[B]oth Jesus and Paul are not so much trapped in a negation of global imperialism as engaged in establishing its positive alternative here below upon this earth.
~ John Dominic Crossan, In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom, 409.
In Part I of this series, I explored the idea of defining the Christian community as a “community of beggars.” I concluded that such a community cannot be sustained within the structures of capitalism and that Christians should, therefore, develop a political economics of “radical sharing and equally radical dependence.” Then, in Part II of this series, I continued to stress the need for Christians to move beyond capitalism. However, if we are to make that move, I suggested that we need to recover our genuinely Christian imagination, which is rooted in the hope that is inspired by the biblical narrative (and not rooted in the “realism” or “necessity” inspired by the narrative of capitalism). However, I also suggested that we have lost the ability to imagine a true alternative to capitalism because we have lost the will to live outside of the comforts that capitalism provides for us. Therefore, I concluded that we will only be able to imagine a genuine alternative to capitalism when we begin to embody the alternative that we are pursuing.
I would like to continue this series by exploring what an embodied alternative to capitalism might look like. What might a community of beggars look like in day-to-day life? How do “radical sharing” and “radical dependence” play out on street level?
However, before I do that, I would like to begin by suggesting that many of the answers to these questions are actually discovered “along the way.” By this I mean that we often spend too much time trying to find the most exact or ideal alternative to capitalism instead of beginning, step by step, to embody an alternative. Indeed, our pursuit of the ideal alternative often leaves us overwhelmed and hopelessly bogged down in the details, instead of leading us to action. However, this assertion needs to be prefaced in at least two ways.
First of all, recognising the ways in which our pursuit of ideals can lead to hopelessness or inaction should not lead us to the conclusion that serious reflection in inadvisable. Far from it. We need to think through things like Christianity and capitalism quite intently. The problem arises when we look to solve all the problems involved before we act. Contemplation can lead to great insight in one area and not in another area. In that case, we need to act upon the insight we gain, with the hope that that action will then open the door for insight into other (as of yet) puzzling areas. Thus, we are always to be “contemplatives in action.”
Secondly, recognising that we will not be able to implement the ideal result from the get-go, should not lead us to the sort of resignation that is satisfied with doing “just a bit more” than we were doing before. This, I fear, is part of the problem with the approach that people like Bono and Oprah take to charity. Bono and Oprah live lives that are marked by massive amounts of luxury, but they also regularly advocate for, or donate to, some sort of charitable cause. The implicit message in this is that I can have my cake and eat it too — i.e. I don't have to feel guilty about living opulently so long as I give just a little more to charity. That we cannot yet attain the ideal should not lead us to settle for less. Rather, we should be involved in an ongoing pursuit of that which is more ideal than what we have now. As with the rest of life, this means employing the metaphor of “journey.” Donating a little more to charity may be a good step on the way, but it is only one step along the way (and probably a small and introductory one), it is not the end-point. Thus, we need to learn to affirm each step, while also challenging ourselves and others to continue on the way.
Given this opening proviso, I would now like to suggest what I believe to be are a few good steps in the development of a Christian alternative to capitalism. Moving beyond mere criticisms, I would like to propose a Christian political economics of sharing (nonsensical charity) and dependence (nonsensical vulnerability).
Confronting Hopelessness
What ever happened to the passion we all had to improve ourselves, live up to our potential, leave a mark on the world? Our hottest arguments were always about how we could contribute. We did not care about the rewards. We were young and earnest. We never kidded ourselves that we had the political gifts to reorder society or insure social justice… But we all hoped, in whatever way our capacities permitted, to define and illustrate the worthy life…
Leave a mark on the world. Instead the world has left marks on us. We got older. Life chastened us so that now we lie waiting to die, or walk on canes, or sit on porches where once the young juices flowed strongly, and feel old and inept and confused.
~ Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety, 12-13.
On one of the many flights my wife and I took on our honeymoon, I watched a film called Sherrybaby. Sherrybaby is about a young woman, Sherry, who has been released from a three year prison sentence (it turns out she was stealing in order to support a drug habit), and who then tries to reconnect with her six year old daughter. Along the way we see her interactions in a halfway house, with her probation officer, with members of a support group, and with her father and her brother’s family. I found this film to be incredibly moving — I have never seen such an accurate representation of the people with whom I work and journey. If I were to sum this film up in one word I was say that Sherrybaby is honest.
