Christmas is one of the hardest times of year for street-involved people.  Granted, it’s a time when they receive more free stuff than usual, but more powerful than the stuff are the feelings of loneliness and loss, and the many painful or traumatic memories about family, or the lack thereof, that are triggered at this time.  There’s a reason why acts of suicide and self-harm go up at this time of year.
And so, I thought I’d post a link to the “Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues.  Here’s a bit of Christmas music for all the lovely motherfuckers who are going to spend Christmas eve in the drunk tank, the hospitals, and the homeless shelters.  God bless us, everyone.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff3aoSyYOVs&feature=related]

[Ben Myers recently posted ’10 theological theses on art’.  This is my response.  As you can see, I find his theses — like the vast majority of Christian reflections on art — to be problematical.]
(1) Theodor Adorno famously remarked that writing poetry, after Auschwitz, is barbaric — Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben ist barbarisch.  This, then, prompted others to explore the possibility of doing any form of theology, music, or art ‘after Auschwitz’ (i.e. after the Holocaust).  And rightfully so.  Adorno is not simply questioning poetry; he is questioning the entire web of Western culture which has now been revealed as indissolubly connected with the mass production of death.  Illustrating this point, George Steiner writes: ‘We now know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning’ and Adorno adds: ‘The idea that after this war life could go on as normal, that culture can be resurrected… is idiotic.’  Thus, Adorno and Steiner both pose deep moral challenges to our cultural or artistic endeavours.
(2) It is these challenges that are the proper starting place for any Christian discussion of art.  Why?  Because Christianity necessarily privileges the experiences and perspectives of those who are oppressed and who are not only excluded from the circles of the cultured, but from the community of the living.  This is what necessarily results from following a crucified Lord.
(3) However, to question the value and role of art ‘after Auschwitz’ does not yet take us to the depths of our current dilemma.  After all, the Holocaust is now more than half a century in our past and the world — including the world of culture and art — has gone on.  People have forgotten what happened, the survivors have slowly been dying, and we are left with little more than the sentimental representations of the Holocaust provided for us by Hollywood — precisely the sort of representations Adorno warned us about.  Thus, we have become incapable of creating art ‘after Auschwitz’ because we are incapable of properly remembering Auschwitz.  Therefore, when we visit the location of Auschwitz, as a tourist destination, we are engaging not in an act of remembrance, but in an act that illustrates our inability to remember.  Indeed, this is why aging Holocaust survivors are three times more likely to commit suicide than others — they are the ones who, unlike us, are unable to forget Auschwitz (which then leads us back to Adorno’s greater question: ‘Is life possible after Auschwitz?’  The answer, I suppose, lies in series of questions: ‘Life for whom?  The survivors?  The perpetrators?  The spectators?’ and ‘What sort of life?’ but exploring these would take us too far from the topic at hand).
(4) That said, we must immediately recognise that we are not really living after Auschwitz.  Proper reflection upon our contemporary situation should lead us to conclude that we are living during Auschwitz.  By saying this we are not suggesting that the Holocaust of the Second World War is still ongoing; rather, we are retaining an understanding of ‘Auschwitz’ as a way of referring to the mass production of death related to Western culture and its self-absorbed lust for property and power.  Thus, for example, every 200 days something equivalent to the Holocaust occurs — every 200 days another 10,000,000 people, mostly children, die due to starvation, water-borne illnesses, and AIDS.  These are just a few of the largely preventable, but largely ignored, causes of death in our world.  Causes of death, we must repeat, that are intimately linked to the web of Western culture, politics, and economics.
(5) Therefore, the question becomes, ‘what is the role of art during Auschwitz?’ and the answer, just as with the question above, depends upon whom is doing the art.  On the one hand, we have seen that, even within Auschwitz, inmates produced art.  Indeed, oppressed and persecuted peoples have always produced art, and it cannot be denied that both the act of producing that art, and that art itself, contain a great deal of life-giving-and-sustaining power.
(6) On the other hand, we must ask ourselves about the value or significance of art produced by those who are numbered amongst the oppressors and spectators during, but outside of, Auschwitz.  Here, we must become much more critical.  All too often such art is simply a contemporary manifestation of the madness and cruelty of the Roman dictator, Nero, who is rumoured to have played the lyre and sang in theatrical garb… while Rome burned.  Thus, while children starve to death, we paint pretty pictures; while children die from drinking dirty water, we analyse films; while children are destroyed by AIDS, we deconstruct classical literature.
(7) Therefore, to continue to engage in art as though Auschwitz never occured, and as though Auschwitz is not continuing to occur, is unjustifiable and immoral.
(8) Instead, art must be created or performed in such a way that it becomes a part of a life-giving process of mutually liberating solidarity with victims and survivors, the dying and those left for dead, around the world.
(9) Indeed, to think that art can ‘seek the beautiful’, or be ‘a parable of redemption’, or come into the ‘proximity’ of the ‘beauty of God’ in the ‘crucified Christ’ apart from engagement in this life-giving process of mutually liberating solidarity is foolishness.  Again, more strongly: to engage in artistic endeavours that seek the beauty of God (which is found in the crucified Christ), without simultaneously engaging the crucified Christ who is revealed in the poor people of history is, to borrow Adorno’s language, idiotic.
(10) To make this assertion is not to suggest that all art must then engage in some sort of overt or superficial didacticism.  It is simply to suggest that the Christian artist — like Christians in every other profession — stands under the Lordship of Christ and is accountable to certain basic, and unavoidable, Christian commitments.

