Being the Church: Stringfellow Revisited

I have just recently re-read William Stringfellow's An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land, a book first published in 1973, another dangerous period in our nation's history. The headlines then were Watergate, Oil Crisis, Cold War, Vietnam. This is the socio-political context in which Stringfellow offers a critical reading of apocalyptic literature, particularly the Book of Revelation. Forty-four years later, he's worth another look, so I'm deeply grateful to several colleagues who have pointed me in his direction in the recent past.

A Harvard trained lawyer and Episcopal layperson, Stringfellow was not one to mince words. It is interesting to me that seven years before Ronald Reagan was comparing the United States to "a shining city on a hill" (as the Puritan settlers in New England had done before him) Stringfellow was insisting that this gets it wrong. The United States and all imperial powers are not new Jerusalems, according to Stringfellow; they are new manifestations of Babylon. "Babylon," Stringfellow writes, "represents the essential version of the demonic in triumph in a nation." He then goes on to write:

Two societies are prominent in the biblical witness. There is Babylon, and there is also Jerusalem. Babylon is a city of death, Jerusalem is the city of salvation; Babylon, the dominion of alienation, babel, slavery, war, Jerusalem the community of reconciliation, sanity, freedom, peace; Babylon, the harlot, Jerusalem, the bride of God; Babylon, the realm of demons and foul spirits, Jerusalem the dwelling place in which all creatures are fulfilled; Babylon an abomination to the Lord, Jerusalem, the holy nation; Babylon, doomed, Jerusalem, redeemed.

Our hope is not in making the nation into a shining city on the hill; it is in being the Church, an outward and visible sign of hope called to incarnate signs of the New Jerusalem in the midst of Babylon. As such, our work is let our light shine for all the world to see.

I find this hermeneutic extremely helpful. On Friday, the 45th President of the United States will be inaugurated. While I think this was a poor decision made in the Electoral College and that we are in dangerous territory as a nation, in truth I must also admit that it helps me to take steps toward clarity about what it means to be the Church. I don't want to be overly dramatic and I was (helpfully) reminded by a colleague this past week that the reaction of progressives in response to Trump's election looks an awful lot like the reaction of the religious right to the election of Obama eight years ago. Both reactions may well be rooted in fear, and lots of it.

So I'm trying not to go down that road, even though I have my own fears. I find Stringfellow helpful because while he is very clear in this same book that the Church is definitely called to be political and that the Bible cannot faithfully be read apart from the political context(s) in which it arose (including but not limited to refugees fleeing from Egypt and then entering into the Promised Land where people already resided; loss of the land to the Babylonian empire and political exile, followed by return under Cyrus of Persia and the political challenges faced during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah; the Roman domination of first-century Palestine and Jesus' birth on the edges of that empire because of a decree from the emperor and then his death on a cross, the Roman method of carrying out the death penalty, etc. and including the Book of Revelation, which is all about politics.)

Ultimately the Bible is about love, not fear, in the midst of all that empire. Perfect love that casts out fear and allows us to be faithful witnesses in the midst of Babylon.

The big seminary-educated word for this is "ecclesiology" - words about the ecclesia, "the gathered community that seeks to follow Jesus and names him as the Christ." To put this in plain English, I'm trying to wrap my head around what it means to be the Church in 2017 and Stringfellow is a very helpful guide. In the face of the serious challenges our nation faces, it is time for the Church (and the mosque and synagogue and other aliens in this strange land) to get clear about who we are and whose we are.

If the most recent election had gone the other way we would not be free and clear right now. While I might personally be feeling more optimistic and less afraid, I know that we would all still be facing many of the same issues and challenges.  Among them: we would be just as deeply divided as a nation; we'd just be on different sides. Fox News would be going crazy while MSNBC would be gloating. Gun violence and opioids would still be corrosively destroying our towns and cities from the inside out. Our schools would still be facing enormous challenges and so, too, would we be facing dangerous global threats.  While I strongly believe that the other candidate would have better addressed these challenges, she would still be trying to work with a Congress that has very different ideas and would be strategizing to stop her at every turn. So who can know for sure how successful she would have been.

The Church is called to be the Church, and that begins with clarity about what our vocation is. "Incarnational theology," Stringfellow writes, "regards this world in the fullness of its fallen estate as simultaneously disclosing the ecumenical, militant, triumphant presence of God." He insists the incarnation "sanctifies the world." And then how about these extraordinary words - words I'm pondering, turning over, praying with, hoping with into this weekend and beyond:

Jerusalem is visibly exemplified as an embassy among the principalities - sometimes secretly, sometimes openly - or as a pioneer community - sometimes latently, sometimes discretely, sometimes audaciously. And the life of Jerusalem, institutionalized in Christ's Church (which is never to be uncritically equated with ecclesiastical structures professing the name of the Church) is marvelously dynamic. Constantly changing in her appearances and forms, she is incessantly being rendered new, spontaneous, transcendent, paradoxical, improvised, radical, ecumenical, free.

The Seventh Sunday of Easter

On this Seventh Sunday of Easter, I have preached at St. Philip's Church in Easthampton. Today is graduation day at Smith College and the tradition is for St. Philip's to welcome folks from St. John's to their church on graduation weekend when Northampton is busier than usual. I was grateful for the invitation from the Rev. Michael Bullock to preach. 

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I was ordained in 1988, thirty-eight years ago. I realize that this is not even close to my much (much) older brother, Michael, but still, it’s a long time ago, in a galaxy far away.  

In all that time, however, I’m pretty sure that I have never preached on First Peter. And I’m positive that I have not done so on this day, the Sunday after Ascension Day, when I’ve normally felt obligated to say something about the Ascension. Not once in nearly four decades! But I’m going to do just that today.

Although the author of this epistle presents himself as Peter the Apostle, the ending of the letter includes a statement that implies that it was written from "Babylon", which is likely a reference to Rome. The letter is addressed to the "chosen pilgrims of the diaspora" in Asia Minor suffering religious persecution. All of this leads most scholars to date it later than Simon Peter the Fisherman from Galilee, and closer to the time when the Book of Revelation was written under Emperor Domitian.

I’m not going to linger on this point for too long. Honestly, it’s not a ditch worth dying in. But context matters. What is clear is this: whoever wrote it was living through difficult times. It was never easy to try to make your life in an occupied territory of the Roman Empire, but things got much worse later in the first century, and so it makes some sense as context to hear these words addressed to a later first-century Church.

Notice the language used to describe this context: the writer calls attention to the “fiery ordeal” and to sharing in Christ’s sufferings, and being reviled for the name of Christ. The writer speaks of the anxiety this causes as the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. The writer reminds these early followers of Jesus that this suffering is not local but global: look around and notice that there is suffering in all the world.

What to do? Despair? Give up? It’s very tempting, isn’t it. But no. Like John of Patmos in the Book of Revelation, the recipients of this letter are encouraged to rejoice, and shout for joy. When reviled, to remember they are blessed. To be humble, to know God cares for them. To keep alert. To resist evil and remain steadfast in the faith. The hearers of this Word are promised that Christ will restore, support, strengthen and establish this community, and that in the end God is in charge.

So do not lose hope! All will be well, and all manner of things will be well, eventually.

It’s a word of encouragement in a very difficult time. It’s a reminder that en-couragement is about cultivating and finding courage. We can choose to dis-courage one another and ourselves when faced with big challenges but that’s not a given. We can choose to en-courage one another, reminding ourselves and one another to be brave. As that great hymn of the Church puts it: grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days.

I know some of you know about the lawyer and activist, Frank William Stringfellow, a layperson who was born on April 28, 1928 in Johnston, Rhode Island, but was raised in Northampton. Stringfellow graduated from Northampton High School in 1945. He died in 1985 but if he was still alive he would be 98 years old, so a local and near contemporary saint among the great cloud of witnesses. If you don’t know about him I encourage you to check out his writings.