When I got back to Vancouver, I asked a film-buff friend of mine if he had seen this movie. He replied that he had but that he had disliked it immensely. I asked him why, and he responded that the movie had left him with such overwhelming hopelessness that he could barely sit through it all. Sherrybaby confronted him with a brokenness so deep that there was no possibility of redemption.
As I thought about my friend’s comments, I realised that it was exactly this revelation of hopelessness that caused the movie to resonate so deeply with me. Yes, we can never fix the brokenness that we discover in Sherry. And, yes, it is just as impossible to fix the brokenness that runs through my neighbourhood, through the men who smoke crack in the park, through the girls who work on the corner, and through the kids who sleep in Blood Alley.
I was relieved when my film-buff friend told me that he chose to watch Sherrybaby all the way through, instead of turning it off and walking away. I wanted him to know the hopelessness I feel, to be confronted, in that moment, with what I face day, after day, after day. Because we live in a culture that wants to cling to false hope and irrational positivity. And Christians are just as good as denying the hopelessness of our situation as the rest of society. Indeed, Christians, especially, don’t want to confront hopelessness and so they cloak false hopes, and apathetic disengagement, with religious language.
You see, there was once a time when I clung to those false religious hopes. There was a time when I thought that we could fix lives like Sherry’s. There was a time when I thought — as Stegner’s character once thought — that we could truly contribute and leave a mark on the world. But — like Stegner’s character — I have only found that the world has marked me. Instead of bringing wholeness to others, I have found that the brokenness of others has become a part of me. Instead of bringing help, I have received helplessness. Instead of bringing comfort, I have received sorrow. Instead of being a light and a guide, I have found myself plunged into darkness. Instead of being an agent of salvation, I have found myself a member of the damned.
This is the hopelessness that I want my Christian brothers and sisters to be confronted with. Indeed, it is only after we have been confronted with the reality of this hopelessness that we can begin to understand the true nature of Christian hope. This hope speaks of a peasant who died abandoned and hopeless, marked by the world’s whips, and thorns, and nails. And this hope continues to lead me into places where the world will, inevitably, mark me.
…
God bless you, Sarah. You were three and a half months pregnant when your man, your john, cut you open. Did you ever make it home?
Christianity and Capitalism Part II: Imagining more than a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
[I]n our world “necessity” and “realism” have become ways to hide the lack of moral imagination.
~ C. W. Mills, from his “Pagan Sermon to a Christian Clergy.”
I concluded my last post by arguing that our Christian identity should “lead us to develop a communal (i.e. political) economics of radical sharing and equally radical dependence.” However, before I begin to explore what exactly that might look like, I would like to take a step back and address one further preliminary issue.
In a bracketed aside in the last post, I suggested that Christianity should lead us to conclude that capitalism is not simply “the best of all the bad options we have.” Unfortunately this position seems to be precisely the position taken by most people (Christian or otherwise) in our society. Indeed, the general contemporary consensus about capitalism seems to be a slightly revised version of what Winston Churchill had to say about democracy: “[Capitalism] is the worst form of [economics], except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” The consensus seems to be that capitalism is not perfect — indeed, we realise that it is far from perfect in many ways — but the catch is that, on the ground (as opposed to on paper), it does so much better than all the other options. Therefore, given this seeming reality of our situation, it is argued that the best we can do is to pursue “capitalism with a human face.”
In sum, we are told that capitalism isn't perfect, but it's the best that we've got and it's here to stay — so let's make the best of it. Indeed, as Christians, it is our duty to make the best of it.
However, I would like to suggest that the pursuit of “capitalism with a human face” is nothing more than an effort to dress a wolf in sheep's clothing. Both “necessity” and “realism” lead us to conclude that this wolf is here to stay, so it's best if we just dress it in a way that makes us feel a little more comfortable in its presence.
That this has become the extent of our economic creativity as Christians suggests to me that we have become accustomed to living with a fatally deficient Christian imagination. When “realism” leads us to conclude that all we can do as Christians is dress wolves like sheep, then there is little or no hope that Christians will actually be a community that offers new life to the world. Consequently, we must learn to let the biblical narrative dictate what is realistic — and if we do this, then I suspect that we will discover that we are called to live as a people motivated by hope and not by necessity. Furthermore, we will discover that this hope is a hope that, rooted in a subversive memory of God's in-breaking into the world, transforms the present in ways that necessity can't even begin to, well, imagine.
