Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February 10, 2019, "Where is the deep? Who are the fish? What are the nets?"

C Epiphany 5 BFC 2019

Luke 5:1-11

February 10, 2019

          We know how the big fish stories work.  As we talk about our magical experience out on the water, the catch gets larger, the danger gets more deadly—“The thing almost pulled me into the water with it!”--and the singular fish becomes larger and larger as a way of conveying not only our skill but that we experienced the epic, maybe even that good fortune or the Divine was with us or just escaped us.   Regardless of catch, fishing stories rarely are re-told when the nets come up empty or with a small haul.  So we exaggerate.

Calvin Coolidge used to go fishing in the cold, clear streams of the upper peninsula of Michigan.  Once he was asked how many trout there were in his favorite creek, and he replied, ‘about 45,000. I haven't caught them all yet,

but I've intimidated them.’  Fishing lends itself to such stories.”[1]

          It was the great English writer G. K. Chesterton who said, “exaggeration is the definition of art.”[2]  And that is what the gospels are, a form of art, a poetic, rather than a literal, historical accounting of what happened.  They were written for meaning rather than historical accuracy. 

Today we are witness to one of those big fish stories from the gospels.  Jesus has been out and about preaching and teaching in the local Galileean faith communities.  He expels demons and heals the sick.  When the crowds try to make him stay, he shares that he has to continue his barnstorming tour proclaiming the good news of the community of outcasts gathered he calls the Empire of God.  He heads south on his barnstorming tour to Judea.  When he returns north to the homeland, he comes upon Lake Gennesaret.   It is not the first time he has met Simon, the fisherman.  Earlier Jesus has healed Simon’s mother.  This will not be the first time Simon sees the miraculous happen in and through this guy. 

Jesus expects and assumes spirituality.  The air is thick with it.  The earth is abundant with it.  Fisherfolk should have no reason to expect the activity of God in their midst.  The Roman politician philosopher Cicero says, “And the most shameful occupations are those which cater to our sensual pleasures: fish-sellers, butchers, cooks, poultry-raisers, and fishermen.”[3]  They would fish naked, smelling like fish, fishing at night because there was no way to keep fish fresh.  The fish would be sold in the morning and eaten that day.  Being away from home and family at night contributed to the low honor status of fisherfolk.  Even more so, in Rome’s extractive and exploitative economy, taxes would have left the vast majority of fisherfolk leasing boats and nets, most of their profits siphoned off with only the very wealthy able to afford a regular diet of fish.[4]  When they left their boats and nets to follow Jesus, to be his disciples, they also left that extractive and exploitative economy.

          Jesus calls these low-lifes, these people from a dishonorable profession, and assumes their spirituality, assumes God’s activity in their lives.  Simon protests.  “Go away from me, for I am a sinful man.”  He believes his life’s vocation, his dishonor, must be a result of his sinfulness.  As I have shared in a previous sermon, too often Christian teaching is focused on sin and forgiveness because Jewish prophets had told the people that their sin of violence and injustice would lead them back into slavery, occupation, and oppression.  They were to rightly fear God and God’s judgment.  So conversely, many people saw the suffering in the status quo as something they or their ancestors must have done. Their low status was a signpost of their sin. 

Jesus will have none of it.  Do not fear.  I’m about to teach you to fish differently. 

          And Jesus isn’t interested in doing this as a miracle for miracle’s sake.  He is foreshadowing.  He says to those strapped to this economy there is a new way of fishing that yields abundance but you have to leave your wading and do some underwater diving into the deep.  Jesus is not in the entertainment business.  He is in the discipleship business.  The old tools of the trade are left for a way and a path that is vastly different.

          This is the last time Simon, James, and John will fish in this way, the old way.  Jesus is asking them to think differently about what it means to fish and to re-imagine who the fish might be.  As people of faith, Simon seems to believe that they must keep fishing in the same shallow waters and trust that one day God will fill their nets.  Jesus sends them out to the deep, where it is riskier and a little bit more murky, and asks them to begin thinking who the fish are now, what are the nets.[5]  

Sisters and brothers, sisters and cousins, is this not the challenge we face in each age:  to constantly re-learn who the fish are now and what are the nets?  But that is so hard, right?  Even if we know that the way we are doing it now just leads nowhere.  At least we know the old way.  We know the repetitive, grinding down of our souls, the lack of energy and life where we just assume we are strapped to our past, defined by the wider culture, and not worthy of God’s activity.  And Jesus steps through all that, assumes that you and you and you are places where abundance can be found.  Jesus says, “Fear not.  Go deep. Follow me.”