Stringfellow left Northampton for Bates College and then Harvard Law School. He’s a person I think we need to listen to, a visionary and critic of the social, military and economic policies of the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. He was a tireless advocate for racial and social justice which he insisted could only be pursued according to a serious understanding of Biblical faith. He wrote lots of amazing commentary on the Book of Revelation. Do you all know about this local saint?

One of his books is called “An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land.” I commend it to you along with this quote from it:

…in the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst Babel, I repeat, speak the truth. Confront the noise and the verbiage and the falsehood of death with the truth and potency and efficacy of the Word of God. Know the Word, teach the Word, nurture the Word, preach the Word, defend the Word, incarnate the Word, do the Word, live the Word. And more than that, in the Word of God, expose death and all death’s works and wiles, rebuke lies, cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed, raise those who are dead in mind and conscience.

Some of you know that for almost twelve years I served as Canon to the Ordinary in our diocese, serving on Bishop Doug Fisher’s staff. For almost all of that time, the Rev. Michael Bullock has been here at St. Philip’s. I’m told that he’s going to retire soon. He deserves to do that, and I also know he will be greatly missed. Michael and I have become friends along the way – he has been a support to me and I hope I’ve been a support to him. Before we ever met our sons had, which is pretty cool: my son, Graham, travelled with Cristosal to El Salvador when he was a senior in high school and there met Noah; Graham is now 35 and the father of two boys.

We are living in perilous times and both Michael and I have been around a while. Let’s be honest: it’s never been easy to be a follower of Jesus: not when the Epistle of Peter was written and not when William Stringfellow spoke up during the 1960s and 1970s, and not today. It’s never been easy to be a follower of Jesus but there are seasons in human history where it seems especially hard. And I think we are living through one of those.

But we should also remember that hard times can bring about moral clarity about who and whose we are and what we are called to be about. When all is going well in the world around us, it may be more difficult to be clear about what the good news of Jesus Christ is all about and why it matters. But when the world around us feels like it’s coming unglued, when we see violence and degradation and wars and rumors of wars and anxiety is high, it also becomes clear what it means to be a community that resists evil and strives for justice and peace. It becomes clearer what it means to be a community that respects the dignity of every human being. No exceptions. We don’t defend holy wars because we know there is no such thing and that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

The writer of First Peter, whether our friend Simon Peter or some later disciple, knew and understood the costs of discipleship with great clarity. William Stringfellow knew as he confronted injustice in this nation the costs of discipleship with great clarity.

This is, I think, what we are called to in this time as well. To face our fears directly, to know that these perilous times cannot define us, because we are called to be an Easter people, a people after God’s own heart. We are not called to react to every news story; it seems to me that keeps us off balance and we lose our way pretty quickly. Rather, we are called to keep our eyes on the prize. To focus on Jesus, the Word made flesh. To pray for courage and wisdom for the living of these days, and to build up the Body of Christ.

Although no longer on the Bishop’s staff I pay attention and the reason I’m here today is that I’m covering a sabbatical for the rector of St. John’s, Northampton. There is life and vitality in that congregation as there is life and vitality here at St. Philip’s. God isn’t finished with us yet. For a long time we Episcopalians have adapted a narrative of decline. Actually the post-war period when all those baby boomers were born turns out to have been a moment of growth mostly based on pure demographics. Suburban churches with nice red doors had lots of kids in their Sunday School classrooms in the late 1950s and early 1960s. If you start there then it feels like we’ve been in a 65-year decline. But who said that was the place to start? If you take the longer view you find there are ups and downs along the way. And if you look at what is happening coming out of the pandemic there is growth and signs of new life in many of our congregations. People are scared and hungry and looking for community and purpose. And they are beginning to find what they seek in the Episcopal Church.

This time of growth is about more than demographics; it’s about purpose. Why are we here on a Sunday morning in May 2026? I think more and more of us are here because it feels like the world has gone off the rails and we need a place where hope is cultivated by courageous and kind actions, a place where love forms community that is stronger than hate and fear.

Here at St. Philip’s, Michael has served faithfully. Well done, good and faithful servant. But the work isn’t finished. So I wonder where God is calling this congregation next and how you will build on the good work that has been done here. Know that there are not magical pills or easy answers to what lies ahead. We live in perilous times. And yet by God’s grace we put our trust in the living God, one day at a time.

…in the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst Babel, I repeat, speak the truth. Confront the noise and the verbiage and the falsehood of death with the truth and potency and efficacy of the Word of God. Know the Word, teach the Word, nurture the Word, preach the Word, defend the Word, incarnate the Word, do the Word, live the Word. And more than that, in the Word of God, expose death and all death’s works and wiles, rebuke lies, cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed, raise those who are dead in mind and conscience.

Revelation 13

You can read the thirteenth chapter of John's Revelation here.

Here is an extended quote from The Jewish Annotated New Testament:

The bizarre polymorphic beasts that arise in chapter thirteen to threaten and delude the earth belong to the most archaic biblical traditions of creation and would have been easily recognized as such by early audiences. The idea that the God of Israel, like other Canaanite gods defeated and bound the monsters Leviathan/Rahab and Behemoth - respectively sea and land monsters - at the beginning of time is invoked in such disparate biblical sources as Psalm 74, Job 41, and Isaiah calls for its reenactment to perfect the earth once again. (Isaiah 27 and 51:9-10)

Years ago I read a much more in-depth study on these texts which I recommend, Jon Levenson's Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence. The main premise of the book (as I remember it) is that there are these "archaic biblical traditions" embedded in the Old Testament texts of a God who is still ordering the chaos, still battling the evil powers of this world. The battle is ongoing and the work not yet finished, Levenson argues. God is good, but evil is real - and persistent.

What does it mean? William Stringfellow spends a good bit of time on "the beast" in An Ethic for Christians & Other Aliens in a Strange Land. There he has an extended reflection on the demonic tactics that the principalities (aka "the beast") mount against human beings, inverting language and turning it into a weapon of chaos, falsehood, blasphemy, and propaganda to make communication more and more difficult. It's Babel on steroids, meant to degrade human life by replacing it with a culture of death. This, from Stringfellow:

The Antichrist, remember, means anti-human as much as the name means anti-God.The Antichrist is the incarnation of death in a nation, institution, or office, or other principality, and/or an image or person associated therewith. And where there is worship of the Antichrist, where there is an idolatry of death as embodied in the State, or otherwise, the manifest blasphemy against God and the denigration of worship and the degradation of human life are all aspects of the same happening. A human being cannot be an idolator of the Antichrist without negating his or her humanity, which, at the same time, means without indulgence in a travesty of worship, which, in turn, means without arousing the jealousy of God...in consequence, a biblical person is always wary of claims which the State makes for allegiance, obedience, and service under the rubric called patriotism. (page 113, emphasis mine.) 

In verse 13:10b, John says that what is required in times such as these of the saints is "endurance and faith." What are the practices that help us to do that, in the midst of degradation and fear?
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Some Summer Reading Recommendations

Composing lists is always a dangerous thing. This is not so much a Top Ten reading list as it is, perhaps, something like Rich Simpson's "Greatest Hits." These are books from which thoughtful Christian leaders, both ordained and lay, have something to learn, and writers with whom we ought to be familiar. It's clearly not exhaustive, but it's a place to start. All of these are books that I'd enjoy discussing over a beer, or a cup of coffee. All of them have left a mark on me over time and have been read from cover to cover more than once. I think I've read Life Together a dozen or more times by now; I used to sit down and read it as a parish priest whenever I felt that my "wish dream" for the Church was overwhelming my gratitude for the complex fleshy reality of the congregation that I'd been called to serve.

My criteria is not only that they have all "stood the test of time" but that they seem particularly relevant today to our current context and therefore deserve another look. They all have gravitas. While I am fully aware that as soon as I publish this list I'll easily think of three or more books I should have added to this list, I think it's safe to say that as long as my list might get I can't imagine excluding any of these writers even if one might quibble over which of their books to begin with. 