Of course, there is nothing new in suggesting that we need to recover our Christian imagination. The opening quote from Mills was written in the 1960s and authors like Walter Brueggemann and Stanley Hauerwas have been talking about the importance of the Christian imagination for the last thirty years. Why then do we, as Christian communities, seem to still have no imagination? Well, I think the answer to the question can be found in another quote, which runs as follows:
What makes a subject hard to understand — if it's something significant and important — is not that before you can understand it you need to be specially trained in abstruse matters, but the contrast between understanding the subject and what most people want to see. Because of this the very things which are most obvious may become the hardest of all to understand. What has to be overcome is a difficulty having to do with the will, rather than the intellect.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value.
What Wittgenstein teaches us, is that learning to imagine another way of living in this world may have less to do with our intellect and more to do with our will. That is to say, we may be able to begin to imagine another way of living in our minds, but we lack the will to actually embody that way of living in our daily lives, and so our imaginings never go very far. Simply put: we cannot imagine a Christian alternative to capitalism because we lack the will to begin the embodiment of that alternative.
Therefore, the crisis that we face is not only one of imagination, it is also one of willing. Christians in the West have become far too comfortable within the structures of capitalism (after all, the wolf prefers to eat people overseas and not the wonderful people in my neighbourhood — or so it seems) and, consequently, have imaginations that have run dry. We will begin to be able to imagine economic alternatives to capitalism when we begin to embody economic alternatives to capitalism. And it is one of those alternatives that I hope to begin to describe in my next post.
Christianity and Capitalism Part I: A Community of Beggars
Christians think we are creatures that beg. Prayer is the activity that most defines who we are. Through prayer we learn the patience to take the time to beg, to beg to the One alone who is the worthy subject of such prayer. Through prayer Christians learn how to beg from each other. Christians, therefore, can never be at peace with a politics or economic arrangements built on the assumption that we are fundamentally not beggars.
~ Stanley Hauerwas, Performing the Faith, 241.
I came across this passage from Hauerwas about a year ago, and I've been turning it around in my mind since then. I imagine that those of us who are situated comfortably within liberal discourse about “human rights” might find this quotation a little upsetting. Indeed, if the language of “rights” tells us anything it tells us this: we are not beggars — we are entitled to life, freedom, happiness, and so much more. Therefore, one begins to see the way in which the language of “human rights” goes hand in hand with the political and economic structures of capitalism and rugged individualism. Operating from within a paradigm of entitlement, the question becomes “how much can I have?” or, better yet, “how much do I deserve?” And we only ever need a little convincing to conclude that we surely deserve more than we have right now.
However, if Christianity teaches us to understand ourselves as beggars, and teaches us to act accordingly, then Hauerwas is surely correct to suggest such an understanding would radically rework the political and economic arrangements of the Christian community (and it is important to emphasise that we are speaking of the Christian community here. As Christians we are seeking to model an alternative to the social order, not impose a more Christian structure on society — the sooner we realise this, the sooner we may be able to see that capitalism doesn't have to be considered “the best of all the bad options we have”). Furthermore, Hauerwas is also correct to emphasise that prayer teaches us to beg — both from God and from others. I suspect that anyone who has gone through times of material hardship quickly learns how closely connected these two types of begging are. I think of some of friends that panhandle — sure, they ask God to provide their daily bread, but that doesn't stop them asking strangers for change. I also think of when I first committed myself to getting through school without going into debt. Sure, I asked for God to help me, but I also quickly learned to beg from others in times of need. And this is precisely what prayer should teach us — to rely on God and the people of God.
Therefore, if Christians are those who know themselves to be beggars, then the Christian community should become a space where it is okay to beg. It should be a space where beggars are not shamed but welcomed. Of course, once such a safe space is created, we will all be able to admit our own needs — for all of us have such needs in our lives. However, we are usually too ashamed, too driven by pressures that tell us we need to be independent, and too driven by our own pride, to admit this. Creating a space where begging is welcomed, creates an honest space where we all are welcomed as we are — and not just as we try to appear to be. Indeed, this is what it means to be a part of a community that proclaims the forgiveness of sins. By allowing others (and ourselves) the space to beg, we create the room for confession and absolution in all the nitty-gritty parts of our lives.