Now our big fish story has been transformed into a “get people into the church story” where we can put the fish in the same barrel and club them into the sameness of submission.   The boat, so often a symbol for the church to later be founded upon Simon “The Rock”, is not meant to be hugging the shore, safe in harbor, like the church so often does, clutching for safety, often performing maintenance tasks, wringing our hands over the nets when the deep calls.  Christ wants us out in the deep where his message and life can be seen in the great world. 

We get often caught on bended knee, declaring our sinfulness, when Jesus assumes all the while that we are spiritual beings called to deep discipleship.   God does not spend time inventorying our past.  There is too much work to be done.  So that is my question for all of you, not worrying or being anxious about your past, or our past, “What are the deep places to which God is calling to us?  Maybe full of risk?  Maybe a little murky?  Maybe places of chaos and a little unsafe?  I want to give you a minute to think about that.  Please do that thinking about where you yourself are called.  But also, where are we as a church called to the deep?  If Jesus assumes that God is already at work to create our own big fish story, where, with whom, and how might that be?  How does that happen?  Take a minute to think about it and then I’ll ask you for your reflections. 

(Pause to ask)

We are called to the deep because Jesus always assumes that God is active in your life even when you feel like your nets are empty.  Jesus assumes your own spirituality and calls you to discipleship.  Praise God.  Amen.

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[1] Grant Gallup, “Epiphany 5C,” Homily Grits, https://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits/msg00007.html.

[2] Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. 15: Chesterton on Dickens (San Francisco:  Ignatius Press), p. 48.

[3] KC Hanson, “The Galileean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 27 (1997) 99-111, Quoting Cicero, On Duties 1.42, http://www.kchanson.com/ARTICLES/fishing.html. 

[4] Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis, Augsburg Fortress, 2003), p. 353.

[5] David Ewart, “Luke 5:1-11,” Holy Textures, https://www.holytextures.com/2010/01/luke-5-1-11-year-c-epiphany-5-february-4-february-10-sermon.html#NRSV.

Baptism of Christ, January 13, 2019, "Becoming toast"

C Baptism of Christ BFC 2019

Galatians 3:26-28; Luke 3:1-6, 21-23a

January 13, 2019

Remember answering machines?  Before Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter, day was when individuals and families would reveal a piece of their identity with a fun, pithy, or just plain entertaining message on their answering machine.    Some of my best friends from the church I served in New Hampshire, a senior couple, would record a new, original poem from the husband Grant, for every season.  My sense of humor, twisted and sick, in a former time of course, had me threatening to kill a small, beagle puppy unless people left a message (whining of the puppy).  Yes, I know.  Jesus saved me. 

My all-time favorite answering machine messages came from a family that had a deep-thinking teenage son.  Every so often he would have some profound, philosophical thought that was funny at first but really made you think as your day went on.  Causing the listener to ponder, one of those messages really stood out to me.  After the fourth ring, one would hear:  “Once bread has become toast, it cannot be bread again.”

I laughed and laughed the first time I heard that message.  After a while, I realized how, in one turn of phrase, this teenage boy had summed up what believer’s baptism means in the Christian tradition.  For once we know we are loved and cherished and that God is active in our lives, we cannot possibly be the same again.  Our world, or at least the perspective on our world, must change.  The transformation does not have to be an earth-shattering moment with doves, wind, and fire.  The transformation can be a way of slowly burning or becoming into being—an evolution that leads to a new way of existence.  But it is a transformation. 

We have treated baptism as a cosmetic, like roll-on or spray can deodorant, instead of as a commitment.[1]  Episcopal priest, Grant Gallup writes, “Baptism will wash the world itself into the Wetback Liberation Movement, wherein we are all swimming to the Other Side of Jordan. . . . Your Baptism means that you are committed to God's brand of justice, it means you've accepted appointment as an agent and an asset to revolutionary change, and it means you've accepted immersion in, solidarity with, all the changes necessary to create a truly human future.”  Water no longer becomes a privatized commodity and instead is understood as a sister or brother, sibling or cousin in our movement to restore the world of Creator.[2]

In pointing to the pivotal moments which led her to ordained ministry, author, pastor, and teacher, Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor writes of her Grandma Lucy, who ran a boarding house in College Park, Georgia.  Taylor continues:

           Grandma Lucy was known both for her considerable shrewd business 

           sense and her bad temper, a combination that earned her a fair 

           measure of respect in the community.  In her later years she was an                       awesome presence, especially to a child.  Having lost both legs to a 

           case of diabetes she refused to treat, she presided from a stainless steel                   wheelchair, her two wooden legs propped in front of her like buttresses.  