So it's a list of some of the recommendations that come to my mind in this moment in July 2017 for summer reading. Admittedly, most of these books were published a while ago, but in a sense this is the point. They are "classics" that people interested in Christian community should be familiar with, and for me, at least, they have stood the test of time. They deserve a first, or another, look in this time and place. They are for people who are interested, as I am, in the mission of the Church and some of the issues raised in fulfilling that mission; I think regardless of denomination or even of whether one situates oneself to the right, center, or left of the theological spectrum. None of them will be found in the self-help section or even in the "spirituality" section of a bookstore (if those even still exist!)

There are two Jews on this list for Christian leaders: Edwin Friedman and Amy-Jill Levine. If this list was fifteen recommendations I am certain that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel would make the list and maybe he should be on this list (I'm just not sure who to drop!) Heschel's book on The Prophets and his work on Sabbath have left big marks on me. Friedman, Levine, and Heschel should be familiar to Christians who have too often forgotten our own heritage and our enormous debt to Judaism. 

There are three African-Americans on this list. As mentioned below, James Cone could also be on this list as well and if I added him at #11 it'd probably be God of the Oppressed. Each of them have helped introduce this white boy to the spiritual depth and prophetic power of the Black Church. In these difficult times I need to return to them and others since I have been shaped by and live and work in a predominantly white context. 

There are four women on this list and many more who have reminded me how "male" the tradition we have inherited has been and the enormous debt I owe to feminist theology. I was truly blessed by teachers like Jouette Bassler at Georgetown (before she left for Perkins School of Theology) and Catherine Keller at Drew who didn't ever make the men in their classes feel less than human even as they challenged the systems of male domination and privilege that continue to make women feel that way. There is a book written by Brian Wren entitled What Language Shall I Borrow? God-Talk in Worship: A Male Response to Feminist Theology that expresses well the sense of gratitude I share with Wren for the women who have both challenged and encouraged me in my journey so far. 

What's not here? There isn't any Queer Theology and I need to rectify that so my list a decade from now reflects that learning. In seminary (1985-1988) and in my subsequent ordained life since then, I've been an advocate for full inclusion of LGBTQ persons in the life of the Church,especially around ordination and marriage equality because I've learned so much from the gifts that LGBTQ persons have so graciously shared with me and the Church along the way, in spite of the abuses they have suffered at the hands of other "Christians." And yet, my theological education has not caught up with that commitment and experience. So I'm open to suggestions on where to begin, since I know there is lots out there. I need others to add to my own reading list for this summer and beyond.

OK, then. Let me just say these are ten really great books you won't be disappointed in if you read them. They may not be light beach reading, but they are all worth the time.

1. Life Together: A Discussion of Christian Fellowship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I would recommend anything by Bonhoeffer: The Cost of Discipleship and Letters and Papers from Prison are also both excellent. But for my money, Life Together hits all the main points of why Bonhoeffer's resistance to the Nazis and his commitment to shaping a church that understood the costs of discipleship is crucial. This is a little, but dense, book about learning to be an underground church and a prophetic witness to the light.

2. A Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, by Amy-Jill Levine. Again, Levine has lots of good stuff but this is my personal favorite. What is so important (especially but not exclusively for preachers) is that Amy-Jill knows Judaism (as a practicing Jew) and the New Testament (as a Biblical scholar.) She situates Jesus in his Jewish context and offers a counter to the heresy of Marcionism, which for my money remains the most dangerous heresy the Church still faces.

3. An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land, by William Stringfellow. Readers of this blog know of my recent interest in Stringfellow who wrote this book in 1973. He was an Episcopal layperson; and as a priest myself, I think it's important that he was a lay theologian. His reading of the Book of Revelation and how the powers of this world seek to destroy the creatures of God is extraordinary.

4. The Dream of God: A Call to Return, by Verna Dozier. (Amazon has a preview of Chapter 1 of this classic here to whet your appetite.) Speaking of Episcopal laypersons, I am amazed at how many people a decade or more younger than I are not familiar with Dozier. Twenty years ago, I had the amazing privilege to sit next to Ms. Dozier at the College of Preachers at an event being led by Phyllis Trible on Texts of Terror that included about a dozen of us. What an extraordinary person of faith; I felt all week that I was listening to an amazing scholar and sitting next to a living saint while doing so. The Dream of God is a clarion call for a less clergy-centered Church focused on the mission of God and the work of all the baptized. We take this language for granted these days (even if we have not yet lived into this dream) but Dozier wrote this book over twenty-five years ago.

5. An Altar in the World: a Geography of Faith, by Barbara Brown Taylor. (Here is a link to an Amazon preview.) There is a movement out from church buildings and into the streets: ashes to go, public liturgies, and the like. I support all of that. But Taylor give us a theology to undergird why. As an old hymn puts it, "This is my Father's world..." BBT looks for the holy in those places where we live and move and have our being, and helps us to do the same. (Leaving Church is also a "must read.")

6 Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America, by Cornel West. When I was studying for my Masters in Divinity from 1985-1988, there were two black theologians who left a huge mark on me: James Cone and Cornel West. Both are worth reading. In differing ways each of them challenged the white left-of-center United Methodist theology I had grown up with. In spite of them both, I have continued to be surprised at how segregated Sunday morning remains in America and how far we have to go. When I hear people say that "they don't see color" or respond to the Black Lives Matter movement with the smug "all lives matter" I want to refer them to West (or Cone) before engaging in any further conversation.

7 Trouble With Jesus: Women, Christology, and Preaching, by L. Susan Bond. This summer I was at the Festival of Homiletics and I was talking with a young PhD who studied at Vanderbilt. I asked her if Susan Bond was still there and she said she was not, that she thought she'd left academia. I was sad to hear that, because when I was studying for my D.Min. degree and had a long reading list on preaching from Barth to the current day, this was one of the most important books I read. Specifically I love it because she offers a thoughtful atonement theology that is grounded in the tradition and not focused on "the blood of Jesus shed for me." More generally, she offers a feminist theology of preaching that recognizes the limitations of a focus on Biblical texts, insisting that preachers need to be doing theology as well as Biblical interpretation in their preaching.

8 Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics and the Body of Christ by William T. Cavanaugh. (Amazon has a preview here.)This is a hard but important read focused on being the Church under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile from 1973-1990. Cavanaugh sees torture as a social-political strategy for control, and Eucharist as what the Church has to offer the world as a response: the broken tortured body of Jesus that offers an alternative vision of life and hope for the world. This is not an abstract book on Christian worship; it's about why the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup matter in a world where people are tortured and disappeared. 

9 Friedman's Fables by Edwin L. Friedman. There are lots of ways one can go with Ed Friedman. Probably both Generation to Generation and A Failure of Nerve could vie for this spot and on another day of the week I might suggest just that. All three should be read and marked and learned and inwardly digested. Friedman wrote as a rabbi and a therapist, but what he understood is that systems operate like families. Understanding those dynamics is enormously helpful. For my money, the fables are a lot like the parables of Jesus in that they are wonderful for group learning and conversation and they tease out meanings that are less "academic" than the other two books but still hit you right between the eyes. There is even a study guide available. (Here is a link to a previous post of mine on Friedman that includes within it a link to one of the parables, "The Friendly Forest.")

10.Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation, by Walter Brueggemann. Anyone who knows me knows that this list would not be a "Rich Simpson list" without the amazing Walter B on it! And he's written so many books - it's hard to know which one to point people toward to begin. I have used his Message of the Psalms for numerous adult formation classes and it's one of my favorites but I think this book undergirds, in some ways, almost everything else WB has written: the prophets are understood best not as fortune-tellers or even social critics but as poets, who are able to imagine the world otherwise. The Church is called to participate in articulating that vision, for the sake of the world. 

On Not Being Deceived

Yesterday, I posted some reflections that grew out of Philip Hallie's  Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and how goodness happened there. I focused primarily on the pastor of that congregation and the role he played there during World War II in occupied France.

