of the Magi bearing gifts is about the question of one’s allegiance, and more. To whom or what will you not only swear allegiance? But also, what you’ll give — of whatever you’ve got — to demonstrate such fidelity in both word and deed?

It is a play in three acts: Act One has to do with allegiance. Act Two is about an alternative to mere adoration. Act Three is about the subsequent, consequential, alternate way forward.

By way of a few prefatory remarks, numerous references made in this commentary assumes familiarity with Matthew’s story found here.  In addition, it’s important to keep in mind this familiar tale is a wonderful fabrication, intended to convey truths the storyteller wants to share. A few remarks from commentator Harry T. Cook say it well:

Magi — whence our words “magic” and “magician(s),”  –did exist in several forms in Middle Eastern antiquity as … a class or type of sages or maybe priests. (But) Depicting representatives of a Persian or other alien elite studying the stars to discern the birth of a Jewish king and then coming to worship him in his infancy or early childhood was a daring reach. 
… By the time Matthew’s gospel tale appeared in the form we now have it, the idea of a Jewish king could only have been nostalgic fantasy. The tableau of exotic wizards from an alien land bowing low before a child and bringing gifts to him was one way for the evangelist to say that the gospel he was promulgating was or could be a universal one.

Act I: Allegiance

In the first part of this mythic tale, the magi journey from afar to Jerusalem, and all Jerusalem represents. If you wanted to know what was happening in that neck of the woods, you’d go to Jerusalem.  That’s where the temple was, of course; along with all that temple authority conveyed. But perhaps more importantly, it was also where the puppet king Herod represented the Empire, and the seat of political power. In Jerusalem you’d find the ones who held all the cards, those in “the know,” the “deciders,” movers and shakers. So the magi go to government headquarters, and ask the king where a new king can be found.

“Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” they ask, “For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”

Numerous commentators have tried to strip away the typical sentimentality with which the story is often retold to clearly expose the ludicrous, laughable nature of the question; and the one to which the question is addressed.  “Where’s the king?” one scholar (Crossan) likes to conjecture Herod may have replied? “You’re looking at him!”

But in addition, Herod might also well have asked, “Who wants to know?” Because the answer to that question is one shared by a common assumption. Who wants to know? The world wants to know. The world in which we perpetually find ourselves always wants to know who’s in charge. Who has the upper hand, the power and might — and consequent authority – to tell us what’s what?

It’s about one’s allegiance: to whom or what will you give of whatever you’ve got? Who is Lord?

The common assumption and claim that was presumed to be beyond dispute in the context of Roman imperial theology was Caesar was lord and savior, both human and divine. As Crossan aptly puts it, “The question is what happens when titles are taken from the Roman emperor and transferred to a Jewish peasant in Galilee? It is more than a joke. This was high treason.”

Still, I can imagine the gospel writer chuckling to himself as he spun this retrospective, imaginary tale. The way Matthew would dare poke fun at Rome (and not that long after Rome had crushed the latest Jewish uprising) Herod’s intelligence network in this plotline had obviously fallen down on the job.  In Herod, the Empire had to confer with the Temple, and rely instead on ancient Jewish prophetic scripture (Micah 5:2) to discern those portents of things to come (or had already transpired for Matthew’s listeners):

“In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”

Not least? If Bethlehem wasn’t the least likely hick town in this backwater province of the Empire, what was? Never mind. Because, since those in power have a tendency to want to retain power, the king is aptly portrayed as already scheming. Send the foreign stooges as cover to find anyone who would threaten to unseat entrenched power. And for a gift, take flattery, essentially saying: “Go, find him, then let me know so I too can genuflect before my replacement.”  Right.

Act II: Adoration of the Christ by the Magi

Three magi are not mentioned, only presumed, simply because Matthew’s tale mentions three gifs. But since the story is really all about myth and metaphor anyway (in addition to the convenient fulfillment of long-anticipated Jewish prophecy in Matthew’s in own intention) we might as well appreciate the richness of the text and the storyteller’s efforts.

First there is overwhelming joy, awe, wonder; set in what is depicted as a dreary, dark and dank sort of place.  But if that doesn’t seem sufficiently out of place, there’s more.

There are the extravagant trinkets, fit for a king, representing the best of what it was presumed the world had to offer: wealth (gold), opulence (incense), myrrh (more opulence, even in death). Because these are royal gifts, who better to offer them to the newborn “king of kings” but foreign monarchs? So the magi are subsequently depicted in subsequent legendary versions as kings themselves. What better way to convey the subjugation of all earthly power and authority than such obeisance? In Matthew’s tale (and his intentions in telling it), the magi – overcome by joy, awe and wonder – are also shown to be wise enough to genuflect before One who should hold scepter and crown.

They’re also wise enough to avoid collaborating with their counterpart back in Jerusalem. They heed their own angel’s dream-warning, and slip out of town another way.

Act III: The Alternate Route

The magi’s alternate route is drawn even before the angel suggests it. It is cast the moment they bend the knee and bow before the newborn king. The shifting of their allegiance sets a new course for them; even as it renders dull the gloss and sheen of their offered, worldly trinkets.  With greater alarm than even Herod’s treachery could conjure, they may have realized the gifts required would far exceed the gifts they’d offered.