          She wore black aviator sunglasses to shield her failing eyes from the 

          light, which gave her face all the openness of a vault.  In old 

          photographs, she looks most like a handicapped bomber pilot.

But with her three grandchildren, this woman was as gentle as a breeze.  She loved us like nothing else in the world and we knew it.  Whenever we came to visit, there were closetsful of wrapped presents, one for each day of the week; trips to town for new dresses with net petticoats, and favorite desserts for dinner; baby chicks from the feed store and long afternoons on the porch swing in her arms.  But her best gifts were her baths.  When my night came she treated me like long lost royalty, filling the tub with suds and then beckoning me in, where she washed each of my limbs in turn and polished my skin with her great, soft sponge.  After she had dried me off, I lay down for the next part of the ritual.  First, she anointed me with Jergen’s Lotion, starting with my neck and finishing up with the soles of my feet.  Then she reached for her dusting powder—Evening in Paris—and tickled me all lover with the pale, blue puff.  When she was done, I knew I was precious.  I was absolutely convinced I was loved, and nothing that has happened since, not even her death, has shaken that conviction.

Can there be any doubt that what Grandma Lucy was doing to her granddaughter was baptizing her time and time again, taking a little girl who hears all kinds of messages in her world about how she is second class, how she is supposed to look or act like a lady, how she is a privatized commodity, how her body is an object for male gaze and not a subject of her own pleasure, and Grandma Lucy saying counter-culturally to her, “You are nothing but precious in the sight of God?”

            As we learned back in Verse 3:1, Luke pinpoints the date of this event as "the fifteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius." Which would be 28-29 A.D. Which would make John and Jesus about 33. Which in their day was about the average life span of the poor. Which was about 80% of the population. And which were the people both John and Jesus belonged to. Jesus and John were not young men in the prime of their life. They were elders. And if they had not escaped the usual life of the poor, they also suffered from long hours of hard work, poor diets, and lack of sanitation.  Jesus' baptism is not about repentance. It is about his identity being publicly, ritually re-rooted into Creator. [3]

John the Baptist told the crowds they had abandoned God.  They had abandoned God by not remembering they were the people God delivered from Egypt.  They had abandoned God by not remembering that the land was God’s given to them for the benefit of the whole community.  Bread, and goods, and services were shared for the benefit of the whole community.  As Jesus related his Jewish tradition, all these gifts of God were meant to flow back and forth across the table in mutuality.  The Jordan River had once been the place the Children of God crossed to remember that God wanted them to be a free, liberated, promised, and mutual people.  

Rome wanted people to remember that they were a subject, beaten, and occupied people.  As long as one remembered that, everything would be just fine.  Caesar was the only actor in life’s play.  As long as one remembers that all bread, and goods, and taxes, and services flow upwards toward Caesar, the Roman peace will be kept.  

But once bread becomes toast it can never be toast again.

Through commercials, the wider culture, messages we receive every day, we are told that we are an audience, consumers, only being acted upon and enslaved to this way of being. Creator wills that we know ourselves to be subjects in God’s story.   No matter what Caesars calls us, we shall be known as the Children of God.

There is also a social dimension to baptism as related by the earliest baptismal creed we have in Paul’s letter to the communities in Galatia.  In Christ Jesus, there is neither Jew nor Greek, a designation relating ethnic and religious difference.  In Christ Jesus, there is neither slave nor free, a designation relating socio-economic and caste status.  In Christ Jesus, there is neither male nor free, a designation relating differences in sexuality and gender. 

The German theologian Dorothee Sollee quotes the 14^th Century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart to say that if God is really God, then God is that which is most communicable.  Sollee goes on to write that “God desperately desires to be shared—that is part of who God is.”  All bread, and goods, and services and love should be shared.

