Third response to Sullivan

Sullivan used apolitical several  times in the article—Christianity in its truest form is apolitical.  It’s a very risky thing to say.  In general, people like Christian politics when it favors their issues and dislike it when it doesn’t.  What we don’t want to accept is that fully formed Christian politics doesn’t conform to pre-existing political categories.  From the perspective of Liberals.  We rally behind the political theology of Martin Luther King (thoroughly Christian) but despise the political theology of Rick Santorum.  When confronted with the political agenda of a Rick Santorum, we retreat to notions of separating church and state and extend that—as Sullivan gets awfully close to doing—to claim that political advocacy can and should be divorced from theological conviction.

The appeal then gets made to Jesus who  “never said a mumblin’ word” in the face of oppressive Roman government.  But such notions make less sense than does the argument that we should not use musical instruments because the early church did not.  Jesus had little other means to indict human violence, greed, and power lust other than to proclaim the Kingdom of God (a political statement not an apolitical statement) and accept the cross wherein by accepting, forgiving and dying he both judged and forgave our destructive nature.  Same thing is true of Francis.  The reality that we have to face is that there is no Caesar in the American political context.  We operate in a government for, of and by the people.  We are Caesar, we are the king.  The system governs.  Therefore we cannot as people of Christian faith partition God’s reign out of the policies for which we advocate.  The problem with politics today is that we do not know how to advocate for certain things—like protection of unborn children, the end of capital punishment, pacifism, equal distribution of wealth—without turning to coercion.  When we cooperate with another church,  we do not want to chastise or coerce a church to change but lovingly pray that they do.  They also lovingly pray that we would become more Christ-like in the ways that Christ is evident in them and not in us.  And that’s why they accept the invitation.  We aren’t interested in just coexisting.  We gather together that we might be more Christ-like.  Christians have an agenda.  We need to.  It is that through faith in Christ—as one who though he had all power accepted that it be power under people rather than power over people—can transform not just individuals but also the systems in which individuals live and move and have their being. 

Second Response to Sullivan

Sullivan says that he believes in the divinity and resurrection of Jesus.  These are defining aspects of Christianity along with his death on the cross.  What they mean, however, requires interpretation.  The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are polyvalent realities and point to multiple, true meanings.  It is impossible to define the significance of these events and therefore what it means to believe in them without risking that these acts of God will be diluted by finite human minds and communicated by fallible human speech.  There are those of us who believe that is precisely why we are called into communities of faith where we can share interpretations and hold one another accountable.  The problem is, of course, that human systems require that power is involved.  It has to be entrusted to people and can, therefore, be manipulated by them.  Every religious tradition has these moments of abuse, misuse and excess.  The media (I know that it’s too easy to blame them) like to chastise the church of these.  This abuse, that abuse or the other abuse has robbed Christianity of its goodness.  Perhaps.  Truth is Christianity has always been a mixed bag made up of people who are created in the image of God and re-created in the image of Christ and who on not so rare instances display those images in words and deeds.  But these very same people are marred by human sin and are capable of tremendous evil.  We are one and the same—saints and sinner.  OR as Luther would say simul iustus et peccator (simultaneously justified and sinner).  Sullivan wants to separate Christ from the very people Christ would claim—his idiot followers.  But Christ resists such division—the distance between Romans 7 and Romans 8 is paper thin.  And the one who can lament, “O Wretched man that I am, who will save me?” can turn around and declare, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.” 

Response to Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan's Easter Week cover article was provocative and deserves a response.  Here is part 1 of three responses. 

Sullivan represents what I would call deutero-Protestants.  These are people who somehow believe that not only can Christianity exist without being bound to a single unified church but that Christianity can exist without any church whatsoever.  It’s a view held not only by Jefferson but also by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Soren Kierkegaard, Gothold Lessing and the list goes on.  The pesky historical detail they tend to neglect is that there is not memory of Jesus without the church.  We cannot access any first hand written document composed by Jesus.  Nor do we have really any existing document that describes Jesus and his activity outside those written by people of faith.  Many biblical scholars believe that there existed a “Q” for (Quelle, the German word for source) that, like Jefferson’s Bible contained the sayings of Jesus but not much else.  But even that would have been compiled by followers and its existence is still hypothetical (I say that even though I believe that there was a sayings source or “Q” document). 

