In almost every church I
have served, I have had congregational members approach me with vexing
questions they have about their teenagers or young adults. The congregational member is usually someone
who has given their whole life to the church and began doing so from a very
young age. But their young person,
although kind and mature, wonders whether if there really are such things as
heaven and hell, has found inconsistencies in the Bible, and has watched as
people of faith do horrendous things in the universe.
The congregational member
will tell me that their young person has decided that they are an agnostic or
an atheist and that they are not sure they believe all this “Christianity
stuff.”
That was me so many years
back. I was the “doubting Thomas,” the
only one out of my thirteen-member confirmation class who confessed to the
pastor that I didn’t think I could believe all those creeds and formulas in the
church. Christian faith seemed like a
life invented by a storyteller like Tolkien who placed all the Hobbits in the
Shire and invented all these rules, an alternative universe, that was divorced
from the realities of the material world.
That was me. I was the trouble-maker in the children’s
choir, the doubting Thomas in the confirmation class, and then showed up as the
geeky pastor as an adult. Go figure.
But in turn then, I am able
to, in love, say to these devoted congregational members and say, “You know,
faith begins with honest questioning.
And your young person is exactly where they should be. We want them interrogating and questioning
their faith now so that they can have an honest and true faith when they get on
the other side of adulthood and decide what is true and what is make-believe.”
For as I grew older, truly
read the Bible, I recognized that the Bible itself was much more about the
material world and that God seemed not so much invested in cherubim and
seraphim and other heavenly beings as God was invested in the goodness of the
earth, the goodness of humankind, and the “very goodness” of all of material
creation.
The concern for the ethereal
and the otherworldly faith can sometimes lead us to a faith that has no tether
or anchor. I see this often in
evangelical Christianity where we give lip service to the signs and symbols of
the faith that really have whatever meaning you want to give to it. I thought about that quite a bit as I saw a
cross lifted up at our nation’s capitol and a banner was strung up as people
stormed the building which read, “Jesus 2020.”
What did or does that mean? Is it
based on the material things that Jesus did and said? Or are that cross and banner conveniently
used for whatever we want them to mean—divorcing Jesus from his relationship to
the poor and prostitute, his willingness to touch the sick and the dying, and
his primary task in the Gospel of Mark of extricating people from the demons of
Roman colonialism and occupation? Would
Jesus have looked at all those white folk and seen himself in the claims they
made for Christianity? Or do Jesus and
the cross get to mean whatever we want them to mean?
As I have developed a
different lens for Christian faith, that concern for the ethereal and
otherworldly seems not only suspect but blasphemous. Biblical faith is strongly based in the
material. I think our inability to
recognize that, as people of faith, is killing us and allowing our relationship
with the very basis of faith to be cheapened in favor of the unearthly realm.
The baptism of Jesus begins
with the description of John the Baptist which grounds both Jesus and John in
the material and their relationships to the good earth. John is described in the Scripture passage as
wholly dependent on God and as a man of righteousness--not through some aura or
supernatural sign but in listing four different relationships he has with the
material world. He wears camel’s hair
and a leather belt. He eats locusts and
wild honey. This diet not only grounds
John in the material world, his diet shows that his spirituality and livelihood
do not depend on the bread and circuses of the Roman Empire. He does not eat the Roman meal. Yes, he eats bugs for lunch.
Jesus is then baptized in
the muddy rivers of the Jordan but also has the skies break open and the Spirit
of God alight on him like a dove. The
water, skies, and the dove are all signs from a God invested in the material and
signals that Jesus, too, is not invested in the Roman story but in something
more heavenly, spiritual, and transcendent.
Let me say that again, God’s
investment in the material earth is a foretaste of Jesus’s ministry being more
heavenly, spiritual, and transcendent than Rome’s gospel. That is what otherworldly claims meant in the
Bible. They were not about saying we
shouldn’t care about the material.
Otherworldly claims were about saying that there are deeper stories and
values than the present systems and structures.
