Monthly Archives: February 2013

The Martyr Complex of Early (and contemporary) Christianity

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I saw a review on Salon of Candida Moss’s new book, “The Myth of Persecution.” I had one immediate reaction, “She’s got a great publicist.” I’d never heard of her before, which isn’t surprising since she received her PhD only in 2008 and her first book came out in 2011, after I left the ivied halls of academe.

What drew my attention is that this is a case of someone popularizing what has been basic historical consensus for decades, if not longer. When I was a grad student (now 30 years ago), the myth of widespread Roman persecution of early Christians had already been debunked. Christians were not thrown to the lions in the Coliseum, and there were in fact very few periods when there was a systematic attempt to suppress Christianity by the emperors.

So why all the attention to this book? Well, because Moss is making a connection with the persecution complex of contemporary Christianity. Miller’s review in Salon begins with another debunking, that of the story of Cassie Bernall, one of the Columbine victims, who quickly became famous as a Christian martyr. Moss is interested in the persistence of martyrdom and persecution as themes in Christianity. That’s an important topic, in part because the idea that one might have to suffer for one’s faith is so powerful, even attractive. In early Christianity, there were many examples of Christians who sought out martyrdom, and the same is true throughout history.

And she’s also right that the notion of martyrdom can raise conflict, whether among different Christian groups, or between Christians and an unsympathetic culture, to apocalyptic fervor. If you take an unpopular position and rouse the ire of opponents, that’s a certain sign that you are being faithful to Jesus Christ.

An interview with the author.

It’s true that those who were killed for the faith in the centuries before the toleration of Christianity were smaller in number than imagined by most contemporary Christians. Similar debunking has been done for Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and “Bloody Mary” in sixteenth-century England and also for Anabaptists on the continent in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Martyrdom cut in different directions, too. If you were unable to make the ultimate sacrifice for your faith, if you recanted, there were potential problems. If you survived, your community wasn’t always quite sure what to do with you. Had you sinned, or did you simply lack the charism of martyrdom? At the same time, there’s probably some truth in Tertullian’s statement from the early second century, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Even in the sixteenth century, rulers worried whether public execution of Anabaptist martyrs might draw spectators to that movement because of the inspirational witness of those who were willing to die for their faith.

In some respects, a worldview that sees inherent conflict between us and them, the forces of good and evil, of light and darkness, of Christ and Satan, is both comforting and safe. Much harder is to live in a world where there are shades of gray and disagreement is not a matter of life and death, and being faithful means negotiating among several possible options.

Respecting the dignity of every human person and the refusal to be complicit in torture

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I have posted a great deal over the years about US use of torture. As an Episcopal priest, I have also posted several times about our baptismal covenant, and the vow we make in it “to respect the dignity of every human being.”

As a priest, I also struggle with how our liturgy connects with people’s daily lives. Do they find in our worship help in making sense of the moral and ethical decisions they face? Does our worship help them find meaning in their lives? I wonder about those questions and occasionally, as in today’s sermon, I explored how the rituals of Lent may or may not be meaningful to most of those who attend our worship services.

Of course, I never know and can often not tell what sort of impact either or worship or my sermons have on those who attend. I was amused today when greeting some visitors to learn that they had attended one previous service at Grace, a year ago, and they remembered my sermon–they remembered that I had once worked for a seafood processing company. So we don’t know the sort of impact our words and our worship have.

But then I came across this story of Lt. Stuart Crouch, who refused to prosecute prisoners at Guantanamo who had been tortured. He talks about his anguish as he learned the “harsh interrogation” techniques used on prisoners. But what cemented the decision for him was one Sunday when he attended a service at an “Anglican” church, where a baptism was celebrated:

I was wrestling with these—with this legal issue and with this ethical issue. And then, ultimately, you know, one Sunday when I was in church, it all kind of came together. I describe myself as an evangelical Christian. I was attending a church service in the Anglican tradition, and it was a baptism of a child. And anybody who’s ever been to one of these services knows that at the end of the baptism all of the congregants in the church stand up, and the pastor goes back and forth with basically the tenets of the Christian faith. And one of those tenets was that we would respect the dignity of every human being. And it was at that time, when I was professing that on Sunday, begged the question to me, if this is what you believe as a Christian, then how does that inform how you’re going to act the other six days of the week? And that really, for me, was the moral point that I came to of what I had to do next.