What a wonderful possibility that lays at our feet.  Sollee continues, “To embrace God means to embrace a process—a process of going forward, a process of infusing everything.  Only with our partnership can that love become incarnate in our world every day.  God dreams for us.”

Sollee believes, “Today, at this moment, God has an image and hope for what we are becoming.  We should not let God dream alone.”

I have told Lisa I think we are a baptism church.  There is something happening here where we have a whole bunch of people who have decided to be baptized.  I believe that is happening because the character of baptism lends itself to what is needed in a world where our identities are mixed and varied and unique. And . . .  because we also long for connection that allows for our diverse identity.  Many of us are looking for an identity that affirms our diverse, beautifully unique, journeys in a profound multicultural mix.  But we also long for connection that allows us retain our unique identity and reaches across the great divide to learn from each other, enjoy one another, and find solidarity with one another.  Our culture is trying to tell us who we are.  And baptism offers a path, a road, that is open to a creative and connected future.      

For once we know we are precious and loved, we can never, ever be bread again.  We are on fire.  We are becoming toast, set out into a world that needs to hear that good news.  Once baptism is done, we are truly becoming toast—set on fire by the idea that God wants us to be known as a free, liberated, and promised people, uniquely diverse and connected to begin the sometimes gritty, sometimes joyous inauguration into the revolution of love that heals, shares, and struggles across the great divide of religion, ethnicity, and culture; socioeconomic status and caste; gender and sexuality.  It is time to tell the world the same dream.  Amen.

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[1] Grant Mauricio Gallup, “Epiphany IC,” Homily Grits, January 6, 2007, https://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits/msg00002.html.

[2] Ibid.

[3] David Ewart, “Year C, Epiphany 1, Baptism of the Lord, January 13, 2019,” Holy Textures, https://www.holytextures.com/2009/12/luke-3-15-17-21-22-year-c-epiphany-1-january-7-january-13-baptism-sermon.html. 

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. 

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[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.

Second Sunday of Lent, "Attention liberation"

B Lent 2 BFC 2018

Mark 8:31-38

February 25, 2018

Mark 8:31-38

31 Then he began to teach them that the Human One (Son of Man) must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Adversary! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Human One (Son of Man) will also be ashamed when that one comes in the glory of the Loving Creator with the holy angels.”

Throughout this season of Lent, we voluntarily walk out into the stark and extreme landscape of the wilderness to develop our focus and clarity about who we are and who we are in relationship.  Because the wilderness can be a dangerous place, almost inhuman, we must discern what we will leave behind as unnecessary baggage and what will we take with us as important, valuable.  If we walk through this time intentionally, the wilderness hones our attention.  And what we give our attention to, grows. 

In the current age, we are consistently being inundated by the technologies that deliver to us our relationships with the outside world through current events, the interpretation of the news, and fake news.  Our technologies deliver to us our relationships with our far-flung families, friends, and our values in texts, tweets, and Facebook posts. 

The etymology of technology is found in words like “art,” “skill,” “craft,”, and “ingenuity.”  In effect, our technology is about “useful art.”  But as our technology becomes more and more strongly tied to our identity, the question is whether we are using our technology or whether our technology is using us.[1] Are we using and infusing our technology with our values or is our technology using and infusing us with other values?  Certainly the news that the Russian government infiltrated media platforms like Facebook and Twitter reminds us that some systems and structures are banking on the fact that we can be manipulated and used by our technologies.  What are we paying attention to?

In the passage from Mark we have before us today, Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, or follow me, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.”  That passage is probably either Jesus quoting Cynic philosophers who had come before him, or were his contemporaries, or the author of Mark placing a popular Cynic quote on the lips of Jesus.  Cynic philosophers were not negative in the way we use the word “cynical.”  Rather, Cynic philosophers were asocial and counter-cultural critics.  Many of them would beg and go unshaven and unbathed.   Some would go without clothes or belongings all to point out how ridiculous the striving after possessions and wealth was in Roman society.[2]  Roman society responded by referring to Cynics as “dogs.”