How long, now, have we been waiting for you to come back to us?
Almost eighty generations.  Almost two thousand years.
How long, now, have we been waiting for you to come back to us?
Countless wars.  Countless plagues and famines and floods.
How long, now, have we been waiting for you to come back to us?
We are bleeding.
How long?
We are suffering.
How long?
We are dying.
How long?
Our hearts are breaking.
How long?
Our minds are breaking.
How long?
Our bodies are breaking.
We are still waiting.
For salvation.
Waiting.
For healing.
Waiting.
For redemption.
Waiting.
For liberation.
Waiting.
For life.
Waiting.
For you.
Return to us.
Our voices have grown hoarse.
Return to us.
Our eyes have grown dry.
Return to us.
Our hands have grown weak.
Return to us.
Our hearts have grown hard.
We are lost without you.
O, come.
So lost.
O, come.
So lost.
Immanuel.

Well, I’ve enjoyed a number of good conversations on blogs other than my own, over this last year, and I thought I would link to a few here (for those who are interested… and for my own reference).
The first was a conversation at Ben Myers’ blog regarding Tom Waits (see here).
The second was a conversation with Gregory MacDonald, the pseudonymous author of The Evangelical Universalist, regarding hermeneutics (see here).
The third was a conversation I began with Michael Wittmer, author of the recently published Don’t Stop Believing: Why Living Like Jesus is Not Enough, regarding original sin (see here).  Unfortunately, Mike appears to have bowed out of that conversation rather early (so it goes on blogs).
So, there are a few past conversations that have stood out to me.  I’ll mention one future conversation now as well.
On March 21, 2009, I’ll be leading a workshop at the Evolving Church Conference in Toronto.  The conference is titled “Amidst the Powers” and the keynote speakers are Stanley Hauerwas, Walter Wink, and Marva Dawn.  Other workshop speakers include the likes of Brian Walsh, Sylvia Keesmaat, June Keener Wink, and many others.  I will be presenting on this topic: “Speaking about ‘the Powers’ from Places of Privilege: Challenges and Contradictions” (for those who might be interested, you can see the conference website here).

