Easter Day, "Resurrection is a this-worldly experience"

B Easter Day BFC 2018

Mark 16:1-8

April 1, 2018

          I think one of the great sins of modern-day Christianity is that it has become an other-worldly religion.  Christianity has become about heaven and hell, judgment and the after-life.  I think the result of this emphasis is that we really don’t need to care about the soil or the atmosphere, even though Biblical faith tells us that we are made out of the deep black and brown of the earth and the wind and breath of the atmosphere.   Instead, we end up with a sky god who seems wholly unconcerned with a relationship to the air, water, and land.  When Biblical faith tells us that the literal translation of the word salvation is “a broad and spacious place for community life and conduct,” we know how central land is to our faith story. The land is the part of the promise, the substance of God’s covenant, the very context for all of our relationships.

          When the Biblical God is made into nothing more than a sky god, then the material bases of life become unimportant.  The imperial narrative tells us to pay attention to the otherworldly battle that is going on to understand why they or we have the authority over life and death, food and land, air and water.  Our gods won.  “So we win,” empire says, “and there is only so much to go around.  Soooooo . . . sorry.” 

Through Pax Romana, Deutschland über alles, and manifest destiny, all of the land that stretches into the horizon is declared the individual property of empire.  We therefore reserve the right to dominate, occupy, colonize, confiscate, and liquidate land first; and bodies second.  The violence of empire becomes like a legion of demons—poisoning the land; spirits--housed in our own bodies.  

We get the message loud and clear.  Empire homogenizes to commodify and divides to conquer.   It tells us that the goodness of God is scarce so you had better get yourself some over and against your neighbor.  First the land and then bodies.  The message is so thick that sometimes we allow the imperial demons to take hold and we experience or do to our own bodies what we hear to be the imperial gospel—dominating, abusing, cutting, starving, drugging, sedating, objectifying—until we can no longer hear God’s voice whisper to us, “No.  Child of God.  Beautiful.  Rich.  Free.  Balance.  Strong.  Kind.”

The resurrection is the disruption to the imperial program.  The tomb is empty.  It’s just empty.  The tomb is empty—a fact that creates great fear for the women because to disturb a tomb, by edict of Caesar, was considered dishonorable, a capital offense punishable by death.[1]  So there is this amazement and this trauma upon trauma, this fear that they could be next.  Is it Rome or God that is ever-present?  In their minds, maybe in the midst of their tremendous grief, even though their friend and teacher tried to convince them otherwise, they just don’t know now.  

Is God or empire ever-present for our soul, heart, mind, and strength?   

There is no great appearance story in the Gospel of Mark--no Mary mistaking him for the gardener; or him walking on the road to Emmaus with disciples; no appearing in the Upper Room to have Thomas put his hands in his side or cooking fish while the disciples cast their nets looking for a haul.  The Scripture passage starts with the Marys headed to the tomb, not even knowing how they will get the stone rolled away.  Rome used crucifixion, like other empires used lynching[2], to not only liquidate the person but to also create so much trauma in the horrific death that they would liquidate his memory as well.  Cut off the head.  Kill the body.  And the memory of Jesus fades.

          But there is some literary wordplay being used in this story.  The word for “tomb” comes from the Greek word for “memory” and the word for “entrance” means “gateway” or “door.”[3]  So as the women wonder who will roll away a stone that is the gateway to memory, the Marys are surprised to find that the stone has already been rolled back.  And so, the door to memory of their beloved teacher and friend has been made possible.  Now they are given permission to re-member Jesus and his whole program, his whole enterprise--over and over again.    