Now, to Matthew’s fanciful tale I myself have imagined another apocryphal variation; one of those “ah, from the mouths of babes” kind of one-liners: When the baby Jesus rips open his presents and finds the glittering gifts given, he looks into the eager, expectant faces of his esteemed admirers and asks, “Is that it? Is this all?”

Remember, the Epiphany story in Matthew is written after the fact. That is, it is written in the light of his account of Jesus’ life, his words and deeds; to the extent Matthew’s early believing community was able to reconstitute this composite figure.  Consequently, after Jesus’ execution, and decades later after Rome had sacked Jerusalem, what did it say about this quaint little gospel tale that transfers such titles as Lord and Savior from Augustus and gives them to what we call a Galilean miracle worker and sage in his own right?  What changes?  Who changes? What different gifts might those who would be changed offer instead?

Put another way, what’s the alternative to the typical movers and shakers of this world? What is this unconventional – and therefore confrontational – juxtaposition and way of thinking, and acting? Matthew’s gospel begins with a subversive joke, asking where can one find this different king.  As numerous progressive commentators have asked, is it any wonder the next time Matthew’s gospel gives Jesus the kingly title “King of the Jews” it is on the inscription hanging over his head on the cross?

But to those who dare ask – and even more so dare to offer another kind of gift — there’s a way “home” by another route.

 Epilogue

On the second day of Christmas my true love could have given me two turtle doves, along with a partridge in a pear tree. Fortunately, she did not.  We’ve gotten to the point where we ended up returning most of the gifts we exchanged, and realized we had a lovely holiday nonetheless.

So it was also that on the second day of Christmas this year, on December 26^th, I was intrigued to watch what seemed to me an “alternate” exchange of gifts on the evening news. The LAPD’s anonymous gun buy-back program was such a howling success that in a single day more than 8,000 firearms were removed from the streets of the City of Angels and destroyed. Included in the round up was a collection of those infamous assault rifles, and even a military-grade missile launcher. In exchange, the donors received a $200 gift certificate.

If the powers that be – that is, the mayor’s office and police department — hadn’t run out of gift certificates, who knows how many more weapons could have been removed from our country’s almost mindboggling stockpile of firearms – a ludicrous joke in itself?

Thinking back on it – from this exchange and clear “epiphany” to the first of such tales, by those who were subsequently considered wise — I couldn’t help but think the babe in the manger would have preferred just such an offering to the gifts actually he received.

© 2013 by John William Bennison, Rel.D.  All rights reserved.

This article should only be used or reproduced with proper credit.

To read more commentaries by John Bennison from the perspective of progressive Christianity and spirituality go to <http://wordsnways.com>

Unidentified icon of Madonna and the Child; and the Crucified Christ

Note:  this Christmas Commentary is written in the context of the holiday observance, and as a requiem for the slaughter of the innocents at a place now known to us all as Sandy Hook. A pdf version to read and/or print is here.

Prelude

In July, 1933, singer-songwriter John Jacob Niles found himself in the small Appalachian town of Murphy, North Carolina. He came across a gathering of evangelicals who’d been run out of town by the local police.  He watched as a young girl, whose name was Annie Morgan, stepped up the edge of a small platform attached to a vehicle. As he would later recollect in his autobiography:

“She began to sing. Her clothes were unbelievable dirty and ragged, and she, too, was unwashed. Her ash-blond hair hung down in long skeins…. But, best of all, she was beautiful, and in her untutored way, she could sing. She smiled as she sang, smiled rather sadly, and sang only a single line of a song.”

As she sang, repeating the line over and over, additional lines of a verse and the fragments of an extended melody came to Niles.

Later, Niles would add the two additional stanzas, to become the familiar American Christmas carol. But at the heart of the rather mournful and haunting tune the puzzling question remains. Why — despite popular Christianity’s doctrinaire explanations — was a Galilean peasant child’s fate was sealed even before he drew his first breath? Was the only reason for the birth of Mary and Joseph’s child — God’s greatest gift and blessing to them — simply so he could die a miserable death; and somehow thereby make up for all the wretchedness in folks like you and me?

And what was Jesus’ consolation? That he is not only the sacrificial Lamb of God, but is God’s “son,” and somehow even God “himself?”  But if that is so, then isn’t he not only the very incarnation of God, but the abdication of all those absolutes (those “omni-everythings”) we like to attribute to God, as well?  After all, “if he’d wanted for any wee thing,” as the song goes, “he surely could have had it,” if he was the king.

Like little Annie Morgan, I wonder as I wander, about such nonsense.

I wonder: Since Jesus came into this world, just as every child of every mother and father comes into this world, then did he come with the same reason we came, as children of God; with that same spark of divinity that, in him, became a living light to this ornery, dark and shabby world?

And, if he were to come again, bearing the likeness of God, would he really come merely to judge this sorry world; simply to determine who would supposedly inherit the next? Or instead, bearing the light and likeness of God, is it up to us to instead hear his voice, follow where he has already led us, and transform the only world there is?

I wonder if we ought to reconsider another way to the manger, and rethink what kind of Christmas we ought to not only eagerly expect, pray and hope for most especially this year; but be as midwives to its birthing, as well?

