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| Our merry band of pilgrims at Herodium, Herod's Palace |
And let me get clearer still on this: I don't mind people disagreeing with MY politics! I may be wrong about many things. When I was a parish priest, and this nation was debating healthcare, I would often say that we could disagree in the parish about a particular political way forward. But we needed to agree by virtue of our Baptism that we cared about providing healthcare. (And the list goes on, clean water, food for the hungry, making sure we don't incarcerate innocent people, etc.) Why? Because we respect the dignity of every human being. And because Jesus healed people, for God's sake! He taught and healed. If his followers don't care about education or healthcare, then maybe they aren't following him very closely!
Conservatives and Progressives can and will disagree on political strategies and policies. No one party should have a monopoly on good ideas. My quarrel here is with those who think that the Bible or Biblical faith should "stay out of politics." That religion isn't meant to have anything to do with people's real lives. That is misguided and it is absolutely NOT what "separation of church and state" means.
I'd go further: it's heresy. It's Gnosticism. It has nothing to do with the scandal of the Incarnation. It has nothing to do with Biblical faith. So, to paraphrase Mayor Pete: if you have a problem with God's politics, take it up with the Creator - not me!
Faith is always political. The question is, "who's politics?" And how do we allow God's politics to deconstruct our partisan bickering in order to shape and form us to be people who seek mercy and justice?
One trajectory of a pure spirituality is the mistaken notion that one might come to the Holy Land today and expect it to be all about mild-mannered innocent Jesus. A kind of Disney version Bible-Land where we walk with Jesus and talk with Jesus and he tells us we are his own. And then we get here and we find there are people who live here and the politics are extremely complicated. Getting to Jesus means working through two thousand years of political history. And the land, while indeed holy, is contested. We may wonder if the politics is keeping us from having a real pilgrimage back in time. It can be emotionally exhausting - and human beings can only handle so much reality at a time. But, in fact, I think this is the work.
Our guide here, Iyad, is a Palestinian Christian. I first met his wife when I was here in 2010; she was working as the librarian at St. George's College. I met Iyad when he was our guide and I came with the Fellowship of St. John the Evangelist group. He knows the Biblical story well. But he also shares his own story and the story of his people. Yesterday he told our group: "I know this is your pilgrimage. But this (the Palestinian story) is part of the pilgrimage."
Every North American Christian needs to take this kind of pilgrimage to rediscover the depth and power of Holy Scripture. We need to encounter those places where we've been mis-taught. in order to rediscover the power of God's Word which is always intersecting with God's people - and especially the least among us. In so doing, we do well to remember that this land has always been contested - or at least it has been for as long as human beings can remember. It was contested even when God promised it to Abraham. It was contested when Moses looked out from Mount Nebo and it was contested when Joshua fought the battle of Jericho. Promised land or not, it has always turned out there were people living there who were pretty sure it was their land. This land may be holy. In fact, I think it is this holiness that keeps drawing me back. But it's still land. And land represents power. It's real estate. It is settled - legally or illegally - here and around the world. It's contested. And that can't be separated from Biblical faith.
So whose land is it? It turns out that's an essay question, not a multiple choice question. One might begin by saying it's God's land. But then who gets to tend it? Who gets access to clean water? These are political questions. But underneath the politics they are also theological questions about who God is or at least whom we claim God to be. And for Christians, about what it means to claim Jesus as Lord.
So when someone says, "just preach the gospel and stay away from politics" I literally don't know what they mean. I know I see through a glass darkly, for sure. I know that my politics is limited and sometimes partisan and sometimes I'm just plain wrong. But the solution isn't to avoid the questions in favor of "spirituality." It's to go deeper. It's to practice listening to one another. It's to strive for justice and peace among all people. Those who say "stick with religion" don't know how to read the Bible and honestly don't know what the word religion means.
So, for me, one of the great gifts of coming to this land is that it is so complicated. It requires us to be open, and to listen, and to ask in new ways, "who is my neighbor?"
