Sermon, Fifth Sunday of Easter, "Friends and Followers"

 C Easter 5 Pilg 2022

Revelation 13:11-18; 18:1-4,9,11; 21:1-6

May 15, 2022

 

           Two treasured terms within the history of Christianity are “friendship” and “followers.”  Friendship with God is well-illustrated in the Sayings of the Fathers of the Egyptian desert.  Fourth-Century Gregory of Nyssa (following his brother, Basil) and the 5^th Century Theodoret of Cyrrhus described friendship with God as the goal of growth in the Christian life.[1] 

           And Jesus begins his public ministry by calling his would-be disciples to “Follow me.”  Become my followers. 

           Now this gives me pause when I realize how active I am on social media.  Facebook’s primary category is “friends.”  Twitter invites you to become “followers.” 

           On Facebook, friends are people who are willing to observe your preaching, excuse me, your one to two sentence observations or descriptions of your ongoing life, humor, or mood.  Friends are allowed to comment, offer suggestions, or to thank you for sharing scenes from your recent vacation.  When my wife and my mother-in-law took a recent spring trip to Belgium and Holland, I got to see all the great times they were having without me, while I was sitting on my couch . . . in Sawyer.  No . . . really . . . that’s ok. (tearing up)  I’ll be fine. 

           I have 668 friends on Facebook.  Pretty sweet, huh?  My son, Abraham, has way more friends than I do without even trying.  I know of people who brag about having over 1000 friends.  But 668 is pretty good, right?  To have that many friends?  Except . . . those people I have listed . . . they’re not really “friend” friends.  I am neither that popular nor that loving.  I’m not sure I even know or have met some of the people who are my Facebook friends.

           And Twitter, Twitter is even worse!  It is great to have friends, even better to have a following!  I spend too many days hoping a Facebook friend will like my post.  I went over the moon when one of my favorite authors liked my post!  And then shared it!  And Anna Lappé, one of my favorite writers and leaders, now follows me on Twitter.  Life is complete!

           Facebook and Twitter have totally re-defined what it means to have a friend and a following.  It is the nature of cultural systems we give our allegiance to, cooperate with, or participate in, that those systems sometimes end up defining, using, and caging us more than we define, use, and contain the time we spend with them.  So much so, that Tik-Tok even has videos they throw in to say to you, “Yeah, you really should go to bed.  Stop watching so many videos.”  I’m caught.  I’m addicted.  I’m no longer free. 

           Several years ago I gave up social media for Lent because I knew I was caught, addicted, and needed to extricate myself from the unhealthy ways social media was defining me.  Ugh, it was rough.  And it reminded me how much social media is a metaphor for wider commitments and loyalties.

           On a national global scale, the book of Revelation is about a “freedom from” the Roman imperial project to have “freedom for” the things of God.  In effect saying, you cannot call yourself a friend of Rom and consider yourself a friend of Rome. 

           The book of Revelation is a reminder that the New Testament is based on the pose, poetry, and images of Hebrew Scripture.  Revelation is a book that is thoroughly Jewish in content.  In Revelation, the strong use of numerology, visions, and values all have Jewish sensibilities—particularly the critique of empire.

           Remember that the birth story of the Jewish people, the Exodus, is a critique of the Egyptian Empire.  Even when Israel rises as the most power imperial power in the ancient near East, prophets are afoot to ask David if Israel is really any different than Egypt was, or any different than any other empire. 

           One by one ten, the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Syrian, and Roman Empires marched through what the Children of Israel believed to be the promised land and claimed it as their own.  Each of these empires also required some form of tribute, an allegiance that often demanded some form of religious, political, and economic fidelity to their gods, with the king, emperor, or pharaoh often making divine claims—Daniel in the lion’s den, or with Bel and the Dragon, Shadrach, Meschack, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, Esther presenting herself to the king at the threat of death, Mordecai refusing to take a knee to the local lord, the Maccabees refusing to ordain the sacrifice of a pig in the Temple.  All these Biblical heroes and heroines had to determine how to balance loyalty to the empire versus loyalty to their God, their faith, and their people.  Just in sharing these stories, we know there were so many others who were faithful that did not escape, persecution, torture, and death. 

           As a result, in Jewish storytelling, allegiance to, cooperation with, and participation in the religion, economics, or politices of empire became the definition of evil.  Jewish heroes like Joseph or Daniel or Esther may have ascended to high rank and position within the empire, but eventually their faith practice or the plight of their people would run counter to imperial edict.  The listed Scriptural stories were about how a faithful Jew, outed by their loyalties, their friendships, their followings, their spiritual practice, navigated faithfulness.  Even the apostle Paul would use his Roman citizenship to make his way in the world but often found himself in conflict, turmoil, and prison for his faithfulness.