          Notice in this resurrection story that there is no story of Jesus ascending to the sky or some metaphysical experience of Jesus as some other life form.  The person in white who greets the two Marys is not even a divine being.  It is a young man.  And he tells them what the resurrection means.  It means that God affirms the whole project, the whole program.  “Jesus is hoofing it back to the homeland, Galilee” the young man tells them, where Jesus has a connection to the rich black and brown soil, where bread and fish are shared, where demons are thrown out of bodies and off the land, and where the ravages of empire on bodies in sickness and death are healed.   It is not about some otherworldly experience.  Resurrection tells the two Marys that in the gateway to their memories, go and relive the mission and ministry of Jesus back in Galilee—the land that is in every bone and sinew, in every synapse and blood vessel.   Through the resurrection power of God, the mission and ministry in Galilee has a connotation that life is shared, in and out are blurred, and diversity is to be celebrated.  Christ has already started the movement before you—disrupted the imperial occupation and colonization in body to go back to the land and begin the nonviolent confrontation of empire--exorcising demons, creating a mutuality between healing and hospitality, and sharing bread and grape across the table. 

          Activist and professor, Loretta Ross, has said, “When people think many different thoughts and move in the same direction, that’s a movement.  When they think the same thoughts and move in the same direction, that’s a cult.”[4]  From its very beginning, Christianity was intended to be a disruptive movement, the resistance, over and against the violence of empire.  And the early Christian movement was not known for its sameness in belief, ortho-doxy, but for its sameness in practice and direction, ortho-praxis.  As Christianity became an imperial narrative, however, ortho-doxy (right belief) became primary--faith homogenized to lose all of its color, commodified to lose all of its courage. 

          We currently live in a time where we are told that there is scarce justice, scarce attention, and scarce liberation.  We believe we are inevitably pitted against each other such that we worry that what is the worst thing in our lives won’t get the attention it deserves.  “How come your worst thing gets attention and my worst thing didn’t?”  That scarcity is an imperial lie.  In God’s land, in the place the resurrected Christ is going to in Galilee, the common quilt stitched together through the hard work in our diverse lives, there is abundant justice, abundant attention, and abundant liberation.[5]

          Throughout this whole season of Lent, I have asked us to develop attention liberation leading to transformative justice.  I have done that believing we are forever diverted and distracted, seduced to try and win the Game of Thrones that leaves the whole world tattered in chaos and ruin.  We have to stop trying to succeed at the imperial project, pretending we can win it if we just play the right numbers, bet on the right horse, straighten out our lives and look a little more presentable.  Resurrection is not winning.  Resurrection is God saying that even crucified bodies, traumatized peoples, are called to rise up and join themselves to the shared program and plan in Galilee.  God’s empire does not win because God does not play that game. 

The jailbreak has already happened.  We may be scared, terrified, amazed, but, over and over again, Christ is being resurrected to do the work of the gospel.  Come to the empty tomb to enter into re-membrance of who he was in Galilee.  Re-member yourselves, re-member your community, re-member the good earth, people of dark rich soil and holy wind, and then follow.  For, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed.  Amen. 

---

[1] Bruce J. Malina, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis:  Augsburg Fortress, 2003), p. 383.

[2] That would be our empire.  James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 2011).  Contrary to popular belief, lynching was a popular white social activity. 

[3] James Rowe, “Mark 16:1-8,” Lectionary Greek, April 3, 2012, http://lectionarygreek.blogspot.com/2012/04/mark-161-8.html.

[4] Rachell Ravelli, “‘Call In, Call Out’ talk examines current human rights movement,” The Massachusetts Daily Collegian, March 10, 2016.  https://dailycollegian.com/2016/03/call-in-call-out-talk-examines-current-human-rights-movement/.

[5] Really paraphrasing one of my oracles, “Interview with Adrienne Maree Brown:  The World Is a Miraculous Mess and It’s Going to Be All Right,” Yes!  March 17, 2018.  http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/the-world-is-a-miraculous-mess-and-its-going-to-be-alright-20180327.

First Sunday after Epiphany, "We have a material faith"

B Epiphany 1 BFC 2018

Mark 1:4-11

January 7, 2018

          As I have shared, I grew up in a small town just outside of Peoria, Illinois, that was right on the cusp between being a rural, farming community to being a suburban, bedroom community for the headquarters of the declining transnational corporation of Caterpillar Tractor company.  Metamora was the small town, football giant, taking on some of the Peoria area schools and beating them and, eventually, then becoming part of a conference with them.  Those were primary narratives for my life.  When our team moved through the playoffs onto its first State Championship, our organist, to the delight of the congregation, played the school fight song as the worship postlude one Sunday.