There is one more thought I want to share, however, that connects some of what I've been thinking and praying about these past six weeks or so of my sabbatical time. Hallie quotes from Pastor Trocme's notes, where he writes: "Many French let themselves be deceived in 1942." (page 104) And then Hallie writes these words:

This is a psychologically penetrating statement. The Chambonnais under Trocme, on the other hand, would not let themselves be deceived. Trocme knew enough about Nazism and cared enough about its victims to realize that what the Germans were doing - whatever it was- was not for the good of the Jews. Perhaps he did not know more about Nazism than many other Frenchmen - Hitler's anti-Semitism was no secret in Europe - but he cared enough about its victims to realize what giving the Jews to the Germans meant for the Jews. That caring had to do in part with Saint John's commandment to love one another, but it also had to do with stubbornness, if you will, fortitude, a refusal to abjure - this crucial word again - a commitment. 

At this moment in American history, it seems to me that too many of my fellow citizens are allowing themselves to be deceived. This same notion came up in my reading of Stringfellow and of Wink. It also goes to the heart of Revelation as an "unveiling." Sometimes people simply do not have eyes to see, or ears to hear. Shouting louder is probably not the best way to get through to them! But it's also important to be able to discern when we are past the idea that people are simply entitled to have their own opinions. The holocaust happened, not only because of Hitler. It happened because too many good people "let themselves be deceived." They could not, or would not, see what was happening. There were not enough people who both knew and cared.

This is not a new problem. It's a problem we always face when battling against the Powers. But it seems to me there is great wisdom here in what Hallie sees in Trocme and the Chambonnais: they cared. It is not always more information that we need. Sometimes what we "know" is not enough on it's own.

I think of the refugees in our own day. Some people know that we need to secure our borders. Some people know that Biblical faith demands that we love our neighbors. Some people know that we (the United States government) played a huge role in creating this mess. (Some even know all of these things to be true!)

But until we truly care for the plight of that neighbor from Syria - until we see in the faces of their children a glimmer of recognition of our own children, - we will only be debating government policy. Until we care, we will not be able to use our eyes to see our neighbor. When we do, we require more than love or "goodness." We need to be stubborn. We need to persist. We need fortitude, and a refusal to abjure our commitment to mercy, compassion, and hope.

The Banality of Evil, Part II

 This is the second post of a three-part series. Part I can be found here.

Celebrant: Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
People: I will, with God's help. (The Baptismal Covenant, The Book of Common Prayer, page 304)

What do we mean when we speak of evil? What does it look like to persevere in resisting it? There is a film that I still find compelling, and a scene about the devil that I find helpful. It's from Broadcast News:  

I think this clip has everything to do with the banality of evil. It's not about the cartoon devil in a red suit, but about the ways that we miss the mark and lose our bearings and compromise our core values, bit by bit. Bruce Springsteen sings in the title track of Nebraska about a guy who offers this explanation for a killing spree that he and his girlfriend go on: "sir, I guess there's just a meanness in this world." (Critics have noted that Springsteen was reading a lot of Flannery O'Connor before writing Nebraska and that these words echo "A Good Man is Hard to Find," if you prefer a more literary reference than the poet from the swamps of Jersey.)

A book that I read many years ago was written by a Jewish scholar, Jon Levenson, entitled Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence. It's a compelling read but for this post it's that issue of the persistence of evil that I want to focus on. I think Levenson would agree to summarize by saying, "sir, I guess there's just a meanness in this world." His argument is the drama is still unfolding and that God is still fighting against evil. God's people are called to share in that work. 

I'm currently serving in a congregation that takes it's name from the Archangel Michael who is said, in the Revelation of John, to have kicked the devil out of heaven but not yet off of the earth. 

We need, I think, mythological and not literal language to speak about evil. But we do need to reclaim this language in our time, starting with John's Revelation. I wrote a series of posts, chapter by chapter, seven years ago, beginning here. One superb guide is the late William Stringfellow. So, too, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series or the Narnia Chronicles by C.S. Lewis. We need to reclaim the language of the faith that it is not enough to just go out and do good and think the world will be better overnight. We do battle not against flesh and blood but the powers and the principalities. See this post for more on this topic.

I'll try to figure out how to bring some of these strands together in Part III of this series, so stay tuned. 

Revelation 22:6-21

Our journey comes to an end with these final verses of the Revelation to John on Patmos; you can read them here.  

Three times in today's reading we hear that all of this will be happening "soon." And ever since this "unveiling" became part of the canon of Scripture, readers have asked, "how soon?" Overly certain and literal ways of answering this question have too often pushed readers away. They've also proven wrong, time and again. It doesn't seem to keep people from trying again.

Early on in this series, I mentioned my grandfather and his love of Revelation, shaped by Hal Lindsay's The Late Great Planet Earth. Lindsay (and others) were convinced that 1948, the founding of Israel as a nation, was a critical date and that a generation in the Bible was forty years, so that "soon" meant not later than 1988.I'm not sure how his his approach changed in 1989...

I think "soon" means the same thing it means in other New Testament eschatological texts: it means these things are always happening. It means that time is not just linear; there is also a cyclical dimension to time, and a fullness of time quality as well. I think soon means Now, in each generation. It means keep awake. It means stay alert to what is happening in the world and learn how to "read" what is happening. In one sense, there is nothing new under the sun. It means now is the time to choose whom you will follow and for Christians there is only one choice: we follow Jesus, and we claim him as Lord.

It means that Now is the time to name, unmask, and engage the powers of this world that threaten to hurt and destroy the creatures of God. It means (as Stringfellow put it) that we need to be able to read the events of our own day as containing both apocalyptic danger, and reason for hope, and to see the ways that "Babylon" is taking shape in our own context - and pulling us away from the New Jerusalem that God intends.

It means that we gather in the Church to worship the Lamb that was slain and to join with the heavenly chorus, because we believe that the Lamb is the Shepherd and the Shepherd is the Lamb. It means that we who thirst dare to come and drink from the water of life and to claim that Jesus is the alpha and the omega, not just our "personal Savior" but as Lord of Lords and King of Kings. That's political. That's cosmic. And the time is Now.

I want to thank all who have come along with me on this journey through Revelation. But I also want to offer one more post (tomorrow) before leaving Patmos. Until then...

Revelation 17:1 - 19:6

You can read this section here.

There is a lot to see in these chapters. A reminder: "Babylon" is code language for Rome, and ultimately for all powers and principalities that draw us from the love of God alone. I find William Stringfellow to be an extremely helpful guide to these chapters. In An Ethic for Christians & Other Aliens in a Strange Land, in the final chapter on "The Efficacy of the Word of God as Hope," he asks the million dollar question:

If, as I have said, the moral reality of death in the Fall is so mighty, so ubiquitous, so relentless a power, what then? If Babylon be the story of every nation and, right now, is a parable for America; if indeed the Antichrist is incipient in the American technocratic State, what can a citizen do?

He then writes about the gift of discernment, which he says is...

...basic to the genius of the biblical life style...with the ability to interpret ordinary events in both apocalyptic and eschatological connotations, to see portents of death where others find progress or success but, simultaneously, to behold tokens of the reality of the Resurrection, or hope, where others are consigned to confusion or despair. (pages 138-39)

To see portents of death where others see "progress" but also, at the same time, to also see signs of hope and new life even when others despair. That'll preach! And then, this wise counsel: .

..in the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst Babel, I repeat, speak the truth. Confront the noise and the verbiage and the falsehood of death with the truth and potency and efficacy of the Word of God. Know the Word, teach the Word, nurture the Word, preach the Word, defend the Word, incarnate the Word, do the Word, live the Word. And more than that, in the Word of God, expose death and all death's works and wiles, rebuke lies, cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed, raise those who are dead in mind and conscience. (page 142) 

I can't do better than that, friends! What the seer on Patmos sees is the fall of Babylon and rejoicing in heaven which is another way of saying that at least in the end, after much struggle, good will triumph over evil.