           In this Jewish storytelling, Babylon became the iconic empire, the seat of all evil.  In critiquing empire, Jewish writers used Babylon to remember that empire regularly conquered with violence, war, and death.  Blood covered the earth.  Empire also led to regular practices of economic injustice.  Real, physical hunger was ignored.  The poor were cheated of their subsistence so that the rich could regularly fill themselves with lavish fare.  Finally, one of the signposts of imperial sin was ecological devastation.  The earth hemorrhaged. Mother Earth, as a living, spiritual being, began to wheel out of control in chaos.  Famines, disease, and catastrophic shortages became more commonplace.[2]

           To convey just how terrifying and ghastly these imperial practices were, Jewish storytellers created monstrous beasts with multiple heads, long teeth, and insatiable appetites.[3]  These monsters salted the land, burned the cities, killed or enslaved the men, raped the women, and turned paradise into desert.

           The book of Revelation is very specific in naming kings, military generals, and merchants as the enforcers of this living death.  Only a certain “marked” people can participate in the wealth such a system generates.  If a people is unwilling to play by the rules of the system, that people will be slaughtered at worst, excluded from the imperial wealth at best.  This Domination System ensured the participation of the masses through deception, brute force, and charity.  The rule is, however, that all must participate and comply.  Or die.  (Revelation 13:14, 16-17)

           The classic Jewish drama plays out in Revelation.  When allegiance or complicity is demanded which conflicts with allegiance to the Living God, how has a faithful Jew responded through the ages?  To whom do they give friendship?  To whom do they give following or loyalty?

           Remember that the Biblical definition for purity is to “will one thing.”  That is a prophetic statement which suggests that God unseats all other idols, priorities, or values.  The exiled author of Revelation, John of Patmos, advocates a fasting from the machinations of the Roman Empire.  The angel in Revelation 18 tells the faithful, “Come out of her, my people, so that you do not take part in her sins, and so that you do not share in her plagues.”

           As Jewish storytellers and prophets had declared for centuries, the correct response to impire was an unwillingness to provide allegiance for, cooperation with, or a participation in the imperial religious, political, or economic systems. 

           Exiled by Rome on the isle of Patmos, John made it clear that to choose for the Domination System, to choose for empire, meant lack of freedom or enslavement. Chapter 18 reads, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great.  She has become a haunt for demons.  She is a cage for every unclean spirit, a cage for every unclean bird, a cage for every unclean and disgusting beast.” 

           John urged the people to show their freedom through their unwillingness to show allegiance to, cooperate with, or participate in the Domination System.  For it is tempting to use the system to gain what little profit one can, when it appears to be your only source of life on the horizon.  Fast from the system of death, John encourages. 

           This fasting, or freedom from empire, allowed the faithful Jew to be free for the things of God.  Though it should be remembered that John’s vision is graphic about what your fasting from empire might cost you.  The cost of discipleship might mean your life.

           But, sisters and brothers, sibling and cousins, God’s purposes are being worked out.  And the future . . . ah, the future is so bright we have to wear shades.  John’s vision, part of it in Revelation 21, is borrowed from the Babylonian Exile prophet Exile prophet Ezekiel who believes the first order of joining hands with God is a friendship in solidarity that will lead to the creation of a new heaven and a new earth.  And the heaven and earth will be filled with the presence of God.  Caesar will be unseated and God will take the throne—with a whole set of other values. 

           War and sorrow are no more.  The land and creation are restored.  Rural and urban settings live in harmony.  The water will not be poisoned with lead

or despoiled with blood.  Rather, the river running from the throne will be crystal clear.

           Would that some evangelical, fundamentalist, or even mainline preacher study Revelation enough to notice that critique.  Can you imagine someone at one of these highly-advertised Revelation seminars preaching that the end of the world is coming because we have not headed off empires appetite for conquering through war, economic justice, and ecological devastation?

           The “freedom for” to “freedom for” found in Revelation must seem miles away from the simple fasting I did from social media one Lent.  But that fasting had me wondering how available I am for my faith and family when I spend too much time fretting over whether I should join the Wordle craze.  Do I use Facebook and Twitter for enjoyment or do they use me, manipulate me, define my world, tell me who are my friends?  Do I use my cell phone, my podcasts, or my Roku TV to entertain me, or does my cell phone (oh, I’d better check that email), my podcasts (do I have an Illini podcast cued up for my free time), or do the many Roku TV apps (will I have to join Hulu to watch that show?), do they all dictate my life?  Is my identity defined by the kings, military officers, and merchants of the world?  Or am I free enough to claim my faithful identity as a Child of God?  How do I claim the good I want to do?  Who am I friend to?  Who am I follower of?

           Even more gut-wrentching . . .

As a community, as a nation, how do we resist or fast from those practices of empire which are all about systems or cultures of conquering, and war, and economic injustice, and ecological catastrophe?  Do these systems and cultures define us and the wants, desires, and practices we have in the world?  Or are we able to, as John describes in Revelation, step out from them to define their role in our lives?  How do we claim our faithful identity as the Children of God?  As the Body of Christ?  How do we claim the good we want to do?

           God’s purposes are being worked out.  Though it might not be apparent, God is acting as a source of life, an underground spring that we may not believe war, economic injustice, and ecological catastrophe are the only ways we might live in the world.  May we choose the freedom for a place where war and sorrow are no more, where rural and urban settings live in harmony, heaven and earth are filled with the presence of God, and the river flows crystal clear from God’s throne.  May we have the courage to walk faithfully toward that vision.  Amen. 

