C Reign of Christ
BFC 2019
Colossians 1:11-19; Jeremiah
23:1-6; Luke 1:68-79
November 24, 2019
Christian author and futurist, Diana Butler Bass,
the author of the book Grateful that Barbara Gulick prepared us to read
in groups last year, recently posted on Twitter what happened to take her from
an evangelical Episcopalian, having graduated from an evangelical Christian college
and seminary, to someone who now references herself as a progressive
Christian. Way back in 1989, she was
very conservative politically, worried about the future, and wanting to do well
in her Ph.D. work. She was one of few
women seeking a doctorate in religious studies in the late 80s/early 90s, and
her focus was on church history with an emphasis on American religious
history.
At Duke Divinity School, all church history students
had to attend a seminar led by different members of the history faculty. Bass remembers a seminar led by Elizabeth
Clark in early Christianity, the field furthest from her own. The topic was the formation of creeds and
focused on the 1st Council of Nicaea from which we have, of course,
the Christian Nicaean creed. Professor Clark shared how the Roman Empire began
to adopt Christianity as the official religion to develop imperial unity and
uniformity. One problem . . . Christianity before Nicaea was theologically
very diverse and divided. To “resolve”
this diversity, the Emperor sent out a call to all the Christian bishops from
across the empire to attend, paid for the whole thing—travel, lodging, shave
gel, loofahs, donuts—all of it out of public funds. Professor Clark coolly shared how Constantine
kept a lid on dissent and how the bishops knew the direction, turn, and trajectory
Emperor Constantine wanted for their time together.
Of course, there is an “official” historical telling,
Professor Clark stated, where Constantine listened to the bishops discuss and
dialog, all the while deferring, never interrupting. As a good historian, Professor Clark then
said, “How would this be possible? You
are a bishop, with your presence bought and paid for by Constantine, and you
objectively discuss doctrine? Emperors
don’t defer to bishops. Power works the
other way around.” Power works the other
way around. Beware the religious faith
where the State pays for all of your donuts.
Bass went on with the historical analysis, offering
the truth Christians have experienced throughout the ages. The State’s political power is brought down
like a hammer on those who question--even if those same people proclaim from
the rooftops their love of Jesus, their fidelity to Christ’s kingdom. If you don’t agree to the particular way the
State interprets Jesus, the emperor can have you killed.
When Bass realized this, when this reality clicked
not only in her head but also in her soul, she found herself in the women’s
room at Duke Divinity School, as she writes, “throwing up over the political
nature of the First Council of Nicaea.”
I think it was because she realized, from that moment on, her faith
might require of her more than she ever imagined. Her faith would require more humility and
less certainty, more risk and more graciousness, more space for others and more
courage from herself, and she would be required to apologize for every last
thing her profound flawed tradition had done as an expression of power over
others.[1]
Writers of authentic faith know that if they are
going to gain critical distance to critique the system communicated by pharaoh,
king, or emperor, they were going to
need to develop an alternative cosmology, an explanation for how the whole
universe is ordered, as a way of remaining faithful to the cosmology, the
profoundly different universe authored by God.
In effect, that is why we have what used to be called Christ the King
Sunday, referred to know as Reign of Christ Sunday. This Sunday says that how the State orders
things may be profoundly different than the way of God. If the two cosmologies are one in the same,
we should be asking ourselves whether that is because they represent the same
values or whether the State has co-opted faith for its own hatred and violence.
Cosmologies are important because the tell us not
only who we are in relation to the universe, they also explain how the universe
works, and, in the end, reinforce . . . or disrupt . . . the status quo. In Roman cosmology, Rome and its emperor are
right and moral and good. Therefore, whatever
Rome does to subject peoples, like the Jews, is based on a cosmology of law and
order that is right and moral and good.
Rome might do the unthinkable, things it might criticize other peoples
and empires for, but because Rome did them, as an agent of the Divine, they
would always be right and true and good.