Whether we like it or not we are dependent on the church for both the introduction and content of our knowledge about Jesus.  There’s nothing of Jesus that’s directly accessible—I’m distinguishing here between the historical person of Jesus and the living presence of Christ.  Surgeon Atul Gawande has recently written a book entitled The Checklist Manifesto.  In it, he tells the story of being responsible for improving surgical safety.  He concluded that the way to avoid post-operative infection was through the use of checklists.  The narrative is both more nuanced and interesting.  But he begins and ends by talking about the miracle on the Hudson.   At the end of the book the chapter is entitled “The Hero in the Age of Checklists.”  He talks about how the pilot kept trying to explain to people that what saved people that day was a system—a system within the plane of pilot, co-pilot and crew and a system that preceded the flight that instilled the necessary actions and reactions in the event of this sort of disaster.  Gawande points out that no matter how hard Sullenberger tried to make that point, “It was as if we simply could not process the full reality of what had been required to save the people on that plane.”  Call it the deutero-Protestant work ethic:  We must find the single person responsible and either make them a hero or a villain.  We do not know how to see the virtue or the villainy in systems.  This is not less true here where scripture comes to us as an interlocking system of writers, readers, retainers, copiers, canonizers, and translators.  All of these handlers of what has come to us as the words of Jesus are members of the same system--the Church.  There is no access to Jesus without the church. 

This does not excuse any of the gross misdeeds conducted by these systems and Sullivan is right to call these into accountability.  It is to argue, however, that would be followers of Jesus Christ must participate in the continual effort to bring the church of Jesus Christ to places of needed repentance rather than create yet another "They" that "we" refuse to engage.    

What Communion Involves--Part 1

            1 Corinthians 11 contains teachings about communion and one part of it is familiar to us.  It's the part that tells us what it means to receive communion faithfully.  We refer to them in church short-hand as “Words of institution.  It's the verses 11:23-26.  “Lord Jesus . . . night betrayed . . . bread for you . . . remember me.  Cup of new covenant . . . remember me.”  It summarizes the conditions of what it takes for people to receive communion in a faithful way—it takes a gathered worshiping body. For reasons I won't go into, I believe strongly that communion is not a part of private devotion.  We read scripture in private, pray in private, fast in private, even sing hymns privately.  But I don't believe we should take communion in private.  To faithfully receive communion, this text suggests to us that the narrative needs to be shared.  This story of Jesus initiating the Lord's  Supper is found in four places in scripture.  And the language suggests that it the narrative itself was something people repeated whenever they received communion.  So, we gather the worshipers, we tell the story, and we remember—Remembrance is a central component of receiving communion.  We remember and give thanks for the whole life of Jesus—his incarnational birth, his authoritative teaching, his compassionate ministry, his boundary-crossing meals, his triumphal entry, his disciple-making community, his arrest, trial and sacrificial crucifixion and his glorious resurrection.  But, says Paul, though we celebrate his whole life in Lord's Supper, we pay particular attention to the fact that whenever we eat this bread and drink this cup we proclaim the Lord's Death until he comes.”  So to receive communion faithfully means to have gathered worshipers, retold story, and Christ-centered memory. 

Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday 2012

Matthew 6:1-4, 19-21

Letty Russell a long-time professor of theology at Yale Divinity School said, "The whole story of the New Testament revolves around this one theme: diakonia, service."  Service is not the most glamorous of themes to revolve around.  We might fill in the blank differently with "Resurrection" maybe--a word that becomes important as we come closer to Easter Sunday. Or "Redemption." OR "Faith," "Hope," or the greatest of these, "Love."  All far more glamorous than that word "service."  

Service, after all, begats sweat and sweat begats body odor and body odor when it is full grown begats stink and stink is not glamorous.  Service will give you blisters, calluses, a sore throat, and sunburn.  Service means spending the night on the floor praying that the Jr. High kids will stop giggling and stay put.  Service is acidic soap suds and hot water and a scouring pad.  It's cracking eggs and peeling potatoes.  Service is cleaning toilets and making copies.  It's choir rehearsal and Sunday School lessons and the call in the middle of the night.  Service is board meetings and support meetings and prayer  meetings.  Service is a handwritten note saying, "I'm here for you," "I'm thinking about you," "I value you." “Are you OK?"  Service is mulch and dirty diapers and comfort dolls.  It is crafting banners and hanging dry wall and sorting cans and hospital visits.  It's beans and rice and water.  It's hearts and hands filled with whatever a person needs get them over this point and to the next point.  It's a friendly greeting on Sunday morning.  It's opening your house so that others can worship.   It is the right hand putting in the offering plate what the left hand would remove if the left hand had received the memo.  Service is the conversation at the bedside, OR through the bullet proof glass or communion pushed through a fence or a friend staring at the tree the tornado has dropped on your house saying, "I'll get my saw."  Service is the carnation pinned to a lapel and the hand over hand journey of a coffin lifted by friends saying good bye.  Service is beautiful but not glamorous.   