My family could not be totally on board.  My dad was the high school baseball coach, the only head coach who was also not an assistant football coach, so his job seemed at risk.  At risk especially after the strongly Christian head football coach targeted the varsity track coach for dismissal and replaced him with an assistant football coach.  Year round, weight training needed to be done by the football team.  It was important that everybody be on board. 

I watched my dad as he struggled with his faith during this time, Moderator of the Church Council, but, at times, refusing communion as the tray was passed through the pew.  I knew that he didn’t really sleep for several weeks in a row as people would stop him on the street to tell him they were sorry.  They had heard he had been fired.   He struggled as he was ordered by the school principal to start football players over other baseball teammates who were outperforming them. 

My dad also knew too much.  As football player after football player gave credit to Jesus for stellar performances, my dad knew the football coach was, on the sly, telling baseball players they would not start on the football team unless they lifted during baseball season, and, the highly Christian football coach was also having an affair with the varsity women’s basketball coach leading to her refusing to name the child’s father.

I had serious doubts about Christian faith and its real impact on the world.  My dad had his faults but I experienced him as a man of integrity, and, well, my dad.  I was really ready to throw the baby out with the baptismal bathwater. 

As I was being pushed to accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior by the football Christianity that pervaded my small community, I was also being peppered with questions from my father about Christianity’s claims.  On long car rides with the family, he would ask, “Jesus says, ‘Just ask and it will be given to you,’ do you really think that is how it happens?  All you have to do is ask?  Maybe I’ll ask for a new car next week.”  I tried my best, as a Junior High son, to be the defender of the faith.  But I had doubts of my own.

I was the only one, of thirteen confirmands at my local UCC church, to turn to my pastor just before confirmation and say, “I’m not sure I believe all of this stuff.  I don’t think I should be confirmed.”   I remember thinking that if theology and Christian faith were really about what heaven looked like, whether the fanciful and violent prophecies in Revelations were of primary concern, and figuring out the details of heavenly beings like cherubim and seraphim, maybe I just wasn’t cut out for it.  In particular, as pimples, sexual desire, and my inadequacies as a teenager all broke upon me at the same time, maybe I just wasn’t good at this Christianity stuff.  Let me make clear.  None of those things were being taught by my local church pastor or shared with me in confirmation, but that’s what I heard from the football Christianity taught in my local community. Give my life to Jesus and the anxiety over those things and all life questions would all go away?  That seemed, at the very least, suspect. 

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.  As I have related in previous sermons, this not only grounds John in the material world, it shows that his spirituality and livelihood does 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.  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 it 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.  It 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 ecomony, ‘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. 

Two 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. 

As I said earlier, 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 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]

I am part of the UCC Council for Climate Justice and this month we are promoting across the whole United Church of Christ 1000 sermons for climate justice in solidarity.  We are doing this in solidarity with 21 children and young adults who are suing the federal government over climate change.  Their case will supposedly be decided the first week of February.  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 drill 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 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.”[6]  The worst impacts will hit my grandchildren. 

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.  May we be faithful.  Amen. 

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[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] “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. 

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 30, 2017, "Mustard and leaven--pervasive and persistent"

Proper A12 Ord 17 BFC 2017

Matthew 13:31-33

July 30, 2017

Just take a look at us
Aren't we ridiculous?
It's safe to say we've got no common sense, yeah
Just take a peek at us
The free song, the mini-bus
The geeks you like to throw into the fence, yeah

You know it really hurts someone loving
You know it really hurts, but we'll rise above it
You know it's gonna hurt
Woah ooh ooh oh, we know what we're worth
And you'll get what you deserve
When all the geeks inherit the Earth, yeah

Hey, aren't we absurd?
We're just a bunch a nerds
Is safe to say you're much cooler than them
So, take your punch at us
Go ahead and steal the lunch from us
We'll take the blow and play our part in the end, yeah

You know it really hurts someone loving
You know it really hurts, but you can't stop it
Right where it really hurts
Woah ooh ooh oh, we know what we're worth
And you'll get what you deserve
When all the geeks inherit the Earth, yeah