And what I did next was I went and met with the chief prosecutor for the Office of Military Commissions. I told him my legal opinion. I told him my ethical opinion. And then I stated in—you know, I have a moral reservation at this point that what’s been done to Slahi is just reprehensible, and for that reason alone, I’m going to refuse to participate in the prosecution of his case. Shortly, within a couple of days, I reduced that—those positions into writing. I provided them to the chief prosecutor. And then, after a few days, I was told to transfer that case to someone else and for me to get busy on my other cases.

Our liturgy is not “just ritual” or rote, or cute things we do on Sunday. The liturgy matters. It helps orient us theologically and ethically, and occasionally, it can be a powerful witness all by itself, to the justice and mercy of God. Sometimes it can be a sign of God’s reign in the world. Thanks be to God!

Mother Hens and Smoking Fire-Pots: A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent, 2013

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One of the interesting aspects of the season of Lent for me is that my earliest and in some deepest encounters with Lent came not through the liturgical cycle of contemporary Christianity, Episcopal or otherwise, but rather because I was trained as a historian of Christianity. Lent’s roots grow deep in the Christian tradition, dating back to the practices of early Christianity. In the fourth century, and perhaps earlier, it was common practice for baptism to occur primarily at the great Vigil of Easter, the wonderful celebration of Christ’s resurrection that begins in darkness on Saturday night, and traditionally ended at the first light of Easter Day. In preparation for baptism, those who had committed themselves to undertake initiation prepared by a season of fasting and learning. Continue reading →

The American Jesus: Reflections on Djesus Uncrossed

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Conservative Christians are outraged, outraged, by the SNL parody of Tarantino films: “Djesus Uncrossed.” Yes, it’s over the top as Saturday Night Live always is. It’s in poor taste, but how could it be otherwise, since it’s parodying the tasteless violence and gore of Tarantino. Still, I love the line: critics rave “A less violent Passion of the Christ.”

And a great deal of the outrage, I suspect, is because the parody hits rather too close to home. For many American Christians the image of Jesus Christ presented in the skit is very close to their own–a violent savior who will destroy his enemies. There’s some biblical warrant for such a view:

Then I looked, and there was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one like the Son of Man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand! Another angel came out of the temple, calling with a loud voice to the one who sat on the cloud, ‘Use your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.’ So the one who sat on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was reaped.  Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. Then another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has authority over fire, and he called with a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, ‘Use your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe.’ So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the vintage of the earth, and he threw it into the great wine press of the wrath of God. And the wine press was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the wine press, as high as a horse’s bridle, for a distance of about two hundred miles. (Rev 14:14-20)

Or this image from popular American Christianity:6a00d83451c45669e20134896b9de5970c-800wiAs David Henson points out:

We have tried to arm him with our military-industrial complex, drape him with our xenophobia, outfit him with our weapons, and adorn him with our nationalism. We’ve turned the cross into a flagpole for the Stars and Stripes. We have no need for Tarantino to reimagine the story of Jesus into a fantasy of violent revenge. We’ve done it for him. We’ve already uncrossed him, transforming him from a servant into a triumphalist who holds the causes and interests of our country on his back rather than brutal execution.

The SNL sketch reveals the paucity of American popular theology with its camouflage and flag-draped Bibles that segregate the story of God for American patriots only. It pulls back the curtain and shows us just how twisted our Jesus really is: We want a Savior like the one SNL offers. We want the Son of God to kick some ass and take some names. Specifically, our enemies’ names. And maybe the names of a few godless Democrats. Definitely the Muslims. And the atheists. And the … I could go on.

Christianity in America has become so intertwined with nationalism and patriotism that American conservatives have fashioned an image of Jesus Christ that conforms to their patriotism and to the cult of violence. That image is shaped by popular culture, especially by film. Note the allusion to both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone in the billboard above. And just as our popular culture is wedded to the myth of redemptive violence, so too is the Jesus of conservative Christianity like the lead character in so many of our action films, leaving blood, destruction, and mayhem in his wake as he rides through the scenery.

The myth of redemptive violence and the image of Jesus in that myth has been shaped by the language and imagery of Revelation. It’s misleading for critics of that myth and that image of Jesus to deny its presence within scripture. But it’s also important to point out that the Jesus we encounter in the gospels bears no resemblance to the destructive and revenge-seeking Jesus of conservative Christianity. The Jesus of the gospels was killed by an oppressive and violent empire that bears more similarity to our own Empire, than many of the self-proclaimed followers of Jesus today bear to Jesus’ teachings and first followers.

Sure, the SNL parody was in poor taste but it also held a mirror up to the image of Jesus worshiped by much of conservative American Christianity. The more that image is exposed for the idol it is, the better.