A little while back, R. O. Flyer wrote a post called “Thoughts on the Future of Liberation Theology” (see here). In this post, he highlights how experience plays a crucial role in many liberation theologies, and how the experience of the poor in particular functions as “the central criterion of adjudicating between good and bad theologies”. This, then leads Flyer to assert that liberation theology is fundamentally reactive because of the way in which it prioritises praxis over theoria.
Further, Flyer finds this emphasis upon experience to be problematical as appeals to experience are all too often made by others as well — notably those liberal theologies that have been disciplined by the logic of capitalism. However, noting that all of us are shaped by our own particular experiences and inextricably entwined in our own particular histories, Flyer asserts that the crux of the problem is this: “the specific move made by much of liberation theology… that sees experience… as more fundamental than revelation.”
Thus, based upon this understanding of the nature of liberation theology’s experiential methodology, Flyer concludes that liberation theology might well be a doomed enterprise.
So what are we to make of all this? On the one hand, I’m somewhat perplexed by what Flyer is trying to do. I’m not sure exactly how he is relating ‘liberation theology’ to ‘liberal theology’ and ‘the logic of capitalism.’ He seems to be saying that each somehow uses ‘experience’ as a primary methodological category, but he doesn’t talk much about how each party uses experience — and they certainly do use it in different ways (which leads liberation theologians and liberal theologians to often be at odds with each other).
On the other hand, it is worth revisiting the role of experience in doing theology. First of all, I find it odd that Flyer creates such a sharp distinction, perhaps even an opposition, between ‘experience’ and ‘revelation’. Flyer seems to be contrasting these things in the way in which Barth contrasts ‘natural theology’ with revelation-based theology, but this is an entirely wrong way of approaching this topic. When liberation theologians talk about the priority of praxis, they are talking about prioritising the experience of the revelation of God in particular historical realities. In this regard, the liberation theologians are actually very close to Barth’s own method. Barth writes out of his experience of being met by the living God in that God’s revelatory action, and the liberation theologians simply complement and add flesh to this approach by arguing that God tends to come out to meet us in God’s revelatory action, in certain places and people.
Secondly, I believe that the theologies of the New Testament writers are just as deeply experience-based (and therefore just as ‘reactive’) as liberation theology. That is to say, the understanding of Jesus as Messiah and Lord, in the Gospels and elsewhere, is entirely dependent upon the experience of encountering the empty tomb and the resurrected Jesus. All NT Christology is reacting to this experience. Similarly, the inclusion of the Gentiles in the people of God, without requiring them to undergo circumcision or follow Jewish food laws, is entirely dependent upon the experience of Gentiles manifesting the Spirit apart from these things. Paul’s ecclesiology is deeply rooted in experience, and is thus also fundamentally reactive.
In fact, when we get down to it, all Christian theology can be described as reactive because all we are doing in our theology, and in our Christian living, is responding to God’s gracious initiative. This is not to say that our reactions can’t also be creative — they can be — but it is sufficient to show how an ideologically loaded label (because, you know, it’s bad or unimaginative to be ‘reactive’ these days!) is actually much more neutral in this context than we might first imagine.
So, where does this leave us in terms of how we analyse liberation theology? Essentially here: we are incapable of properly analysing and criticising liberation theology unless we first enter into the experiences to which it calls us. Thus, despite the intellectual discussion that has ebbed and flowed over the years, liberation theology remains (in the West) a largely untested thesis. My suspicion is that things (in the West) will remain this way. Liberation theology is ‘doomed’, not because of a faulty methodology, but because it takes following Jesus (who was also doomed) more seriously than most other theological movements.

[The Pharisees] tie up heavy loads and put them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them… Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. (Mt 23)