I wonder if we ought to reconsider another way to the manger, and rethink what kind of Christmas we ought to not only eagerly expect, pray and hope for most especially this year; but be as midwives to its birthing, as well?

Given those recent events at Sandy Hook that can’t help but muffle the merriment of the Christmas season, we might do well to re-think the harsher realities of the original Christmas tale that has been retold again this season as such a stark and sober reckoning.

 A Wonder-Full Christmas?

A week after the onslaught of this year’s Black Friday’s kick-off to the national holiday shopping frenzy, the Rhode Island governor’s office announced at 11:31 AM on November 29^th that the annual tree-lighting ceremony would be held twenty nine minutes later, at high noon in the state capitol building.

The reason for the short notice was meant to pre-empt a repeat of last year’s disruption, when protesters objected to Gov. Chafee’s generic reference to the “Holiday Tree,” instead of the more traditional term “Christmas Tree.”  While the Gov said he himself would have a Christmas tree in his own home, he believed a more inclusive term was appropriate for the government building shared by people of all faiths, or no faith whatsoever.

In response to the sparsely attended event, the state’s leading Roman Catholic hierarch, Bishop Thomas Tobin, suggested the “Gov” should instead have respected the “heartfelt sentiments of the vast majority of Rhode Islanders” by calling the 17-ft high spruce a Christmas tree. Never mind the inconvenient fact such holiday décor is utterly pagan in origin, I guess. But such is just one of the many  “wonders of Christmas” this year. So it got me wondering what other puzzlement could be found?

One thing I apparently won’t have to wonder and worry so much about is what I might get for Christmas. If my beloved fails to come through, happy retailers report the rising popularity of a recent trend known as “self-gifting.”  For every present I buy someone else, I’m encouraged to go ahead and pamper myself with another gift for lil’ ‘ol me. After all, whether I’ve been ornery or nice, apparently I deserve it.

And, if I have buyer’s remorse over any of my trinkets and bobbles, there’s always the now well-established modern tradition of “re-gifting.” If I were to draw your name in the Secret Santa gift exchange, for instance, I could unload some of the stuff I neither want or need.

But of all the crazy things I’ve always wondered about Christmas, there are those that have made little sense to me from childhood on. So here are a few holiday gifts that are yours to keep or return as you wish.

First there’s the whole, honest to goodness truth the Christmas story is pure myth.

The second is this nonsense that the only reason a baby was once born to some poor peasant parents in some backwater province of the Empire in the 1^st century CE, was so he could die a miserable death; purportedly on my behalf.

And third is this incredible concoction that the messiah of God not only made his first appearance as the baby Jesus; but that he’s coming back again – as a 4^th century creed recited to this day by many 20^th century Christians — to judge the living and the dead.

Apparently, it wasn’t sufficiently miraculous enough for two millennia of believing Christians that a deity would so gracefully manifest a way of life in one who would dwell among us with the wisdom and compassion of all we would subsequently deem to call divine.

Apparently, it wasn’t sufficiently miraculous enough for two millennia of believing Christians that a deity would so gracefully manifest a way of life in one who would dwell among us with the wisdom and compassion of all we would subsequently deem to call divine.

So here in a little more detail are a few things to consider; along with a sobering look at what certainly remains of this Christmas message, given the recent slaughter of the innocents that continue to this day.

Myth Busters

American Atheists organization’s holiday gift to Times Square, New York City.

A national organization of Atheists has a huge billboard in Times Square this year depicting the two images of Santa Claus and a crucified Jesus. The caption reads “Keep the Merry, Dump the Myth.”

 Their point is obvious, but the irony of course is that in their effort to debunk any divinity from being attributed to the crucified Jesus they avail themselves of Saint Nicholas, a 4^th century bishop of the Christian faith from what is now modern day Turkey. Not only that, but the evidence of at least regarding the execution of a 1^st century Galilean peasant rabbi named Jesus is pretty much an accepted historical fact.

At the same time, I’ll readily concede the Christmas story is a wonderful, mythic tale. As it’s related in two different canonical gospels, we have two different stories that are complete fabrications; with no factual evidence of how Jesus actually came into this world.

In other words, the infancy narratives provided in the canonical scriptures are imaginary tales and pure myths in the best sense of that term; as they are meant to convey certain assertions of truths for which factual evidence is hardly the point. Once we accept the Christmas story as a wonderful mythic tale we can then get on with the business of re-thinking just what is so wondrous about it, or not.

But while the story of Jesus’ birth in any version is purely mythic, it is not magical.  Like any great myth it tells a story that is not only full of wonder in its imaginings; but conveys certain truths by which we might be willing to have our lives and world view shaped by something deemed more important than mere facts.  And the most important fact for us to remember, perhaps, is that we live by myths.

So, the most important question for us may be to ask by which myths do we choose to live our lives?

Myth-Makers

Matthew and Luke’s nativity accounts) not only provide mythic tales by which they frame the life and death of Jesus as messiah; but the context in which the messianic reign of God is taught and lived in the life and teachings of the Galilean spirit / sage, as well.

But when our Atheist friends choose to debunk any Christian claims to the Christmas holiday, it is peculiarly apt that they choose the image of Jesus hanging on a cross.  It begs the same question little Annie Morgan wondered about so many years ago when she sang her mournful tune.