For early Christians, to talk about an invisible
God, as the passage from Colossians does, is to offer an alternative to the
divine status the flesh and blood emperor claims. In a stroke of poetic genius, the writer of
Colossians may assume that an invisible God is a God who cannot be
co-opted. Continuing in the passage from
Colossians, to elevate a crucified Christ over “thrones, dominions, or rulers
or powers” is a critique over and against a government cosmology that said its
law and order is right and moral and good.
If so right and moral and good, how does Jesus get crucified? Sitting Jesus on the throne normally occupied
by Caesar undoes the cosmology that understands Roman violence, slavery, and
execution, Roman law and order as right and moral and good. Calling the crucified Jesus as right and moral
and good undoes the normalization of violence done by Roman law and order.
I placed the picture of that crucified Jesus on the
front of our bulletin today because I wanted us all to imagine what it might
mean to proclaim that Jesus King who is outside the barbed wire reaching in . .
. or inside the barbed wire looking at us on the outside. That perspective, that kind of kingdom, does
not allow us to be co-opted. Rome and
the wider society had a view of lepers that is not shared by Jesus and his
community in much the same way that Jesus’s disciples today should have a much
different understanding of access to health care. Rome and its economic agents had a view of
how economic debt might be leveraged to create wealth that was not shared by
Jesus and his community in much the same way that Jesus’s disciples today
should have a much different understanding of how debt destroys the lives and
futures of so many. Rome and its
patrons believed that the land was a commodity that could be bought and sold in
perpetuity which was in contrast to Jesus and his community in much the same
way Jesus’s disciples today should have a much different understanding of how
Creator’s good earth is the basis for our shared life and well-being.
But certainly we see the history of our own country,
right?—to know that we have lived out of
a profoundly flawed tradition? In many
circles, we cannot even begin a discussion of genocide or the slave trade. It is why, so many years after Viet Nam, we
as a country still fight over that war’s meaning. What if we are not right and moral and
good? What if our cosmology just tells
us that certain people can always commit incredible acts of hate and violence
and death because, no matter what, they are right and moral and good. For Viet Nam, we leverage the true valor and
courage of veterans to say that denigrating that war is denigrating them. We cannot possibly allow our cosmology to be
questioned.
This is the fight we are having as a country over
the policing of people of color. Even
though the video evidence and the testimonies are right there for us to see,
some of us cannot possibly validate them because it would invalidate our whole
cosmology—of police officers who are the helpers. White
children are taught from an early age that police are the people you go to
whenever you are lost, or vulnerable, or afraid. My brother and sister-in-law, raising an
African American child in Denver, openly talk to me about their fear as Kian
grows to be big for his age. What do
they teach him? They know that to teach
him what they were taught risks his life.
The cosmology does not hold when their son’s life is at stake. The furor over a football player kneeling
during a game continues because we cannot possibly admit that law and order is
not evenly applied, justice is not equally dispensed, and our society has no
critical distance by which we might say that we are not always morally right.
We so want to believe that “our people” are
fundamentally good, our church is fundamentally loving, that we create a
cosmology which reinforces us as good regardless of how we live that out. Sometimes we will even violently defend that
cosmology so that we do not have to employ our faith that demands us to be
ever-growing, self-interrogating, and ever-expansive in love. We all struggle to live out a humility which
might suggest that something might be fundamentally wrong. We will accept any lie, deny any facts or
evidence to the contrary, all so we can continue to see ourselves as
fundamentally good.
When the prophet
Jeremiah spoke against the cosmology created by his own people the State could
not bear to hear that God stood apart from their unjust, lying, and violent
schemes. The story we read for last
Sunday when Kandi Mossett preached told of the prophet Samuel being pushed by
the people to appoint a king over Israel.
Samuel objected because the Jewish people were to have no other Pharaoh,
no other Caesar, no other King but the Living God. Samuel knew that human kings inevitably make
Divine claims. Over time, kings assumed
they had the tacit support of the Living God.