When approaching passages such as this one, it is crucial that we identify ourselves with the Pharisees who are being challenged by Jesus. Unfortunately, I suspect that we tend towards letting ourselves off the hook and glossing over remarks directed at the Pharisees because we assume that Jesus is confronting their Jewish ‘righteousness based on works’, whereas we all know that we are Christians saved by grace through faith.
However, this way of thinking grossly misrepresents the Pharisees and the Judaism(s) of Jesus’ day. The Pharisees, and the Jewish people in general, did not affirm a ‘works-righteousness’. Rather, they practiced a grace-based form of faith — by God’s gracious election they had been born into the people of God and now they acted in certain ways, not to ‘earn their salvation’ but to demonstrate their membership within that people. Thus, to use an oft-quoted phrase, the question confronting the Pharisees, just like the question confronting the recipients of Paul’s epistles, is not that of ‘getting in’ but that of ‘staying in’. In both cases, one is saved by grace and, in both cases, one remains in that grace by responding appropriately.
All that to say, I hope that this helps the contemporary Western Christian reader to begin to identify more closely with the Pharisees in the Gospels. Other factors strengthen this identification process — rootedness within places of privilege, and comfort; claiming high religious status for one’s self in relation to others; drawing strict boundary lines between members of the in-group and those outside; shunning many who are labeled as ‘impure’ or ‘sinners’; and so on.
Consequently, when we read of Jesus accusing the Pharisees of piling unbearable burdens upon the shoulders of others we should ask ourselves how we engage in this sort of activity.
Sadly, I believe that Christians on all ends of the spectrum do this all too frequently. Let’s take a few examples from opposite ends.
First, let us take the way that Evangelicals and Conservative Roman Catholics focus on the issue of abortion. It seems to me that a good many, perhaps the majority, of those who are outspoken in this issue are approaching it in the Pharisaic way that Jesus condemns. Without regard for that which motivates a person to have an abortion, the dominant Conservative Christian approach appears to be one that simply condemns abortion, and creates a sharp division between the high-status righteous (who are ‘pro-life’) and the low-status sinners who have had abortions.
Unfortunately, as I have argued in more detail elsewhere, abortion is primarily a symptom of (at least) three root causes: (1) poverty; (2) a lack of respect for the lives of the disabled (NB: anywhere between 80-95% of babies-to-be with Down Syndrome are aborted in the Western world); and (3) the pursuit of a lifestyle that prioritises one’s own comfort, status, and goals above all others.
Therefore, unless Christians are seriously addressing and responding to these core issues, there is a good chance that all their talk about abortion is simply placing unbearably heavy loads onto the shoulders of others. Unless Christians are genuinely journeying alongside of poor women and families, unless Christians are demonstrating a commitment to the disabled, and unless Christians are pursuing lives of sacrifice focused upon others, then there is a good chance that Jesus’ words in Mt 23 apply to those who speak against abortion.
Second, moving across the spectrum of Christian positions, let’s take the example of so-called Christian radicals, and those committed to alternative Christian lifestyles. Here, I’m thinking of those who buy locally grown organic foods, fair trade coffee, clothes not made in sweatshops, and those who avoid shopping at places like McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, and so on. Now, while this is all well and good (I also try to live this sort of lifestyle — so this section of my post is directed at myself), it is absolutely crucial that those who live in this way don’t just tell others that they must try to live in this way; them must empower them do the same. After all, these things are much easier to do if one has a certain amount of wealth (to be able to afford more expensive fair trade or local items), a certain amount of life skills (to know how to prepare healthy meals), and a certain amount of education (to be able to discern which corporations and structures are corrupt and corrupting).
Therefore, if one simply pursues this lifestyle, as some sort of better way of living, without also helping to empower those who lack the requisite wealth, life skills, and education, then one has simply become like the Pharisees. Once again, one places unbearable burdens on the backs of others and replicates sharp boundaries between the high-status and privileged righteous (who live conscious of these things) and the low-status and poor sinners (who participate in evil structures).
Therefore, if Christians on all ends of the spectrum wish to avoid the damning criticisms of the Pharisees, raised by Jesus in Mt 23, we must engage in a public moral discourse that simultaneously analyses, invites, and empowers.

You know, I try to avoid just posting quotations from whomever I happen to be reading, or links to other blogs but, dangnabbit, sometimes somebody just really, really nails a topic.  In this case, it’s Tim Minchin and I think he’s got a great perspective on charity.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGas0D9_zgI]

[On November 13th, Dr. John Stackhouse and I engaged in a public discussion of the question written in the title of this post.  I have held off blogging about this because I was told that what we said was going to be published through Regent College Audio (the discussion took place as a forum at Regent).  Unfortunately, I have been told that there was a problem with the recording, and so this will not be taking place.  Therefore, I have decided to ‘publish’ my opening remarks here.  What follows is the transcript of what I said in the first fifteen minutes of the forum.  Dr. Stackhouse then responded for fifteen minutes, we each had another five minutes to respond to each other, and then we took questions from the audience.]

1.

We have come together today to discuss the question: “Is Christian Scholarship accountable to the Poor?” There is a good chance that many of us have never seriously considered this question. It is worth asking ourselves why this is the case: why does it seem unnatural or unusual to connect the Academy with the Poor?

Perhaps, we could argue, the roots of this go back to an ‘Industrial’ or ‘Scientific’ mentality that compartmentalises all the various aspects of life, in order to study each in isolation from the others. After all, this mentality is part of what gave birth to the Academy as we know it, and it continues to be reflected in the Christian Academy as it exists today – we have divisions between ‘theology’ and ‘ethics’, divisions between research-oriented students and ministry-oriented students, and so on. Now, granted, this division of labour has resulted in a great deal of productivity, but it is worth exploring some of the other results.

One of the worst results has been the divide that has grown up between theory and practice. This divide is now so deeply established that, for the most part, we don’t even think to connect our research to our lives as we live them. Thus, for example, I could write an A paper on Pauline notions of cruciformity, but the chances are that I won’t make much of a meaningful connection between my paper and my life. Perhaps I’ll think about giving a little more money away to charity afterwards; perhaps I’ll try to be more patient with my partner. Either way, both responses, although decent enough, are quite superficial and are a far cry from allowing our lives to be fundamentally challenged and reoriented by our research. Sadly, I suspect that this superficial approach is how most of us tend to connect our scholarship to our living. We just aren’t accustomed, or trained, to make deeper connections.