You toss your sticks and stones
And we'll just lick our wounds
Beware the underdog
Payback is coming soon

Don't blame the Universe when the commas reverse
Just look at yourself

            That’s a song by singer/songwriter Hailey Knox titled, “The Geeks.”  For a moment, it has us imagine the violence some of the people in grade school and high school experienced, the exclusion and the underdog status they lived in, “Just take a peek at us; The geeks you like to throw into the fence.”  But the song also has us imagine a future that is quite different, a future when the geeks inherit the earth.  “Payback is coming soon,” she relates.  We might imagine that with four-year or even Master’s degrees, good-paying jobs, perhaps white-collar jobs, and legal battles over intellectual property.  Knox even uses language from the Beatitudes (“When all the Geeks inherit the earth”) recognizing that the gospels have a parallel reversal.  We learn that God seeks out transformation.  The world is not as God wills it.  Some of us may have been the kingpins in grade school and high school, the popular kids, the head cheerleader, the football star, with the power to wear the letter jacket proudly and push people around.  We were gods then. 

          But maybe, Knox imagines, maybe this is not the end of the story.  Maybe there is more to write. 

And so it is with God.  We learn that the way we see things may not be the way God sees things.  The way we see ourselves, may not be the way God sees us.  God takes what is a teachable moment in our lives, takes all of our expectations, and turns them on their head.  We may see that play out as we move through grade school and high school into adulthood, but is that possible when we are the poor of the earth?  Is that upending of expectations something we even want to contemplate as the lone super power on the planet?  We might like Knox’s song because we can partially or wholly identify with those geeks, says the pastor with the pocket protector, but is our faith such that we want our expectations, our lives, the world upended?  And does our faith actively call us to see that upending of expectations?

          For the parables taught by Jesus were like that.  They took teachable moments and turned those moments on their head.  Expectations for where people stood in the world, how God saw folks, were used to create a suspended moment and then, through parable, Jesus would open a space where expectations might change, how God saw people might transform.

          Parables begin with things that are familiar, invite us in, make us believe we know the ending of the story.  Biblical scholar, John Dominic Crossan, then talks about a dark interval with parables—a place where reality is suspended for a moment while our whole brain, body, and community receives new information.[1]   Parables flip expectations and give us new perspectives.   But parables do so in a way such that our life cannot be the same as it was, for the reversal is usually done in a place where we are highly invested. 

          Each of these parables begins with a familiar image for the people of First Century Rome—empire.  Empire was the way people described the activity of the Romans in Galilee—how they violently and oppressively kept people in tow.  They dominated the landscape.   Rome had wiped out cities in Galilee[2], cities had been built in tribute to Roman Emperors in Galilee[3], and taxes were all about a trickle-up enterprise that overstuffed the wealthy and leveraged debt to destroy the life of the poor.  People knew the activity of Rome’s Empire.  Jesus was quite clearly invoking the term “empire” for its familiarity and coupling it with a term that immediately opened up a space for seeing empire differently—God.  Or in Matthew’s gospel, Heaven.[4]  Jesus used the Empire of Heaven to ask how heaven might do things differently than Caesar.  How would Heaven’s activity, Heaven’s Empire be any different in perspective?

In the particular Scripture passage from Matthew today, Jesus changes expectations, opens space through parable.  The Empire of Heaven is like a mustard seed or leaven.  As I shared last week, we have often heard these two elements as just how something small can take over and change the very essence of the host where it is planted.  The mustard seed planted becomes a bush that grows wild and takes over the garden, the field, or the land.  The leaven inserted causes the bread to rise and expand.  What we have not often heard is that these two elements, mustard seed and leaven, are considered unclean and make the field and bread unclean.  The Empire of Heaven is like something unclean which planted or inserted takes over and changes the very nature of things.  All of the field, all of the flour has certainly been transformed.