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[1] Roberta Bondi, “Prayer in Friendship with God,” Christian Century, January 29, 1997.

[2] See David J. Hawkin, “Globalization, Empire, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Churchman 118 (2004), pp. 317-324.

[3] Heather Macumber, “A Monster without a Name:  Creating the Beast Known as Antiochus IV in Daniel 7,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures Vol. 15, Article 9, DOI:1055.08/jhs.2015.v.15.a9.

Reformation Sunday, "Water is our mother," October 27, 2019

C Revelation/Reformation 2019 BFC

Reformation 6

October 27, 2019

2:00 minute mark to 3:46 minute mark of podcast, “Omnicidal Tendencies:  The Nuclear Presidency of Donald Trump,” The Intercepted.  https://theintercept.com/2019/10/23/omnicidal-tendencies-the-nuclear-presidency-of-donald-trump/

We have this breaking news out of north eastern Russia. Seven Catholic peace activists cut a fence on the outskirts of Russia’s feared Northern Fleet base, which houses some of the most powerful nuclear weapons systems in Vladimir Putin’s arsenal. They hammered on a statue celebrating the power of Russia’s nuclear force and poured their own blood on the doors to one of the command buildings. They waited on the base until they were discovered by Russian military police who took them into custody.

In a statement released by supporters of the group, seven activists described their motivation: “We come to the base of Russia’s Northern Fleet to answer the call of the prophet Isaiah to ‘beat swords into plowshares’ by disarming the world’s deadliest nuclear weapons. We resist militarism that has employed deadly violence to enforce global domination.” The statement concluded: “This weapons system is a cocked gun being held to the head of the planet.”

Vladimir Putin’s government has responded by arresting the seven activists and they now face a slew of charges that could result in their imprisonment for decades. Among the activists is an 80-year-old mother of three and grandmother of six. Supporters of the activists say that they understood the risks they were taking in this action and said that the fact that they were able to make it onto this nuclear base is clear evidence that these weapons systems are not secure and pose an imminent threat to humanity.

In the U.S., several leading Democratic politicians praised the bravery of the activists and called for their release, saying that their protest has unmasked the danger of Vladimir Putin’s control of the massive nuclear arsenal….

          In the Apocalyptic Vision Bible study we are doing on Thursday nights, we learned that one of the warning signs for the dangerous use of apocalyptic literature is when one uses the material to ignore the warts of your own religious faith while magnifying all the sinfulness and evil of someone else’s faith.  At a time when our religious faith is so based in overt nationalism, we might also make that argument for other countries and their leaders.  Beware the citizens who are unable and unwilling to be held accountable for their own flaws while magnifying the warts, sinfulness, flaws, and evil of another country. 

The audio for this radio broadcast you heard is based in fact.  But this incident did not occur in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. 

This protest was carried out on April 4, 2018 at a U.S. nuclear submarine base in St. Marys, Georgia by seven activists calling themselves the Kings Bay Plowshares 7. The Kings Bay nuclear arsenal houses nuclear armed submarines equipped with two dozen ballistic Trident D-5 missiles. Each of those missiles has roughly 30 times the explosive force of the nuclear bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. 

The activists were able to cut a fence and enter the base completely undetected. They staged a demonstration. They used household hammers to deface a monument to the Trident weapons system. They also poured their own blood and placed a banner on the base that read: The Ultimate Logic of Trident is Omnicide. According to the activists, they also managed to make it undetected to three different sites on this nuclear base, including a nuclear weapons storage bunker. They displayed crime scene tape and delivered an indictment charging the U.S. government for crimes against peace.[1]

Several of the defendants were held in jail for a year and a half as they awaited trial.  They included Jesuit priest, Steve Kelley and legendary peace activist, 80 year-old mother and grandmother, Liz McAlister.  She could end up spending the rest of her life in prison for breaking the law.  She said, “If the world is obliterated by these weapons, it will be perfectly legal. What does that say about the law? When do we say no?”[2]

          When do we say no?  Our country’s foreign policy is being shaped by apocalyptic literature, particularly our policy in the Middle East and Israel.  Some evangelical Christian leaders seem to be supporting and proposing an almost gleeful, violent joy ride against people of Muslim faith, then moving on to do violence against people of Jewish faith, to advance what many believe to be the plan and purpose of the book of Revelation.  In advancing what is believed to be the prophesied plans of a violent God, we seek to do the most horrendous things, create a cocked gun that is being held at the head of the planet.

          Tracy always makes fun of me because she sees my ardor and says, “You think that one more sermon is going to save the world, don’t you?”  Yes, it’s true.  I get caught up in it, knowing on my better days that my sermons mean so little in the scheme of things.  So little.  But what I hope you have heard Lisa and I preaching over these last few weeks is that we believe in you.  We believe in you.  We believe in what a people with a critical, discerning faith, people with an other-hearted faith, people who are willing to come out of the domesticated violence of Babylon to say, “No!  No more!  I will not allow my church, my community, my faith to domesticate and soften the violence we do.”  As Christians, and people of a Biblical tradition, we are called to name evil.  And we are in a country right now with a leader who is so self-absorbed that he might just push the button to absolve himself of any wrong-doing.” 