Another of the results of this compartmentalisation of life, is that we are not accustomed to thinking of the Academy in conjunction with any other social body. In general, the Academy is seen as a self-justifying institution, accountable only to itself. Therefore, when confronted with this question, the general scholar will most likely respond that he or she is not accountable to anyone or anything, other than the rigours of his or her own discipline.

Of course, Christian scholars, like many at Regent, will likely give a significantly modified response to this question. At Regent, it is widely recognised that Christian scholarship is accountable to its Lord – Jesus Christ – and it is also recognised that Christian scholarship is accountable to the Church and her mission within the world.

Unfortunately, for many there is still a great divide between our understandings of Jesus and the Church, and the Poor. Thus, when confronted with the question at hand, a good many of us might respond: “I know I am accountable to Jesus, and I reckon I could be accountable to the Church, but why would I be accountable to the Poor?”

Now, before we go any further let us define our terms. By the term “Christian scholarship,” I am referring to the work done by professional researchers, writers, and teachers, as well as the work done by students who aspire to these things, within institutions of higher education. I am referring to what happens in places like Regent. This is fairly straight forward.

Defining “the Poor” requires more care. There are two extremes that I want to avoid. First, I want to reject a too narrow, overly material, definition of “the Poor” — one that limits the term to the economically disadvanaged. Second, I want to reject a too broad, overly spiritual, definition of “the Poor” – one that allows people like you and I to call ourselves “Poor” because we’re (supposedly) “poor in Spirit”. Properly understood, poverty is experienced in the economic-material, socio-political, and religious-spiritual diminsions of a person’s life. Thus, the cornerstone of poverty is economic-material – signaled by the absence of income or possessions, often due to the loss of one’s economic base (say one’s kinship group, one’s capital, one’s health, or one’s means of “making a living”) – but this is both the cause and result of the loss of socio-political status, and the experiences of marginality, social vulnerability, and openness to exploitation. Furthermore, this is often aggravated by religious-spiritual dynamics which heighten the isolation and oppression of the poor, because it labels them as ‘sinners’ and treats them as outcasts bound for damnation.

Of course, there are always degrees of poverty, but the male and transgendered sex workers whom I have gotten to know in recent years, illustrate this combination of things quite well. They suffer from economic-material poverty – being homeless, and lacking an economic base due to abandonment, addictions, mental health issues, and other illnesses like HIV and Hepatitis – they suffer from socio-political exploitation, marginality, and vulnerability – being required to sell their bodies for sex in order to make money, they are targetted and beaten by pimps, johns and police officers (in equal measure), and are almost entirely invisible within society at large – and, finally, they are ostracised by the Church – in this regard, it is telling that, in the ten year history of the drop-in that focuses on male and transgendered sex workers, I am the first Christian to volunteer there.

Thus, when I ask: “Is Christian scholarship accountable to the poor?” I am thinking of these sex workers and others like them, not just within our own city, but around the world. Does our research, writing, teaching, and living as Christians necessarily have something to do with these people?

2.

I believe that it does, and here are the steps that lead me to this conclusion.

The first step is taken when we begin to overcome the fracturing of the Christian life. As Christians, we should be seeking to live integrated lives, wherein all areas of our lives are subjected to the lordship of Jesus. We need to begin to bring the scattered pieces back together.

In this regard, it is helpful to reimagine our Christian academic efforts as the pursuit of wisdom, and not simply the gathering of knowledge. The gathering of knowledge is the accumulation of information (theories, perceptions, discoveries, etc.), but wisdom, understood biblically, is something different. In the bible, a person is said to be wise when that person lives according to the will of God (which suggests that this person also knows what the will of God is). Thus, although knowledge may be something we carry around in our minds, wisdom is something we do with our lives.

The implication of this is that we must surmount the divide between theory and practice, because Scripture tells us that right thinking can only be found in connection with right living. So, to return to the example of my hypothetical A paper on Pauline notions of cruciformity, I would argue that the fact that I got an A on the paper does not accurately reflect whether or not I have actually understood that topic at hand. Rather, how much I understand the topic of cruciformity is directly related to how much my own life becomes cruciform, and has little or nothing to do with the grade I received.

Furthermore, because the Christian life is focused on how we live as Christians, we must go one step further and say that theory must be practice-oriented. It is not enough to say that theory and practice exist in a symbiotic relationship; we must also give practice the place of privilege. This is not to say that there is no place for theory but, for as long as we exist on this side of the new creation of all things, theory must be placed in the service of practice. In this regard, I find myself in agreement with Latin American liberation theologians who define theology as “critical reflection on praxis.”