          So why would Jesus use images like a mustard shrub and leaven to talk about the Empire of Heaven?  The image of power and strength and protection within Mediterranean mythology was the cedar of Lebanon, according to the prophet Ezekiel, “with fair branches and forest shade, and of great height, its top among the clouds.  The waters nourished it, the deep made it grow tall, making its rivers flow around the place it was planted, sending forth its streams to all the trees of the field. So it towered high above all the trees of the field; its boughs grew large and its branches long, from abundant water in its shoots.  All the birds of the air made their nests in its boughs; under its branches all the animals of the field gave birth to their young; and in its shade all great nations lived.”[5]  Would this not be the image of power and strength and protection that would most closely rival the Empire of Heaven?  Is the character of Heaven, the activity of Heaven, like a weed that grows into a shrub or a tall and proud tree?

          Or is the character of Heaven, the activity of Heaven, like a woman who hides leaven in the loaf?  One of the things that is apparent from this parable is that Jesus was a brilliant storyteller.  For in one short sentence, Jesus provides a multitude of everyday images that would have created a dark interval by using familiar, everyday images and coupling them in strange and odd ways.  Jesus is not only creating dark intervals.  He is probably blowing the minds of people who hear him.

It begins with equating the character and activity of Heaven to a woman who is working in her household.  Women were the unclean, the religiously impure in Mediterranean societies.  Men were considered the pure.[6]  The Empire of Heaven is equated to a familiar, everyday thing that women do in the household. 

Leaven, in the ancient world, was a symbol for moral corruption.  How leaven came into being in the ancient world supports the idea that it was a corrupting influence.  Bernard Brandon Scott writes, “Leaven is made by taking a piece of bread and storing it in a damp, dark place until mold forms. The bread rots and decays, unlike modern yeast, which is domesticated.”  Leavened bread then invited images of the everyday unholy, rotten,  and profane.  Unleavened bread, on the other hand, invited images of the sacred and holy feast—particularly Passover.[7]

Finally, this woman is not kneading the leaven into the dough.  She is hiding it—using the Greek word (krypto).  This hiding has a more negative connotation than using the Greek word kneading (phyrao), or covering (kalypto).[8]  The hiding suggests that maybe the unclean leaven’s activity is Heaven’s activity.  One would have to be involved in the character and activity to even know what is happening. 

Three images brought together, a woman, leaven, and hiding.  All of those images conveying something about the activity and character of Heaven that would have been considered an insult if used for the activity and character of the Roman Empire.  But in the hands of Jesus, they become about re-imagining a world that invites us to see God as a Bakerwoman who is secretly, hiddenly, changing the whole character and substance of society.

          In societies like first century Rome, two tiers of people existed.  In the top tier were people like rulers, the ruling class, and some merchants.  The bottom of the second tier was occupied by people who were considered the unclean and the expendable.[9]  The disciples of Jesus were among those considered unclean and expendable.  First century Roman philosopher Cicero wrote:  “And the most shameful occupations are those which cater to our sensual pleasures:  ‘fish-sellers, butchers, cooks, poultry-raisers, and fisher[folk],’ . . . .”[10]

          So what would it mean among the unclean and expendable people who followed Jesus, farmers and fisherfolk, prostitutes and tax collectors, to hear that the Empire of Heaven is not like the powerful and proud cedar of Lebanon but like the mustard shrub or leavened bread?  Can we imagine the good news that broke forth in that teachable moment when how God sees us gets turned on its head?

          How often do we find ourselves aspiring for the powerful and proud cedar of Lebanon when actually, truly the God of Jesus meets us and makes a home in the places where we are unclean and broken, expendable and outcast?  We so often struggle to make our faith about what is respectable and what is moral when God, all along, has been trying to share with us a different perspective, a different way of seeing the world, a different way of seeing ourselves.

          God sees us with different eyes.  God sees us with different eyes.  In the places where you are wounded and harmed, bleeding and outcast, God wants you to know that you are precious, and cherished, and loved.  Because, because if you know you are golden to God in those places, the good news will be that this love and compassion intended for you cannot be contained.  This love and compassion will well up to overflowing and where there is wound and harm in the world, the bleeding and the outcast, we will be there to tend and heal.

          You are a weed sown in a field.  You are leaven mixed into bread.  It is not so much that God wants power from you, but wildness and freedom, to not be caught up in the culture and the schemes of the world.   God asks us not to be dominated or over one another, but pervasive and persistent in our work together.