We must beware of the polarization and the easy “us” and “them” narrative that the book of Revelation offers.  But we also must be aware of the counter-cultural narrative it offers which, upon closer examination, takes imperial language and flips it on its head.  In Revelation, the Christ who conquers is the Lamb who has violence done to him and is coupled with the Jewish understanding of the paschal lamb slain to bring liberation to an entire people in the Exodus story.  The blood spilled in Revelation is the Lamb and the faithful witnesses who were willing to step forward to confront the Domination System.  The weapon wielded by Christ and his army is a two-edged sword coming from his mouth which represents that the faithful are called to witness and testify in vocal and bold ways to God’s alternative purposes to imperial violence.  And the people who witness and testify?  According to Revelation, Chapter 7, they come as “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”[3] 

In contrast to those who believe they will  be part of the select few to be raptured into another realm, John’s vision is of those, from all over the world, who speak boldly and courageously against the everyday violence.  John’s letter is a broad and inclusive vision of a non-violent people of a non-violent God who have the tools, in hammers and plowshares, their own courageous witness and testimony, to bring about transformation. 

John of Patmos knows that Rome has mythically communicated to subject peoples that it is all-powerful and everlasting.  So the vision John of Patmos shares with the faithful, the vision read for us today, reaches back to a vision shared by the prophet Ezekiel during the Babylonian Exile and forward to a time when the devastated and traumatized Jerusalem shines, gleams, with God’s presence.  Sustaining all of life is a river which runs from the throne of God and the Lamb, coursing its way through the city. 

The vision is in keeping with Native storytelling which knows that water is not only life but water is our first medicine.  That saying comes from the truth telling among the Lakota, the name given to the Black Hills which also is the name for “uterus,” reminding us that we were all born in water.  Water is the beginning of life.[4]  Water is the signpost of shalom, the absence of violence. When the water is crystal clear it provides for the trees whose leaves are medicine for the healing of the nation.  The water also provides for the trees to bear fruit in due season.  When the river that runs through the city is right and good, all is right and good for not only the citizens of the city but all of the flora and fauna—not only at Standing Rock but in Syria, in Flint, and in Billings, Montana.  When all is not well with mother water, all is not well with the people. 

So as the effects of climate change begin to take hold in Billings, Montana, and beyond, as the faithful people to whom John writes to in this day, we will be charged with the care of the Yellowstone River.  It is our mother, a canary that will tell us when the coal mine has become so much of a focus that we destroy our relationship with the river and show that we are not in relationship to Creator.  We are to witness and testify whenever its water is not crystal clear.  For the origins of the water that moves through our city flow from the throne of God and the Lamb.  We must remember the courage of the Kingsbay Plowshares 7 and 80 year-olds like Liz McAllister so that our critical minds and other-centered hearts do not become clouded by imperial rhetoric.  

Violence to our mother river has become so domesticated that we have too often become collaborators in the certain destruction of our own lives.  As people of faith, we are called to a grander vision, one rooted in our ancient story and Native wisdom.  May we be faithful.  Amen. 

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[1] Jeremy Scahill,, “Omnicidal Tendencies:  The Nuclear Presidency of Donald Trump,” The Intercepted.  https://theintercept.com/2019/10/23/omnicidal-tendencies-the-nuclear-presidency-of-donald-trump/

[2] Ibid.

[3] Harry O. Maier, “The War of the Lamb,” Peace and War:  Christian Reflection Series (Waco, TX:  Baylor University, 2004).

[4] Ken Estes, “Standing Rock and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance,” August 16, 2019. 

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, "Deeper than our trauma," October 13, 2019

Revelation 4 BFC 2019

Revelation 13

October 13, 2019

          The African American author and activist, James Baldwin said in “A Talk to Teachers” way back in 1963, “Let’s begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time.  Everyone in this room is in one way or another aware of that.”[1]  In the early 60s, Baldwin recognized that our country’s grotesque and disfigured beast of racism would do all that it could in its determined barbarity and cruelty  to avoid being transformed.  That beast was either going to fuel and stoke our country’s history of imperial violence or a revolution of values might replace the Domination System for something more whole and good and right. 

In answering what he might do to teach an African American child, Baldwin said, “I would try to make [them] know that just as American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it, so is the world larger, more daring, more beautiful and more terrible, but principally larger – and that it belongs to them.”[2]  The good earth not only belongs to you.  It is you.  We share in it.  And it shares in us. 

          Those monsters may come as a warning.   But now the devil has been called out into the street and revealed for just how hateful and cruel it is.  We must vow that we will work hard to stop it.  On this Indigenous Peoples’ Sunday, we can no longer say we didn’t know of our country’s legacy of colonization, violence, and racism.  We can’t say we don’t know, pretend that the time and pain and hurt of this monster or dragon is over, and something lodged in the past.  The time is now.  And the time to engage the principalities and the powers was yesterday. 

          How do we do that?  How do we engage the principalities and the powers?