The second step leading us to the question under discussion today is this: as we begin to piece our fragmented lives back together into some sort of “Christian” whole wherein theory serves practice, we discover that there are certain priorities and demands that apply to all Christians, at all times, in all places. Now, if any of you have read Making the Best of It, or some of Dr. Stackhouse’s other writings, you will know that I will meet a great deal of resistance on this point. So, allow me to try to make my case.

All of us, Dr. Stackhouse included (I think), would agree that there are certain foundational confessions and beliefs that unite, and define, all Christians, at all times, in all places. Notably, the confession of the Lordship of Jesus and the belief that salvation is found in him. To this we could probably add other confessions and beliefs, but the point is that all of us would argue that these confessions are, or at least should be, common to all Christians.

I would like us to expand our thinking in this regard, and argue that there are also certain practices and priorities that are, or should be, common to all Christians, at all times, in all places. Indeed, affirming common confessions, or beliefs, while denying common practices, is, perhaps, one of the more insidious symptoms of the divide between theory and practice.

Therefore, I would like to argue that the preferential option for, and with, the poor is one such common Christian practice. I believe that this preferential option is one of the definitive characteristics of the Christian God, as that God is revealed in history and in Scripture. This preferential option is central to the identity and mission of God. Consequently, it is also central to the identity and mission of the people who claim to follow this God. This is one of the inescapable threads running through, and uniting, the entire biblical narrative. From Ex 2 to Deut 15, to Is 25, Mic 6, Lk 4, Acts 2, Phil 2, James 1, 1 Jn 3, Rev 18 – and a whole host of other passages – we are inescapably confronted with the call to prioritise the poor.

Hence, we arrive at the question confronting us today. The call to prioritise the poor means that we are accountable to the poor – not just as scholars, but as Christians in any profession. Is Christian scholarship accountable to the poor? Yes, it is; because all Christians, as Christians, are accountable to the poor.

3.

Now I reckon that this conclusion is unsettling to most of us – it certainly was to me – so let me try to support it in two further ways. Earlier I mentioned that people at Regent would probably agree that Christian scholarship is accountable to Christ and to the Church. Now I would like to argue that being accountable to Christ means being accountable to the poor, and, being accountable to the Church also means being accountable to the poor. Thus, I hope to demonstrate the intimate and inextricable connection of the poor to both Christ and the Church.

Let us begin with Christ. Matthew 18.20 has been used as one of the foundational verses supporting the notion of the real, sacramental presence of Christ found within the Church. However, what has often been neglected in discussions of Christ’s presence is that an equally strong statement is made regarding the poor in Mt 25.40, 45, when the king in this parable says that whatever is done to “the least of these” is done to the king. Of course, the king in the parable represents Christ and the implication is that whatever we do (or do not do) to the poor is also done (or not done) to Christ. What is interesting is that the union implied between Christ and the poor is even deeper than the union implied between Christ and the Church in Mt 18. While Christ incorporates the Church into his company in Mt 18, he goes one step further and fully incorporates himself into the poor in Mt 25. This reading, then, is further verified by the actual words and deeds performed by Jesus in the Gospels. Jesus becomes one of the poor, he shares their life and their death, and in doing so, he becomes fully identified with them.

In fact, Mt 25, along with further research and my own experiences with and amongst the poor, have convinced me that, just like the Church, the poor are a nation of priests administering God’s presence to the world. There are at least four ways in which the poor perform this duty.

First of all, the poor reveal to us, in history, the bleeding and suffering of God due to the brokenness of creation. The cry of the poor is, simultaneously, God’s cry. The wounds of the poor are, simultaneously, God’s wounds. Hence, the poor are a sacramental and eucharistic presence of the broken body and spilled blood of Christ within history.

Secondly, the poor, like Christ, bear the burden of our sins. They pay the price for our greed, and they bear the burden of our self-indulgent lives. In doing so, they reveal the falsehoods that structure our society, they make manifest the perverse results of our ideologies, and they expose the hypocrisy in our piety. In this regard, the poor are the sacramental presence of Christ known as Truth and Light.

Thirdly, by choosing to respond to us nonviolently – by refusing to harm or rob us, even though we have played a role in taking their food, their clothes, their health, and their loved ones – the poor demonstrate an “amazing grace” towards us. In this regard, the poor are a sacrament of God’s grace in Christ that calls us to conversion.