And this, of course, flows out into the economic aspects of our lives (how can it not?). Allowing the structures of capitalism to dictate the economics of a community of beggars is fatal — because capitalism has no use for beggars. In fact, beggars are marginalised, jailed, or left to die precisely because beggars, by their very existence, challenge the validity of capitalism. Therefore, if Christians are to come to believe that capitalism is the only viable economic option for their communities, then they have already submitted themselves to that which seeks their destruction. Of course, by speaking in this way I am not suggesting that capitalism is out killing Christians (although it should probably be noted that capitalism is doing that too, just not usually in our neighbourhoods), rather what I mean is that surrendering to capitalism in this way is fatal to both our identity as Christians and our ability to act meaningfully as Christians within our contemporary situation.
Therefore, if Christian communities are to exist in a genuinely Christian way — as communities of beggars — then we must demonstrate a political and economic way of living that is different than the structures of capitalism. And, since we are prayer-shaped beggars, this will lead us to develop a communal (i.e. political) economics of radical sharing and equally radical dependence… but more on that later.
March Books
Well, a lot of things going on this month, so not a lot of book reading. Without further ado:
1. Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus by Ched Myers.
This book is one that inevitably gets mentioned in any hermeneutics class, and seems to be treated as the example of a socio-political reading of Scripture. So, since I’ve been working my way (slowly) through the NT, with a different commentary for each book, I decided to use Myers’ commentary on Mk.
There was much that I enjoyed about this book, and there were several passages that jumped out at me, and quotations that I found to be very well-worded and thought-provoking (as reflected in a few of my recent posts). However — and I say this as a person committed to a form of “nonviolent direct action” that has many overlaps with Myers’ approach — I felt that Myers’ reading of the text was sometimes overly dictated by the particular means he, and those around him, were employing in contemporary subversive political activity. At points I felt that Myers was a little too concerned to make Jesus look like Gandhi, rather than exploring the ways in which Gandhi looked like Jesus… if you get what I’m saying here. Along the same lines, I found Myers’ substitution, and explanation, of the term “the Human One” for the title “Son of Man” (out of a sensitivity to feminist hermeneutics) to be deceptively inadequate — and, to be honest, it was a bit of a double-standard since Myers felt fine retaining male-based language when it was employed negatively. However, these things aside, I suggest Myers’ book for those who may not have explored the idea of reading the Gospels as subversive political literature.
2. The Way of the Heart: Desert Spirituality and Contemporary Ministry by Henri Nouwen.
Nouwen is always a breath of fresh air. Indeed, I would be inclined to suggest that Nouwen should be absolutely mandatory reading for those of us who are more involved in “social action” since we often distance ourselves from the more spiritual/religious/contemplative elements of our faith. We must be contemplatives in action if we are to hope for transformation.
In this book, Nouwen appeals to the Desert Fathers and Mothers and explores the ways in which the disciplines of solitude, silence, and prayer, transform our selves and our ministries. I especially appreciated the section on prayer. In this section Nouwen talks about how we need to move from understanding prayer as a conversation that occurs within our intellect, to understanding prayer as the place in which our being becomes rooted in God — and thus prayer goes on to define all areas of our life.
Like most of Nouwen’s books, this book is short and easily applicable. Highly recommended.
3. And No Birds Sang by Farley Mowat.
This is Mowat’s account of his experiences in the Canadian Army in Italy during WWII. My Grandfather, who was a Canadian soldier during WWII, gave it to one of my brothers and said that this book, more than anything else that he had read, captured what he felt at the time. Essentially the book describes Mowat’s movement from optimism, bravado, and sheer ignorance, to overwhelming fear. Mowat suggests that, for men at war, fear is like a worm that becomes rooted in our gut and slowly grows until it devours us entirely. Next to The Wars by Timothy Findley (which is a fictional story of one soldier’s life in WWI) this is probably the novel that has moved me the most in its account of the world at war.
Sermon on Luke 24.1-12
This is a copy of my notes for a sermon I preached a few months ago. I always have mixed feelings about posting such things since what I write, and what I end up saying, often don't match-up very well — plus there is something that occurs in a public dialogue that really can't be captured on paper. Regardless, I like to keep some sort of record of these things.