          You may have heard the story of Chanel Miller, the young Chinese-American woman who became defined by the words “unconscious,” “stupid,” “dumpster,” “half-naked,” “nameless,” and “nobody,”  because she was raped by a white Stanford swimmer behind a dumpster.  Chanel Miller moved out of the shadows when her victim impact statement was picked up by national media and shared with the world.  In four days, 11 million people read her victim impact statement—a statement that had her step out into the world declaring her worth over and against domination and violence.  In speaking, she recognized that the Domination System and story, the violence done to her, did not have to be her story.  She could continue to craft herself and be confident in who she was. 

          But Chanel recognized that her soul was able to step forward because of the community that held her, saw her, checked on her, grieved with her, provided a presence for her, held her rapist accountable, believed her, and became a movement surrounding her.  To me, that sounds like the role of the church with the work of historical trauma.    

She remembered when she told the story of the violence done to her to her mom.  Chanel watched her mom’s face just break open.  When you see yourself through the eyes of your loved ones, you recognize that the historical violence, institutional violence, the personal violence done to you isn’t something you deserved.  And that what happened is really painful and that’s ok.  Chanel’s mom just held her so she could break open.  And as Chanel said, “[S]ometimes, even if you don’t have words, you need that holding. You need someone to be showing you that they see you and that they’re here for you.”[3]

          It was the two Swedish graduate students who checked on her, chased her perpetrator and pinned him to the ground, saying, “Do you think this is ok?  What the f--- were you doing?  Say sorry to her.”  And then the two Swedish graduate students held him there so that there might be first-compassion, second-a demand for repentance, and finally-accountability.  In all of it, they stayed with Chanel and offered their presence to her. 

Chanel was later told by the police that when one of the Swedish students gave his testimony to the police, he openly wept for her.  And in his grieving, deputies attending to Chanel openly wept, their hearts softened by his compassion.  The Swedish graduate students took time out of their lives, interrupted their lives, to repeatedly testify to the violence at trial, to reveal the monstrous behavior.  When Chanel later thanked them, they would not let the focus be on them.  They both thanked her for what she had done for the world by stepping forward in courage.  As Chanel boldly stated, these two Swedish graduate students created a standard by which we can hold other men to. 

          Then it was the jury members, who one by one, repeated “yes” to all of the counts against her rapist, each one, individually, saying these “yeses” to validate her story, to tell her she was something more than nothing.  Chanel had known he should be held accountable.  But the beast roared and the historical violence pounded and made her unsure until the jury would not unbelieve what had happened.  When each juror was finished saying “yes” again and again, she was reminded that she was of worth.

          And finally, it was the whole movement of women, the #MeToo movement and a professor who led a movement to recall the judge for imposing such a ridiculously lenient sentence.  The judge believed the pain of the white young man committing the rape did not define him and worried that his accountability might mitigate his future.  The movement helped Chanel Miller know she would not be defined by his violence or the judge’s sentence.  The movement helped Chanel Miller to know she would not be limited to the absolute worst thing that had happened to her in her life--that the parameters set by the violence and the surrounding Domination System would not define her, her trauma would not hold her.  This whole community movement, like what church is supposed to be, reminded her that Chanel Miller had a larger and more transcendent story than her trauma. 

          John of Patmos said to Christians in the First Century that there was something more transcendent than the violent monsters, a story more boundless than the beast.  At the same time, John invited early Christians, tried to help them see, that this story was already here, nearer, being revealed as a community that holds one another in love, sees one another, checks in, grieves the historical and present violence done, provides a presence,  believes those who recount the violence, and holds those responsible for the violence accountable.  When I see people in the Native community step forward, as they do today and every day, I know the sacred, deeper story is being told again—people like Phillene, Kassie and Walter, Nell, Angie and Marci, Josiah, Alicia, Cora, Jean, Dyani, Barbara, Kinsley, and Leonard—the story is being told again and the day of the monster is coming to a close. 

          This is the stuff of their souls. It is not defined by moments of mercy or opportunity; it is not good things happening to them. Rather, it is the good thing that is in them, regardless of what happens. They carry this down through generations, same as the epigenetic trauma of a violent Domination System. We say on this Indigenous Peoples’ Sunday that the holding, seeing, grieving, providing a space and presence, and believing them is what Creator now calls forward in a movement. It is what made the ancestors hold on so that all of us could be part of that old, old story—more transcendent, boundless, bigger than the story of any monster or beast.[4] 

Like the early 60s, we live in a very dangerous time.  But the movement is beginning and already here.  It is near.  Do you feel it?  That movement is beginning and already here.  Amen.  

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[1] James Baldwin, “A Talk to Teachers:  The Negro Child-His Self-Image,” October 16, 1963; originally published in The Saturday Review, December 21, 1963, reprinted in The Price of the Ticket, Collected Non-Fiction 1948-1985, Saint Martins 1985.    https://richgibson.com/talktoteachers.htm

[2] Ibid.

[3]“Interview with Chanel Miller: The Stanford Sexual Assault Case Made Her “Emily Doe.” In New Memoir, Chanel Miller Tells Her Story,.” Democracy Now!  October 11, 2019.  https://www.democracynow.org/2019/10/11/chanel_miller_know_my_name_interview

[4] “Interview with Amani Perry:  More Beautiful,” OnBeing, September 26, 2019.  https://onbeing.org/programs/imani-perry-more-beautiful/. 