Truth really is stronger than lies. And so we bear witness to the truth. We live against the grain, naming death where others claim progress, but also not losing hope. Even as we we feebly struggle, we do so knowing that there is a cloud of witnesses who have been here before us, shining in glory, and they cheer us on.

 We know how the story ends. This allows us to live by faith, with hope and courage and love.

Domination Systems (Darkness Revisited, Part II)

My last post, Darkness Revisited, generated a lot of interest and encouragement and comments on Facebook. Part of that, I'm sure, was Springsteen fans who have listened to Darkness On The Edge of Town as  much as I have. But I believe the theological point that I was trying to make is also important, and that it resonated. And that is about the notion of Sin.

My own sense in writing that post was not one of despair, but of hope. Not everyone read it that way, but I tried to say several times that where Sin abounds, Grace abounds all the more. I tried to make it clear that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot and will not overcome it. As a priest, I see liturgy and worship as an opportunity to practice. We light candles on Christmas Eve and at the Easter Vigil and at Candlemas (which is coming up!) not because it looks pretty but because we really do believe that we are called to let our light shine in the world.

In my faith tradition, the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement, The Baptismal Covenant is central to shaping and forming the people we have been claimed and marked to become. In Holy Baptism we have renounced evil in order to turn to Jesus. We come back again and again to renew those promises that were either made on our behalf as infants (and perhaps confirmed by us at Confirmation) or that we made as adults.

As a parish priest, when I prepared parents and godparents or candidates themselves for Holy Baptism, often the biggest challenge was in helping people to interpret the three-fold renunciation. Before being asked the three-fold affirmation (Do you turn to Jesus and accept him as Savior? Do you put your whole trust in grace and love? Do you promise to follow and obey him as Lord?) the presenters are asked three hard questions:

• Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?
• Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
• Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?

The late New Testament scholar, Walter Wink, wrote a three-volume series on The Powers. In those three volumes, Wink is unpacking this old Biblical language to try to make sense of it in our postmodern world. He speaks of Domination Systems which is perhaps language we can better relate to. He speaks of naming, unmasking, and engaging these powers. 

That is the work I'm feeling drawn to in my writing and preaching and teaching these days and it is in part what was behind and ahead of my last post. I will be taking a sabbatical this April, May, and June and I'm beginning to develop a reading list, or perhaps more accurately a re-reading list. I want to explore these issues in the context of this time and place in the North American Church. How can we better equip ourselves and one another to be light that shines in the darkness by renouncing Satan, and the forces of wickedness that rebel against God, and the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God, and sinful desires that draw us from the love of God? That last one has been particularly problematic in a Church that thinks everything is about sex! Greed, power, envy, selfishness, addiction and despair all draw us from the love of God - not just lust!

Here is the beginning of my sabbatical reading list. I'm open to additional suggestions!

• Apocalyptic Biblical Literature, especially the Book of Daniel and Revelation. I recently posted on William Stringfellow's "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land." The Book of Revelation is key to what he's doing there. I also just purchased a commentary by Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Justice and Judgement.
• Ched Myer's amazing commentary on Mark's Gospel, Binding the Strong Man is also due for a re-read.
• As mentioned, Wink's trilogy on Naming, Unmasking, and Engaging The Powers.
• Paul Auster's novel, In the Country of Last Things. I first encountered this novel in reading L. Susan Bond's Trouble With Jesus: Women, Christology, and Preaching. I love her book which among other things outlines an atonement theology focused on "salvage." (She notes the word salvage and salve, as in a healing balm, are in the same family of words - as of course is the world salvation.) I love Bond's book and at some point I loaned it to someone - if that someone is reading this post and you have my book - I'd love to get it back! Otherwise I'll find another copy to take with me in April as well. 

So, this is where I am and where I feel like I'm headed in the weeks and months ahead. My hope is that these books and others help me to clarify what it means to be the Church in this time and place - what it means for us to let our light shine. I am hopeful about this work and about a Church that rediscovers its mission in the world. 

Perhaps an even greater enemy to this work than the Domination Systems themselves is the temptation to think that Christianity is "spiritual" and not contextual. Along the way I will continue to try to remind myself and readers that this is heretical; it even has a name, Marcionism. The Christian faith is Incarnational. We remember the God of Genesis fashioning human beings out of the clay of the earth, and sending prophets like Amos and Jeremiah and Micah and Isaiah to preach justice and kindness and mercy. We remember that the God who loved this created world enough to "pitch tent" among us in the Word-made-flesh, and to die on a cross, and to be raised in a way that wounds in his side could still be touched, has everything to do with this world. We remember that in the Book of Revelation, believers are not "beamed up" to heaven but the New Jerusalem emerges at the center of a new earth where there is no more weeping and pain is no more. 

And so, in the meantime, we renounce all that would destroy and hurt the creatures of God - all that seeks to dominate us and others - all that destroys human community. We most definitely have our work cut out for us. We are a people who are walking through great darkness. But we have also seen a great light, and we turn toward the One who has come that we might have life and have it abundantly. 

One More Before Leaving Patmos

The big question I am wrestling with at this point in my ministry, as I seek to do my part in building up the Body of Christ so that the Church can more faithfully follow Jesus and serve the world is this: how can Christian communities practice discernment that leads to resistance against the powers of this world that would seek to destroy the creatures of God? Or to paraphrase Mary Oliver, how can the Church more faithfully be "the way to the Way?" As I said to one of the faithful readers of this blog recently, it's about finding new ways to claim my own voice in this time and place, along with the bishop, clergy, and lay leaders in the diocese where I have been called to share in this work.

I think of my blogging as an extension of my preaching. And I've always felt that the sermons I preach are mostly for myself. I don't just preach to the choir; I preach the sermon that I need to hear. Very rarely do I try to figure out what a congregation "needs" to hear. In my current role I do talk a lot about transitions, because often that is the work I'm doing with congregations as they say goodbye to one cleric and prepare to say hello to the next one. But even then, I tend to think that if I am true to my own voice, they will hear, by God's grace, what they need. I am always surprised, and sometimes amused, at how the Spirit works, especially when someone says to me, "it felt like you wrote that sermon for me..." I am tempted to say, "no, I wrote it for me!"

In a similar way, I have been writing these posts for me. I have been needing to engage (and re-engage) the Book of Revelation as part of my Sabbatical journey. I've been needing to read and mark and learn and inwardly digest this strange and neglected book in a more structured and disciplined way. And I feel I've done that. If you've come along for the ride from the very beginning or read just one post, I'm grateful for the company. And I do hope that maybe you have even read something that is helpful to you, in your journey, and in your prayer life.

My initial hunch has been confirmed; namely, that the Revelation to John is a vital and underutilized resource in our time. I want to summarize why I feel that way before moving along:

First of all, it provides us with a much needed vocabulary. This vocabulary isn't immediately obvious, but guides like William Stringfellow and Walter Wink remind us that the Church needs more than language of morality and psychology to interpret the good news of Jesus Christ. We have all but lost our apocalyptic vocabulary which helps us to name, unmask, and engage the powers and principalities of this world. We have all but lost that vocabulary, especially in progressive Protestant circles that are focused on "progress." When we encounter "the Beast" (aka "evil") we are surprised, and maybe even a little scared.

We need to remember, however, that progress has never been a straight- line enterprise. The arc of the moral universe is indeed long, as Dr. King knew.. With him, and by faith, we trust that it does bend toward justice. But when the hoses are pointed at you (or when the "liberal" clergy tell you not too push too hard) you need a vocabulary that will give you courage and hope. Knowing how the story ends encourages us to keep on keeping on, even when it sometimes feels as if we've taken two steps back.