And, in fact, it must have been the same bewildering and terrifying question the first followers of Jesus must have asked in the earliest decades that followed his execution, burial and claimed “resurrection.” For resurrection is where gospel story as myth really sets our heads spinning with a search for meaning beyond factual assertions and historical evidence.

For anyone like myself, for whom a physical resuscitation of a corpse is inconsequential for any set of beliefs, the meaning of both Jesus’ birth and death does not require adherence to a predominant line of thinking so often expected and assumed for “right-thinking” Christians.

Jesus wasn’t born, just so he could die; any more than any child is born. More so, he did not, by his death, somehow make up for all my failures and shortcomings, and thereby “save” me for all eternity with “Him” in some unearthly realm.  Neither was he, nor his executioners, merely pawns in some divine morality play. He died at the hands of the state, as a consequence of his teachings and behaviors that were considered unorthodox and heretical by the religious establishment, and subversive by the political power structure.

The notion that Jesus was born merely to “save” me by his death is a sorry tale that fails to provide any kind of meaning; and therefore is not a persuasive myth. For me, the mythic tale of Jesus coming into this world with the innocence of a holy child at Christmas is of quite another sort. Before getting to that, though, there is the matter of Jesus’ “second coming.”

Come Again?

In the Common Lectionary, Year C, gospel readings during the Advent season (posted at the end of this commentary), one finds a mix of poetic hope and longing, alternating with eschatological forebodings of the imminent end of things as they are; to be replaced with the reestablishment of what God intended from the start.  The coming of the Christ child at Christmas (along with his death, resurrection and “ascension”) is sometimes touted to be but the prelude to his second coming (literally) and the end of the world.

from The New Yorker, Dec. 10, 2012

If you buy that, then he’s also coming back as our atheist friend’s Santa Claus, to judge who’s been naughty and nice.

It is as if his first time wasn’t enough; when he lived among us, and travelled from town to town, preaching, and teaching, and healing anyone whom he encountered by chance.  The wonder-filled tale of his birth, life and death wasn’t sufficient evidence of the kind of intimate relationship any parent has with the child; demonstrating love, compassion, forgiveness and mercy, regardless of the consequences.

We know what the deadly consequences were for such a “living Word,” to use the image of the Johannine prologue . We know how difficult it is to accept his invitation to similarly live such a consequential life; instead of the ways we so often live our lives that are safe and self-serving, but of little consequence.

We know what the deadly consequences were for him. And we know how difficult it is to accept his invitation to similarly live such a consequential life; instead of the ways we so often live our lives that are safe and self-serving, but of little consequence.

As the gospels all relate it, Jesus didn’t come to save himself. He came to lose himself for the sake of the other; and simply treat others with compassion, just as you would want to be treated.  The Christmas story that begins the way the world responds is the first half of a passion play that ends on Calvary.  He wasn’t born, simply to die. But he also needn’t come again to show us what we have already seen and heard from the story.

How then might we wonder about what the Christmas story has to say to us this year?

Asil’s Story

If you were to drive north a mere 26 km on the main road from the town of Bethlehem to the Jewish settlement of Anatot in modern day Israel you’d pass the Mount of Olives off to your right, and Jerusalem’s Old City part just off to the west.  Beyond the Separation Wall that carves its way through the territory is the nearby Palestinian village of Anata.

One afternoon last January a four-year old girl in braids, named Asil Arara, was playing in a field near the Wall and the Anata Forest, when her 10-year old cousin heard a gunshot ring out and came running.  Asil lay on the ground, bleeding and paralyzed. A bullet from somewhere, fired by someone, had struck her in the back of the neck.

Four-year old Palestinian, Asil Arara

The story was recently related to me by Michael Cooper, a devout Jew and pediatric cardiologist from Northern California, who periodically travels to the occupied territories to serve the medical needs of Palestinian children.  [See the Commentary “A Tale of Two Cities: Jerusalem, Now and When?” Sept. 2012]. As my friend describes it,

The Palestinian village of Anata has seen violence before. Trapped by the Wall to the west and Area C, under Israeli control to the east, life in the village remains just as paralyzed by the Wall, check points, and a permit regime that limits Palestinian access to school, family, work, farmland and health care. Recently, men and women of the village were beaten when they attempted to cultivate their land bordering Anatot. The Jewish settlers poured out of their homes, beating the villagers with clubs and pistol butts, while Israeli police looked on. And now this — the shooting of a four-year-old child.

  Our team met her by chance — in the pediatric intensive care unit at Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem where we’d come to do a cardiac consult on another child. As a group of doctors and nurses from the UK and the US, we’re here on a medical mission—to provide heart surgery for Palestinian children living under occupation—an occupation going on its fifth decade.

Michael went on to relate how after his return to Northern California he received the report little Asil had lingered five months before succumbing to her injury.

I looked again at the photograph of this child. She appeared to have such a haunting and bewildered look on her face; as her body lay limp and lingering on the verge of death. What on earth, I wondered to myself, could possibly explain – let alone justify – a single bullet. I wondered, how could this be the only reason this child was ever born?

Madonna and Child, 2012

The other image Michal sent me was of Asil’s mother sitting alongside her child’s hospital bed. It was the telling tableau of the Madonna and child in a modern day nativity scene. Because this is what the real Christmas story looks like again to this year.