A Smoking Fire Pot and a Flaming Torch: Lectionary Reflections on Lent 2, Year C

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This week’s readings are here.

One of my most memorable worship experiences is connected with this story from Genesis. I was still a layperson at the time, member of an Episcopal Church.  I remember looking around the congregation and as the description of the covenant ceremony was being read, catching the eyes of a parishioner on the other side of the church. Her eyes grew wider and wider, a look of puzzlement on her face. She wanted to know something about this strange story. The reading ended. The service continued, and the preacher got up and had nothing to say about it, or as I recall, any of the other lessons read that day. That experience cemented for me the conviction that one of the preacher’s greatest obligations is to engage directly the hard questions raised in or by a text.

The story tells of the covenant Yahweh made with Abram. It’s a promise by God to give Abram a son, to make of his descendants a mighty nation, and also to give to them the promised land. Although covenant is a key theme in scripture, it’s almost as strange a notion to moderns as the subsequent description of the ceremony. We might think of it as a treaty, for in many cases, biblical covenants share a great deal with ancient treaties that have been discovered. At its heart is God’s promise. As we see in this text, Abram has a hard time trusting in that promise. He wants to work out his descendants on his own (here in c. 15, later with Ishmael, too). Here, Yahweh shows him the stars in the sky, and says, “So shall your descendants be.” And in that powerful verse used later by Paul, “Abram believed, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”

Then comes the ceremony. Abram splits animals in half, lays them out, and “a smoking fire pot and a torch passed between these pieces.” In ancient covenant ceremonies, parties to the treaty passed between similarly-killed animals and promised that if they broke the covenant, the offender would be destroyed as these animals were killed.

In this eerie story, we encounter both the otherness of the text and the otherness of God. Various details contribute to its spookiness–Abraham falls into deep sleep, there’s a terrifying darkness. The story’s ambiguity contributes to its strangeness. Does this take place in a dream, a vision?

In spite of all of that strangeness and other-ness, relics of a far distant age, there is also reassurance. There is God’s promise, and those wonderful words, Abram believed, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Here “righteousness” doesn’t have to do with holiness, but rather with being in right relationship with God. Whatever his doubts now or in the future,  Yahweh’s promise to Abram will remain true, and Abram will know that God is with him, and he with God.

It’s a reassuring message in Lent as well. Invited to reflect on our lives, we are also encouraged to encounter and experience God’s promise to us of salvation, and the grace that is offered us in Jesus Christ.

 

 

A word of forgiveness in Lent

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I had one of those encounters yesterday that brought me up short. A homeless guy was hanging around the church after the early service and said he wanted to talk with me. There was something concrete I could help him with, but then he began telling me his story, telling me what burdened him. Many years ago, he had done something terrible to another human being and for all that time, his actions and what resulted from them preyed on him. He told me that he had asked God for forgiveness many times over the years, but that he couldn’t be sure he had been forgiven. We talked and prayed, and at the end of our meeting, I said the words of absolution while laying my hands on him:

Almighty God, have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, keep you in eternal life. Amen.

As I said them, I prayed that he might hear those words as words of consolation and forgiveness, words of assurance of God’s love for him. I hoped they could be words of comfort in the midst of a difficult life and at the end of a long road. As I said them, I thought of the Great Litany that we had recited earlier that morning. I thought too of Ash Wednesday with its litany of penitence. Ash Wednesday and Lent are times when we are encouraged to reflect on ourselves, our sins and shortcomings, repent of them, and seek God’s forgiveness. All of that can be hard work. It’s difficult to be honest with oneself, to admit one’s humanity, weaknesses, and faults. It’s difficult to repent of them—to say, yes, I’m sorry I’m that way, or that I’ve done those things. I’m sorry I continue to do them. It’s hard to lay oneself bare before oneself or before God.

But it’s also hard to ask for and accept God’s forgiveness. Sometimes that word of forgiveness is lost in the midst of our own pain and self-loathing. Sometimes the grace of forgiveness seems overwhelmed by our own suffering and the suffering we have inflicted on others. Sometimes, God’s forgiveness seems impossible. Sometimes we resist the amazing grace offered by God. Do the words of absolution, the offer of God’s forgiveness come as words of good news and grace in the midst of our lives? When we resist them, how can we open ourselves to the possibility that through God’s grace and love, we might experience new life in Christ?