Intro: The story so far…
• Luke’s gospel is supposed to be good news, after all that’s what “gospel” means.
• In particular, it is supposed to be good news to the poor. Thus, in Jesus’ first act of public teaching he announces what today would be considered his “mission statement.” This is what he says:
o The Spirit of the LORD is upon me, because he anointed me to preach good news to the poor, he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favourable year of the LORD (Lk 4).
• Then, as we followed Jesus’ ministry, it really looked like all this good stuff was happening. Jesus was healing the sick, casting demons out of the possessed, empowering the marginalized, freeing the oppressed, and showing those who were rejected by the religious leaders as “sinners” that they were, in fact, God’s beloved children.
• It must have been terribly exciting for the disciples to watch. The disciples – who mostly consisted of people who were poor, and people who were rejected by the healthy, the wealthy, and the religious – watched all sorts of wonderful things occur. Yes, they thought, God has forgiven our sins, he has come back to heal us, to set us free, and to bless us.
• The disciples were a part of a people who were singing, “O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel,” [I requested that we sing this song during worship] and in Jesus they thought Emmanuel had come and they thought that they were being set free. Free from the Roman military that persecuted them and taxed them, free from the religious leaders who rejected them and taxed them some more, and free from illness and demon possession.
• But then, everything goes terribly wrong. Jesus, who was supposed to save them from all these oppressive powers, ends up being defeated. The religious leaders capture him, condemn him and hand him over to the political leaders who beat him and crucify him. On the cross, Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” but God doesn’t answer.
• So Jesus dies. The disciples thought he was going to set them all free, they had surrendered everything to follow Jesus, but at the end of the day, Jesus is crushed by the same powers that crush the poo and the sick and the “sinners.”
• Can we imagine how devastating this must be for them?
1. Lk 24.1-12: Something new has started…
• But then we get to the passage we’re looking at today and we hit a turning point – not just of the story, this is the turning-point of history. Something so dramatic, something so incredible, has occurred, that those of us who are used to hearing the story often forget just how crazy it all sounds.
• Keeping the story-so-far in mind, let’s read the passage trying to think like the characters in the story:
o But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, [the women] came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing; and as the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living One among the dead? He is not here, but he has risen. Remember how he spoke to you while he was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.” And they remembered his words, and returned from the tomb and reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now they were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James; also the other women with them were telling these things to the apostles. But these words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings only; and he want away to his home, marveling at what had happened.
• So, what is going on here?
• Well, one thing is certain: we see a group of people who are certain that Jesus is dead. Everybody is sure that Jesus is defeated. Nobody at the time of Jesus was expecting a Messiah that would die and then be raised again to new life. And so the women go to the tomb, not because they expect or even hope to find it empty, but because they want to anoint Jesus’ dead body with burial spices.
• Of course, it is interesting to note that it is women who go to the tomb. Women, after all, were considered to be not-as-fully-human as men during the time of Jesus. Women were subservient to men, they did not have a lot of the rights and privileges that men had. Thus, Luke is continuing to demonstrate his interested in the marginalized. Whereas in the last few chapters we have seen the men betray Jesus (Judas), deny Jesus (Peter), and run away from Jesus (all the rest), it is the women who love Jesus enough that they follow him to the cross, and they are the one’s who love him enough to go out and anoint his dead body. Furthermore, they are those who are brave enough to go to Jesus’ tomb. After all, if Jesus was condemned, then those who followed him could face similar penalties – especially those who were close to him. However, while the male apostles hide away in their homes, the women have the courage to go to Jesus’ tomb.
• But they were sure that Jesus was dead. So it is no wonder that they are perplexed when they get to the tomb and find that it is empty. What has happened? Maybe somebody has broken into the tomb and stolen the body? Maybe, in their grief, they got confused about which tomb Jesus was buried in?
• You can, therefore, imagine their shock when the angels appear to them to tell them that Jesus is risen. However, it is important to notice that it is not the presence of the angels that is convincing. Rather, what convinces the women is the remembrance of what Jesus said. The empty tomb can only be understood as shockingly good news when it is understood in light of Jesus’ words and deeds prior to his death. As things play out with the women, remembrance brings understanding, which inspires new actions – without being told to do so, they rush back to tell the apostles the good news.