Jesus style service is, in fact, required to be anything but glamorous.   "Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before others to be seen by them."   I've talked about service a long time and listened to people talk about service a lot longer.  And we generally try to dress it up. We say things like, "When you serve you get more out serving than the people you serve do."  Which is probably true if we're talking about my construction abilities.  You know, but there are some people who actually manage to do some real good in this world.  We talk about how service reveals the miracle side of life.  And we tell the touching story to help convince people to serve others.  But there's only so much dressing up of service and eventually people are going to see the dirty elbows and dirty knees and the dirty, dirty feet.  There's only so much dressing up we can do before Jesus taps us on the shoulder and says, "That's not the reason for doing service."  It's not about dressing up.  

So we’re left to wonder, if service isn’t glamorous what does it mean.? Is Letty Russell correct in saying “The whole story of the New Testament revolves around” service?  All of the rest that this weekend is about--the redemption and the resurrection, the agony and the victory, it is all designed to reconcile God and us and to reconcile us to each other.  And we must ask, what kind of God are we being reconciled to and how are we to be reconciled to one another.  And Jesus said:  here, let me show you. On a night leading to us arrest Jesus closed the doors and with his closest friends and his betrayer Jesus removed his clothes, wrapped a towel around his waste and he washed their feet--all their dirty, dirty feet.  And said, you call me teacher and Lord and rightly so now I your teacher and Lord have set and example for you also should wash one another's feet,.  Indeed the whole act of Jesus's life is a single and seamless act of God serving thumanity--the humanity God made, and loves, and allowed to wander and came to retrieve.  This is the character of God and God's vision for us.  Service is the remaking of ourselves in the image of Christ.  But why serve without expectation of recognition beyond that which God sees and knows? To serve for nothing else than the affirmation of God?

I mean, it's lousy public relations for one who would be Lord and Savior of the world.  Didn't Jesus know that the better path is to find people who need your help, tell their story on national television, give them a few days of vacation and while their gone remodel their house. "Jesus, move that boat." That’s a much better catch phrase than those who could come after me must follow me.  And if we could talk back at Jesus, we would explain, ever so respectfully, that if you don't advertise your service as loudly as possible then people might misinterpret what you're doing.  They might challenge that healing is a violation of Sabbath law.  They might say that feeding is an attempt to reorder the economy.  They might say that welcoming children overturns the social order.  Far better, don't you think, when giving your gift to do so with trumpet blast so that everything is perfectly clear.  But that's not what Jesus said.  And so he left himself wide open that people might misunderstand  the wood and the hammer and the nails and the sweat and the pain and the blood.  They just might walk past and assume that what you intend as service is in fact a punishment, a curse, an execution, a crucifixion. Jesus took this risk and calls us to do the same—the risk that the only people who will understand what you are doing are those who see with the eyes of faith.  He said “Take up your cross and follow me.” There are days I wouldn't risk the confusion.  I'd take the trumpet blast. I’d shoot glamorous. But I'm not charge.  And a servant is not greater than the master.  So we serve in memory and in unity as Christ has served us.  Thanks be to God. 

Response to Sandhya Jha

I found Sandhya Jha's recent post on gender really helpful, thoughtful and it sparked a flood of thoughts for me. It did not feel like “old news” to me. I wrote the following response directly to her.  It got long, so I thought I'd post it here. 

I chuckled with her reference to “Very progressive man.” My first thought was—oh, good—she’s not talking about me. Then I retreated where I usually do in these conversations to saying, “We’re not the ones you need to convince. Other women are the biggest obstacle. Convince them.” That was the first point of conviction for me. Because as soon as I thought that I though about often I let other men intimidate me. I’m not successful at persuading them. I’m often not courageous enough to try. So, I need to quit using that cop out line or else accept that if feminist women are responsible for the non-feminist women then I have to accept responsibility for persuading the unrepentant men (Oh Brother).

I think a lot of times “Progressive Men” try to appear feminist but don’t actually get there. I’ve been struck by a few of my strong feminist friends who married somewhat conservative almost red-neck men. The thought that occurred to me is that a lot of the most conservative, politically insensitive people I know are very respectful in one-on-one relationships with their wives and in fact everyone they meet. They don’t try to prove that they aren’t sexist they have an ethic of respect. It’s the weirdest thing that some of the nicest people, most willing to help folk around here are Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly fans. I simply don’t get it.