So in our own day, when it feels like the gains made for racial and economic justice, for the full inclusion of immigrants and refugees, for gender equality and for LGBTQ people, are under attack, we do not lose heart. We find new ways to work together. We find ways to name, unmask, and engage the powers that threaten God's people. And we keep singing that new song that the heavenly multicultural choir from every tribe, language, people and nation are already singing. Mostly though, we are able to discern that when you are battling against the powers and principalities it's supposed to be hard.

I also think that this language, while easily misinterpreted and misused, still has the power to encourage prayerful imagination. There is a sense of urgency that we need; not panic nor anxiety, but urgency for the Church in our day to recover imagination and wonder and holy curiosity. We have often adapted the language of "adaptive" and "technical" change and we know the former takes time. Yet too often I find that we can't seem to quit the addiction to latching onto the latest technical fix for adaptive challenges that in fact require patience, endurance, steadfastness, and trust. Too often like the dog in Up we get distracted by "squirrel."

At some deep level, John's Unveiling is an antidote to that temptation. If we believe that the Lamb is on the throne and is truly alpha and the omega, then we are freed to imagine that we are not responsible for it all. Only God is God. We strive to be members of the choir who are learning to sing that new song which then equips us to do the work God has given us to do, one day at a time. We are a way to The Way; not the Way itself. 

And what is this work? We are increasingly seeing, across the globe and in our own nation, the rise of xenophobia - a fear of the stranger. This runs counter to all of Scripture, literally from Genesis to Revelation and every place in between. Always, God calls on Israel and then upon the Church to love the stranger.

In John's Revelation, however, we glimpse the fulfillment of what was previously given as a commandment. You love the stranger because you were once a stranger in a foreign land. But what John sees is beyond this: the healing of the nations. John imagines the day when strangers become friends and the heavenly choir includes voices from every language, tribe, people and nation. The Syrian refugee is, in the end, harmonizing with the Russian Orthodox priest and the American evangelical. All of them play a role in their own cultures that is, in the end, greater than Trump or Putin or al-Assad. It may not feel like it most days, and we may get discouraged. But if this is in fact the heart of vision, then the work of the Church is to give us a chance to get to know each other better now, by refusing to allow the powers and principalities of this world to drive us apart. We have our work cut out for us.

Let anyone with ears to hear, hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. 

A Metaphorical Theology of Salvage

In 2005, I received a Doctorate in Ministry degree from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, where I'd had the extraordinary opportunity to study with Walter Brueggemann, Barbara Brown Taylor, Anna Carter Florence and others. I was in the "Gospel and Culture" program and focused a lot on preaching; part of that program included putting together a homiletics (aka "preaching") bibliography. During a sabbatical in 2003 I read over twenty-five books on preaching including people like Barth, Craddock, Lowery, Troeger, Tisdale and many others.

Included on that list and perhaps the most memorable book of them all for me was L.Susan Bond's Trouble With Jesus: Women, Christology, and Preaching. I was so taken with that book that I urged my lectionary group at the time to read it so we could discuss it together. But I've seen little reference to it since then and in fact either misplaced my copy in a move, or more likely loaned it to someone on whose shelf it is now buried. (Shout out to Noel Bailey who was a member of that lectionary group and recently sent me her copy, which I just finished re-reading.)

What has stayed with me the most is what Bond calls "A Metaphorical Theology of Salvage." She explores Paul Auster's grim, apocalyptic novel, In the Country of Last Things as a way toward clarifying what she means by this metaphor. Bond writes:

The metaphor that I am suggesting here is similar to the root meaning of salvation, the Latin salvare. Salvare means to save, to deliver from sin, to protect or maintain. It also has medical connotations involving soothing or remedial agents for healing. Both metaphorical trajectories, deliverance and healing, have strong associations with the tradition...the metaphor of salvage has the same linguistic source as salvation but offers a more immediate physical image...

This metaphor leads Bond to a rich discussion of Auster's book - in fact her book on preaching led me to also purchase Auster's novel which I also recommend on it's own. As Bond notes, Auster is not writing from a religious perspective in The Country of Last Things. It is certainly not a "Christian" novel. In this "country of last things" however, the world offers stark differences: one is either part of the death business, highly organized by the government and those scavengers who collect waste materials to sell for fuel, or repair and sell. The heroine, Anna Blume, is a scavenger. Bond quotes these words from Auster's novel:

As an object hunter, you must rescue things before they reach this state of absolute decay. You can never expect to find something whole - for that is an accident, a mistake on the part of the person who lost it...What another has seen fit to throw away you must examine...and bring back to life...Everything falls apart but not every part of every thing, at least not at the same time. The job is to zero in on these little islands of intactness, to imagine them joined to other such islands, and those islands to still others, and thus to create new archipelagos  of matter.

I'm not going to quote the whole book here; you can probably see where this is going. And maybe why I'm thinking about it again, a dozen years down the road from when I first read these words. Bond revisits the classic Christus Victor by Gustaf Aulen arguing for a new apocalyptic Christology rooted in the experience of the early Church. I still find her argument compelling and commend it to you but for now, just one more quote:

Success, for Auster's last country, is the resistance to death and its enterprise. The characters we grow to admire are ordinary folks who refuse to cooperate with the "kingdom of death" in any of its manifestation. They band together to devise strategies of resistance and subterfuge, refusing to grant death and its lackeys any satisfaction. Even the final death in the narrative is fraught with gospel reverberations. 

The place where this work happens is called Woburn House. Not surprisingly, Bond sees it as a metaphor for the Church, which in every generation is called to resist death and to salvage what can be salvaged of  this world. The work of those who live at Woburn House is humiliating; "they must touch and be in constant contact with the losers of the country of last things." But in so doing they embody hope.

For close followers of this blog you will note what I've been reading and thinking about lately: William Stringfellow and the Book of Revelation and Walter Wink's trilogy on The Powers which focuses on the Domination System. Recently I agreed to teach an elder-hostel class next year on apocalyptic literature, specifically the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation. I confess I was nervous in writing that description up, fearing that I'll scare away the very people I am hoping will sign up and attracting folks I'd rather not debate! But I'm going to give it a shot.

I'll be taking a three-month sabbatical this coming April, May, and June. We have some family travel plans and I'm looking forward to the Festival of Homiletics in San Antonio. My reading list is to go deeper into these questions. You might be surprised (or maybe not!) at the looks I'm getting when people ask me about my sabbatical and I tell them I want to delve deeper into apocalyptic literature. But that is the challenge, isn't it? In many ways the progressive mainline denominations have abdicated responsibility for interpreting this genre of Biblical literature. So the Biblical literalist fundamentalist pre- and post- millennialists have gladly filled that void and we get Hal Lindsay's The Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series. (I am NOT even going to hyperlink to them - stay away!)

In fact though, there is a reason that Daniel and Revelation are part of the Biblical canon - and when I was ordained I solemnly declared "that I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God and to contain all things necessary to salvation..." (BCP 526) There is that word again: salvation. I didn't cross my fingers when I said those words twenty-three years ago at Christ and Holy Trinity Church and think, "well, not Daniel and not Revelation."

I have come to believe we need that part of the story now more than ever. So this is the reading list I'm working on for the time apart that begins in just about six weeks. If you follow this blog you'll see more of this to come before and during and after my sabbatical. Stay tuned.

Religion and Politics

This is my first post from day one of a three-month Sabbatical. I'm going long on this one - that's a football reference if you are not a sports fan!

I have jokingly said to friends asking me what this Sabbatical will be about that it's like Seinfeld, which was a "show about nothing." But I say this in jest, in part because I know that groups like Lily will give grants to people who have great "themes" and I don't have one, not really. My Sabbatical will include daily prayer as well as some more structured retreat time at the Society of St. John the Evangelist, It will include family time (in Scotland) and some fun at "preacher camp" (aka the Festival of Homiletics) in San Antonio, Texas,  I don't know how or if all those connect but I'm looking forward to all of them.