Finally, returning once again to Mt 25, and building on the point just mentioned, the poor are also a sacramental presence of Christ as Judge. Note well: if we will be judged on the basis of our actions towards the poor, then surely in the work we do – scholarly or otherwise – we are already accountable to the poor.

Consequently, in light of all these things, I must conclude that being accountable to Christ means, at the same time, being accountable to the poor.

Of course, the most immediate and obvious objection to my desire to connect Christ and the poor in this way is that there are many amongst the poor who do not confess Jesus as Lord. In fact, some amongst the poor would deny the lordship of Jesus, so how can we maintain that they are, at the same time, a priestly people and the sacramental presence of the one whom they deny?

The answer to this question is found when we are honest about ourselves. Are not the poor, like us, simul justus et peccator? Do we not, by living self-indulgent lives, deny Christ in our actions, even though we confess Christ with our lips? Yet, do we not, at the same time as we confess this sin, still affirm the sacramental presence of Christ within the Church? We do. Thus, if our sin is that we confess Jeus as Lord while maintaining lifestyles that serve the Lords of Sin and Death, then the poor sin by not recognising the lordship of Jesus (although this is largely because we make Jesus so unlikeable). However, in God’s grace, both parties are still identified with Christ.

This, then, leads to my next assertion: being accountable to the Church means being accountable to the poor. Our previous conclusion regarding Christ’s incorporation of himself into the poor, should lead to the further conclusion that the poor are members of the body of Christ. Again, the biblical narrative confirms this idea.

Let us begin by referring to 2 Ki 24. After we read about the fall of Jerusalem, and learn that the king, the nobles, the officers, the fighting men as well as “all the craftsmen and artisans” are led into exile, the narrator concludes: “Only the poorest people of the land were left.” The poor are not led into exile. Of course, on the one hand, it makes sense that Nebudchadnezzer wouldn’t take the poorest members, since he would have little to gain from them. However, on the other hand, the reader also knows that exile is what happens when God abandons his people to the consequences of their sins. Exile occurs when God says, as he does in Hos 1, “those who were my people, are my people no longer.” Therefore, the ongoing presence of the poorest members in the promised land, means that they have been spared from this punishment. This is not because the poor are any more righteous than others; rather, in this passage, that which permits a person to escape from God’s wrath is poverty. And who are those spared God’s wrath? God’s people.

Fast foward, then, to the arrival of Jesus and his embodied proclamation of the end of exile and the forgiveness of sins. What is intriguing about this is that Jesus simply proclaims the forgiveness of the poor as a fait accompli. The poor are regularly said to be forgiven, even though they do not come to Jesus asking for, or expecting, forgiveness (cf. Mt 9/Mk 2/Lk 5; Lk 7; Jn 8). Jesus’ harsh words, wherein he withholds the proclamation of forgiveness and makes it conditional, are reserved for the wealthy and the well-established – people like you and I. This fits well with our reading of 2 Ki 24. Jesus’ proclamation of forgiveness for the poor is unconditional because the poor were never sent into exile in the first place. The poor were never rejected by God, they were only rejected by other members of their society.

In light of these things, I would assert that our contemporary understandings of church are far too narrow, and reflect a tragic divide between the confessing members of Christ’s body – people like you and I – and the crucified members of Christ’s body – the poor. Therefore, to unite the body of Christ, the confessing members are call to cruciformity, and the crucified members are called to confession. Indeed, apart from this unity, I believe that the body of Christ is sick unto death. In this regard, I would refer us to 1 Cor 11. Here we see a church that is practicing eucharistic table fellowship in such a way that the poor are excluded and marginalised. The result of this is that some members in the Church are growing sick and dying. Although many have been puzzled by this passage, this result should not surprise us. For, on the one hand, when the poor are abandoned, they are abandoned to die of things like malnutrition, starvation, and otherwise treatable illnesses. On the other hand, when the rich abandon the poor in this way, they are acting as subjects of Sin and Death – so it is not surprising that Death would come to claim some of his subjects.

Therefore, although St. Cyprian was correct when he stated extra ecclesiam nulla salus, Jon Sobrino is certainly correct to argue that this necessarily means, extra pauperum nulla salus. The result of this, is that when we say that Christian scholarship is accountable to the Church, we are also saying that Christian scholarship is accountable to the poor.

4.