Rome justified its violence
and domination through otherworldly battles where Jupiter and Roma conferred
divine power to its emperors. In fact,
Augustus Caesar conferred himself the title Pontifax
Maximus, the chief priest of Rome, and head of the Collegium Pacificum, the high priests in the land. Augustus brought back many of the traditional
social rules and religious rituals, the family values, all to make Rome great
again.[1]
God sanctioned Jesus through
the material world. Rome sanctioned
emperors through the otherworldly.
This is not some new thing
in the Bible with the arrival of Jesus.
Way back in the book of Genesis, God creates, looks out over all
creation, and declares the material world “very good.” God owns the land and gives the land over to
human community for the prospering of all of creation. Rome claims ownership of the land and gives the
land over to the elite, wealthy, and ruling class believing that this this will
prosper all of creation. These are the
two narratives that run headlong into one another in the First Century, making
the Jewish people a dangerous lot over and against Rome’s empire. Who owns the land?
That is not just a First
Century conflict. That is a tale, to
borrow a Disney song, as old as time. That tale continues, in Biblical order, with
the Ten Commandments. We have often
heard the second commandment as not making any idol or image which we call god
or primary priority to which we give our worship or bow down before. But the whole of the second commandment is a
prohibition against bowing down and serving idols with your possessions or
produce—your land, your salary, your capital—in service of that idol. Do not give material to the immaterial. This commandment was a direct response to
Pharaoh’s extractive economy of taking people’s possessions to impoverish
them. In contrast to Pharaoh’s
extractive economy, the Ten Commandments are about developing a social-economic
relationship of neighborliness so that families and communities might thrive
through the sharing of resources like land and possessions.[2] The divine is found in the material bases of
life and how the material bases of life are shared.
Christian origins scholar,
Richard Horsley, believes that the apostle Paul continues in this great Jewish
teaching. He wrote, “Paul repeatedly
exhorted the assemblies to withdraw as much as possible from dealings with the
local imperial economy, ‘the [Roman] world’ of supposed ‘peace and security’
that was ‘passing away.’ In contrast to
the vertical imperial extraction of resources, Paul pressed for the horizontal
sharing of their meager possessions among subject peoples, working for ‘the
good of all . . . .’”[3]
The material nature of
Biblical teaching does not let us break off the political, economic, and the
spiritual into separate categories which can bend and twist words like
liberation and freedom into words fit only for the individual soul. The material nature of baptism as evidenced
by John with camel’s hair and leather belt for his clothing and locusts and
wild honey for his diet, and water, sky, and dove for the association of the
divine with his practice, is made even more strongly material when we recognize
that Christ’s baptism is done embodied.
The baptism of Jesus is a “material body” experience, not some dusting
or sprinkling, but an immersion. One of
our two holy sacraments in the Protestant tradition, baptism is a materially
embodied experience.
Five years ago, the great
Hebrew Scripture scholar, Walter Brueggemann, published a book titled “Money
and Possessions.” In that book, he
argued that the “Bible is relentlessly material in its focus and concern” and,
he goes on to write, “[e]verywhere the Bible is preoccupied with bodily
existence.”[4]
By relentless, Brueggemann is trying to
make clear that the Bible will not be sidetracked by a concern for the
supernatural and otherworldly. The
Biblical mythologies, when deciphered, take us right back to material concern
and a preoccupation with bodily existence.
One of the primary Biblical
statements is that God owns the land and gives it to the whole community for
its welfare, benefit, and livelihood.
That is a counter-narrative to all imperial claims. In Ezekiel, chapter 29, verse 3, that is made
abundantly clear. “Thus says the Holy
One, the Living God, I am against you, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great dragon
sprawling in the midst of its channels, saying, ‘My Nile is my own; I made it
myself.’”
Kingdom and pharaohs,
empires and caesars, multinationals and presidents, may try to make you believe
they are self-made and owners of creation.
The fact is, Pharaoh did not make the Nile. The Nile made Pharaoh and his empire.