But I've also got a reading list - a pretty long one in fact. And I may work out some of that reading on this blog over the course of the next few months as I process it. It probably does have a theme: religion and politics. Or more accurately how can the Church be faithful in a time of political crisis? Because, make no mistake about it, unless one's only source of information is Fox News, more and more people are realizing that our country is in serious trouble right now and needs our prayers and our faithful resistance to policies that are already endangering the poor, the earth, women's health, our LGBTQ neighbors, Muslims, immigrants, refugees...

Sometimes I hear people say that they don't go to Church to hear about politics. But here's the deal: the Bible is about politics. More on that below. But also, early on, the Church defined Gnosticism as a heresy. In short, the core beliefs of the Christian faith are about a real birth - of the Word-made-flesh - and a real death, and a bodily resurrection. None of the post-Easter experiences with Jesus are with a ghost: he has wounds in his hands, breaks bread, eats fish. The early Church insisted that matter matters. The good news of Jesus Christ is not about being "beamed up" to heaven but about the New Jerusalem. To say Jesus is Lord is a political statement; it means that Caesar is not. 

So here's a quick run through the Bible for those who think you can separate religion and politics. Start at the beginning. Start in the Garden where Adam and Eve are asked to care for God's good creation. (Not to dismantle the EPA!) Abraham and Sarah go when God sends them out as refugees in Genesis and they are promised descendants and land. They eventually get both, but the land is contested to this very day. Land is a political matter. If you don't believe me, book a flight to Tel Aviv and go see these places with your own eyes.

Exodus begins with a new Pharaoh in Egypt who did not know Joseph. A pharaoh is a king. Kings are political. This Pharaoh oppresses the people. God hears and sees what is going on and, through Moses, God acts as liberator. Liberation is a political word. The Exodus story is about a group of refugees in search of a better life. If you don't believe me, attend a Seder sometime with Jewish neighbors. What kind of Church ignores oppression in our own world as "too political?"

At the end of the Torah, after forty years of wandering around the Sinai Peninsula, the people are about to enter the Promised Land - without Moses, of course. The leadership "baton" is passed to Joshua who will soon fight the battle of Jericho. The Book of Joshua reads like a military history. Not political? Tell that to the people who were living in Jericho when the walls came tumbling down!

Judges is all about politics, akin to the early days of the United States after 1776 but before 1789. Skip Ruth for now (which is very political) and jump to First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, First and Second Chronicles. Israel wants to be like all the other nations. They want a king. They get Saul, then David, then Solomon. Religion and politics come together, including a big scandal when David sees a lovely woman out sunbathing and invites her over while her husband is off fighting David's war. He has the man killed because he can...because he has power over other people's lives.

Then the monarchy falls apart and the Babylonian army marches in and destroys Jerusalem and the Temple: war is political. Some of the leaders become refugees in Babylon (Iraq) where they lay up their harps and weep and dream of the old country. I don't imagine them as so different in some ways from the Cubans who settled in Miami in another time and place, to pick just one contemporary analogy.

The prophets. Pick one. Any one. Other than those lines from Isaiah that you can't read without Handel's Messiah going through your head, it's hard to think they are about "predicting Jesus." Read Jeremiah. Read Amos. They are about class warfare. They are about God taking the side of the poor. Read Amos 6.

Ah, but all I've talked about so far is the Old Testament, right? I mean it's only 75% of what Christians call "The Bible." But what about the New Testament? How about this? "In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled..." (Luke 2:1) Who was Pontius Pilate again? King Herod? The whole story is told in the midst of the presence of a foreign occupying power, the Roman Empire. You can't read the New Testament without the politics - you'd end up with confetti if you tried to cut it all out!

How about Paul's epistles from prison, or his plea to Philemon and Apphia and Archippus to release a slave named Onesimus? How can people who love St. Paul not care about  mass incarceration of people of color?

Or how about the Book of Revelation which borrows language and imagery from the Old Testament to describe how imperial power operates but also imagines a New Jerusalem, a holy city coming down from heaven, and a God who again pitches tent among mortals? Behold, the God who makes all things new!

Too strong? Too snarky? Hey, I'm on Sabbatical! But I am also so very weary of people saying that religion isn't about politics. That is heresy! Religion is always enmeshed with politics and you can't preach from the Bible without going there. As Ghandi so accurately put it, "those who say religion has nothing to do with politics don't know what religion is!"

The question is: whose politics? And should it be partisan? That's a different question. But we need to be more precise. We don't preach pie-in-the-sky "spirituality" because that isn't what the Bible is about. Yes, preachers do need to be careful about misusing their own power to preach their own politics to a captive audience. Yes, preachers should be careful about naming politicians from the pulpit or endorsing one candidate over another, but not necessarily because the Bible prohibits that. It turns out that the IRS isn't so keen on it. But here's the thing: there are costs to discipleship and maybe there are some things more important than tax-exempt status. In any case, an argument can be made that we avoid partisan politics in Church, but we cannot (and must not) avoid the great political questions of our day about violence, poverty, injustice, healthcare...

The Bible challenges all of our ideologies, but not because it is neutral. The Bible, from the first words to the last is about a God who takes sides. Read the Sermon on the Mount. God takes the side of the poor again and again, in both testaments. Does that mean the rich are all going to hell? No, I sure hope not since I live a secure life in the richest nation in the world. But Jesus did say it would be harder for a rich man (or woman) to enter the Kingdom of heaven than to get a camel through the eye of a needle. As my old friend Darrell Huddleston used to say, you can do it, but it makes a helluva mess!

During the next few months, I want to focus in on Revelation for a number of reasons. Watch this blog for more in the coming weeks. My guides into this strange bit of writing will include William Stringfellow, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Walter Wink, and Michael Battle, among others. But I wanted to write this post first. I do hope that most of my faithful readers reach this point and say, "amen." But I also hope if you see this and have yourself said you don't like mixing religion and politics that some of what I've said here will encourage you to rethink that.

Let me be clear: I do not believe that God is a Democrat or a Republican. While I do have partisan views and I do belong to a political party, I have good friends who I know to be people of faith across the aisle who think I'm totally wrong about lots of things. And I may be. Truly. I do believe that people of faith can disagree on political issues and particularly on political strategies. But not on the larger principles. To use one example: people of faith can never turn a blind eye to the challenge to make healthcare affordable for the most vulnerable of our neighbors. We might well disagree on the specifics of a particular plan. But merely moving money from the poor to the rich? That's an offence to the living God. It is simply not an option for people of faith to show neither mercy nor compassion to our neighbors. Go back and read Amos again if you don't believe me!

Religion is all about politics. The harder part is figuring out what God is calling us to do in a particular circumstance. To figure that out we do well to pray for wisdom and courage and humility and also to keep engaging those whom we know to be faithful people who see things differently from us. If we do that we may yet find a way forward, with God's help.

Breathing Together: A Conspiracy for Goodness

At the Cuttyhunk Union Church, I have the rare opportunity to deviate from the lectionary and preach on texts I otherwise wouldn't get to. This text DOES actually come up later this summer, on August 23, at least for those who use Track 1 for the Old Testament readings. It can be found here, Exodus 1:8-2:10. Below is a manuscript for the sermon I preached last night at the Evening ecumenical service. 

The Exodus story is one of the most powerful narratives in the whole Bible, both testaments! It’s the kind of script that can be easily adapted to film as well as to liturgy. How cool would it be to get someone like Charlton Heston to play Moses?

From the Exodus story comes the celebration of Passover, the central liturgical experience for our Jewish cousins. I hope many of you have had the chance to sit at the Seder table at some point with Jewish friends, where the story is remembered, and if not yet then perhaps find a way to do that sometime.

For Christians, Holy Week is set in the context of first-century Passover celebrations in Jerusalem. Jesus and his followers are pilgrims to the holy city, a story we remember every year in Holy Week, starting on Palm Sunday, and then continuing through the three holy days. On the night before he died for us, Jesus took the bread and shared the cup to breathe new life into this old tradition of the matzoh and God’s saving acts of liberation.