• But nobody believes them. In fact, in first-century Jewish society, women were never considered to be reliable witnesses. Thus, for example, if a person was being tried for a crime, and a woman witnessed the crime, her testimony would not be considered valid in a court of law. Because they are female, their story and their testimony is dismissed as hysterical babbling.
• Peter, however, at least goes to the tomb to check things out. But Peter doesn’t go into the tomb. He just looks in and ends up being puzzled because he says the linen that was wrapped around Jesus’ body. Why is he puzzled? Because he doesn’t believe that Jesus is risen. And so he probably wonders why the linens are there – after all, if somebody had stolen Jesus’ body they would probably not take the time to strip the body before removing it from the tomb. Peter, unlike the women, still doesn’t believe, and still doesn’t know what is going on. Like the rest of the apostles, he will need more proof before he gets what is going on.
2. Application: Victory, Fearless Love, Women, & Entering Empty Tombs
• So here we are, 2000 years later, and what are we supposed to make of all this? Well, I want to suggest that there are four key points – four pieces of good news – that we should take away from this. The first relates to the nature of the victory that Jesus won, the second relates to the role the women play in the story, the third relates to remembering these stories, and the fourth relates to entering the (empty) tomb.
• Victory: Luke’s gospel, like we said at the beginning, is supposed to be good news. Jesus was supposed to be setting people free – free from oppression, from sickness, from poverty, from rejection, from sin. And it looked like he was doing it. But then he was killed by the oppressors and by the wealthy and influential powers that make sure that the poor stay poor and that the sick die alone. So what happened?
• By choosing to go to the cross to die, Jesus reveals who the true enemy is. Jesus reveals that, ultimately, Sin, Death, and the Devil, are the true powers that lurk behind the political powers that oppress the poor, and behind the religious powers that reject those that they label as “sinners.” Thus, Jesus reveals that setting out to fight and conquer the Romans, or fight and conquer the religious leaders is focusing on the wrong enemy. Even if one defeats these people, one will still be enslaved because Sin, Death, and Devil are the true powers that perpetuate oppression, poverty, and illness. Thus, Jesus goes behind the religious and political powers to get to the root of things.
• And by getting to the root of things Jesus thus triumphs over all things! The resurrection of Jesus shows that he has conquered death, and by conquering death, he conquers sin (because death is the consequence of sin), and by conquering sin, he conquers the devil (who is powerless without sin and death). Thus, in Phil 2, Paul realizes that, through the cross and resurrection, Jesus becomes Lord of all. As he says:
o Because [Jesus] existed in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself taking the form of a slave and being made in the likeness of humanity. Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted him, and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
• Luke is hinting at this at when he writes that the women did not find the body of “the Lord Jesus” when they entered the tomb. Luke realizes that the tomb is empty because Jesus is Lord. This then shows that, even after the tragedy, we are receiving good news.
• Therefore, because of this good news, we no longer need to live in fear of our enemies. In fact, we don’t even need to fight our enemies; instead, we are empowered to resist our enemies by loving them. Because we are not afraid of our enemies, we can resist them and refuse to let them control us. And because Jesus, rather than sin and death, is our Lord, we can love our enemies.
• Even if our enemies hurt us, we know that they cannot triumph over us. We are the people of the resurrection. We know that even in our suffering, we are victorious.
• Thus Paul writes in Ro 8:
o Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus or Lord.
• In fact, that’s one of the reasons why I love Mosaic, here, I feel like I’m getting a glimpse of resurrection happening all around me. We are all broken, like Jesus on the cross, but we are all being raised up and made new, like beautiful pieces of art.
• Being the Women: Now to turn to the second point: that Luke focuses on the women as the central characters of this story. As we mentioned before, women, in Jesus’ day, weren’t considered valid witnesses, and their testimony is dismissed. Therefore, the fact that only the women are witnesses to the empty tomb is quite significant.
• This fact is significant for us, because we at Mosaic are like the women in the story. We are not the kind of people who are in charge, we are not the sort of people who have a voice – either in society or in the rest of the church – in fact, we are the type of people who are ignored by society and abandoned by the rest of the church. We’re too poor, or too young, or too uneducated, or too old, or too rough, or just too broken to matter.
• But we learn from this passage that our voices matter. In fact, our voices are crucial – without the women’s testimony, we would never know about the empty tomb, and without our voices today, there’s a chance that many in both society and the church will never understand what it means to say that Jesus is Lord.