 It is the telling tableau of the Madonna and child in a modern day nativity scene. Because this is what the real Christmas story looks like again to this year.

If you think about it, it’s not all that much different than the first sad tale of Christmas in Bethlehem, or the one from a place called Anata. Or Newtown.

For Asil’s name could just as well have been Charlotte, or Allison, Benjamin, Victoria, May, Lauren, Avielle, Jessica, Caroline, Noah, Jack, Emilie, Anne, Grace, James, Jesse, Catherine, Madeleine, Dawn, Dylan, Ana, Josephine, Olivia, Rachel, or Daniel.  The first nativity story included the slaughter of the innocents. And the Christmas story has been told once again in these last few days.

And I wonder. I wonder amidst all the wonders of Christmas what we might finally do – not just say, but do – to live a different story; a story that might once and for all be truly filled with awe and wonder, instead of such dread and death.

© 2012 by John William Bennison, Rel.D.  All rights reserved.

This article should only be used or reproduced with proper credit.

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Bedrock Christianity and Americana

A Precarious Reflection for the Thanksgiving Holiday, 2012

By John Bennison

Above: “Seaside with the Sermon of Christ” – Bruegel, late 17th century. Note what looks like “Pilgrim” dress!

 

Preface

 The presidential election is history, and you’d like to think we ought to be able to move on and enjoy the holidays; followed by that creeping encroachment of the  traditional mass consumer spending spree, to the delight of retailers. But the debate over one of the most contentious issues remains unresolved; namely, the federal deficit / budget crisis, the battle over new revenues (taxes) and a looming “fiscal cliff.”

The day after the election, the Speaker of the House of Representatives delivered a speech, meant to re-establish his political party’s position on such matters.  In his remarks, he alluded to scripture, perhaps with whatever seal of approval that might provide:

“In the New Testament, a parable is told of two men,” he reflected.  “One built his house on sand; the other built his house on rock. The foundation of our country’s economy – the rock of our economy – has always been small businesses in the private sector.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the “rock” to which that little scriptural illustration was referring was Jesus’ ethical teachings; based on an unconventional and (as it turned out) unpopular form of radical egalitarianism.

The use of an analogy for the two types of foundations for anyone who would undertake to construct their life was well known and used in the ancient Near East. But the New Testament employs it specifically to conclude that section commonly known as the Sermon on the Mount (in Matthew 7) or Sermon on the Plain (in Luke 6). And, that particular “rock” had little to do with keeping one’s fiscal house in order, taxes to Caesar, the entrepreneurial spirit, or the free enterprise system.

That bedrock of Jesus’ teaching did however have implications as to how we might order our lives in society; in closer alignment with what those scriptures depict as something more akin to what the divine had in mind. As well as how we ought to treat one another, without vacuous pretence or self-embellishment.

The last Words and Ways commentary explored how we might reconcile our very human motivations of gratitude, generosity, sufficiency, abundance and excessive concern for self.  As a Thanksgiving holiday reflection that customarily takes stock of our bounty and abundance, this commentary explores what is clearly the precariousness of our lives, in light of the bedrock of what we call our Christian faith.

 

The Precariousness of All Things, and the Impermanence of God

 

“Rock of Ages cleft for me

Let me hide myself in thee.”

Hymnist Augustus Montague Toplady, 1763

 Legend has it that Rev. Augustus Montague Toplady, an itinerant English preacher, was inspired to write the old Christian hymn of personal salvation, when he was caught in a nasty storm and sought refuge in a rocky crag in the Mendip Hills of England. It wasn’t the first, nor last, time mortals sought a form of divine protection and favor for refuge and repose that was touted to be as sure and firm a foundation as rock.

That’s what religion is often purported to promise; something – indeed, sometimes anything — of permanence to which one can cling; when the ground beneath our feet begins to shift, and the old reliable pillars we’ve constructed can no longer support the weight of the pressures brought to bear upon them.

This could certainly include those outmoded human institutions and belief structures (religious, social, political, economic, etc) that bear little resemblance to present-day realities.  In a “religious” context, when all else fails, the prophets and soothsayers call us to turn (or return) from what is retrospectively regarded as our wayward ways in exchange for another covenant, or “grand bargain.”

When we do so, we want to believe if there remains at least one constant, amidst the uncertainties of life.  God – or, at least our notions of who, or what, God is — should be that one certain anchor and rock. After all, isn’t that how we typically try to define the divine, as all-knowing, all-powerful, all-everything we want “Him” to be?

The seeming contradiction we find in our own biblical tradition, however, is a kind of divine dynamic contradiction, when it comes to making our images and imaginings of God as one who is inanimate, unchanging and permanent. And it becomes clearly problematic when we seek to construct some sort of bedrock of faith.

For example, Moses strikes what one might call the rock of improbability at Horeb, and from it flows living water (Numbers 20:1-13). Jesus is depicted in his triumphal, but short-lived, entry into Jerusalem with the proclamation that if the shouts of “Hosanna!” were suppressed, then irrepressible stones would begin to sing (Luke 19:40).