It’s a political story. It may not get taught that way in Sunday School curriculum but that doesn’t change the fact that this is a story about unjust power and how one resists power that corrupts. You can’t sit and break the matzoh and hear about Moses telling old Pharaoh to “let my people go” and miss that. In some parts of the Church we’ve been mixed up, though. I agree with those who say that partisan politics is not appropriate from the pulpit and I agree with those who say that God is not a Democrat or a Republican. I agree with the founders commitment to separate church and state. But that does not mean that religious faith is apolitical; it just means that religious speech is protected speech.

From the beginning to the very end of the Bible when the Lamb seated on the throne creates the new Jerusalem where there are no more tears and God’s will is done on earth as in heaven, there are political implications of choosing to follow God rather than human beings who overextend their claims on authority.

OK. Enough about Moses, who gets all the good PR. Tonight I want to back up a little bit to the reading we heard tonight, from the first two chapters of the Book of Exodus. There we meet six of seven courageous women, all of whom model wisdom, resilience, and faith as a direct challenge to Pharaoh’s tyranny. Moses deserves credit for leading the Hebrew people out of bondage and toward the Promised Land but let’s be clear: without these seven women there is no Moses.

They are, first, Shiprah and Puah, the two midwives who defy Pharaoh and save the lives of Jewish baby boys. They are Moses’ mother and his sister, who build a little ark to keep Moses safe and allow him to be rescued. Pharaoh’s own daughter and her maidservant directly resist Pharaoh’s edict and save Moses and then raise him as their own. When she happens to find Moses’ own mother and asks her to be the nursemaid, it’s pretty clear she knows exactly who this woman is and what she’s asking of her: to nurse her own child in the midst of Pharaoh’s own household. So that’s six, all of whom appear in tonight’s reading. Finally, there is Zipoorah, Moses’ wife, whom we have not yet met.

These seven women promote life and prepare the way for Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Without them there is no Moses to stand before a burning bush, no Moses to lead the Hebrew people across the Red Sea and toward the Promised Land. In their quiet work, these six women before us tonight resist and disrupt Pharaoh’s anti-creational, death-dealing abuses of power.

For tonight, I want to focus primarily on the first two of these seven women, these two midwives: Shiprah and Puah.

Notice again the subtext and pay close attention to the verbs. The law that Pharaoh has decreed is clear: kill the boys. All the Hebrew boys. The girls may live. Kill them before they have a chance to become little freedom fighters.

But the two midwives disobey the law. It turns out that even law-abiding citizens answer to a higher power, and if a law is unjust there is no requirement to obey it. This is why Jews and Christians have conspired together throughout history to challenge unjust laws. That doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences. That doesn’t mean the “powers that be” won’t go bonkers when one dares to challenge their authority. The women are summoned to report to the Pharaoh and they lie – presumably under oath. Those Hebrew women, they say, are just amazing! They give birth before we even get there!

The word conspiracy comes from two Latin words that literally mean “to breathe together.” The word has taken on a more negative meaning – we speak of conspiracy theories and of conspiring to commit a crime together.

But I want to call us back to that older, more literal meaning tonight. To breathe, together. We breathe in the Holy Spirit, the breath of God. Like the disciples in that upper room after Jesus is raised from the dead, he comes and breathes on them and they are changed. They are changed for good, to be more courageous, more wise, more faithful to what Easter is all about.

When we come here on a Sunday night, and we sing these hymns and we say our prayers, we are forming a conspiracy together for goodness in this world – a conspiracy to be a light that shines in the darkness, to be the salt of the earth, to be leaven that makes the whole loaf rise.

This conspiracy is not partisan. It’s not a Democratic or Republican thing. But it most definitely has political implications. It is about getting clear about who we belong to, namely the living God. All others who wish to claim our allegiance are pretenders to the throne.

Most of us want to be good citizens, at least I do. And on many days we can do that and still be faithful to God. But there come certain moments in our lives, and sometimes even moments in human history, when we are called to breathe in together to join a conspiracy of goodness and to obey God’s Word over human authorities.

In the midst of World War II, France was partly occupied and partly “free.” The French government, headquartered at Vichy, collaborated with the Nazis, mistakenly believing that one could cooperate with evil in order to live another day. But there was a small farming village called Le Chambon-sur-Lignon that made history by harboring some 5,000 refugees, most of them Jews, many of them children.

A good deal of sacrifice was involved. The village basically doubled its size as Jewish families found a safe haven. Families took in children and their parents, making them feel as though they were fellow “Chambonnais” going to school, working on the farms, sharing meals, and so forth. There was great risk involved. The village became a center for the forgery of documents. Illegal documents, according to the Nazis and the Vichy government.

Almost all of the Chambonnais were Huguenot Christians. France had persecuted Protestants heavily, especially during the eighteenth century. Those who did not flee, and those who were not put to death for their faith, survived in particular pockets of the country. Le Chambon was one such place. They kept the memories alive by meeting in worship, hearing the Bible preached by their pastors, and singing the psalms as well as folk songs that recounted their story. They felt a special affinity for the Old Testament and for the Jews. It was part of their theology. There is no doubt that they learned about Shiprah and Puah and those other five women along the way.

So during the Second World War, Le Chambon became the safest place in Europe for refugees from the Nazi horrors. Take that in for just a moment. Breathe in that truth. Breathe in that a little church in a little town did great things.

And here is something interesting, at least to me: the Chambonnais did not feel they were heroes. One of those born in Le Chambon, Pierre Sauvage, moved with his family to America, where he became a filmmaker. Out of curiosity about his origins, he did a documentary on Le Chambon called Weapons of the Spirit. When he returned to his birthplace with a film crew, he interviewed the somewhat reluctant villagers. Over and over he found that they did not think of themselves as courageous champions who had defied the Nazis. Instead, they quietly did what very few others could do, saving thousands of people from their oppressors.

Why? How? “It’s simple,” they explained, “love God and love your neighbor; that’s what Christians do.” That is all that we did, they explained. No big deal!

They conspired for the good, because that is what Christians do. They simply took the two great commandments seriously. Like Shiprah and Puah and those other five women had done all of those many centuries earlier.

These are witnesses to us, my friends. They inspire us to conspire against evil in our own time. They remind us what it means to be faithful in dangerous times. It can be scary, but it can also bring us clarity about who we are called to be, with God’s help. I worry that sometimes what keeps us from acting is that we think only of the big things. We raise up Moses at the Burning Bush and send him up on the Mountain to get the Ten Commandments. But never underestimate what seven women can do to change the world. Never underestimate what a little Protestant Church in a small village can do. Never forget that without Mrs. Parks and many like her in Montgomery, boycotting the buses and walking to work every day for 381 days, Dr. King’s “dream” is just good rhetoric.

To be the Church, we do sometimes need to take sides. Being non-partisan does not mean staying neutral. The meaning of our Baptism is to stand for justice over and against injustice, for dignity of every person over degradation. For love over hate, and for truth in a world of lies. We have to remember who we are and whose we are and live like that matters. It’s not easy, and we won’t all do it the same way. We won’t all agree every day on what is required of us but if it looks like being kind, and showing mercy, and loving our neighbor we can be reasonably sure we are on the right path. We come to a congregation like this one to remember our core beliefs so that in small and large ways we can practice those beliefs one day at a time on this Island and when we return home.

William Stringfellow was an Episcopal layperson who got all this. He wrote powerfully in the 1970s. I commend his writings to you, and close with his words, dear friends and then a brief time for silent reflection before we sing "Breathe on me, Breath of God."

The biblical lifestyle is always a witness of resistance to the status quo in politics, economics, and all society. It is a witness of resurrection from death. Paradoxically, those who embark on the biblical witness constantly risk death - through execution, exile, imprisonment, persecution, defamation, or harassment - at the behest of the rulers of this age. Yet those who do not resist the rulers of the present darkness are consigned to a moral death, the death of their humanness. That, of all the ways of dying, is the most ignominious.