• Thus, in the midst of our brokenness, we bear witness to Jesus, and we embrace the things that make us insignificant because we believe that God is revealed in those very things. Paul understand this point, so he writes to the Corinthians:
o But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – the things that are not – to nullify the things that are… [for God has said to me] “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong (1 Cor 1; 2 Cor 12).
• All that is needed is for us to, like the women, love Jesus enough, and be brave enough, to share this gospel with society, and with the parts of the church that have gotten so wealthy and comfortable that they have forgotten what the gospel is.
• And how do we do this? We do this be embracing our weakness. We embrace our brokenness, and our poverty and our insignificance; instead of trying to hide these things, we show that Jesus is risen because here, in the midst of our brokenness, power of resurrection is at work. This is surely good news for us!
• Entering the Tomb: This idea leads me to the next point: instead of being like Peter, who only looks into the tomb, we need to be like the women and enter the tomb. What do I mean by this?
• By this I mean that following Jesus doesn’t just stop at the point of coming to listen to his teachings. Following Jesus means following Jesus to the cross. And it means that we even go so far as to follow Jesus into the grave.
• This means that Christians are often completely wrong about the way in which they present Christianity. Christianity is often offered like some sort of spiritual prozac. We’re told: Come to Jesus and all your problems will go away, come to Jesus and everything will get better, come to Jesus and you’ll always be happy. But that’s not true. Following Jesus into the tomb means that when we follow Jesus, sometimes things don’t get better. In fact, sometimes following Jesus makes everything harder. That’s why Jesus is always warning people to count the cost before they decide to be his disciples. As it says earlier in Lk:
o Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish. Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14).
• It is true that we are resurrection people, but to be resurrection people we also need to be cross-shaped people.
• This will be the difference between people who actually follow Jesus and people who only admire Jesus. In our society, there are a lot of people who admire Jesus, there are a lot of people who think Jesus was a good person who said a lot of really nice things about love and peace and all that good stuff. However, there are only a small amount of people who actually follow Jesus down the road to the cross and into the tomb.
• Summation — victory, fearless love, becoming the women, and entering the tomb — and conclusion.
A Few Thoughts on Conferences…
[T]he new order of the kingdom does not arise from within existing power relationships but quite independently of them, at the margins of society.
~ Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man, 122.
I recently presented a few seminars at a conference in Toronto that explored some (more or less) Christian perspectives on social justice. The conference was well attended (750+ people) and I greatly enjoyed the dialogue that I had with both the other seminar leaders (or whatever you call people who give seminars) and with old and new friends that were in attendance.
However, there were a few things that seemed a little odd about the conference.
To begin with, I thought that it was a little odd that that the conference was hosted in a church that had allocated around $12 million dollars to the church building, while only simultaneously allocating approximately $1.5 million dollars to “social justice” related issues. Now, if you dig into this a bit (which, I have discovered, some others have), you will discover that this church had all sorts of “good reasons” for building a a multi-million dollar compound… but, of course, how “good” those reasons are all depends on the paradigm through which we understand things like “Church,” “community,” “love,” and, of course, “justice.” Indeed, I might be inclined to suggest that this is but another example of the way in which growth actually makes it impossible for us to fulfill our vocation as Christians (I've watched this happen over and over with Christian institutions: be those social service agencies, churches, or colleges). Church “growth” is most definitely not an unequivocally good thing, and sometimes I think churches need to put an end to growth and send their people elsewhere — like to a church that is walking distance from home, you know, a church that is actually a part of the community in which a person lives.
Which, by the way, is the second thing I found a little odd about the community in which the conference occurred. The church where the conference was held is located in a city outside of Toronto — although it is still a part of the “Greater Toronto Area” — a city that just happens to be the wealthiest city in Ontario (and one of the top ten wealthiest cities in Canada [at least according to the 2001 Canada Census — all the results aren't in from the 2006 Canada Census]). So, one might wonder, why is it that we are holding a conference that stresses the theme of solidarity with the marginalised in an extremely wealthy community that is notorious for forcing out its poor? Well, some have suggested that it is precisely this community that needs to attend to this conference. Perhaps that is true… although the opening quote that I pulled from Myers' book might cause us to begin to rethink this approach. To root such a conference in this city suggests to me that we might still be attached to models that pursue transformation from the centre to the peripheries — from the powerful to the powerless. However, to attach oneself to models that believe that transformation moves from the peripheries to the centre — thereby questioning our general understanding of power and power relations — might suggest that another location may have been more suitable.