But if among those things that would be constant include improbability and irrepressibility, there’s certainly the human desire nonetheless to try to nail down something unchangeable and irrevocable when it comes to God. We need look no further than Matthew’s gospel, and the early community of believer’s desire to define its own organizational lines of ecclesiastical authority. Conveniently the words put in Jesus’ mouth not only ascribe to Petros (the Rock) the keys to the kingdom, but all earthly authority to speak as proxy for the absentee Galilean sage, as well.

It sure sounds like a rock solid case for permanent divine sanction.  Of course it’s also certainly an inconvenient truth to recall only a few verses later in Matthew’s same gospel the same Rock is referred to as Satan, because Peter’s ideas run along the lines of human thinking, and not God’s ideas (Mt. 16:23).  From the get-go it appears the early church struggled to hold fast to the heart of Jesus’ message

Then there’s Peter’s thrice-repeated denial that he has no idea who Jesus is when accused of being a collaborator (Mt. 26:69-73); which turned out to be more telling than even Peter knew.  And finally, there is Peter’s full conversion of faith in a gospel message of radical self-sacrifice that comes closer to what would constitute the original bedrock of Jesus’ teaching.

But if it is at all troubling that God is truly then a dynamic, living a reality, that can (and does) change, we might keep in mind the bedrock of Jesus’ teaching comes from an itinerant preacher who modeled a way of life reflective of a different way of seeing the world; not of unchanging permanence, but receptive and responsive to the dynamic relationship with such a God of change. Where then might we look to find any fundamental and eternal message?

It may have been the same question Augustus Montague Toplady asked when he found himself in just as precipitous a predicament as one we face today. Today the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are engaged in armed conflict among themselves in Israel and Gaza, we find ourselves just days away from going over a national fiscal cliff, and Thanksgiving for many has been reduced to counting our greatest blessing as being the fact that we’re not as bad as a lot of other folks.  There seems nothing but sand beneath our feet where you’d think there should be rock.

 

Bedrock Christianity

Sermon on the Mountain – Karol Ferenczy, 1896 The pastoral scene of gentle folk lounging on a rolling hillside suggests a message far removed from the precipitous and precarious depictions of life.

But if the bedrock of Jesus’ teachings could be reduced to a few sayings, it might be those beatitudes that seem to turn the conventional ways of this world on its head; and suggest a different kind of precarious path as we make our way through this world.  Instead, those few sayings from Jesus might be condensed further to a one-liner about faith and hope, once uttered by the modern-day prophet Martin Luther King; that “unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”

In 1630, the Puritan preacher Jonathan Winthrop preached a sermon entitled, “A Model of Christian Charity.” He envisioned the Massachusetts Bay Colony (and what was, in fact, the birthing of our nation) would one day be an example of a “city on a hill.”

The phrase would become part of the lexicon of our political rhetoric, of course; most notably by what is now regarded almost nostalgically by many as the “Reagan era.” Indeed, in his farewell address in January 1989, Ronald Reagan repeated the phrase one last time, with the elaboration,

 “…I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it and see it still… “

 It’s helpful to remember that before Reagan appropriated the line it was used by a Puritan preacher; who himself drew upon an image recorded in Matthew’s gospel; and in the context of Jesus’ central teachings that were to form the foundation upon which the bedrock of that gospel message was intended to be built.

The winds would always surely come and beat upon the house.  And, if politicians (and preachers) would consider not only the source, but the original meaning and intention of the source from which they would appropriate their quotes, perhaps our house pitched so precariously would not fall, because it would be built on a rock of another sort.

© 2012 by John William Bennison, Rel.D.  All rights reserved.

This article should only be used or reproduced with proper credit.

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The Affliction of Affluence:

Reconciling Gratitude, Generosity & Greed

[Reader's comments welcome at the end of the commentary. You can read and /or print a pdf copy here.]

“Lazarus & the Rich Man” - Medieval fresco, Rila Monastery, Bulgaria

Introduction

 From Tevye’s monologue, Fiddler on the Roof, Harnick & Bock, 1964

We all know the story of Tevye the poor peasant, who dreams of another life; with his own particular list of those things that constitute what would make him a wealthy man.  For him, it includes ducks, chickens, turkeys and geese, a wife with a proper double chin, a big house all the neighbors would envy, and all the time in the world to discuss holy books with learned men.

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The story is told of an old man who’d been visiting the Western Wall (otherwise known as the Wailing Wall) in Jerusalem for many years. Turning his face to this last remaining ruin of the ancient Jewish temple in the Old City, he would nod his head repeatedly, while reciting the same silent prayer over and over again.

One day a reporter approached the man and asked how he felt, given the current state of affairs. “How does it feel?” the old man replied. “It feels like I’ve been knocking my head against a brick wall.”

We know all too well the ongoing dispute between Israelis and Palestinians in the divided city of Jerusalem; where a 26’ high security barrier made of solid concrete partitions the city, as part of a 430-mile long physical barrier being constructed along the West Bank.

But it is not simply a global hotspot of international tension and conflict. In the context of a shared biblical tradition and the three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) both the old Western Wall and the new concrete barrier stand as powerful and sobering symbols for the hope, struggle and failure of humankind to build the kind of city where all can not only dwell, but abide one another, as well.