The message of Ash Wednesday and Lent can be hard indeed, but harder still for us to hear and receive may be the message of God’s forgiveness. Lent should also be a time when our goal should be to experience that message fully. It should be a time when we open ourselves to the joy of God’s grace.

He was tempted in every way as we are–A Homily for the First Sunday of Lent, 2013

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I often wonder what visitors think when they visit an Episcopal church like Grace on the First Sunday of Lent. Actually, I often wonder what most members or regular attenders think when they come to Grace today. We have endured the oldest piece of liturgy written in the English language—the Great Litany, with its comprehensive list of petitions on behalf of everything and everyone under the sun. We have chanted and prayed at length, listened to readings, and now finally you’re settling in for a few minutes of respite from what will be six weeks of relentless reminders of our humanity, sinfulness, and need for repentance. Is it any wonder some people give up church for Lent? Continue reading →

Why priests? Ask Garry Wills, but don’t ask a priest

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Randall Balmer’s review (BTW, he’s an Episcopal priest):

Central to the priestly claims to authority, Wills says, was the importance of the sacraments, especially celebration of the eucharist, which could be performed, the church declared, only by priests. “The most striking thing about priests, in the later history of Christianity,” the author writes, “is their supposed ability to change bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ.”

This exclusivity, according to Wills, derives from Thomas Aquinas rather than Jesus. The Thomistic view of the eucharist understands the Mass as re-enacting the sacrifice of Christ, from which all other graces devolve to the believer. The church, following Aquinas, vested the power of transubstantiation — the bread and wine of holy communion actually becomes the body and blood of Christ — in the priesthood. With that magical power, the priesthood increasingly set itself apart from the laity.

Kevin Madigan’s review in The New Republic (he’s not a priest, he’s a historian of Christianity):

Although the Catholic Church has for centuries maintained the opposite position, it is simply false—from an historical perspective—to assert that Jesus instituted the priesthood. Not only was Jesus not a member of the priestly class; it is simply anachronistic to say that any of Jesus’ apostles were imagined in priestly terms, either by Jesus or the apostles themselves.

I remember many years ago when I was lecturing on organization in early Christianity at the School of Theology at Sewanee, and said something like “presbyteroi–whatever that means” and 23 first-year students shouted back at me “priest”–to which I replied, “tell that to Calvin.”

I doubt I’ll read Wills’ book, but my guess is, he’s probably right on. The understanding of priesthood in the western church is directly related to the elevation of the understanding of the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist. As Ballmer points out, Luther offered a powerful critique of that view from early in his career, one that continues to challenge our understanding of priesthood and the sacraments. It’s part of the reason why he was so opposed to an understanding of the mass that involved sacrifice. For Anglicans, that we’ve retained the language of the sacrifice helps to explain why we continue to lift up the office of the priest, but we might well ask whether there are downsides to it.

Silence on the Drones, revisited

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Well, Archbishop Tutu has spoken (and was acknowledged by the Episcopal Cafe) but still from progressive American Christians, little else.

Teju Cole in The New Yorker writes:

We now have firsthand testimony from the pilots who remotely operate the drones, many of whom have suffered post-traumatic stress reactions to the work. There is also the testimony of the survivors of drone attacks: heartbreaking stories of mistaken identity, grisly tales of sudden death from a machine in the sky. In one such story reported by The New York Times, the relatives of a pair of dead cousins said, “We found eyes, but there were no faces left.” The recently leaked Department of Justice white paper indicating guidelines for the President’s assassination of his fellow Americans has shone a spotlight on these “dirty wars” (as the journalist Jeremy Scahill rightly calls them in his documentary film and book of the same title). The plain fact is that our leaders have been killing at will.

Also in The New Yorker, Jane Mayer explores the differences between torture and drones:
In some ways, what’s most disturbing about the Obama white paper is not that it tried to set limits in order to ensure that the drone program was within the laws of war. Rather, what seems more worrisome is what it didn’t attempt to figure out, and which no one else seems to be addressing either: namely, whether conventional laws of war should still apply to America’s unconventional counterterrorism program, particularly now that it is over a decade old, and is seemingly morphing into an endless worldwide lethal manhunt. Drones per se are weapons, and they are not so much the problem as the parameters of the war in which they’re being used.
Mayer’s position notwithstanding, Kelsey Atherton points out something quite obvious though it’s been overlooked by almost everyone, including myself. The so-called “drone memo” isn’t actually about drones at all. It’s about “targeted killing,” in other words assassination. The use of drones is only one possible way in which the US targets suspected terrorists from afar:
We may talk about the “drone war” and debate the drone memo, but we’re not really looking at the use of a specific technology. Instead, the “drone debate” is about policy, and how the United States chooses to attack its enemies in the War on Terror. Fancy as modern drones may be, it’s the policy that makes this kind of war new.
By the way, President Obama refused to deny that he had the right to target an American citizen on US soil with a drone strike.
If Atherton is write to say that to debate drones is to debate the technology and not the underlying policy, then we have an obligation as Christians to engage that deeper debate, whether our nation should assassinate those we proclaim to be militantly opposed to us, without recourse to any legal or judicial framework for making those judgments. It seems to me that such policy is untrammeled, unchecked power which always leads to abuse.