World Communion Sunday, "Revelation has its limits," October 6, 2019

Revelation 3 BFC  World Communion Sunday 2019

Selected reading from The Gospel of Truth; Selected reading from Thunder Perfect Mind; Revelation 8:1-8

October 6, 2019

       German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”[1]  Not only in Revelation, but deep within the tradition of Christianity is loaded language which gives license to a Christianity that is no longer speaking as those traumatized and the victims of empire but now uses its tradition and texts to act like the innocent and persecuted even though Christianity and Christians now hold the reins of imperial power from the 4^th Century onward.  Scholar of early Christianity, Richard Horsely, is strongly critical of a faith that used the language of the Roman Empire to critique the Roman Empire. 

          For example, Jesus references the Roman Empire to talk about the decidedly different Empire movement happening with the community of poor and oppressed, outcast and sinner that is forming around him.  Jesus references this as the Empire of God.  John of Patmos, the author of Revelation, uses the iconic, mythological goddess Roma, often seen in Roman art in her long, flowing, victorious robe.  John satirizes her with the Whore of Babylon, sitting atop the monstrous beast, drinking the blood of the martyrs.  John’s whole point is to not allow the reader or listener be drawn into the dressing up of Roman violence and bloodshed.  “See Roma for what she is!” John might say, intending strongly misogynistic rhetoric aimed at Rome’s mythological goddess.

          As Christians, we must be honest and critical of our own tradition to not only see the historical, social context for when our holy texts were written but to also acknowledge the historical, social context in which we live.  For when we have not, Christians have oppressed Jewish people, burned strong women as witches, enslaved African people, committed genocide against indigenous peoples, and created shame and harm for the LGBTQ+ community.  White, straight North American Christians are not the innocent, oppressed victims of the New Testament.   The book of Revelation, in particular, has been used from very early in the Christian tradition to create irreparable harm.  Those in power use the violent imagery to punch down and suggest that we are the chosen, given license to do the very thing Revelations condemns—oppression and violence in the name of the very God who condemned the same activity authorized by the goddess Roma. 

          Or, as progressive Christians, we have simply ignored our obligation to engage our own tradition to discern the good and the evil found within it.  By ignoring our obligation to engage our tradition, we allow evangelical Christianity’s interpretation of Revelation to stand alone as a book that encourages the perfect hatred of our enemies.

In humility, Scripture tells us to speak truth to power and call out evil when we see it.  We must be forever aware of our own collaboration with evil, not to limit our courage or our refusal to speak with a strong voice, but to know that God is slowly working out our inner transformation as we partner with God to transform the world. 

          Even though the book of Revelation holds many gifts for us, we must also be critical of the way it easily categorizes how black and white, good and evil are named.  In contrast, there are early Christian writings, like the ones read today, that suggest life is more spectrum than polar binary.  And, if polar binary, both black and white, good and evil can be found within our own souls. No good theology is so simplistic as to suggest that I am wholly good while you are wholly evil.   

We may all want to see ourselves as the “innocents” or the “victims” in the world and there may be times in all of our lives where that is true in personal relationships or in wider dynamics of power within our communities.  Even as a white, straight, cis-male, living in the United States, I often feel diminished by people in the social justice community as a simpleton because I am a person of faith.  And then I find myself drowning out other voices in other ways because I broaden and lengthen my innocence and victimhood. 

          On this World Communion Sunday, it is more important than ever to find a way to acknowledge our common destiny.  As scholar of early Christianity, Elaine Pagels writes of orthodox Christianity’s apocalyptic stories:

          Left out are the visions that lift their hearers beyond apocalyptic polarities to see the human race as a whole—and, for that matter, to see each one of us as a whole, having the capacity for both cruelty and compassion.  Those who championed John’s resurrection finally succeeded in obliterating visions associated with Origen, the ‘father of the church’ posthumously condemned as a heretic some three hundred years after his death, who envisioned animals, stars, and stones, as well as humans, demons, and angels, sharing a common origin and destiny. . . . [W]e need such universal visions more than ever.[2]

Today we ate bread and drank grape to say that we would be formed around a table of shared endeavor and common status.  We do that, almost impossibly, within a culture and economy that wants us to believe we do better when it’s everyone for themselves, and we would do better to get our own, and hoard and protect our treasure.  We eat the bread and drink the grape to say, over and over again, we are a people woven together in a single garment of destiny, in shared endeavor, and blessed by God in common status as the Beloved Children of God.  May we practice this common table so much in our own lives that it becomes the reality in our wider world.  Amen.

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[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, (New York:  Random House, 1966), Aphorism 146.

[2] Elaine Pagels, Revelations:  Visions, Prophecy, & Politics in the Book of Revelation (New York:  Viking, 2012), p. 176.