Both the old Western Wall and the new concrete barrier stand as powerful and sobering symbols for the hope, struggle and failure of humankind to build the kind of city where all can not only dwell, but abide one another, as well.

Above: Guard towers along the 26′ high concrete security barrier. Right: the ancient Wailing Wall of the old temple in Jerusalem.

Both the old Western Wall and the new concrete barrier stand as powerful and sobering symbols for the hope, struggle and failure of humankind to build the kind of city where all can not only dwell, but abide one another, as well.

Historically, by one calculation, the city of Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured then recaptured 44 times. Since this is the repeated past and present reality, one might well ask when and how might things ever be any different?

Biblically-speaking, it’s déjà-vu, all over again

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you murder the prophets and stone those sent to you! How often I wanted to gather your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you wouldn’t let me. Can’t you see your house is being abandoned as a ruin? … Yes take a good look at all this! I swear to you, you may be sure not one stone will be left on top of another! Every last one will certainly be knocked down!” [Matthew 23:37-24:2]

 The Jesus character in Matthew’s gospel reportedly once wept over Jerusalem, but such weeping was hardly new. The Wailing Wall has a long, repeated history. Composed after the fact, this gospel passage retrospectively foretells the destruction (once again) of Jerusalem; this time by the Romans in 70 CE. The historical Jesus, of course, was executed by the Romans decades earlier.

This is why it is essential to read the canonical gospels — written decades after Jesus’ life and death – in the light of the geo-political-religious framework of the “earthly” Jerusalem that had once again just been laid waste; followed by this subsequent era of apocalyptic/messianic expectation amongst the Jewish peasant class.

Consequently, in addition to the prediction of the temple’s destruction, Matthew’s Jesus does not simply predict his own demise. He recites, as well, what would have been recognized by his listeners as that literary motif commonly known as an oracle of lament. It is representative of a much, much earlier collection of sayings, which can be found in the Book of Lamentations in the Jewish scriptures. Those ancient oracles expressed the very same sorrow. Except in that case, it was over the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians nearly six hundred years before the time of Jesus.

If anything was different this time around, it was an attempt within the early gospel traditions to not only comprehend what could have once again be razed to the ground; but what could also somehow be raised up again, once and for all. For early first-century believers of an emerging Christian faith, Isaiah’s ancient prophecy could be appropriated, and finally realized:

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has dawned upon you. For behold, darkness covers the land; deep gloom enshrouds the peoples. But over you the Lord will rise, and his glory will appear upon you. Nations will stream to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawning. Your gates will always be open; by day or night they will never be shut. They will call you the City of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Violence will no more be heard in your land, ruin or destruction within your borders. You will call your walls Salvation, and all your portals Praise. …The Lord will be your everlasting light. And your God will be your glory. [Isaiah 60:1-3,11a,14c,18-19]

 Subsequently, when the theologically-evolved Jesus character of John’s gospel [John 2:13-25] makes the outrageous assertion he can rebuild in three days a temple that has taken years to construct, it lays the foundation for the resurrection motif; and a kind of embodied spirituality that required no fixity in a temple made of brick and mortar.  The bounds of an earthly Jerusalem were loosed.  Heaven on earth became a different kind of transfixed reality. That is to say — at least in the personal experience of certain early believers then — the time was ripe for the Jewish Galilean sage and spirit-person Jesus to be accorded a messianic title (Christ).

But as for that other city, the heavenly Jerusalem, it would still remain a fantastic dream; as evidenced in the passage from that last book of the Christian canon, Revelation:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. [Revelation 20:12-21:4]

Dream Makers

In the deeper context of this rich biblical story then, there are profound implications of what such a dream is, and is not, all about.

It is important and meaningful to understand and appreciate that we shouldn’t be so limited to such wooden-headed thinking as to believe the dream of Jerusalem – or even the “state” of Israel — is only fixed in time and place; any more than I am literally a first-century Jewish peasant myself, living under foreign occupation and domination.

However, at the same time, Palestinians today may well describe their own experience and perspective in just such a way.

In other words, anyone who understands their own story within the broader metaphorical context of the biblical story, can not only identify themselves as Abraham’s spiritual heirs; but as children of Israel, as well.

We shouldn’t be so limited to such wooden-headed thinking as to believe the dream of Jerusalem – or even the “state” of Israel — is only fixed in time and place. …Anyone who understands their own story within the broader context of the biblical story, can identify themselves as Abraham’s spiritual heirs, and children of Israel, as well.

Too often today we see evangelical Bible thumpers aligning themselves with partisan politicians in a limited and shallow understanding of Jerusalem as merely the capital of a nation state, with a religious sectarian bias; instead of the spiritual home in which all people of goodwill would all seek to dwell.

To that end, such “unwavering support for Israel” ought simply mean an unflinching kind of faith that a heavenly Jerusalem for all people – no matter how futile such faith may sometimes seem — is still worth striving for in our own day and age.  An example:

Dream Works

Michael Cooper is a pediatric cardiologist who lives in the San Francisco bay area. Three times each year he travels to Jerusalem and the occupied territories in Israel to serve the medical needs of critically ill Palestinian children.  When asked why he does not extend the same humanitarian gesture to Jewish children, he simply explains there is currently no need of additional medical assistance for them.