It shouldn’t surprise me, though. I know that there is a profound difference between what my “ideology” says and the feelings and motivations generated by synapses, hormones, and hardwiring. I am Romans 7 walking around in the 21st Century. That’s not an attempt to divert responsibility just a way of saying responsibility for actions means more than changing ideology. As you said, “Your desire for me to feel completely liberated . . . .” Right. There’s a long and arduous—not so straight but definitely narrow—road from good intentions to healthier interactions and systems.

Which leads me to say that part of what has to happen now is the development of simpler norms. You’re final point is where my anxiety kicks in—there are different kinds of feminism. As an aside, I’ll say, I have always been of the opinion that men cannot be truly feminist and the white middle-class cannot be liberationist. It has to do with my understanding of theological anthropology (or psychology). I believe that self-deception, which ideology often leads to, is one of the biggest barriers to wholeness. I believe that we must be constantly vigilant about our participation in injustice or to put the word simply—sin. I can be informed by feminism but to claim to be a feminist too easily drifts into self-deception that I have conquered all my sexist tendencies. So when I decline to claim my own feminism in the conversation, it’s not because I disagree. Aside over.

The challenge now is that with the diverse opinions about how gender should be thought about and lived out, it is much more difficult to know how to respond. If it’s dark outside and one of my women colleagues is still in the building. Do I offend her autonomy by waiting until she’s done to see that she makes it to the car safely (our zip code—76010--has problems to rival any inner-city neighborhood) OR is it just showing respect per your point #1 (BTW, I know my colleagues well enough to know to stay. They know me well enough to tell me if they think I’ve crossed a line and said or done something insensitive). Simple actions of “chivalry” become complicated internal dialogues for many men who are trying to be (or appear) non-sexist. That’s an isolated example of what happens all the time. Somewhere in the attempts to appear non-sexist we have stopped using language like the language one of your commenters posted. We don’t say to boys, “Be a gentlemen and treat ladies with respect.” It sounds patronizing and archaic. I heard a discussion a few weeks ago on NPR (can’t remember which show) where the women in the discussion said they didn’t like the term “ladies.” Really? Someone please explain how we’re supposed to keep this straight. Paradigm shifts create stages where old norms have fallen away but new norms have yet to emerge. Maybe that’s where we’re living but, in the absence of clear norms particularly as it relates to the education of boys the vacuum will be filled with the sort garbage we’ve heard recently.

Finally, and somewhat unrelated to the preceding, the Fluke controversy was tragic. Limbaugh’s rhetoric was some of the worst I’ve ever heard. Frankly, I think we need to have a conversation about religious liberty and to what extent the first amendment protects the policies of religious affiliated organizations. Personally, I think an insurance company should regard birth control as essential. I see it as preventative medicine and I think insurance companies would do well to be more aggressive with promoting preventative medicine. But, whether companies should be compelled by law to implement policies that are morally problematic for their shareholders is a lot more complicated than it appears. Fluke deserved a serious and nuanced response and serious scrutiny. What she got instead was a pundit willing to simplify it below the waist (where a man’s brain is a lot of the time) and drive it straight to the gutter. In doing so, he severely crippled people like myself who think that Fluke’s arguments deserve some heavy counter-argument and dialogue. Not on moralistic grounds about sex but on constitutional grounds about the extent of religious freedom and freedom of conscious in our complex interdependent context. Unfortunately, any male adversary to Fluke’s argument will now get coupled with Limbaugh’s rant and be dismissed out of hand as sexist.

Search Engine

Maddie's Search Engine

Loading

Search Engine

Loading

Keep the Christ in Christmas

-->

They’re called nomina sacra—sacred names. The Earliest Christian scribes who copied the books of the Greek New Testament by hand so that they could be circulated to other churches had a relatively uniform set of abbreviations for divine names. For example-the word for “humanity” in the ancient Greek of the New Testament was anthropos. You can imagine writing that several times could become tedious so the scribes would write two capital letters—an alpha and a nu and then put a line over it. The word for God –Theos—would be abbreviated with a capital theta with a line above it. The nomina sacra for Jesus was Iota Eta and if it was in the nominative case (that is as the subject of the sentence) it would have a concluding sigma. It would look like IHS though many Christians think that means “In His Service.” Perhaps the most profound nomina sacra is the one used for cross, in Greek Stauro and in crucify stauroo. It looks like a smooth, curved capital “P” with a cross bar. It looks like a man on a cross. Of course with the persistent use of Christ, there was a nomina sacra for Christ. It was a chi with an line on top. A capital chi looks like an uppercase X. Nomina sacra were the forerunners of Christian symbols used to this day.