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, "The Four Horsemen," September 22, 2019

C Revelation 2 BFC 2019

Revelation 6:1-8

September 22, 2019

          It is that time of year again!  It is the time of year when I go through the seasonal ritual of dashed hopes and impossible dreams of the University of Illinois college football team going through the season undefeated . . . Ok, maybe to a bowl game?  Or playing .500 ball?  Maybe winning one or two Big Ten games?  How about just beating the lowly Eastern Michigan Eagles?  Or hold Nebraska under 700 total yards?  No.  Drat.  The dollars and pageantry poured into college football recognize a long history of mythology created to make it a nation-wide phenomenon. 

Early 20^th Century sportswriter, Grantland Rice, had a way of writing which elevated sports to something beyond the everyday, ordinary, and mundane.  In the 1920s, Grantland Rice wrote about the Notre Dame backfield, under famed coach Knute Rockne, as the four horsemen of the apocalypse.  Today they sound like your State Farm insurance agent:  Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and Elmer Layden.[1]  Most of these guys weighed less than 160 pounds.  I may not be as fast as these guys, but I bet I could still take Elmer Layden? dowwwwwwn!  Four horsemen!?  Pfffft.

          That is the purpose of mythological, particularly apocalyptic, storytelling.  Whether Grantland Rice or John of Patmos in the book of Revelation, use of the apocalyptic is to elevate the stakes, make something bigger than life so that we recognize deeper meaning or something more than the everyday, ordinary, or mundane.  For John of Patmos, it was about helping Christians of his day see a crisis unfolding such that they would move to non-cooperation with the Roman Empire, to speak out in a way that might very well create suffering for them, and to recognize that they were part of a long line of faithful ancestors who would work to bring God’s shalom to all of creation. 

Throughout history, those who espouse hate and violence to the most vulnerable have done so in a way that de-humanizes or belittles, calling them “rats or cockroaches”, “animals or savages”, “murders or rapists” and continues the imagery by herding people into cattle cars, boarding schools, or detention centers.  In so doing, we deny our connection and justify our humanity by declaring some as less than human. 

Lisa and I remarked about the three people who made incredible statements on Facebook about the immigration and refugee forum being offered this Friday.  One even carried her objection over to Lisa’s weekly offering of communi-tea with Lisa responding in such a beautiful and elegant way that no response followed.  I was less charitable.  When another person asked what I was doing about the persecution of Christians in China, I tried to be kind in my first go-round, but after being accused of carrying a political football, I responded by saying, “It sounds like you don’t care about the persecution of Christians at our border?”  Yeah, I don’t think it occurred to them that the people at the border might have a faith.  Take that.  Put that in your pipe and smoke it.  Triple snap. 

(scolding myself) You are a pastor, Mike.  A pastor.  Deep breathing.

What Jewish and Christian writers have historically done in response to unjust and dehumanizing words and actions aimed at vulnerable populations is to help the faithful see the principalities and powers, the systems and structures as the true monsters, hybrid wild beasts, animals with excesses in things like teeth (representing appetite) or horns (representing power).[2]  John has these mythological figures doing horrifically graphic things, like drinking the blood of the martyrs, so that the faithful do not accommodate to or get used to their everyday, ordinary, and mundane violence.  If the images John uses scare us or cause revulsion, John might say, “Yeah, you get it then!  Wake up!  Don’t try to pretend this anything less than horrifying!”

The root of the word “monster” is “a sign, to show, or to warn.”  And John is revealing these terrible monsters as a way of warning the faithful of the ordinary violence, regularly perpetrated by the conquering empire.  Don’t be co-opted, don’t accommodate, don’t cooperate, don’t pretend their sly and subtle invitations to be like them or to aspire to be them are innocuous or without the destruction of others.

John conveys that there is something deeper than the everyday, ordinary, and mundane world you experience, something more real.  As it is with the four seals in Revelation that are opened, opened as if to give entrance to the soul[3], the cosmic order broken open to the chaos that now ensues.  The first rider that emerges with the breaking open of the first seal is conquering Rome in all of its imperial glory on a white horse.   White is symbolic of victory and that was a primary mission statement of Roman imperialism: “Peace through military victory.  The Roman mantra was “RELIGION, WAR, VICTORY, PEACE.”[4]  Rome conquers and conquers and conquers ever more.[5]

Just to emphasize, when the second seal is opened, the chaos emerging is a bright red horse.  On that horse is a rider who comes with a sword to take peace from the earth so that the people would slaughter one another.  This is a countercultural statement over and against Rome’s claim that it brought peace to the earth.  “(F)rom the point of view of those who were exploited by the Empire and opposed it, this was not real peace.  It was an imposed peace.”[6]  All of this is to emphasize Jewish thought, story, mythology, and values.  Violence is the original sin.  Rome is rife with it.  John’s monsters are calling forward not only chaos but unmasking and revealing Rome as run through with this sin.  John is interpreting a narrative to charge Christians in Asia Minor with a necessary spiritual exodus from Roman cooperation and accommodation. 

The third seal is opened and coming forth is the black horse, black a symbol of economic misfortune.  The rider of the black horse, holding scales in his hands, makes us aware that this is about economic injustice.  There is a severe shortage of the staples, the essential food, the wheat and barley.  But the luxury items like olive oil and wine, now those are protected.  “Do not damage the olive oil and wine!” it is declared.  The monstrous, inhuman, and violent are shot through all representations. 