Ashes in the Public Square: What do they mean?

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There’s a lively debate in Episco-land about the appropriateness of “Ashes to Go” an effort that began several years ago to bring the liturgy of Ash Wednesday into the streets. Here’s a press report from USA Today (last year).

Here are views from several priests. From Scott Gunn:

The world is more full of seekers and wanderers than it is of disciples. Our task, as Christians, is to share the Good News and preach a gospel of hope in a world without much real hope. If we limit ourselves to those who would cross our thresholds first, we will be limited indeed. The imposition of ashes is not a sacrament. One need not be baptized to receive them. And, it seems to me, the act of receiving an ashen cross and a reminder of one’s mortality is as good an invitation to repent as many will ever receive. That gray cross is a powerful sign, even when that’s all there is.

From Susan Brown Snook (she wants to take Easter to the streets, not Ash Wednesday):

But Ash Wednesday?  Surely there are more enlightening ways to touch people with God’s grace.  Leaving aside the facts Everett points out – that this quick “ashing” comes without repentance, and directly countermands what Jesus tells us to do in the Ash Wednesday gospel – that is, don’t wear your piety on your forehead for all to see and congratulate, but practice it quietly – there are other problems.  After all, what is the most immediate experience of getting “ashed”?  It is a reminder of our mortality:  Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

In past years, I’ve written about my own experiences sharing ashes on the sidewalk as well as my ambivalence about doing so.

As I’ve continued to reflect on it as well as on the arguments pro and contra, I’ve come to think about another aspect of the rite, the imposition of ashes, and of carrying around that sign of the cross on one’s forehead all day.

The liturgy itself focuses on our individual piety: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” But immediately upon departing the church, especially if we receive the ashes in the morning or in the middle of the day, that smudge on the forehead becomes a very public display. The gospel of the day cautions us against displaying our piety in public but unless we immediately remove it, the ashes will linger as a reminder to all of what we have done this day. It is a public act and whatever its meaning for us, people who encounter us throughout the day will also attach meaning to it.

This is where it gets interesting, especially in our current American context. With the public face of Christianity so often shaped by people who preach messages of hate, exclusion, and who claim to know what is true and right both for themselves and for the world, people who engage in culture wars over things like “Merry Christmas,” what does it mean to enter the public square with an ashen cross on one’s forehead? That sign of humility and repentance, borne in silence, can offer a powerful counter testimony to the loud and shrill voices of conservative Christianity. What might it convey to passers-by who struggle to make sense of their lives and are struggling to make ends meet? How might the sign of the cross help us bear our public Christian witness with humility, and grace, and repentance?

Even more, while the liturgy of Ash Wednesday, and certainly popular understanding of it, may tend to focus on individual acts of repentance, there is also in the liturgy a powerful communal aspect. The lesson from Joel emphasizes communal repentance: “Call a solemn assembly, gather the people.” My understanding of Ash Wednesday has been re-shaped by my experience observing it in the midst of Wisconsin’s protests two years ago.

There was a time when American civil religion involved public repentance–presidents, governors, legislatures would proclaim a day of prayer and fasting. No longer. If they do it today, they are likely ridiculed. As a society, we have lost the ability to repent. We lack appropriate rituals, even language for it. Public repentance is left to politicians or celebrities who have been caught doing something wrong, and for which they will publicly state, “I take full responsibility.,” and go about their merry way. The sinful acts we commit as a society, as a human race, go un-noticed and unconfessed. The very public act of bringing ashes out on to the street can be a prophetic act–a reminder to all those who pass by as they go about their daily business that there is a higher calling, a higher claim to our allegiance than the gods of money and power. It can be a call to our cities and our nation to repent of the sin and violence that occur in our midst and that we commit.

I think there may be no better message that we could proclaim in the public square, in 2013, than an invitation to a holy Lent, a call to repentance, and a reminder that “we are dust and to dust we shall return.”