          As Hailey Knox’s song might teach us, we need to remember that our perspective may not be God’s perspective.  Go.  In your uncleanness, grow wild and free.  Be pervasive and persistent.  Do not worry that our movement is not talked about in the halls of power or plastered on the tabloids.   The revolution will not be televised.  Or tweeted.  Learn in the ways that the world calls you unclean, that you are precious, cherished, and loved and that you are in keeping with the character and activity of Heaven.  In that teachable moment, turn the world on its head, so that all who are called unclean may hear the good news and begin to transform the suffering of the planet, not into a haven where people with pocket protectors are safe and powerful, but where the poor and oppressed, sick and dying, the outcast and excluded grow and flourish and change the nature of the garden.   May it be so.  And may we be faithful enough to follow and lead.  Amen.

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[1] John Dominic Crossan, The Dark Interval:  Towards a Theology of Story (Polebridge Press, 1988).

[2] Sepphoris (near Nazareth) and Emmaus (probably not around at the time of the Biblical story).

[3] Tiberias and Caesarea Maritima

[4] Although not afraid to use “God” throughout his gospel, the author of Matthew to refer to the Empire or Kingdom.  Scholars have long surmised that this is because the author of Matthew honored Jewish tradition and did not want to insult the author of Matthew’s audience.  But why use the name of God elsewhere?

[5] Ezekiel 31:3b-7

[6] Bernard Brandon Scott, Hear Then the Parable (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 1989), p. 326.

[7]Ibid, p. 325.

[8] Ibid, p. 326.

[9] William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech:  Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed (Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), pp. 58-59. 

[10] Cicero, On Duties 1.42.

Sermon for the Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 5, 2016, "Learning from the Roman newspaper."

C Proper 5 10 Ord BFC 2016

Galatians 1:11-24

June 5, 2016

        I’m sure many of you have heard that one of the pressing issues in the present presidential election is the amount of media coverage given to presumed Republican nominee, Donald Trump.  I think the conventional wisdom is that the amount of coverage has provided candidate Trump with a celebrity and popularity that has led to his nomination.   Such conventional wisdom recognizes the power of the Fourth Estate in our culture, how the media can drive and control not only the message but also the concerns and values of a nation. 

          Who controls the media then dictates our concerns and values.  That was never made so clear as when I was in Chiapas, Mexico, for the first return of refugees back to their homeland in Guatemala.  It was an incredibly historic day for a people, a nation, that had waited for so long.  Refugees in over 100 refugee camps would make the long bus ride back into their homeland.  Huge!  Big! 

The day before the historic return, Barb Wenger, the Witness for Peace volunteer, who had gracefully taken me in like a stray dog, led me out to the camp that was to start the historic return to Guatemala.  We came back to the city by hitching a ride from a BBC reporter.  Barb asked, “How will the coverage go?  Will the international media cover the full return?”  The BBC reporter was frightfully honest.  “We don’t do well with history that doesn’t follow a continuous news cycle.  The refugees will need to leave tomorrow.  They will need to arrive in Guatemala City by the next day.  The following day they will have to arrive at their destinations in Guatemala.  Otherwise, we will be pulled from the story.  As you know, the United States is about to invade Iraq.  And what the U.S. government pays attention to, we must pay attention to.  So unless we can prove that there is something to cover each day here, the United States government will probably dictate international focus and coverage.” 

          In the most extreme extension of “if it bleeds, it leads”, the violence and devastation wrought by war captures our attention like nothing else does.  And so it becomes our regular breakfast, lunch, and dinner not only for the news but also for gaming and the most popular movies.  “Captain America:  Civil War!” Because even the Avengers who are friends can’t find a way to talk out their problems.  They use violence and war to work through their issues.  I think Iron Man and Captain American would have been better to find a good therapist.  Use your words, boys!  Collateral damage in these superhero movies has become a small footnote to justify even more violence and war.  Are there people in those buildings being mowed to the ground?  But what we are being told, over and over again, is that justified, sacralized violence is the only thing that can save us.