I mention that because this time of year we frequently see Christmas abbreviated as X-Mas. Many people assume that this is an attempt to remove “Christ” from the season. In reality, this particular abbreviation has a long standing tradition in Christian literature. Evenso, many Christians feel that the culture is trying to minimize the central of Jesus and maximize festivities, commercialism and marketing. People think that because the culture is trying to maximize festivities, commercialism and marketing. So everywhere, something of a tug of war that usually gets portrayed as a culture war is waged in this country over the appropriate expressions of religion. Instead of crafting scenarios where we are the victims, perhaps Christians should learn from early generations and see in simple letters and figures, representations of Christ.

Mystal's Judgment of Helping and Moral Superiority

Recently, Elie Mystal, a blogger for Above The Law, took issue with a column by George Will challenging Affirmative Action. The blog post started with the following paragraph and a half.

People who think giving charity to those less fortunate also gives them the right to direct the personal choices of those receiving the charity are some of the worst people on the planet. The biggest offenders are religious organizations: “Ooh, here’s some food. Yes. You like food, don’t you? I bet you’re hungry — I can tell ’cause I can see your ribs. Well, it’s all you can eat in here… first, just say you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior. SAY IT. Wonderful. Bon appétit!”

Organizations do it all the time, but there are plenty of individuals who also think giving a guy a buck gives them the right to tell the recipient how to spend the money. This behavior is the worst because it takes what should be a generous gesture (giving somebody money) and turns it into a cheap way to make a BS point about your moral superiority (“If this man did just one thing more like me, he wouldn’t have to beg for my scraps.”).

The rest of the article was devoted to refuting George Will's stance against Affirmative Action. Mystal's specific arguments about Affirmative Action made sense to me though they were largely based on his summary of arguments made by one of his former professors. He didn't make it as clear in the argument why he distrusted Will's motivation. He had interacted with Will personally. Perhaps he knows something from those interactions that he does not spell out in this article. In any case, from my perspective the complexities of responsible charitable assistance and the complexities of Affirmative Action are too intricate to be grouped together in this manner.

Too much of his criticism hinges on his perceptions of people's motivations. Will is "disingenuous;" some people who give charity are really just advancing their own "moral superiority." Public argumentation about policies and practices should limit the scope of investigation to assessing the harms and benefits of particular policies or practices. People's true motivations are rarely clear to themselves and virtually inaccessible to others. Let's judge trees by their fruits rather than their sap. People can do the wrong thing for the right reasons and the right thing for the wrong reasons. In the end, it's the effect of what people do that can and should be scrutinized.

I have worked in professional Christian Ministry for twenty years. During that time, I have administered thousands of dollars of assistance on behalf of the churches I have served. I have never once treated a confession of faith in Jesus Christ as a prerequisite for giving assistance nor have I ever required someone to listen to a gospel presentation to receive assistance. I am familiar with the work of a number of Christian ministries. None that I know of require a confession of faith prior to giving assistance. A few--by no means the majority--do require people to listen to a gospel presentation first, but none requires acceptance of that presentation. Mystal's claim that "Organizations do it all the time . . ." is an assertion made without the benefit of concrete evidence.

The judgment that people who do this are among "the worst people on the planet" is an unjustified hyperbole. He claims that such people are driven by moral superiority. I agree that moral superiority is bad--by the way, I think Jesus felt the way Mystal does about moral superiority--but I'm not sure I'm prepared to condemn the morally superior in the hottest places of hell. At best, Mystal makes a good argument that people who oppose Affirmative Action are uninformed or misguided. The link between Affirmative Action and charity is not clear. Further, labeling the well-intentioned who attach strings to their assistance as "the worst people on the planet" would require greater detailing of the harms involved.

Finally, such an argument does little to aid a genuine dialogue on the ways assistance can be offered in helpful ways. Many people desire to be helpful, compassionate good neighbors AND unfortunately enact their helping behavior in unhelpful, prejudiced, judgmental and destructive ways. Many of the people inclined to help are also inclined to be self-reflective about their helping behavior. Repeatedly I have seen people engaging in helping behavior and simultaneously assessing their own embedded prejudices and assumptions. People are mixed bags and not as neatly categorized as heroes or villains in the way that Mystal seems to do.

In a complex world filled with challenging problems, the sort of unelaborated assertions given by Mystal frustrate people who are searching for ways to exercise their compassion in wise and truly helpful ways.