What is of even more significance, however, is that Michael Cooper is a devout Jew; who learned to understand the pain and suffering of people on both sides of this seemingly irresolvable conflict through his many years of living in Israel.

Dr. Cooper attends to the medical needs of a Palestinian child, as the mother looks on.

At a Pathways Faith Community gathering, he poignantly related personal accounts of children dying in ambulances, stopped at security checkpoints; while waiting 24-48 hours for a paperwork clearance. Such is the “state” of Israel.

An elderly Jewish American woman once asked him, “God forgive me for saying this, but how does it feel to know that you’re saving children who will grow up to kill Jews?”  In response, Dr. Cooper replied,

The question doesn’t surprise me since I’ve heard it before. So by way of answering, I try to acknowledge where this question comes from; the layers of fear and suspicion surrounding a deep national trauma and memory (of the Holocaust). Understanding the painful source of the woman’s question provides an opportunity to acknowledge that pain, and to the have a conversation about the conflict that feeds into it.

Cooper then went on to explain,

The Israeli writer, Amos Oz, once provided a vivid metaphor for this conflict as a raging fire. What does one do in the face of such a fire? The answer: Whatever you can. If you have a hose, you use it. If you have buckets, you form a bucket brigade. And what if you only have a teaspoon?  You use that.  Because if there are enough people with teaspoons, you have a teaspoon brigade that can extinguish any fire.

The same holds true as we confront darkness and hatred. We do what we can to dissipate the darkness with light, the hatred with love. Because, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hatred cannot drive out hatred, only love can do that.”

Dream Speech

The Jewish prayer practice of mizrach directs one to always face towards Jerusalem and the ancient temple (Wailing) Wall. Included is the practice of grieving over the destruction of the temple, and all it represents; the fractured symbol of what should be the very threshold of union with all that is divine, and the “holy of holies.”

But in addition, there is also the long held practice of stuffing little pieces of paper containing fervent written prayers into the cracks and crevices of the old Wall.

In obvious contrast, the new security barrier has no such provision for even a single scrap of paper. The two different walls – one religious, the other socio-political — represent two very different things within the same city.  One represents an ancient hope for another kind of future; the other the reality of seeming irreconcilable conflict and division.

One might ask, why should we care? Because as primitive as they are, we have learned time and again that we all construct walls everywhere; only to have them inevitably breached, circumvented or torn down. This should be more than a little obvious in an age of mass inter-global communications, long-range trajectories and logistical drones.

Part of the separation wall dividing the Shuafat refugee camp from Israeli settlements on the West Bank.

First consider that meandering wall extending hundreds of miles through the Palestinian territories, dividing citizens living in the same land; while at the same time the sabre rattling against a neighbor state grows louder. Then consider the lunacy of extremist politicians in our own country who’ve proposed a similar barrier along our own southern border.

There is a haunting similarity whenever people anywhere are compelled by our racial, tribal, nationalistic or religious and sectarian biases to erect barriers to “secure the border,” and divide us, one from another; whenever we are unable to abide one another, and choose instead to live in fear instead of faith, and settle for a containment of violence, instead of a genuine, just and lasting peace.

There is a haunting similarity whenever people anywhere are compelled … to “secure the border,” and divide us, one from another; whenever we are unable to abide one another, and choose instead to live in fear instead of faith, and settle for a containment of violence, instead of a genuine, just and lasting peace.

And so, this greater reality is evident in our own history, as well; as a recently discovered recording of a radio interview with Martin Luther King only a half century ago, reflected the early days of the American civil rights movement; long before its successful outcome was assured:

“I think this (protest) movement represents struggle on the highest level of dignity and discipline,” King said. “No one of good will can disagree with the ends … the end to break down all barriers between people. But the thing that impresses me about the movement is the fact that they have followed means that grow out of the highest tradition of nonviolence and peaceful methods.”

Jerusalem, here, there and everywhere

In 1804, the English poet William Blake composed Milton a Poem. Though highly critical of his own Anglican Church and all forms of organized religion in general, Blake was thoroughly inspired by biblical story and metaphor.

With Jerusalem, the short preface to the epic poem, he drew on the fanciful legend of a young Jesus once visiting England during his supposed “lost years,” along with his uncle, Joseph of Arimethea.  With biblical imagery – and, in particular the Book of Revelation – Blake describes a Second Coming of sorts; when a longed-for heavenly Jerusalem would once and for all dispense with whatever human condition would prevent just such a thing.

For Blake, it was the “dark satanic mills” of the dehumanizing aspects of the emerging industrial revolution in his own era. Later set to music by Charles Parry in 1916, in order to bolster British troops in the First World War (and later Britain’s suffragette movement), it became beloved as Britain’s “unofficial” hymn.

More recently, and strangely so, it was these lines that began the bombastic opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympic games in London; as billowing smokestacks rose up out of a pastoral countryside scene, drowning out a child’s voice singing these lines,

And so I thought to myself — in what would be a telling reversal of the apocryphal tale of a young Jesus once travelling to England — I’d like to imagine Blake as having once made the trek to Jerusalem himself; and standing before the ancient Western Wall, stuffing a scrap of paper into a crevice with his remaining penned lines:

© Photo credits: Michael J. Cooper

© 2012 by John William Bennison, RelD.

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