          So it also was in the ancient world.  After the Roman armies levelled the city of Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E., they sacked it of all of its valuables and brought back the booty.  Rome also returned to the capital with 7,000 Jewish slaves to help build the Roman Colosseum including the Arch of Titus, a tribute to the Roman general who would soon become Roman Emperor.   And by becoming Emperor, Titus would take his place among the pantheon of the divine.  The Arch of Titus shows with great architectural detail the Romans marching off with valuables of Jerusalem, one panel clearly showing them carting off a menorah.  This then was the message.  Through the violence, carnage, torture, victory, and spoils of war, generals elevated themselves to divine status.  They became sons of God.  Christian origins scholar, John Dominic Crossan, wrote, “Roman imperial theology was advertised with poems and inscriptions, coins and images, statues, altars, and structures.  It was, Crossan states, “a multimedia context that could have learned but little from Madison Avenue.”[1]  As Seneca, the great Roman statesperson and philosopher from the first century wrote, “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”

          Indeed, Roman imperial theology, their talk of the gods and the sons of god, was about maintaining civilization against the barbarism that infringed upon its moral, cultural, and geographical borders.  Roman law was opposed by lawlessness.  Roman culture was opposed by savages.  And Rome made violence and war a sacred necessity to defend their boundaries against transgression.[2]  This imperial theology was not new to Rome. 

          Union Theological Seminary New Testament Professor, Brigitte Kahl turns to how Greek imperial theology set the stage for how Rome understood itself over and against the barbarians of their time.  And that can be found in a massive political and religious architectural piece from the 2^nd Century BCE.  To guide us through some of this art work, I have asked my resident Greek mythology expert, Sophia Heilman, to share her observations and reflections of this work. 

The Great Altar at Pergamon, c. 170 BCE, from the Hellenistic Attalid dynasty.

Father Zeus slaying three giants.  In the many friezes, the greek gods

come from above while the giants come from below.  The Attalid dynasty, through their rulers, saw themselves as “sons of god” and therefore linked to their destiny.  Roman emperors took for themselves the titles god and “sons of god” and used this theology to understand the way they moved against other peoples or the Other as justified and sanctified by the divine.   State violence becomes sacrament.

“The monument of a dominant world order—and of a primeval world war. In manifold combat scenes of supreme artistic perfection the gods and goddesses of the Great Frieze are shown in battle against the Giants attacking from below. The deities above fight vigorously but in a composed manner, clearly victorious and in control. Their opponents, on the other hand, appear in all poses and stages of dying and dead as they are impaled, mauled, hacked and trampled down by the divine force. The hair of the defeated Giants is wild, their bodies are naked, rage and despair show in their faces. Lacking calmness, restraint and all the other features that mark their conquerors as superior and civilized, some of them are even depicted as half-beastly with nasty snake legs. We cannot miss the point that the battle unfolding before our eyes is the holy war of civilization protecting itself against barbarism. The order of the world and the whole cosmos is at stake.”[3]

The Pergamene city goddess Athena and winged Nike in battle against the earth goddess Gaia and her favorite son Alkyoneus.

“If we look at this image closely we can see how Athena from above tries to separate Alkyoneus, Gaia's favorite son, from his mother below, stepping between the two of them with her beautifully-draped knee, at the same time pulling him up by his hair. Legend has it that Alkyoneus must die the very moment he loses touch with mother Earth. The poison of Athena's snake is already entering his body, and his face is in pain.”[4]

Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, steps on the face of a defeated Giant.  To the right, another snake-legged winged Giant is attacked by Eros from above.   

          Architecture such as this was, effectively, the media of its time, the massive and monumental thing you might see every day as you entered the city, walked to work, or went to buy essentials in the marketplace.  This was the Roman newspaper.  So you might ask, “What does the Great Altar at Pergamon have to do with Paul’s letter written to the Galatians some 200 years later?”  The Greek word for Galatians covers Gauls and Celts in general and are thought of, in general, as the “northern barbarians.”  These architectural panels relate the successful military campaigns of the Attalid dynasty over and against what were termed the “marauding Gauls.”[5]  These are the lawless, the savages, the defeated and the vanquished.  Carried on and co-opted into Roman mythology and world-view, the Galatians are the bearers of chaos into the law and order of Rome. 