Weren’t the King of Israel and
all of his actions and pronouncements and edicts and actions right and moral
and good by virtue of being the chosen people and the ancestor of King David?
Jeremiah seeks to gain a
critical distance from the Israelite government and aristocracy by placing the
Living God back on the throne to appoint kings who will be in keeping with the
values of the Living God. In those
days, the family tree will develop an offshoot, an alternative cosmology to the
most recent kings of Judah and Israel, and their values shall be named, “The
Living God is our justice.”
As God called Jeremiah
and early Christians, so we are called to gain a critical distance from our own
cosmology so that we might be more humble, more gracious, and more
faithful. If we are unable to take any
new information in that might broaden and expand our compassion, we are
sometimes found violently defending a cosmology just to think of ourselves as
moral and good. I even experience this
among progressive institutions dominated by one generation. When harm is caused by one of those institutions,
words like “those millennials” or “Ok, Boomer” are used as a way of discounting
fair and right and good criticism. No
new information comes in lest they might be held accountable.
If we were able to take
in new information, if we were not beholden to a cosmology that depended on
State donations or generational solidarity to survive and say we are always
good and moral and right, what might that look like?
Diana Butler Bass ended
her Twitter feed in just such a way, transforming her whole cosmology to gain a
more critical distance with a Christianity that was taught to her by the wider,
imperial culture. Her willingness to
critique her faith did not make her any less a Christian. As she writes,
And yes, I'm still a Christian. One who understands
questions of historical inquiry, of the complex motives that animate Christians
through the ages. If you are church historian, you understand sin and evil, esp
how it works in the church itself.
You learn to bear the past as profoundly flawed, tradition
as an expression of power, and honestly apologize for every single rotten thing
that was ever done in the name of Jesus Christ.
You learn to wear your own certainty lightly, cloaked only
in humility and willingness to admit how wrong you can be, and a graciousness
to know that in a century or two, you, too, will probably be shown to have
contributed to some injustice that was invisible to you.
We do the best we can. And then some. And yes, some years
later, I thanked Prof Clark. She was surprised. And gracious.[2]
In
such a faith, when God or God in Christ are King, we should be able to critique
our faith in such a way that honestly apologizes for our past, wears our own
certainty lightly, and finds joy in making a path that is often obscured. We learn that we have much to learn from
other faiths and peoples and traditions—for they might have something to tell
us about the blind spot our State or generationally sponsored religion has
cultivated. In such a faith, sometimes
we wake up renewed and our hearts transformed by new information and points of
view. As Bass knew in the Duke Divinity
School bathroom, it may mean throwing up some time-worn certainties that really
did not hold up under closer inspection.
But the faith we do inherit traces a history all the way back to Moses
when he stands on holy ground and hears for the first time that Pharaoh, as
Pharaoh had told everyone, is not the sun, moon, and the stars. And the law and order and compassion of God
for a people living in bondage, was on the move.
Over the five and a half years I have been your
pastor, I hope you have heard me say that I believe God’s greatest joy is found
in a community that recognizes wisdom and love in every generation—to know what
it is to be a Christian at age two to age twenty-seven to age seventy-two. I hope that while you have heard me call us a
courageous congregation, you have also seen me bring a critical eye to my own
faith and our collective faith—that we might be safer, healthier, more mature,
more gracious, more hospitable to the wisdom and love found in other faiths and
traditions that our different than our own.
I do that hoping we will not be once again be co-opted by Emperor
Constantine and his imperial project.
My continuing hope for this blessed church is that
you will span the generations in your wisdom and not be bought by a
Christianity that offers an “in crowd” mentality. I pray we will always keep a critical
distance so that the State cannot buy us, just by buying the donuts. May it be so.
Amen.
[1]
Diana Butler Bass, Twitter account, November 14, 2019. https://twitter.com/dianabutlerbass/status/1195086562322796550
[2]
Ibid.
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