          Epictetus, a Cynic philosopher, was quoted in the 2^nd Century as saying, “If you want to be crucified, just wait. The cross will come. If it seems reasonable to comply, and the circumstances are right, then it's to be carried through, and your integrity maintained.”[3]  Within Cynic schools of philosophy in the first century, suffering sin and death or literally carrying one’s cross for doing the right or virtuous thing, certified that person as full of integrity, authentic, a true philosopher.[4]  The Roman government maintained its dominance through horrendous, tortuous executions carried out through crucifixion.  The message of Rome was simple, “Submit or die.”  Many believe that the gospel of Mark was written around year 70 C.E., the time of the Jewish Great Revolt.  The historian Josephus believes that approximately 1.1 million Jews were killed by Rome during the Great Revolt, many of them crucified, Rome ringing the city of Jerusalem alone with tens of thousands of crosses.[5]  So when Mark includes admonitions to take up our cross and follow Christ, this is not metaphor or hyperbole.  These are real challenges to a costly discipleship, to recognize that to live out our values might be a test of our loyalties, even to the point of death.

          That was the original meaning of the Greek word we now translate as faith, pistis.  Pistis meant loyalty or allegiance.  In what basket do you put your eggs?  Historically, we have heard this passage translated as Jesus admonishing Peter, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”  But the better word for “Satan” is probably “Adversary”, the great tester of loyalties[6], the one who wants to know if you are a disciple of Christ or Caesar?  Are you a follower of the one who puts their eggs in the basket of the materially poor, the political prisoner, and the occupied?  Or are you a follower of the one who puts their eggs in the basket of the materially wealthy, the militarily powerful, and those who maintain peace through violence and death?  Are we setting our minds, our attention, on divine things or something else?

Cynic philosophers believed a life lived virtuously, with the expectation of struggle, rose above what the Romans could do to you with a cross.  The disciples of Christ defined that virtuous life in an even more radical path.  We, too often, interpret Jesus’s crucifixion as a singular experience when, in all reality, hearing the gospel story would have been a sign of solidarity that Christ too, like you experienced among your friends and family, was crucified too. 

Repeated by or put on the lips of Jesus, Jesus’ followers had to be aware that the path they had chosen was a hard path, a path full of struggle.  Suffering and hardship came to Jesus’ followers not just because life was hard, but also because a virtuous life, a life full of integrity put them square against a society maintained by violence and torture and death. 

Too often this verse has been interpreted in the common vernacular about having our own individual crosses to bear, a phrase we still use much too often, as in, “Poor Mike, how does he stand it when the Illini lose to Michigan State and Purdue like that.  I guess that’s just his cross to bear.”  Rather, this verse is about entering into struggles and hardships which put us foursquare against systems of domination and destruction.   “If you take up your cross,” is about choices over and against a hopelessness that says the world can be any different.  Show your loyalty even in the shadow of the cross.

The radical call of this Scripture is made even more explicit when Jesus references the Human One[7] (not once but twice) or what has been traditionally translated as the Son of Man.  The Human One, in Jewish mythology, is seen coming with the Ancient-of-Days in the prophet Daniel’s dreams to institute, transform, and rehabilitate society in the values of justice.[8]  The Human One also opposes the evil and wicked empires, characterizing them as carnivorous beasts with their arrogance and long teeth, devouring and consuming, consuming and devouring.   Again, are we aligning ourselves with the project of the Human One or the carnivorous, violent, consuming, and arrogant beasts?

We must liberate our attention in this wilderness of Lent so that we have the tools to live this difficult, radical life, to maintain our loyalty when it would just be so easy to assent to the violence and death reasserted in Syria, now practiced in our schools, and furthered in extractive economies that devour the poor and our planet.  How shall we do this?  How do we use our technologies to inform our faith?

Kevin Kelley, the founder of Wired magazine and a self-identified Christian, has a fascination with the Amish and their practices.  The Amish are stereotyped as people who resist change and the wider culture by abandoning technology, electricity, and any sense of modern fashion.  But Kelley relates that the Amish are changing all the time.  They decide what useful art they are going to employ based on values and practices that inform their values.  According to Kelley, the Amish use discernment questions which reveal their values.  Those discernment questions are:  1) Will this technology increase or strengthen my family?  And 2) Will this technology increase or strengthen my community?  Kelley goes on to say:

So the Amish, their ideal is to have every meal with their children until they leave. They want to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day with their children. How much time does it bring them and keep them in the community? So the reason why they have horses instead of cars is because the horse can only go 15 miles away, so they have to go shopping, go to church, go to visit, all within 15 miles. That forces them to pay attention, to support their local neighborhood, their community. And so when they’re looking at new technology — like, they say, LEDs or whatever — does it help them do that, or does it not? So they’re not rejecting technology. They’re saying: We want technology that serves our purposes.