          Ok, I know that is just a ton of mythology to put out there for us all to try and get a grip on for understanding the apostle Paul.  But my main point today is this.  We so strip the New Testament of its political context, backdrop, or matrix sometimes that we hand deliver it to people who think the world-transforming news is about who gets invited to heaven and who gets shunned into hell.  No!  We explain Paul as concerned with “faith versus works, grace against law, foreskin versus circumcision.”[6]  By doing so, we totally strip him of any concern for the real world.  We make him concerned about other-worldly things rather than the real, world-transforming news in which he sits, walks, and teaches. 

The world-transforming news, traditionally translated the “gospel”, was a word regularly used by Roman rulers to proclaim military victories in the here and now.  And ambassadors and teachers like Paul were trying to say that the Jewish gospel understood through the lens of Jesus had to be understood in a radically different way.  Jesus, crucified, as Paul preached him, was one of the vanquished and defeated, one of the barbarians at the border, one of the savages undercutting culture, one of the lawless usurping Roman law and order. 

          Paul was not preaching who gets invited to heaven and shunned to hell.  Paul was saying that the world-transforming news is all about who gets invited to the table, who gets to share bread, who gets to partake in the resources for earthly life and sustenance and joy.  Paul writes that the shunned are those who would use law and order to keep others from the table.  And lo and behold, Paul uses a pre-existing baptismal formula to say that the lawless, the savages, the barbarians, the vanquished and defeated all get invited.  And get this:  the host of that feast is the most vanquished, defeated, barbaric, savage, lawless person you can imagine.  Rome crucified him as a way of saying that violence and war carry the day.  Other-centered and other-hearted people said that there is a God who comes from below to raise up a mission and ministry that is greater than war and violence. 

          So today, we say, we proclaim, that if you feel excluded through cultural norms that have you feeling like you are on the outside looking in, this meal is for you.  If you belong to a race or a culture or a religion that does not fit into the official religion that sanctions death, war, and violence, this meal is for you.   If you feel odd or strange or misplaced or struggling with a culture that wants you to achieve, go deeper into debt, shop until you drop, and work until you can barely scrape by, this meal is for you.  Share in the Anointed’s baptism and eat at the Anointed’s table.  For Paul teaches that the world-transforming news is that Christ’s table blurs the boundaries of law and order, breaks down the walls of civilization, calls into question what it means to be a savage, and de-bases a world view that legitimizes violence and war against the already defeated and vanquished.    The world-transforming news is:  this meal is for you, as a sign and seal of God’s intent for your sustenance, life, and joy.  Praise God!  Amen. 

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[1] John Dominic Crossan, In the Shadow of Empire:  Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance (Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), Richard Horsley, ed., p. 61.

[2] Brigitte Kahl, Galatians Re-Imagined:  Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2010).  I find Kahl’s conclusions around Galatians nothing short of genius and think she will help re-define scholarship around this early letter. 

[3] Ibid.  Here is the theology as described by Kahl, “The Giants are fatherless in an even more shameful and abominable way. According to Hesiod (Theogony) and Apollodorus (Library 1.1-6) the following happened: When Ouranos/Heaven, the primeval partner of Gaia/Earth was trying to kill the first generation of their children, mother Earth hid them and eventually made a sharp sickle-shaped weapon that was taken up by Kronos/Time against the tyrant-father. He emasculated Ouranos. The blood dripping on the ground made mother Earth pregnant and she gave birth to the Giants. These deviant sons literally are the brood of rebellion against the divine father—and against the sacred institution of patriarchy as a whole. It is "in their blood" if they finally rise against the deities and try to de-throne them. They are the seed of insurgence against divinely sanctioned law and order. Violence against this viper's brood is therefore saving the world.”  This is sacralized, justified violence. 

[4] Ibid.  How can we not see this as what empire is doing to the daughters and sons of Gaia (Earth Goddess) in this present day?  If we are lifted from this earth, we will lose connection and power.

[5] Ibid. 

[6] Ibid.