Then when we read that "a new pharaoh arose who didn't know Joseph" (Exodus 1:8) we know that's a political observation that puts into place the events that Jews are remembering right now in Israel and around the world: the Passover. It's not about "spirituality." It's about the economy. It's about who benefits from the economy and who is being used by it. It's about the journey from slavery toward freedom - then and today. That may well be an inward journey with spiritual implications, but it is also an outward journey to the halls of power, where Moses will tell Pharaoh to "let my people go!" It may be centuries later when Dr. King preaches the same message in the Civil Rights movement but it's part of the very same story. Is it religion or politics? Yes.
The Old Testament emerges under the shadow of empire: Egypt, but later Babylon and Persia. The New Testament emerges under the shadow of the Roman Empire. And the history of this land continues under the shadow of the Ottoman Empire. And the British Empire. And the American Empire.
Ah, did the preacher just move from preaching to meddling on that last one? We want to believe that our national "self-interest" is always pure. But my experience tells me otherwise. I love my country. And I also know that here and in southeast Asia and in Central America we have behaved much like the empires before us behaved.
When we read in the Bible that it was springtime, the time when kings go to war, and David sent Joab and stayed home himself in order to check out the wife of Uriah the Hittite (a squared away soldier) (see 2 Samuel 11) we are put on alert, as readers, about the danger and corrosive nature of power. When the Babylonian army destroys the Temple or when Cyrus of Persia decides it is advantageous to let the captives go back home - this is not just history. It's history in the sense that all history is about politics and about power. About who is on top, and who is on the bottom. So that when Jesus comes along and talks about the first being last and the last being first, he's talking about putting the (political) world right.
Faith in the shadow of empire is about raising up a people - often under the radar - to name that power. And to unmask it. And to resist it. Faith is about the long, arduous journey from slavery to freedom. Next year in Jerusalem....I'm in Jerusalem right now. This year. More particularly in East Jerusalem, at St. George's College - which was founded in the late nineteenth century by Anglican Christians. They do great work here. And they also wouldn't be here if it'd had not been for the British Empire. Life is complicated...
Yesterday we visited Herod's Palace. Today we'll be going into the Palestinian Territory, through a checkpoint beyond the wall, to Bethlehem. There we will remember how "in those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered." Herod freaked when he learned of the birth. This child threatened his paranoid lying self. Why? Because Jesus wanted to bring a truncated message to people's souls about the great beyond? And "let 'em eat cake in the meantime?"
I don't think that would have scared Herod enough to start killing children. Herod was scared because the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice and people like Jesus were not afraid of people like Herod. Jesus was not afraid to help bend that arc and he asked those who were willing to take up their cross and follow him to join him in that work. That was a radical idea when Jesus was healing and teaching and hanging out with a Samaritan woman at the well. And it still is.
Following him means a commitment to clean water for everyone. And unfortunately since even water can be commodified, that's about politics. Who gets clean water? Samaritan women. Palestinian men. The children of Flint Michigan. All the little children of the world. And when they aren't getting it, we begin by asking why...
Give us this water to drink, Lord!
There are no "spiritual" pilgrimages. There are, rather, pilgrimages into the mess and beauty of this world, among the nations. Both the powerful ones and the colonized ones. But there is, at the end, a vision of the healing of the nations. There is, in the end, a vision of people from every tribe and language and people and nation as one. See the Book of Revelation.
We live, in the meantime. Faith that seeks understanding comes back to the Bible again and again and when the scales fall from our eyes we realize it's always been about the journey from slavery to freedom. And that this is a dominant metaphor that carries all the way through both testaments. That Passover is the religio-politcal context for the Last Supper, and the foot-washing. The one who wishes to be great in this counter-insurgency must be a servant to all.
The empire will keep striking back, because this is what empires are built to do. They will seek to gain more and more and more power and to hold onto that power. At all costs.
Disciples who follow the rabbi who was fed on Torah and the Prophets agree to leave beyond the pursuit of power and instead seek justice and mercy and kindness. Not to leave politics behind but to uncover a new and more just way by following the way of the cross, which is the way of love. Eventually, we trust that this way leads to peace on earth. And good will. For all.
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