The third major thing that bothered me about the conference was the price. Depending on when one registered, and depending on whether or not one registered as part of a group of ten or more, one ended up paying between $69 and $89. Now, in my books, that's quite a bit of money and, although there were some big name speakers (Ron Sider, Jim Wallis, and Shane Claiborne being the big three), I would of thought twice about attending if I was paying to be there. Indeed, I think that such high prices probably prevented quite a few people from attending the conference. However, seeing as it was held in such a wealthy city/church, this might not have been that big of a deal. Regardless, it strikes me as unfortunate that a conference on social justice would, from the get-go, exclude those who don't have that sort of money to throw around for a one day event (oh, and meals were not included in that price… or transportation for that matter — the church was located in an industrial complex so it seemed that one needed access to a car in order to be able to attend).
So, what do we do with all this? If we are to be critical, how can we also find a positive way forward? Well, I've got a few ideas but I would be interested to hear what others think. Are these significant concerns? If they are, where would be a good place to go with all this?
Oh, and there was one final point that caught me off-guard a little — probably more due to poor communication than anything. It was this: nobody told me that what I said would be recorded and then sold (maybe I was just supposed to assume that that would occur?). That's right, for $10 you can own your very own copy of my seminar. However, since I'm a little uncomfortable with that (i.e. with being unknowingly commodified), you could also just email me and I'll burn you a copy of the CD that I'm receiving and I'll mail it to you (although if you wanted to pay for postage that would be nice… but not mandatory).
Update
Just a quick note to say that I am back from my wedding/honeymoon, and I hope to resume blogging regularly in the next few days.
Grace and peace.
Subversion Rooted in the Biblical Narrative
There is another way in which our practice needs to be better buttressed by our reading. For example, we often claim that our practice of nonviolent direct action is grounded in the symbolic action of the Hebrew prophets and Jesus, but rarely does our biblical study demonstrate how exactly this is the case.
~Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus, 12.
Myers, I think, points out one of the greatest weaknesses of Christian involvement in subversive socio-political and economic action. Simply put, Christians who desire to live counter-culturally too often uncritically adopt already present models of subversion, or protest, without thinking through those actions in light of what it means to live within the trajectory of the biblical narrative. Myers challenges us to think about how exactly the biblical narrative leads us to adopt counter-cultural action.
The catch is that most of the available models of subversion, protest, and transformation from the margins to the centres of power, are only a little more meaningful (if that) than most of the available models of trickle down productivity and reform from the centres of power to the margins. Myers wrote his book in 1988, but in 2007 we can see the ways in which the “counter-culture” has, in fact, become “popular culture.” Moreover, we can see how much of the counter-cultural movement has, at its core, not really been counter-cultural at all.
Therefore, Myers' wish for us to examine how the biblical narrative under-girds our action becomes all the more urgent. We cannot simply use Jesus and the prophets as proof-texts for already present models of “nonviolent direct action” (which, by the way, seems to be the mistake that Jim Wallis has fallen into lately). Rather we must allow our study of the biblical narrative to tell us what exactly constitutes counter-cultural activity.
When we engage in this form of bible study, then I suspect that we will discover that celebrating the Eucharist regularly is far more subversive than writing letters to members of parliament, that living in community with one another is a far more meaningful protest than rallying outside the American embassy, that reading the liturgy is far more counter-cultural than reading Adbusters, that suffering alongside of the homeless is more powerful than donating to a soup kitchen, and so on and so forth.
Perspective…
I don’t know what it means to “maintain perspective” anymore. Indeed, when I think about the perspective that I used to have on things like evil, suffering, and risk-taking, then it could quite easily be argued that I have “lost perspective.” But which perspective have I lost, and which have I gained? After all, it is not as if I have no perspective now; it’s just that my perspective has, over the last half dozen years of journeying alongside of those on the margins of society, shifted quite radically (and I suspect that it will continue to do so).
How is one to know if one has become enlightened or if one has become blind? And, since the chances are that both enlightenment and blindness have occurred in various ways, how is one to discern where and how each has occurred?
I would be very interested in hearing how others answer these questions as they examine their own lives. Any takers?