And the way that they do this is also interesting, is — they don’t think about the technologies. They have Amish early adopters. And these are guys, usually, in any community, who are eager to try new things. And they have to get permission from the bishop. And so the bishop will say, “OK, Ivan, yeah, you can have a cellphone in your truck for work.” And so, for the next year, they watch — his community watches Ivan to see how that affects his family, his community, his work, and if they don’t think that it’s a positive, then he has to give it up. So it’s a community decision.[9]

Does our useful art, our technology, reveal our loyalties, reflect what we want to grow?  Or do we end up reflecting the loyalties of or technology?

          Allied Media Projects is an organization based out of Detroit that is actively seeking to build a world based on transformative justice through intentional and strategic use of media technologies.  Their mission is to cultivate media strategies for a more just, creative and collaborative world. They serve a network of media makers, artists, educators, and technologists working for social justice.  Their definition of media includes all forms of communication, from videos and websites to theater, dance, design, and interactive technology.[10]  Hear in that mission statement values, not unlike the Amish, to be purposeful and intentional with their attention to technology.

          Here are some of the principles they have discerned in their work: 

·      We are making an honest attempt to solve the most significant problems of our day.

·      We are building a network of people and organizations that are developing long-term solutions based on the immediate confrontation of our most pressing problems.

·      Wherever there is a problem, there are already people acting on the problem in some fashion. Understanding those actions is the starting point for developing effective strategies to resolve the problem, so we focus on the solutions, not the problems.

·      We emphasize our own power and legitimacy.

·      We presume our power, not our powerlessness.

·      We spend more time building than attacking.

·      We focus on strategies rather than issues.

·      The strongest solutions happen through the process, not in a moment at the end of the process.

·      The most effective strategies for us are the ones that work in situations of scarce resources and intersecting systems of oppression because those solutions tend to be the most holistic and sustainable.

·      Place is important. Place helps define context.

·      We encourage people to engage with their whole selves, not just with one part of their identity.

And, finally, they list in bold: 

·      We begin by listening.[11]

Imagine a whole community of people who might take up those spiritual practices as a way of walking through the wilderness and honing their attention.  I hear in those principles strongly spiritual content coming from a secular setting.  More and more, I hear a spiritual consensus emerging that recognizes we can no longer give our loyalty to the rules of Rome but must find something more just, more life-giving, more intentional.  What of those principles might you take, individually, as a walking stick which measures your steps?  What of those principles might we take, as a faith community, to sharpen our attention, to continue piecing together our downtown neighbors and citizens, and living our lives in loyalty to the things of God and not of Caesar?  I think they have it right.  We begin by listening.  May it be so.  Amen. 

                                                                                                                                         

                                                                                                                                         

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[1] “The universe is a question:  interview with Kevin Kelly,” OnBeing with Krista Tippett, January 18, 2018.  https://onbeing.org/programs/kevin-kelly-the-universe-is-a-question-jan2018/.

[2] F. Gerald Downing advances the comparisons between Jesus and the Cynics more than anyone.  The Jesus Seminar has used much of his material to draw comparisons.

[3] “Historical Commentary on the Gospel of Mark,” http://users2.ev1.net/~turton/GMark/GMark08.html, citing Robert Price, Deconstructing Jesus (Amherst, New York:  Prometheus, 2000), p. 160.

[4] Ibid, citing David, Seeley,  “Blessings and Boundaries:Interpretations of Jesus' Death in Q. In Early Christianity, Q and Jesus,” Semeia 55 (ed. John S. Kloppenborg; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), pp. 131-46. 

[5] James Carroll, Christ Actually:  The Son of God for the Secular Age (New York:  Viking, 2014), pp. 46-54.

[6] Bruce J. Malina and Richard J. Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Fortress Press:  Minneapolis, 2014), p. 182, n. Honor; Secrecy.

[7] Literally, “The One of Fertile Soil” or, as I translate it, “Child of Earth.”

[8] The Bible references this as tzedakah (righteousness)

[9] “The universe is a question.”

[10] https://www.alliedmedia.org/about/story

[11] https://www.alliedmedia.org/about/network-principles.