Those statements, that God
owns the land, Creator of life-giving water, and that the Bible is relentlessly
material and has a preoccupation with the body, Brueggemann believes, find
their foundation when the Priestly writer in Genesis, Chapter 1, has God look
out over all creation and declares all of creation very good.
And that is the point I want
to remind us of today. This good earth
is the body in which we move, live, and have our being. There is no ethereal, otherworldly place
where our faith is acted out. The lakes
and rivers are its blood.[5]
[6]
I am part of the UCC Council
for Climate Justice and this next Wednesday we will be discussing what might be
possible for creating change with the incoming Biden Administration. For many years now, the corporate world has
tried to convince us that we are the ones who need to recycle, take shorter
showers, and maybe do a little composting on the side. We, in guilt, then hang our heads in shame
because we just can’t do everything required.
That’s it! Maybe I could buy a
new economy car! What leading climate scientists tell us is
that we actually need political action to change national and global economics,
policies, and trajectories. We need a
movement. And we need it yesterday . . .
to turn the tide. We need to remember the
material nature of our baptisms (leather belt, camel’s hair, locusts, wild
honey, shell, evergreen bough, water, sky, dove, and full body), and the gifts
we have been given as a trust in land, water, animal. As the president declares his intent to take
down the last pristine wilderness in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, we
need to remember our baptisms and turn the tide.
The convener of the UCC
Council for Climate Justice, Brooks Berndt, sent out some time ago a staggering
quote from climate justice scientist, Camille Parmesan. In an interview with The Guardian, dated New Years’ Eve, Parmesan said, “Things will
shift to the extremely negative in the next 50 years. Climate scientists are
doing decadal projects and it starts really shifting about 2070-2090. That is in
my children’s lifetimes. They will have to deal with it. That’s what makes me
angry. Policymakers are mostly in their 50s and they will be dead by then. The
worst impacts will hit their grandchildren.”[7] The worst impacts will hit my
grandchildren.
The material world is one of
those things that still engenders faith in all ages. We look at the beauty and complexity, the
unity and the diversity, and our hearts experience an intelligence of Creator’s
love that is sometimes beyond critical thought.
Some theologians wonder whether that intelligence will be available to
us as climate change makes the natural world full of disasters, more barren and
desolate.
Today I ask you to keep both
the material baby and the bathwater and remember your baptisms. John the Baptist was out in that wilderness
dressed in camels and cows, eating the stuff of bugs and bees. He baptized Jesus with signs of water, sky,
and dove. Remember the material stuff of
faith to help start a movement. We have
been given this good earth as a trust and sacrament.
Harry Wilson and I are
talking about starting up a book study later in the year using the book of
climate activist and UCC pastor, Rev. Jim Antal. Our faith should always be interrogated by
young people who might not want faith to become a dead idol that has no meaning
in the real world—and in in many circles, it is young people who are leading
out the climate movement. My hope is
that if we join in this study, it will lead us not only to a deeper
relationship with Creator and creation, to witness to the love God intends for
us, but to become protectors of land and water so that our baptisms are
anchored and tethered in the real stuff, the material bases of life, the
goodness of God. May we be
faithful. Amen.
[1]
“Augustus,” The Roman Empire in the First
Century, http://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/augustus_religion.html.
[2]
Richard Horsley in the Foreward to
Walter Brueggemann, Money and
Possessions, Interpretation Series (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), pp.
xi-xii.
[3]
Ibid, citing I Corinthians 7:29-31, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, and Galatians 6:10,
p. xv.
[4]
Ibid, but this is Brueggemann, p. 11.
[5]
A theological statement directly from Standing Rock.
[6]
The United States river system displayed on one map. https://www.livescience.com/56751-visualization-of-united-states-rivers.html
[7] “Camille Parmesan: ‘Trump’s extremism on climate
change has brought people together’,” The
Guardian, December 31, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/dec/31/camille-parmesan-trump-extremism-climate-change-interview.
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