Finally, the fourth seal is opened and the fourth horse is called forth.  Death and Hades come with them and the horse is a pale green color.  They are given authority of one-quarter of the earth to kill with the sword, famine, pestilence, and by the wild animals—all signs that the earth has been overrun. The Greek word used to describe the color of this horse is also the one used for grass and other vegetation.[7]  The ever-more conquering in war, the widespread violence against the vulnerable, and the economic exploitation leads to ecological catastrophe, death and hell now loosed upon the earth.   The fourth horse and rider are pictured as ecological devastation. 

All seems graphically and tragically hopeless, right?  Revelation is filled with such gross images, vivid bloodletting, and horrific mythology that we would want to turn our head away.  For many of us living in middle class America, we would rather that the decision had been that Revelation not be included in the Bible.  But I am reminded of a quote I repeat over and over again to explain the Bible from English author, G.K. Chesterton, “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”[8]  

John wants his readers and listeners to know that evil is real, results in real consequences for the earth and all of its inhabitants, particularly the most vulnerable.  John is pleading with the faithful not to go along just to get along, only to avoid their own persecution.  Do not harbor evil because you are safe.  Do not participate in it.  Do not collaborate, conspire, or contribute to it.  Do not partner with that evil which defined unfaithfulness from the very beginning of the Jewish.  John the prophet knows it leads to ruin, and is not in keeping with God and Christ.  Evil is real and evil abounds.

I will admit that Revelation frightens the heck out of me because I wonder how much I have collaborated, conspired, and contributed to the war, violence, economic exploitation, and ecological catastrophe which seems to be the death march my country is on regardless of party. 

I think Creator could care a whit about my prolific Facebook sparring ability.  If there is a God, if there is a deeper story, I know my commitment to the care and relationship with our earth does not compare with the historical resistance of Native and indigenous peoples, does not hold a candle to the 16 year-old Swedish activist, Greta Thurnberg, who asks, matter-of-factly, why she would go to school on Fridays, instead of protesting, when the adults won’t listen to the science taught at school, when present policies and practices leave her no hope for the future. 

We would all like to believe we are not collaborators with evil.  That kind of self-inventory sounds like too much of old-time religion.  But Wendell Berry, the poet-farmer from Kentucky, asks me tough questions.  He writes:

How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy

In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security;
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.^[9]

          Those are hard questions—not questions I want to answer.  I might have to change my life!  Not unlike John of Patmos, Wendell Berry wants me to wake up and calls me to a deeper faithfulness.  Like a questionnaire on a job application, Berry unmasks my everyday, ordinary, and mundane cooperation with evil.  But . . . it is too much.  Take Revelation out of the Bible and Berry away from me.

          All this next week, Montana Interfaith Network and Billings Sanctuary Rising and the leadership of this congregation have events which offer us an opportunity to live more faithfully and to come out to be part of movements that say we will resist the four horsemen and their plans for war, violence, economic exploitation, and ecological catastrophe.  As people of faith, we are not promised ease but we are promised deep meaning.  Evil is real and evil abounds.  But the book of Revelation reminds us that dragons . . . and the four horsemen . . . can be beaten. 

          God is at work . . . deeper . . . from underneath.  Let us join Creator and collaborate in the coming of the saints, our beautiful ancestors, who have stitched and woven together a world which is waiting for us, a city that requires us to be awake with eyes to see it.   Amen. 

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[1] Grantland Rice,”The Four Horsemen,” Sports Illustrated, October 31, 1955.

[2] Heather MaCumber, “A Monster Without a Name:  Creating the Beast Known As Antiochus IV in Daniel 7,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures.  Volume 15, Article 9 DOI:10.5508/jhs.2015.v15.a9, pp. 2-5.  In his book, Philosophy of Horror, Noel Carroll shared the characteristics of the hybrid monster we see in Dracula or Frankenstein:  1) Must be a dangerous or threatening entity to one’s person or society at large; 2) Impure beings crossing normative categories by fusing disparate characteristics (zombie-living and dead; werewolf-human and animal) 3) Originate on the periphery of society or known world and considered other or alien to the society they infiltrate. 4) Emotions aroused by audience create fear in community with hope that restoration of cosmic order will be restored.

[3] “455: ἀνοίγω,” Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, https://biblehub.com/greek/455.htm. 

[4] John Dominic Crossan, “Peace through victory,” The Challenge of Jesus, https://faithandreason.org/images/uploads/COJ_Participants.pdf. 

[5] One of Richard Horsley’s critiques of early Christianity is that Christianity borrows the language of empire to critique empire.  So when we sing at Easter, “Thine is the glory, ever-conquering Son!” we impute the values of Rome to Jesus and pave the way for Christendom’s ever-conquering empire. 

[6] David J. Hawkin, “Globalization, the American Empire, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Churchman, Winter 2014, pp. 320-321.

[7] David E. Aune, (Word Biblical Commentary) Vol. 52b: Revelation 6-16 (Dallas, Texas: Word Book Publishers, 1998), p. 400.

[8] GK Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles (London:  Pantiano’s Classics, 1909)

[9] Wendell Berry, “Questionaire,” Leavings (Berkley, CA:  2010), p. 14.