So, my response to the question under discussion today is a threefold “yes.” First, Christian scholarship is accountable to the poor because the preferential option for the poor is central to the identity and mission of all Christians. Second, Christians scholarship is accountable to the poor because this is one of the necessary implications of our accountability to Christ. Third, Christian scholarship is accountable to the poor because this is also one of the necessary implications of our accountability to the Church.

In his fascinating study of idolatry, We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry (Downers Grove: IVP, 2008), G. K. Beale develops the thesis that the bible consistently argues, and demonstrates, that ‘what people revere, they resemble, either for ruin or restoration.’  That is to say, if one worships lifeless, deaf, and blind idols, then one becomes lifeless, (spiritually) deaf, and (spiritually) blind.  Conversely, if one worships the living God, then one becomes the living reflected image of that God.
In this post, I’m interested in pursuing a thought that Beale develops in his third chapter, wherein he argues that Israel’s first act of idolatry after being liberated from Egypt — the worship of the golden calf, depicted in Ex 32 — becomes paradigmatic of how both Israel, and her idolatry, are described elsewhere in the Old Testament.  What is fascinating about the thought developed by Beale is the way in which Israel is described as a rebellious and wild calf — precisely because she chose to worship a golden calf.  Thus, Beale develops the following five points of comparison:

(1) “stiff necked” (Ex 32:9; 33:3, 5; 34:9) and would not obey, but (2) they were “let loose” because “Aaron had let them go loose” (Ex 32:25), (3) so that “they had quickly turned aside from the way,” (Ex 32:8) and they needed to be (4) “gathered together” again “in the gate” (Ex 32:26), (5) so that Moses could “lead the people” where “God had told him to go (Ex 32:34).

Thus, the people of Israel are depicted as ‘rebellious cows running wild’.
This becomes even more fascinating when one realises that, upon his descent from the mountain, Moses’ face is described as ‘horned.’  Now, as far as I know, the English translations of this passage — Ex 34: 29-35 — tend to favour the translation that Moses’ face “shone with glory” but the literal translation is that his face became horned — as Beale says, ‘it emanated a horned-like radiance’.  Hence, what we see is a divine parody of the people’s idolatry, wherein God chooses to portray himself as a warrior bull figure to demonstrate that he is the truly glorious and powerful God — unlike the pathetic calf Israel has chosen to worship.  This, then, helps explain why this made the people afraid, and why Moses’ face needed to be veiled — if his face had remained unveiled then people may have been gored and utterly destroyed and so, as Beale says, veiling appears to be an act of ‘mercy in the midst of judgment’.  The revelation of God’s glory in the context of active idolatry, rather than finding its reflection in the people, ends up judging the people.
In the remainder of this chapter, Beale then goes on to demonstrate how this event is paradigmatic of later events of idolatry within Israel, and how Israel continues to be described as stiff-necked (like a rebellious calf) or like a cow that has turned aside from the way in which it is to go.
Now, what this automatically made me think of (even though Beale does not develop this connection) were Jesus’ words in Mt 11.28-30:

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Now, in this passage, Jesus is probably alluding to Jeremiah 6.16 and following, which begins in this way:

Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.  But they said, “We will not walk in it” (which then results in disaster for Israel and the bondage of exile).

Thus, we see the rebellious calf motif resurfacing in the language of being yoked and in the allusion to the need to walk in the proper way (which also calls to mind all of the times Jesus is described as on the way, or as calling people to the way, or as describing himself as the way).  Once again, in Mt 11, Jesus is drawing on the image of idolatrous Israel as a rebellious calf and he is pleading with her to return because his yoke is easy and his burden light.
However, it appears that the motif has been further developed in Mt 11 because Jesus calls all who are ‘weary and carrying heavy burdens’.  This is not the image of a wild calves running free through the fields, it is an image of bondage.  The lesson then is this: calves that run wild will inevitably be captured by other powers, exploited, and worked, quite literally, to death.  Or, to put this properly back into the context of idolatry, those who think they find freedom by running from God and God’s ways, are in fact running straight back into slavery to the horrendous powers of Egypt, Babylon, and Rome (and all other forces in the service of Sin and Death).
Consequently, true freedom is not found in being unyoked; rather, true freedom is found in being properly yoked.
This, then, takes me back to my last post on self-judgment and my own inability to be free.  My conclusion is that there is a tension here that one must constantly negotiate.  One the one hand, I am yoked because I am accountable to the judgment of Christ.  However, on the other hand, I am free because I am bound to the judgment of Christ.